Wow, has it been a week already? Time has been flying and so much has been happening. The response to the last story (Microsoft’s bing Delivers a Branding Catastrophe) was overwhelming (over 1,800 hits in a single day!). We have gotten so much great feedback, encouragement and advice that we have decided to get you involved in our re-branding. As we will discuss later, a branding campaign should be adaptive and reactive, so with all this buzz going around why would we stop it?



Drum Roll Please… Vote!

Congratulations you have passed the test, now we want to hear what you think! The three options you have to choose from are Wick, Striking Ideas, and lastly to stay with Bing! Please vote and let us know what you think. Be sure to read our thoughts behind each name detailed below.





Wick
Wick is great for many reasons. It is a great “brandable” name, meaning it can mean whatever I build into it, and it’s very unique and short. With Wick my brand visuals can stay pretty much the same, making for a low resource transition. Wick uses light in a very similar way and brightens everything around it. It also build a more personal brand as it plays off my name Scott Wickberg, giving it a deeper meaning. For Wick I was able to buy www.wickcreative.com which is a good domain, but not outstanding. Wick also has the downfall of being less about creating great ideas, which is the cornerstone of my brand positioning.


Striking Ideas
Striking Ideas is also great for many reasons. It is a great example of a “discoverable name”, meaning that it very directly describes my branding and services. This allows for it being easy to find on the Internet and very relevant. Another huge plus is that I have gotten www.strikingideas.com so anyone could just type my business name in and I will always come up first, which is a huge bonus. It is also very on brand with communicating our unique attributes within the market. On the down side it has less character and is longer, making it easier to forget.


Bing!
As I have detailed in the previous post, microsoft’s “bing” undermines my brands unique attribute and makes me look like a copy cat brand. My SEO is currently up, but in the long run that will not sustain. Also random hits won’t convert into sales.
On the other side though, Bing! is a great name, and obviously requires no investment in resources. It talks about my unique attributes and connects with customers.



A Branding & Transition Campaign is Adaptive.

We have all known companies who have resisted to grow & adapt to their surroundings and have been left in the dust. It is essential to gauge your next moves on the most up-to-date information and continue to grow with the flow and not against. In this specific case, people are actively interested in the development our situation and we want to continue to foster that interactivity. So we decided to push user interactivity to a real level, let them help us decide. With this approach we can actively gather our audience’s opinion while continuing to grow interest in our brand. Also users will feel invested personally in our brand and will begin to share it with others.

So if you are still reading this and have yet to vote, please do. We value your opinion.



Thanks,

Scott Wickberg & Bing!



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• Microsoft’s bing Delivers a Branding Catastrophe
• Work Extravaganza! Pt 3
• Shine Creative
• ADDY Gold Award
• Work Extravaganza! Pt 1