Taglines and branding

For the past few weeks, we've been thinking about AdSymetrix as a brand, a web-based service and a company. Every time we talk about how the product will help business advertisers we find ourselves trying to explain the real value we're offering to them.

You're an advertiser who knows you need to spend money to get new customers, but you just don't know where or how to spend it best. Or you're a publication and you want to find a way to get advertisers to trust you when you send your sales people out to solicit new ad buys. Either way, the need is there to concretely define the value of a particular ad location. And that's where we come in.

The itch we've been trying to scratch has been how to explain the role we play with our customers in their negotiations. How do we express that quickly and succinctly?

This is where taglines help. You visit a site, or see an ad and right after the company's name, you get a simple explanation of what they do.

To date, we've been looking bit too practically at our tagline. AdSymetrix will keep track of the clicks, calls and emails that come to your business through your advertising. The symmetry of 'clicks calls and emails' made for a quick and easy understanding of AdSymetrix to us, but we're deep in it, and already understand the purpose of the product suite.

The business advertiser needs more information. They need to know that we not only track information, but we give them power. We give them knowledge and the tools to make better decisions. We give them the opportunity to not only buy more effective advertising, but to not buy ineffective advertising. AdSymetrix lets our customer control their marketing budget in ways they have never been able to before.

AdSymetrix is about advertising assurance. Assurance that the decision you make to spend your money on a new ad in this newspaper or a flyer in that neighborhood is the right decision. And that's were we are headed with our new tagline.

Advertising Assurance.

Getting noticed

Just a quick post to hat-tip the good folks at the Museum of Modern Betas who have seen fit to mention AdSymetrix on their site.

Thanks for the nod, we hope you enjoy our ride.

So what type of businesses will benefit from Adsymetrix?

...dentists, plastic surgeons, dermatologists, spas, salons, health clubs, franchises, restaurants, mortgage brokers, realtors, property managers, businesses that sell to other businesses, auto dealers, new home builders, retail stores, wholesale businesses, big businesses, small businesses, happy businesses, sad businesses, most businesses....

Basically any business that wants to know:
1. Where there advertising dollars are best spent
2. Where they shouldn't spend anymore money
3. Where they best connect with their customers
4. How they best connect with their customers
5. Where their customers are.
6. What is said when customers call their business
7. How effective their advertising is working overall
8. How each medium stacks up against the others
9. How to make good business decisions about advertising spends
10. If salespeople really are full of BS

If you rely upon your advertising to drive traffic to your website, telephones or front door and aren't just advertising to build a brand, YOU will need Adsymetrix.

5 weeks and counting....

Organization and Information

This week, we're working on the basics that go into the build out of our online presence. On the front end, you'll see the introductory information that will serve to introduce AdSymetrix to you, our potential customer. Behind that, you'll find all the inner workings of the application suite and all the assistance you'll need to make AdSymetrix work for you.

We're going to use a content management system, Joomla, as our publishing engine. The CMS separates the presentation of content from the development of content. So we'll be able to build the design of the site once, and then update the information you'll see on the site whenever we need to. It is a simple, object-oriented way of building a website. The structure of the site sits removed from the information that fills that structure.

And that's where information architecture comes in to play. Think about your experience at a new website. When you first visit, you're presented with the task of figuring out just how to find the answer to the question that brought you to the site in the first place. If you're at Amazon and you want to buy a cd by Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods, you would just plunk their name in the search box. Because the path to your answer is placed right in front of you when you come to the site, you have a better experience and will probably go back the next time you need to find an obscure band from the 1970s.

Good information architecture makes for good business. Defining the easiest path for a web site visitor to find the answer that brought them to the website in the first place. In the case of our website, we want to explain in the simplest terms possible the powerful new services we offer the advertiser. We'll have that information up front and center. We'll have additional pages that explore these services in greater detail, and all along the way we'll offer the visitor a chance to test out AdSymetrix for their purposes.

We think that by keeping our site design simple, by presenting the information our visitors are most interested first and working backwards, we'll have a site that quickly delivers the answers they're looking for.

And, of course, entices them to become clients.

Nit and grit

As Rick mentioned in his last post, we're developing Adsymetrix from different parts of the US. To help us communicate, we're using a series of systems that track our progress along various tracks. For the most part, my responsibilities are front end brand building and marketing. Rick, who's been living with this idea for the past year, is focused on the development of the applications.

We're using online weblogging tools to help us keep on top of the tasks we have at hand. Soon, we'll move from blogger to a blogging tool on our own website powered by Joomla!, an open source content management system that will help run the overall site once it's been launched.

We made progress last week - choosing a logo and site design. By Friday, just in time for the holiday weekend, we'll have drafts of the templates that will serve to host our content on our site. And in honor of that, my work is to detail the content that will fill those areas, as well as define the areas themselves.

Content strategy, information architecture and design all working together to bring out our brand and make certain that our clients, you, can quickly and easily use our service in your business.

And as we put these together, you're along for the ride

This week and the next milestone

I am finally getting organized on our side of the development and just started using basecamp to manage all the bits and pieces of what needs to be completed. Andy and I need to get our partnership finalized and we need to figure out silly things like where to incorporate and where to do our banking. Since I am in San Francisco and Andy is in Cincinnati, it seems to make good sense to incorporate in Delaware, right? We are on the road to Milestone Two which will really put some meat on the bones of what was built in Milestone One and I am very excited to see the app grow legs. We are really going to change the way advertisers can quantify the value of their advertising purchases and that is very exciting. I have a great deal of experience selling advertising and teaching others to sell advertising and Adsymetrix should significantly impact the knowledge that buyers will have about how well a particular publication worked at increasing revenue. Adsymetrix isn't for companies that are using advertising to build a brand, rather it has been developed for companies that need their advertising to generate revenue and drive traffic to their business.

Big week ahead....

Milestone One has been met!

I had a meeting with Ben from Biego yesterday to review the milestone list. Everything was done, with a few exceptions that were approved, and I am thrilled with the results. Ruby on Rails has breathed new life into the application and its usefulness to the users. Adsymetrix is really going to change the way businesses track their advertising. Next milestone is one week from today with about 40+ days till we launch.

New Blogger Template

With this post, we introduce the new AdSymetrix logo. You can see it in all its glory at AdSymetrix.Com


And get ready for our launch. August 7, 2006. Or as it looks digitally: 08-07-06, 5:43:21

Our First Logo (draft three)

The final set of logos brought home our brand in a way we never quite expected. It made everything seem like it was right. Like we were headed down the correct path the whole time.

The first logo in this wave of drafts brought about the sunset concept, but included the new color scheme and the arrows/icons/partitions that we liked so much from our last attempts
Knowing that we didn't want to have the logo behind the name, we decided that this wasn't the best way to go. Instead, the next offering showed the mark in front of the name
A better option, but somehow uninspiring. We love the mark, we just think that by pushing it ahead of the name we lose some impact.

Which brings us to the final, approved logo
It's strong. It's simple. It shows you what we do. The placement of the mark behind the name means that your eye reads the name, sees the mark then follows the arrows back around to the name and tag line all over again and speaks to the fact that we are an application that tracks advertising.

So now, we've got a name, a color scheme and now a logo. And that's just on the front end. You should hear about the programming development we've got cooking on rails.

Decisive Colors

We decided upon a color scheme. One that we thought would bring out our brand and make our application easy to work with.



All we needed was a logo and site design template.

Our First Logo (draft two)

After we'd discussed what we liked and what we didn't about the logos presented to us, we were happy to receive a new set of options

Each had an icon that would help explain the tagline and our core business - calls, clicks emails

The first had the partitioned circle behind the name

The second included a set of arrows that would show how everything is connected
The third takes that same idea and deploys it in a different way
And finally, the sunset of the mark behind the name with the icons inside a partitioned circle.

We liked the general approach to the circle. Liked that the logo's mark had all the icons in it that we could use throughout our application. But we thought that maybe having a sunset as a logo was a self-defeating idea. Instead, the idea came up to shrink the logo's mark and fit it at the end of the word. Giving the mark a position of punctuation, and making it appear all the more powerful.

Colors and Options

Along with the logos, we received a set of color suggestions.

Our First Logo (draft)

A few days passed. The wheels were turning. Biego's designer, Molly, was working to bring our brand to life. Or at least find us a logo that fit.

The first logo brought out the professional side:

The second did as well,

The third was a bit more playful, and brought in the concept that we would bring all your touchpoints together


And the fourth , showed that story by separating the mark into three distinct portions.We went back to Biego and told them that we liked the way that the mark sat behind the logo, and that we liked the three segments. We asked them to develop more along the lines of this design, but a bit less like a German luxury car company.

Logo Pre-Development

Now, after all the build up, you get to see some of the work we've done developing our identity.

Going in, we knew that we wanted the logo and the mark (that symbol that you'll see near a business name) to not only promote the simple, clean, friendly and professional attitude we're bringing to the development of the product suite, but also to tell a bit of the story about how everything works.

Advertisers deserve to have better control over their advertisements. We've got a way to track the effectiveness of your ads, both on and offline. The approach allows you more information about who's calling, emailing and visiting your websites. We wanted Biego to figure out how to tell that story in our mark.

AdSymetrix is going to be a tool to help you run your business. But it's just a tool. The less time you spend figuring out what we're doing for you, the more time you can spend managing your own success. So we wanted to make sure that the eventual look and feel was simple to understand, professional and empowering.

We passed along some suggestions to Biego.

A font:
A possible color scheme:
And all the brand strategy materials we could get our hands on.

In the end, they developed a set of logos and colors that we're really excited about. But you'll have to read ahead to see those.

How you'll see us

Choosing a logo is a big step in the formation of a new company. On the web, it's the first opportunity a company has to show who they want you to think they are. AdSymetrix has been working with the good folks of Biego to develop a new logo and site design for our in-development product suite. We're pretty happy with the results.

We gave the designer a brand strategy document that detailed Adymetrix's vision, mission and positioning statement. We also included some information about our competition and the kinds of promises and attributes that the brand should exhibit. We also gave some direction as to the general design of the site, logo and color scheme.

It's always an interesting process, seeing your words turned into someone else's pictures. If you carefully define your brand ahead of time, you'll find that a talented designer will be able to come up with results that surprise you, and make you feel like you're meeting an old friend.

Now that we've chosen our favorites, we'll begin posting some to this blog. You'll get a look inside our process, and a sneak peek at the future of the company.

What we say, what you see

Branding can be so over thought. And that's coming from a brand strategist.

Basically, your brand is what other people think of when they think of you. It's the personality of your business (or product, or entity, or department). It's the thing people take away from their encounters with you.

Defining your brand is important. You need to decide just what kind of business (product, etc) you want to be. In a way, it's the easiest part. You get to say, "we're the shine on your apple", or whatever is most appropriate. The heavy lifting comes in expressing that brand.

Adsymetrix wants to protect small business advertisers.

That's the simple vision behind the company, and our products. How we accomplish that vision will be through the tools and applications that we provide our clients.

We want our clients to rely on our professional, efficient, easy to use and understand applications to simply do better business.

Defined, that's pretty easy. We're a tool in your back pocket that helps you make better business decisions. But how do we show that?

We're working with a talented designer from our friends at Biego to develop a set of colors and images that expresses our brand. She's got a great start. We'll share soon. You'll see that we're here to help, to advise and to make your advertising purchases easier.

Keep an eye out for our changes.

Open

Open. It's a wonderful word. AdSymetrix will be an open company. The products will allow our customers - you hopefully - to open the curtain and see just how important your ads are to your business. We like open.

That's why we're blogging. We're going to tell you about the process we're taking to make AdSymetrix. We think that by being open, and showing you what goes on inside our business, you'll find that you'll want to do business with us.

So, when you stop by our blog, you'll find some of the stories that brought us to make this product. You'll also learn what we're trying to develop, and how we're managing the process. Opening our doors before we even open our doors.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please feel free to say hi.

Scary Advertising Stories

Let's say, for a minute, that we're all back in 1995.

It being 1995, barely anyone, barely anywhere knows what you mean when you tell them that you're going to start a company that would create websites on the Internet. Your parents don't know what you're talking about. Your friends furrow their brows a bit and scratch their heads. Your partners in this venture, however, believe that someday soon, everyone everywhere will spend their days pretending to work and looking at sites that designed by your new company.

Thing is, you've got to find some clients. This is 1995, Netscape hasn't gone public yet. AOL is still behind closed walls and your cell phone could still be hard wired to your car.

When the phone rings and a friendly voice says that they work with the local small business newspaper and can get your marketing message into the hands of all their tens of thousands of subscribers, your ears perk up.

What could be wrong about spending a little money to make a little money. You arrange a meeting. They give you the schpeel: the media kit, the sample newspapers, the names of companies you respect who already do business with them, the possibility of free press and of course the ad sizes that you'll have to buy to get in the game.

After you've had a chance to think it through, you decide to go ahead. To just spend the money you had intended for a different purpose and try to get some new business. They say you can have the full page, back page of the newspaper. Color too, if you want. You send in the contract and the Photoshop'd advertisement file and you await a proof.

The proof of the ad comes back and you think you're happy. Everything looks the way it should, even with all the problems they had understanding how to manage Photoshop files. Your partners aren't thrilled that the money's going toward advertising instead of infrastructure, but they understand the reasoning behind the decision.

And then you wait.

The ad isn't supposed to run until Monday. You'll get your stack of papers on Friday afternoon. You wait.

Eventually, the knock of the door brings a courier with a package. You it open and turn over the first issue and see your first advertisement.

Your ad. Perfectly proportioned on the page. Exactly the copy you wanted, exactly the colors you decided. Exactly the positioning you'd discussed.

Except.

Except the full page ad that you sent over somehow became a 3 x 2 1/2 inch ad in the middle of a full blank page. Right in the center, in little tiny letters, you could make out the name of your company. Just below, in little tiny numbers, you could read the phone number. The full page ad that you hoped would introduce your company to the world, instead barely whispered your name.

And the ad sales people never called to tell you just how dumb it looked.

It was as if they only wanted you to buy into their story about their publication, and didn't care at all what happened after they cashed your check

Hello Biego!

For a little over a year, Rick has been working to develop the concept that's becoming AdSymetrix.
The idea is simple - people should be able to track the effectiveness of their advertising across any medium.

Making that concept a solid web-application is not quite so simple.

In the past few weeks, we've found a partner company that we're thrilled to be working with. Biego. They develop in Ruby on Rails, allow us to show them our idea and how we want it to work and then build the application to match those intended end results.

It means that we'll be able to tie up all our loose ends in a fraction of the time, launch a beta test long before we'd expected and get this product into the hands of advertisers in time for the busy shopping seasons.

Check them out. Biego. They speak web. We're just excited someone's listening.