Brand Surgery Or Brain Surgery: It Is Not As Simple As Buying A Logo

Refreshing your brand is a very important task if you want to maintain your position as a market leader.  Staying sharp, relevant and up-to-date technologically is imperative!  But, take it from us; get some expert help! Performing your own “brand surgery” is like performing your own brain surgery.

We are just now completing our own brand surgery. It was a grueling experience for many reasons.  The process of further distilling your own extraordinary promise of value to its bare essence and then communicating it with even fewer words and images is a daunting task.

This challenge is exacerbated by the new constraints of contemporary website design that has to work not only on desktop computers but also on all mobile devices (both in landscape orientation and portrait).  We are excited about the results. And, we will share the new Napa Consultants, Int’l website with our readers by the end of the month.

Refreshing your brand is not like shopping for a logo.  Sure, you can update your look. But, a look is not necessarily a brand.  Your brand needs to empower your entire current and future referral base to spread the good word about you. It needs to be remarkable to spark word-of-mouth advertising.

Your website needs to become your silent salesperson. It needs to be a polished presentation that communicates who you are and how you are different from your competition with an economy of words. 

Do not attempt brand surgery on your own. It is hit or miss at best. It took us six months to figure out our own rebranding.  Think of how many homes you could sell in six months.  It is not as simple as buying a logo, get some expert help!

Written by Ron & Alexandra Seigel-

 ABOUT:  Napa Consultants, International is the leader in brand strategy for the luxury real estate industry.  They work exclusively with professionals who are passionate about gaining or sustaining market leadership. With an expertise in personal branding, company branding, luxury real estate website design and social media marketing they help their clients become the breakaway brand in their marketplace.

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Luxury Real Estate Marketing: Buzz and Ants!

Word-of-mouth is, by far, your best form of advertising.  But, very few luxury real estate marketing professionals seize the opportunity to spark word-of-mouth advertising (buzz) ON PURPOSE. 

If you want to accelerate the pace at which you achieve top-of-mind status in your marketplace, or within your niche, the art of deliberately triggering buzz should definitely become part of your skillset.  If you can leverage social media channels such as You Tube or Twitter you could score a grand slam in publicity!

During the Holidays Disney released a trailer for its upcoming feature film, Ant-Man.  The screen size was tiny, so you could not actually view the trailer.  But, it said that the “human” size trailer could be viewed if you watch Agent Carter, the new ABC TV series starting on January 6th.  The clever trailer went “viral” with over 2 millions views on You Tube.  Both Ant-Man and Agent Carter are based on Marvel characters, a company owned by Disney.  Ant-Man premieres in July.

To capitalize on the buzz, Disney released a teaser of the full-length human sized trailer.  Huffington Post for one wrote an article on this and featured the teaser.

How can you leverage buzz to spark word-of-mouth advertising for your luxury real estate marketing practice, on purpose?

Written by Ron & Alexandra Seigel-

 ABOUT:  Napa Consultants, International is the leader in brand strategy for the luxury real estate industry.  They work exclusively with professionals who are passionate about gaining or sustaining market leadership. With an expertise in personal branding, company branding, luxury real estate website design and social media marketing they help their clients become the breakaway brand in their marketplace.

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Focus, And Say (Grilled) Cheese!

                 

Focusing on doing a few things really well is a surefire way to success.  This was Steve Job’s mantra at Apple.  Yet, specialization is, by far, one of the most challenging concepts for luxury real estate marketing professionals to embrace. They are afraid of losing out on other opportunities that comes their way.

Recently we had lunch at a restaurant in our neighboring town of Ventura that exemplified the power of focus.  805 Bar & Grilled Cheese specializes in grilled sandwiches that are simply out of this world. In fact, grilled sandwiches comprises their entire menu (with a choice of complimentary side orders) And, they have an excellent wine list. The restaurant is located right on the marina in Ventura Harbor where you can sit outside, see the boats and enjoy waterfront ambiance.

Growing up, one of our most comforting comfort food combinations was a grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. 805’s tomato bisque is best in class. It is rich and spicy with plenty of tomato chunks, the perfect compliment to the sandwich.

The name, 805 (our area code) Bar & Grilled Cheese tells you exactly what the brand category is, local comfort food, and also its niche within that category.  This not only makes it easy to remember, but also easy to spread the good word via word-of-mouth advertising. And, that is the power of focus and specialization!

Written by Ron & Alexandra Seigel-

 ABOUT:  Napa Consultants, International is the leader in brand strategy for the luxury real estate industry.  They work exclusively with professionals who are passionate about gaining or sustaining market leadership. With an expertise in personal branding, company branding, luxury real estate website design and social media marketing they help their clients become the breakaway brand in their marketplace. 

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A Branding Challenge: Don’t Sing Opera to a Rock & Roll Audience!

What works in  creating a brand in your real estate market place is  focusing on your audience.  Choosing colors follows the same logic.  So when you are thinking of branding yourself, think twice and don’t necessarily default to your tastes. Take a moment to analyze why you are creating your brand and the audience you are appealing to.  In other words don’t sing opera to a rock and roll audience!

Recently, when we working with a client in the wine country, we identified her color preferences, and it was clear that they would not necessarily be a fit for the marketplace.  So we started to walk around and focused on at the environment and the colors of nature that surrounded us. 

We noted the colors she loved in the environment that represented her  her market niche in the wine county.  We took our inspiration from the golden hills, the tawny color of the light, the dark green and brown of the oaks growing on them and the reddish umber colors of the soil.  These colors became part of the brand’s identity, as represented in the color swatch above. 

By using a mix of the colors of the environment for her brand identity, she is singing on key, the right song for her marketplace.  Her brand is her silent salesperson.  It tells her story: who she is, where she is, and makes it easy for her clients to refer her.   We will be sharing her brand identity and web site which is presently under construction.

Remember your marketplace is the economic driver! Don't default to your tastes or someone else's ideas.  It is more important to create a brand that will work rather than one you like.  Don’t sing opera to a rock and roll audience! And if you are an opera singer, find your marketplace, and your audience!

Written by Ron & Alexandra Seigel-
 ABOUT:  Napa Consultants, International is the leader in brand strategy for the luxury real estate industry.  They work exclusively with professionals who are passionate about gaining or sustaining market leadership. With an expertise in personal branding, company branding, luxury real estate website design and social media marketing they help their clients become the breakaway brand in their marketplace.

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 Buzz-Worthy Luxury Real Estate Websites  

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Do You Have A Remarkable Slogan? Part 2

A great slogan artfully articulates your extraordinary promise of value with brevity of communication. The trick is to create a clever slogan that instantly sticks in the mind of your target market and triggers word-of-mouth advertising.  

In Part 1 of this article series we challenged you to identify the business category of this 3-word slogan:

FINDER OF KEEPERS

This is one of the advertising slogans for the market-leading matchmaking firm in North America, Selective Search. Their tag line, which consistently accompanies their logo, is, “Executive Search Meets Personal Matchmaking”. In just 5 words they communicate their unique value proposition here as well. 

“Meet Your Future” (just 3 words) is the name of their proprietary process for helping their clients find true love. Selective Search claims to have the highest success rate in the matchmaking industry. 

Most real estate professionals do not realize that it is not just your immediate sphere of influence that encompasses your referral base. ANYONE in your marketplace who may know a buyer or seller currently in the market can become a referral source!  Here we are, a happily married husband and wife business team, spreading the word about a matchmaking service just because their slogan is remarkable.

Can you see how empowering all of your potential referral sources with a remarkable slogan that communicates your extraordinary promise of value can help you or your company gain or sustain market leadership?  We hope we made our point in fewer than 250 words.

Written by Ron & Alexandra Seigel-

 ABOUT:  Napa Consultants, International is the leader in brand strategy for the luxury real estate industry.  They work exclusively with professionals who are passionate about gaining or sustaining market leadership. With an expertise in personal branding, company branding, luxury real estate website design and social media marketing they help their clients become the breakaway brand in their marketplace. 

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 Buzz-Worthy Luxury Real Estate Websites  

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Do You Have A Remarkable Slogan? Part 1

One of our biggest challenges as brand strategists is to refine, condense and distill our clients’ extraordinary promise of value into a remarkable slogan in just a few words. After brainstorming with our clients and gathering a tremendous amount of information about them and their marketplace, it usually comes to us in a flash! We know we have nailed it when the slogan sticks in the minds of their target market, including any potential referral source, and sparks word-of-mouth advertising.

You may have heard the expression, “Finders keepers, losers weepers”. Recently, we came across an ad for a service that conveys their extraordinary promise of value in just three words. It is a play on this expression.

FINDERS OF KEEPERS

For fun, we will not tell you the category of business this is. In part two of this article series we will reveal the answer and also analyze this brand’s other tag line that further defines its value proposition in 5 words. 

Do you have a remarkable slogan? Can you guess the category of business “Finders of Keepers” belongs to?

Written by Ron & Alexandra Seigel-
 ABOUT:  Napa Consultants, International is the leader in brand strategy for the luxury real estate industry.  They work exclusively with professionals who are passionate about gaining or sustaining market leadership. With an expertise in personal branding, company branding, luxury real estate website design and social media marketing they help their clients become the breakaway brand in their marketplace.

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Planning For 2015: Dream Big Or Go Home!

The Garden of Dreams in Katmandu, Nepal, Photo by Jerry Way

Dream Big or Go Home is the saying our French partner’s father told her time after time.  If you are going to dream, why not dream big!  My father (A) had a similar mindset.  As a child when I admired a Rolls Royce, and indicated that I wanted one; his response was “Why just one, why not one for each day of the week?”

As many of you are planning for 2015, take a moment to dream big without limiting your thinking.  Shut down all negative thoughts and considerations, and take a flight into the realm of “everything is possible”. This is the wonderful world of creators and innovators.  Don’t focus on details and the how to.  Work on creating images and experience what it would feel like to be in the dream and realize all you want to achieve.

This past week in Florida, Ron and I walked into a dream, the inaugural event that launched a new venture that we have been creating with our ideal partners for over a year and a half. It was heady and exceeded our expectations.


Using your imagination without self-imposed limitations is what it takes to dream big.  Dream Big or Go Home!

Written by Ron & Alexandra Seigel-
 ABOUT:  Napa Consultants, International is the leader in brand strategy for the luxury real estate industry.  They work exclusively with professionals who are passionate about gaining or sustaining market leadership. With an expertise in personal branding, company branding, luxury real estate website design and social media marketing they help their clients become the breakaway brand in their marketplace.

-WATCH VIDEOS- 

 Buzz-Worthy Luxury Real Estate Websites  

Personal Branding Case Studies   Company Branding Case Studies  

About Language of Luxury  

 GET FLUENT. GET AFFLUENT! - JOIN THE LOL COMMUNITY