SAGE: OUR BLOG
adj: wise through reflection and experience
Branding
Avoiding the Common Pitfalls of Brand Ideation
By Sheryl Rinker The best companies have a brand that speaks to its customers beyond the transaction. A good brand connects with an emotion, evokes a lifestyle or presents a company as a friend that looks out for its customer. A few things that all strong brands should have are: a clear understanding of who they are, what makes their [...]
Create Consistent Brand Voice With These Writing Tips
By: Kristy Hoelscher and John Donovan Strategic America serves clients in countless ways, and one of the most important is one that often goes unnoticed: Making sure you present a consistent brand voice. Your brand voice is at the core of your brand’s personality. The words, sentence structures, and punctuation you use to engage your audience determine their perception of [...]
How to Get More Prospects to Try Your Brand
Converting a prospect into a customer is a lot like dating. There are many steps that go into finding the person you will someday marry. If you start talking about children on the first date, it rarely works out. So why as marketers do we go into a new relationship and jump to the end sale? The more value you [...]
A Brand New Beginning: 3 Tips for Rebranding Your Business
According to The Princess Bride, a movie that I can (and will) quote ad nauseam, two of the classic life blunders are “never get involved in a land war in Asia” and “never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line.” If I may be so bold, I’d like to complete the trifecta and add “Never go into [...]
The Logo Process
When you see the Nike swoosh, the FedEx arrow, or the McDonald’s golden arches, you immediately think about the company the image represents and what they do, right? That’s exactly what a company’s logo should do. What many don’t realize is the hours of design, research and planning that go into designing a logo. What will best resonate with the [...]
Building Brands
In a former agency, I had a creative director who would respond to every common office greeting like “How’s it going?” or “What are you up to?” with “Building brands. Just building brands, man.” He believed it, too. He believed passionately that every time he had the opportunity to create something that represented a brand, he wanted that piece of [...]
When Is The Right Time to Rebrand?
The Des Moines Business Record recently printed an article on the right time to rebrand your business. The article explored branding and how (and when) companies need to take a look at their products and services and how they are perceived by customers. I had the opportunity to contribute to the article, “Gaining Clarity: Evolving your Brand,” offering my experiences [...]
Brand and Reputation Management
Today, things are moving so quickly, with such velocity, that brand management is more important than ever. Many clients are asking us to initiate account planning in order to assess their positioning related to competitive and market changes. Positioning, tagline development and category differentiators are components of a brand audit that SA conducts. In reputation management, mapping of key messages [...]
