Crafting Your Public Identity with a Guerrilla Logo

Sorry to have to say it, but Image is Everything. And yes, people do judge a book by its cover. It doesn’t matter how important your message may be, you’d better look good while delivering it.

Your Identity and Your Audience

Micheal Dell wears a suit and tie. Steve Jobs wears faded jeans and a turtle neck. Both are very recognizable figureheads of very recognizable computer companies. When I think Dell, I think business. When I think Apple, I think fun.

When you see the Apple logo, do you think computers or do you think phones? Or do you think Beatles? Most likely you don’t even remember the Beatles’ Apple Records. The Beatles once sued Apple Computers over the Logo. As I recall the suit was finally settled, long ago, when Apple Computers agreed that they would not go into the Music business. Well, we know how that eventually worked out, which is why the Beatles again sued Apple.

Image is Everything. Oh, did I already say that? That’s why companies will sue each other over the rights, usage, and preservation of company trademarks.

To be an effective marketer partially requires that you carefully craft an Image for your company or product. A symbol. An instantly memorable Identity. People must remember you, and all that your company and your products are about.

Guerrilla Logo vs. Corporate Logo

Many corporate logo’s today are recognized and remembered, but that is only because 1) They have been around a long time 2) You have been bombarded with advertising using that logo pretty much all your life.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume your company hasn’t been around for years and years and you don’t have millions and millions of advertising dollars at your disposal. Therefore, you simply cannot afford a bland, esoteric logo. Your logo must Pop. Your logo must be Remembered.

My wife calls the Header of my website, “the little dude.” He’s a working class guy putting up his own sign for his new company. And he’s looking confident about it. Compared to all the bland Marketing sites out there, I would hope that my site looks different enough to be memorable. The “Mascot”, Persona, Look & Feel… however you would label it, the “little dude,” in combination with the colors were all crafted together to convey a memorable idea and user experience.

Will this site attract corporations looking for marketing consultations? Hardly. But big Corporations aren’t my Target Market. My Target Market is the Entrepreneur who must wear many hats in order to succeed on their own, without a whole heck of a lot of help from the outside. My goal is to work with a community of men and women who, by choice or by circumstance, need information they can easily digest and utilize to help them achieve their goals.

And, I want us all to have fun doing it. I try to be fun and I try to be smart. So that’s the message I try to convey. No, some won’t want to stick around because I don’t seem “serious” enough. But all I can say to that is everyone recognizes the Coca-Cola logo, but not everyone drinks the stuff.

By the way, I’ve decided that I will be making RickLaPoint.com look very corporate, to attract a different clientele. I will use a different logo and pursue a different Identity. But that’s OK, it’s what Marketers do, after all.

What’s Your Company Image?

So then, what’s in Your wallet? Ooops, that’s a a different article—the one about Slogans

Have you decided on your Image yet? If you are just getting started there is time to think it through, with all the ramifications. Or, you can always change the one you have. If you aren’t getting a lot of Traffic yet, no will notice.

Sometimes you would want to use your own picture as your company Image. Why not? Real Estate people do it all the time. Their picture is always on their business card and other materials. Some use cartoons or caricatures  of themselves. Cartoons and caricatures are great and often work very well. Often, at least one of the Top 10 prime time TV shows is a cartoon with a wide adult audience. And never forget that a deadly serious product—Life Insurance—is sold by Snoopy. If you go the caricature route, just make sure you have it done by someone who is very, very good at it. The last thing you want is a amateurish cartoon that looks like your kid did it. Those belong on your refrigerator, not on your website.

Maybe your product is something real tangible, that you can actually see in action. A good choice of logo maybe a picture or artwork of your product doing something dramatic, along with your company name.

Or it might be better to show warm and fuzzy people using your product. Or puppies.

Or some dramatic Symbol that conveys the Idea of our product.

The last thing you want is some bland, forgettable image, because  that is no Image at all.

You don’t have an Image if No One Sees It

So you have spent time, thought, and energy carefully crafting your Public Persona. Now What?

Create an Avatar. You know, those little bitty 3/4 inch square pictures you see all over the Internet by people’s names who post at Blogs and Forums. Sometimes you are able to upload an image, most often in a Forum. Sometimes the size you upload must be precise, sometimes they will automatically re-size it for you. I use a basic graphic that is roughly 250 x 250 pixels in .png format. PNG re-sizes very well. I also have a version in 80 x 80 and 100 x 100 because those sizes were required at certain sites.

Here is my 100 x 100. This gives me a Public Identity whenever I contribute a post somewhere.

Rick LaPoint's Avatar

Very often though, you cannot upload an Avatar, yet you see many postings where people have them. These are Gravatars—Globally Recognized Avatars. Go to gravatar.com to get yours. Now whenever you post at a Blog where Gravators are working, yours will automatically appear beside your post when you provide the email address associated with that Gravatar to the Blog Comments box.

Thus, you spread your joy everywhere you go And your Identity. And hopefully, your LinkBack. But remember, it’s a heavy and sobering responsibility to spread that smiling face around the world. Make sure your postings are full of value to the site where you are a guest. Otherwise the idea that your Image carries won’t be of much help to you, to say the least.

Edit: Since originally writing this article, I see someone must have been inspired by it   Branding Your Business or Blog with an Avatar.

I hope this has been helpful. Be sure to leave a comment in my Gravatar-friendly comment box.