Helping your business grow

For small businesses and start-ups alike, attention to building your brand will deliver results both now and in the future.

While many small businesses often defer an investment in branding until they're more established, putting time and money into brand-building, early on, should be a high priority. The process of clarifying your promise, value, values, attributes, and position in the marketplace is always useful internally—and being able to build on this foundation even in early communications helps prospective customers, partners, and investors to better understand who you are, what you offer, why it's valuable, and the experience they can expect.

"But I have a logo, isn't that my brand?" No. Your mark is a shorthand symbol of your brand, one that you need to invest with desired meaning. Your brand is established only when those people whose interest and support are important to you "get it." When you deliver (or exceed) your promise, you start to turn customers, media, and partners into loyal advocates—an unpaid sales force that generates buzz. But because brand-building is a process, not an event, it's good to get an early start.

Our approach

At Sametz Blackstone Associates, we work with start-ups and emerging businesses to define and promulgate brands. We help to define your brand foundation, evolve strategic messages and a competitive position, and create a visual system that can inform and connect a wide range of communications––ensuring that your e-newsletter, business papers, brochure, and website all reinforce each other. And while this consistency is a good thing in itself, the real value is that those who need to learn about and value you learn more quickly. Beyond collaborating to make whatever communication vehicles are needed, we also help you "own" your brand system by providing the training and tools that enable you and your staff to make creative, effective, tactical communications—that also always work hard to build your brand.

In practice…

For one of the first mutual fund companies to take a behavioral slant on investment strategy, Fuller & Thaler, we put in place an identity that they have built on for years. For another fund company, Direxion Funds, we collaborated to re-launch the firm with a new name, visual identity, print and digital communications, and messages and materials that demystified their market segment—leveraged index funds—and built trust and relationships.

Before Flour Bakery and Café broke their first egg, we collaborated to design an identity that instantly communicated the owner's hands-on approach to bread and pastry—and helped to draw interest and customers to the new enterprise. For Finale Dessert Company, a strengthened brand system and attention to all points of customer interaction helped them to grow from two locations to four.

For consulting enterprises Balanced Scorecard and Back Bay Strategies, strengthened and new (respectively) identity systems and communications helped each to be better understood and valued.

For newly-renamed and launched travel company Illume, a new brand promise, positioning, descriptor, messages, and materials helped them to connect to a broader group of travelers, and grow, even in the wake of 9/11.

Sometimes the goal is to build an organization and its brand in preparation for a public offering or sale. Long before Google, we collaborated to name and launch Switchboard.com, the first online people and business directory.

Invest in your future

Brands matter to customers, partners, and investors now more than ever. With every industry—from bakeries to mutual funds—crowded with businesses offering similar products at similar prices, brand meaning can influence thinking and behavior. And much like managing your business, you're never done managing your brand; it should grow and change as your business—and customers—evolve.