designs&blossoms

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is often disturbing to learn/read about accidents to young and old acquaintances which otherwise would have been averted if Helmet was used. The price they pay is high and hence an attempt to make realise the importance of wearing the Helmet while riding on a 2 wheeler.
Issued in public interest by blossoms

"A Brand is a complex symbol. It is the intangible sum of a product's attributes, its name, packaging and price, its history, reputation and the way it;'s advertised. A brand is also defined by consumer's impression of people who use it, as well as their own experience"
-David Ogilvy

I reared cattle to sell milk, got in poultry farming, silkworm farming, then turned a motorcycle dealer, an Udupi hotel owner, a stock broker, irrigation equipment dealer, an agricultural consultant, a politician and finally an aviation entrepreneur - struggling, falling, rising, falling, rising again and taking off.
Capt. G. R. Gopinath, Simply Fly, A Deccan Odyssey

'Entrepreneur is one who creates wealth where it did not exist earlier by creating a new market and a new customer. The create something new, something different, they change and transmute values; and on a size and scale that will impact society.'
Peter Drucker

Why you need a branding specialist?

90% of businesses aren't born with million-dollar funding. So what makes any entrepreneur successful in cut throat competition? Every enterprise has to have an idea followed by a plan to execute it. A research on the target audience, their taste, the geographical demand, the incentives offered and the value of the deliverable needs to be properly done. The burger we eat for Asian taste would have to be different from the European or American taste. McDonald’s introduced local items like McAloo tikki and vegetarian French fries based on public demand.

KFC spiced up its fried chicken using local spices and more pepper than its traditional recipe. A similar consideration applies to understanding the psyche when you are going to introduce cars in different geographical locations with respect to their usage, terrain etc. All wheel drive or four wheel drive is necessary in hilly terrain and bad weather. Compact cars are more popular in heavily congested Asian countries due to lack of space and buying power of the average consumer. Neglect considering your target audience and your product is doomed even before it hits the market!

For a product/service to get popular without any concrete marketing plan, it may take more time than imagined however good the product may be. A quick and better way is to use different available mediums to advertise the goodness in the best possible fashion. Hence the need of a solid business strategy and a plan doubly ensures the success of the product/service to be offered.

Some reasons which are attributed to failure of any enterprise which otherwise could have been successful:

Lack of business plan
Weak initial funding
Lack of branding initiatives
Poorly executed plan
Launching at the wrong time
Failure to develop the brand
Weak employee participation
Logistics roadblocks
Not fulfilling the brand promise 

If you are an entrepreneur about to introduce a new product or business idea, you need a well researched business plan. This will take into account several things such as your brand promise, brand strategy, product/service attributes, target demographic, market positioning, pricing strategy, promotional or advertising strategy etc. Without this concrete roadmap, you are like a ship without a rudder and will be soon lost in the sea of countless nameless businesses that are launched every day. A good business plan will allow you to develop specific milestones, financial projections etc. so that you can plan how long you can sustain your business before it starts adding to your revenue stream.

 

Some beautiful quotes of Warren Buffet

 Price is what you pay. Value is what you get...

The first rule of Investing is don't lose money; the second rule is don't forget rule #1...

I don't care where someone went to school, and that never caused me to hire anyone or buy a business...

Predicting rain doesn't count, building an ark does...

If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.

We can afford to lose money - even a lot of money. But we can't afford to lose reputation - even a shred of reputation.

Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.

In the business world, the rear-view mirror is always clearer than the windshield...

The Start-Up of You

The rise in the unemployment rate last month to 9.2 percent has Democrats and Republicans reliably falling back on their respective cure-alls. It is evidence for liberals that we need more stimulus and for conservatives that we need more tax cuts to increase demand. I am sure there is truth in both, but I do not believe they are the whole story. I think something else, something new — something that will require our kids not so much to find their next job as to invent their next job — is also influencing today’s job market more than people realize.

Look at the news these days from the most dynamic sector of the U.S. economy — Silicon Valley. Facebook is now valued near $100 billion, Twitter at $8 billion, Groupon at $30 billion, Zynga at $20 billion and LinkedIn at $8 billion. These are the fastest-growing Internet/social networking companies in the world, and here’s what’s scary: You could easily fit all their employees together into the 20,000 seats in Madison Square Garden, and still have room for grandma. They just don’t employ a lot of people, relative to their valuations, and while they’re all hiring today, they are largely looking for talented engineers.

Indeed, what is most striking when you talk to employers today is how many of them have used the pressure of the recession to become even more productive by deploying more automation technologies, software, outsourcing, robotics — anything they can use to make better products with reduced head count and health care and pension liabilities. That is not going to change. And while many of them are hiring, they are increasingly picky. They are all looking for the same kind of people — people who not only have the critical thinking skills to do the value-adding jobs that technology can’t, but also people who can invent, adapt and reinvent their jobs every day, in a market that changes faster than ever.

Today’s college grads need to be aware that the rising trend in Silicon Valley is to evaluate employees every quarter, not annually. Because the merger of globalization and the I.T. revolution means new products are being phased in and out so fast that companies cannot afford to wait until the end of the year to figure out whether a team leader is doing a good job.

Whatever you may be thinking when you apply for a job today, you can be sure the employer is asking this: Can this person add value every hour, every day — more than a worker in India, a robot or a computer? Can he or she help my company adapt by not only doing the job today but also reinventing the job for tomorrow? And can he or she adapt with all the change, so my company can adapt and export more into the fastest-growing global markets? In today’s hyper connected world, more and more companies cannot and will not hire people who don’t fulfill those criteria.

But you would never know that from listening to the debate in Washington, where some Democrats still tend to talk about job creation as if it’s the 1960s and some Republicans as if it’s the 1980s. But this is not your parents’ job market.

This is precisely why LinkedIn’s founder, Reid Garrett Hoffman, one of the premier starter-uppers in Silicon Valley — besides co-founding LinkedIn, he is on the board of Zynga, was an early investor in Facebook and sits on the board of Mozilla — has a book coming out after New Year called “The Start-Up of You,” co-authored with Ben Casnocha. Its subtitle could easily be: “Hey, recent graduates! Hey, 35-year-old midcareer professional! Here’s how you build your career today.”

Hoffman argues that professionals need an entirely new mind-set and skill set to compete. “The old paradigm of climb up a stable career ladder is dead and gone,” he said to me. “No career is a sure thing anymore. The uncertain, rapidly changing conditions in which entrepreneurs start companies is what it’s now like for all of us fashioning a career. Therefore you should approach career strategy the same way an entrepreneur approaches starting a business.”

To begin with, Hoffman says, that means ditching a grand life plan. Entrepreneurs don’t write a 100-page business plan and execute it one time; they’re always experimenting and adapting based on what they learn.

It also means using your network to pull in information and intelligence about where the growth opportunities are — and then investing in yourself to build skills that will allow you to take advantage of those opportunities. Hoffman adds: “You can’t just say, ‘I have a college degree, I have a right to a job, now someone else should figure out how to hire and train me.’ ” You have to know which industries are working and what is happening inside them and then “find a way to add value in a way no one else can. For entrepreneurs it’s differentiate or die — that now goes for all of us.”

Finally, you have to strengthen the muscles of resilience. “You may have seen the news that [the] online radio service Pandora went public the other week,” Hoffman said. “What’s lesser known is that in the early days [the founder] pitched his idea more than 300 times to V.C.’s with no luck.” 

(An Article by Thomas L. Friedman)
 

Designing a Logo/Corporate Identity

The most famous and recognizable logos in the world like MacDonald’s, Nike, Shell, Mercedes Benz or Apple can be branded on a horse’s butt. What I mean to say is, a logo need not be a complex network of many design elements in order to reflect the values of that organization. The success of any organization lies in garnering an emotional response to the products/services they offer by virtue of their commitment or promise with respect to their commercial value. The growth depends on how well they interact with their market and interpret and improvise on the deliverables. A logo plays a vital role if your promises to your clients are fulfilled.

 Logo Designing is part of a big branding exercise and we will not endeavor to understand it from a larger perspective over here. blossoms’ intention is to showcase the impact of a logo in creating the brand image of any organization through various designs the creative team developed over a period of time.

Gone are the days when companies like Adidas and Rolex came out with their identity decades after their marketing success. Today, every budding entrepreneur thinks of a business card with his iconic logo symbol in the initial stage itself.

Even though your branding philosophy will decide your fate in the competitive world, you cannot neglect the need of a proper logo which is the face of your company. Ideally, a marketing or branding strategy decides the logo rather than the business one is into. Otherwise, what would a star(Mercedes) have to do with a premium car brand? In short, the logo should be able to convey a bigger message instead of immediately hinting at the product or service offered by the organization. If it is possible to gel both together, nothing like it.

If you are in the process of creating or revamping your logo, feel free to drop a line at mktg@studioblossoms.com and let us try to bring the positive attitude of your organization to the world. Like any other business, logo designing is best left with professionals.