Here's the thing...

The Sensationals are your alluring communicational assets. They are the “shiny hooks” designed to be Observed from afar to attract people’s attentions and help people Realise the relevance of a brand’s offerings and ultimately make them Aspire towards Engaging with the brand. These items often require significant investment of time and money, however due to their broad top-level nature, they also tend to enjoy long-shelf lives and can be serious demand generators and sales aids, that can “open the door” to valuable end-user Engagement. The key goal of these items is to attract attention and position a brand, so the brand can “get its foot in the door” and begin its relationship with its end-user, and take that relationship to the next level. It’s basically like the mating dance of the Chilean Flamingo.

Stationery can be an understated yet very powerful set of Touchpoints that quietly expresses your brand’s credibility. Business cards, letterheads and other subtle materials show your business is established and trustworthy, but they also quietly convey the character of your brand. Quietly is the watchword here. Quiet quality speaks volumes. Thanks to advances in technology the very best in stationery design and print can be achieved well and fast. Well-designed stationery strengthens your brand’s connection to its audience.

Professionally shot and edited videos are a valuable means of signalling your brand’s credibility, identity and style to its audience, while presenting vital top-level information to provide a ‘snapshot’ that conveys quickly and effectively what that brand is all about and what it has to offer the world. Good overture films provide the perfect “opening” to a brand. They set the tone and inspire people to want more. Where you choose to put your video is up to you but YouTube videos are favoured by Google in terms of SEO and are usually put to the front of the queue.

Signposting is a verb, and it is both a physical and abstract thing. Signposting your clients and customers towards better using your goods and services is these days mostly done using soft communications such as digital messaging, spoken voice and social media but often you need to guide and encourage engagement by harder means such as printed materials and branded clothing, and every now and then, you just need some good old fashioned signage. Whether it's permanent signage for a shop-front or a wayfinding system for an office complex or a more temporary signage for a one-off event, well-considered signage is a valuable Touchpoint that helps your audience find their way around your brand.

Uniforms are important Touchpoints that extend the reach of your brand and show the world who is on your team. Branded clothing can transform a brand, and items such as t-shirts, aprons and hoodies are especially valuable at events and public demonstrations of your goods and services.

A great top-level ad campaign can transform your brand’s fortunes because a good idea well executed can grab attention, retain attention and leave a long-lasting impression upon those it’s seen or heard by. Top-level refers to the central creative idea designed to promote a brand and effectively convey the brand's main audience message and proposition via a particular slogan or visual hook e.g. The Meerkats of comparethemarket.com or Apple's Mac vs Pc campaign. 

There are multiple options for designing and placing an advert, from MPU banners to billboards but essentially when considering an advert you must create something that will be Observed, Realised as relevant, Aspired towards, Trusted and Engaged with. Ensure the advert has a clear direction on how to Engage further e.g. give a “Call-to-action”, such as an invitation to call a telephone number or visit a website. If an advert’s audience can ORATE the advert – and by extension your brand – it is an effective advert, and it has done its job. 

‘Touchstones’ are Super Touchpoints such as websites and physical stores. These should ‘straddle’ tiers and be both sensational and educational.

A website is a Touchstone; a ‘Super Touchpoint’; a central point of focus for any brand; a place anyone can visit almost instantly to discover your key features. It is a massive opportunity to connect with prospects and end-users. Ensure it is audience-relevant, mobile-friendly and loads fast. Also check the user can interact with the site and navigate through the content in a way that ensures a pleasing and meaningful User eXperience (UX). The more content, imagery, video and information one adds to a website the more you risk slower load times and user confusion, so curate with care. An effective website needn’t be overly complex, expensive or “glitzy”, and less is often more. The first important aspect to consider early on when developing your website is what to call it ie. the domain name. Domain names have to be unique, there cannot be two identical domain names on the internet, so make sure that whatever you’d like to call your website is available as a domain name. Then decide what you’d like to put on it and how you’d like that put there.

The level and degree of value that a proprietary store can provide your brand will depend on what it is you are delivering to your audience. For many brands, such an investment is not necessary, especially in light of the related overhead costs, but if your brand can better lever its value offering via a bricks-and-mortar store, the opportunities for audience engagement can be very attractive and effective. For brands that sell fixed-location experiences such as coffee shops and restaurants a store makes sense. When a brand's value offering requires non-portable equipment to create 'while-u-wait' goods and services (health spas, sushi bars, etc) a store is often a lifeline between a brand and its audience, especially if the offering is seen by its audience as an 'impulse buy'. However, if your brand can deliver its value just as effectively online or in your home, a store could be an expensive liability. If your brand's offering is reliant upon a real store, it's worth aiming for achieving one but there are many other opportunities a brand can consider on the run up to that, such as partnerings, pop-ups and concessions. Adding a physical location to a brand's arsenal, can be a game-changer but ensure you are taking advantage of the opportunity. Successful in-store retail is an art, a science and often case-specific and reliant upon a broad set of tried-and-tested principles, but eCommerce has changed the landscape so the rules have changed, and opportunities to grow your brand via meaningful store-based experiences are everywhere.

The TED stage is a wonderful example of a Touchpoint that is both sensational and educational. Also, thanks to video and YouTube your TED talk will be around for a while too. TED has enabled greater and more widespread opportunities thanks to their licensing extension in the form of TEDx talks. Most towns frequently organise TEDx events, and the application process to perform one is straight-forward. The competition for a slot on the spot is usually high and the organisers are likely to award the opportunity to the strongest applications, however if you present your prepared talk in a way that sufficiently aligns with the event's theme, and can show some relevant personal credentials to lend your application authority that sells your performance potential, you can really shorten the odds. Also, the TEDx talks are currently enjoying a growing wave of popularity, so more and more events are being held, probably in a town near you soon. It's worth nothing the TEDx entry requirements state that talks cannot be self-promotional in nature or content. However overt self-promotion is rarely a good way of capturing an audience's imagination or effectively warming up a prospect, so instead of just talking about what you do, why not come at your area of interest from a unique angle? After all, the official line of TED is 'Ideas worth spreading', so take the time to create something genuinely interesting and take the time to practice it and practice it, and join a local public speaking club to help you. Sure, such a project may well be out of your wheelhouse, but if you can achieve this, it can be a massive profile-raising Touchpoint – especially if you're a personal brand – and not only does it contribute to culture's conversation but it also adds great authority and interest to your work.

Yes, you’ll have to write it first, but a book is the ultimate business card and can be a highly valuable asset for a brand. A book helps to signal the author is a credible expert in their field and provides an effective bridging point for fans to learn more and develop trust in the author and by extension: the brand. 

The Educationals are your well-informed communicational assets. They tend to be the items audiences look to after they’ve been seduced by The Sensationals. Educational assets are ‘credentialising’ assets that a brand’s audience can engage with to learn more about the brand. These communicational Touchpoints can be either inbound or outbound and tend to be less sensational than The Sensationals, but much more in-depth and informative. The idea is that The Sensationals initially attract eyeballs with an inviting and alluring teaser that gives a sensational ‘snapshot’ of the brand and what the brand offers, and then if the audience wishes to know more it can dive into The Educationals, the ‘credentials’ i.e. the whitepapers, the blogs, the books and be keep up-to-speed with emails and updates––items that help people Trust a brand, and see that there’s substance to the brand’s claims and propositions.

If you are providing expert knowledge about a particular field, you should consider writing a white paper. These reports are especially valuable if you're a brand operating in new and emergent areas of business, science and technology. A white paper makes for an effective and persuasive argument as to why your brand is qualified and positioned to offer goods and services in your particular niche area. It's a great way to promote awareness about your value and credibility.

Whether you host, sponsor or simply exhibit, an event can be a powerful way to touch your existing and prospective audiences, and can provide you with an array of Touchpoints, including demonstrations, face-to-face discussions and speaking and panel opportunities. Ensure you make your presence known and optimise your event with a road-ready range of branded materials and engagement widgets such as pull-up banners, merchandise and rolling video.

Photography builds trust and reaches the parts that cold facts cannot. Photography inspires, shows professionalism and sets the tone. Images break down barriers, speak volumes and engage people in the blink of an eye. Brand awareness is created in many ways but visibility is vital in order for your brand to get seen, and recognised as relevant, aspired towards, and trusted. And showing the human face of who you are really helps that. As a media asset few things give as much value as well-considered imagery. Show your brand is alive and ready-to-serve by investing in a super set of team headshots.

Samples of your goods and services provide the ultimate awareness opportunity. When end-users experience your actual offering in a physical way there is no greater demonstration of your brand's value and proven ability to transform lives. Some brands are able to circulate their samples without need for human interaction however the use of Brand Ambassadors can add significant value and can enable greater impact, interaction, engagement and visibility – especially if tied in with PR. Whether you organise taster sessions in selected stores, or hand out free giveaways in shopping malls, ensure that each and every element and aspect is an authentic expression of what your brand is ultimately trying to do.

A blog is a great use of internet, an effective medium for building brand awareness, engagement and trust, and also a brilliant example of the value of inbound marketing. Because most blog text on the web is searchable, it enables people who are already interested in your niche and area of value offering to find you almost by accident and begin an obligation-free relationship with your brand. The more you can retain their interest with relevant content, the longer, richer and deeper that relationship becomes. Brands grow through regular communication with their audiences, so blogging is a super way of educating and persuading your fans until they are ready to engage further with your value offering.

The Continuals are Touchpoint assets that a brand must create with great frequency to 'ground' the brand, to bring everything 'down to earth' and to maintain an ongoing dialogue between a brand and those it serves. As any well-trained hostage negotiator will tell you, 'Never stop talking!' and so it is with the Continuals, they are a vital connection point between brand and audience. Thankfully, and with great thanks to the widespread take-up, cost-efficiency and functionality of social media platforms, these Touchpoints are cheaper to generate than the top-tier sensational stuff, and can be done on a shoestring budget, on a whim, on an ongoing basis, day-by-day. For a hairdresser brand this is may be an Instagram of Sandra finishing a half-marathon, or for a legal firm this could be a LinkedIn post about its new hire. The Continuals don’t take long to generate and aren’t expected to last very long but because they touch audiences in real-time, in a very human way, they show the world the brand is alive, and alive today, connected, accessible and ready to connect further.

A Vlog is a “video Log”. And a Quickie is, well, something you do quickly. So, you do the math! This is essentially a "selfie video" and could be a live streaming video (Facebook Live), or a quick video of yourself recorded on your phone. This is part of The Continuals, and so the greater value of these will come when you’ve made many, over many days, weeks, months and years. The idea is that they are not perfectly finished or edited videos, but rather quick little #nofilter glimpses of “the real you” inside your brand. As Gary Vaynerchuk always says ‘document, don’t create!’

But creating does enhance documents, so we advise you to get as much footage in the can as possible, and enhance later as are many great phone-based apps that allow you to add filters, and edit key parts and include overlay text and funky graphics. So of course add some nice little details if you want, but don’t get carried away. Keep it simple. Record and share. YouTube videos are favoured by Google in terms of SEO and are usually put to the front of the queue. 'The Body Coach' Joe Wicks rose to fame on the back of his self-made 15-minute videos 'Lean in 15' that gave his true audience of superfans a daily dose of advice, entertainment and human connection.

A tweet is a Twitter post, and Twitter is a powerful social media platform that enables brands to reach potentially large numbers of followers. Because Twitter is free, it's a very cost-effective means of 'broadcasting' your brand's messages and providing your tweets are relevant and interesting to your 'readership' i.e. followers, you can continue to engage with them, and dialogue and banter with them, on a continual real-time day-by-day basis. Tweeting is good for business. Twitter was originally launched as a 'text-only' message platform, and so tweets were once purely text but now you can now also post images and videos in your tweets (videos have a 2 minute 20 secs length limit). You are also able to include free live hyperlinks in your tweet (this is not possible in an Instagram post unless you pay for it). This feature enables you to easily direct people towards landing pages, blog posts and well, wherever your links lead to. However, when writing your tweet you can only use 280 characters, so if your hyperlinks are long this can take up valuable character space. A good way around this problem is to use free link shorteners (such as bitly.com) which shrinks any webpage link to around 14 characters. If you tweet the Bitly link of a blog post, Twitter will also, where possible, fetch the title, overview snippet and hero image related to your blog post so instead of a random Bitly link your followers will see your blog post’s title, the lead-in paragraph and a nice preview image. It is said 'you should not just be on social, but you should be social!', and so a good tip is to treat your time on Twitter as you would at a party IRL i.e. listen and engage with consideration and respect. When responding to the tweets of others include their Twitter handles e.g. @thunderbranduk check this out [link]. Share good stuff, often, over a long period of time with consistency and you can give your brand a strong presence on this platform and really make it work for you.

Instagram is a great Touchpoint for brands. Often shortened to ‘IG’, Instagram is an app that provides brands with a fantastic platform on which to grow their audiences, connect and share. IG was originally developed as a mobile-first means of sharing photos and that is still its key strength, however users are also now able to post from their computer desktops (via apps such as Buffer and later.com) which can provide additional accessibility and functionality options such as scheduled posting. It is also now possible to share video formats such as mp4, although these currently cannot be longer than 30 secs. Users are able to use more characters than Twitter, and IG makes great use of hashtags and allows up to 30 per post, which can ensure a high degree of relevant targetting to your shares, e.g. if you are posting pictures of your recent appearance at a horse show, simply add a few #s to your post (#equestrians #horse #equestrian #horses #equestrianlife #dressage #equestrianstyle #horsesofinstagram #horseriding #equine #equestriansofinstagram #horselove #showjumping), you will be very likely to win new fans.

A shop window is a massive opportunity to sell your value, and for brands with the luxury of a shop window, it is a highly-significant Touchpoint. There are established best practices for most appropriate use of one’s shop window, e.g. the milliner or apparel merchant uses it as a showcase for mannequins, the jeweller uses it as a glorified display cabinet and the estate agent uses it as an oversized newspaper advert. But how one chooses to best use one’s space is determined only by the limits of one’s imagination and with the emergence of smartphones, geo-location functionality and augmented reality apps, the opportunities for imaginative engagement are growing by the week. A shop window is your brand’s opportunity to get attention, communicate your relevance, inspire aspiration, earn trust and win engagement. And make sure the glass gets cleaned, dirty windows = bad business, 'if that's how they keep their windows, what are their toilets like?!!'

Facebook is that social networking platform you may have heard of over at facebook.com. It is a trusted and widely-used platform (over 1 billion users) and a great Touchpoint opportunity for brands. Facebook allows users to share status updates 63, 206 characters long, and post videos 45 minutes in length (but after 1GB there are some bitrate restrictions). You can also ‘go live’ and ‘live stream’ directly on your phone or computer via the Facebook app, which effectively allows you to ‘broadcast’ directly to your audience of friends and followers in real-time. As a brand it makes sense to set up and operate from a ‘Facebook business page’ which is easy to set up, providing you already have a personal Facebook account on which to ‘hang’ your business page (although there need not be any obvious public link between your personal FB account and the business pages it plays host to in the back-end, as far as your respective audiences are concerned).
A key benefit of Facebook as a business- and brand-building tool is the role it plays as a very effective low-cost marketing machine. You can easily set up and run highly cost-effective and highly-targeted advertising campaigns in the form of ‘post boosts’ and news feed ads that can be tailored to reach just the kind of audience you wish to engage with. But as with any advertising campaign, the advert must respect the medium and the audience, and considering that most FB users are usually on the platform to interact with their friends and family, it’s a good idea to engage people with distinctive thumb-stopping image-heavy creative, and relevant, highly attractive offers.

A 'selfie' is just a photograph or video someone takes with their camera or phone for posting, promotion and/or posterity. It captures a moment in time, because that's what photographs do. The cameras on most smartphones are fairly wide angle (the equivalent of around between 25-30mm on a full-frame DSLR) which means quite a lot can fit in the frame, however the further you move your camera or phone away from the subject, the more you can fit in. 'Selfie sticks' enable the user to do just that, which can be helpful if you have to 'selfie' a large group, or if you want to fit in more background features like landmarks. Am I seriously suggesting 'selfies' are the one true path to business success or the ultimate way of selling your value? No, of course not. One selfie does not a business make; a single sugar sachet is not the one secret to unlock success in the coffee shop game, but it can be a sweet little gem along the way, and you never know whose day it will improve. As they say, 'it's not how many you shoot, it's who you shoot', so do not overlook the power of the 'selfie', it still is a great way to show your brand is on the ground, keeping it real and taking care of business.

Lighting aside, there are few things which can brighten up a room quicker than freshly-cut flowers. Flowers change the energy of a room, they help people focus and relax, reminding everyone to chill out and appreciate the fleetingness of life, the importance of appreciation and the underlying beauty of universal existence. Unless you’re allergic to them, and then they’re just a pain, so do check first with your other team players, and regular passers-by.

A sandwich board – or ‘A frame board’ – is typically a set of two boards fastened at the top and either worn over a willing person’s shoulders as a moving advert or in the absence of a willing person, positioned on its own in front of one’s store or eatery as a static self-standing advert. In the former use – when worn over the shoulders – i.e. as a ‘human billboard’, the key benefit is portability of advert and the opportunity of taking that to locations more likely to be populated by potential end-users, such as high streets and tourist honey-pots. In such cases it’s important to ensure anyone who might be interested is given a clear, memorable and foolproof way of seeking out the advertiser’s goods or services. In the case of the static self-standing board – or ‘pavement sign’ – the key benefit, apart from lower running costs, is its highly-relevant positioning i.e. right outside your place of business. To ensure constant interest it can be beneficial to invest in a blackboard-style board which can allow a frequent change up in messaging, a tactic often used to great effect by pubs and coffee shops.

Your brand’s Why will give your brand focus. An essential starting point to give you purpose and meaning because focus fuels fulfilment.

Your brand’s Ethos is a definitive articulation of the values that will guide and inspire your brand. Think of it as your brand’s ‘code’, or ‘credo’.

Your brand’s End-user is the person who will actually truly want what you truly love doing. You end-user is the person you sell your value to. So it is important you know who that is. An end-user profile is a way of better defining that person, so you know who you are selling to, and can thereby better tailor your brand and marketing efforts.

Your brand’s Name is the purest form of your brand, your ultimate “digital asset”.

Your brand’s Line is one succinct and well-considered sequence of words that sits alongside your name, saying as much as it can in the least amount of words.

Your brand’s Identity is its definitive distinctive identifying feature—or set of features—it uses to identify itself. It is also used by your brand’s audience to identify your brand.

Your brand’s Style is a wider and fuller expression of your brand’s identity.

Your brand’s Voice is the final step in defining your brand foundation and is all about your brand’s ability to communicate. And in life, business and branding: communication is key.