Class is back in session for the biannual ‘Brandcamp’
A dozen start-ups enrolled in the day-long course, which is offered by the Knoxville Entrepreneur Center.
The Knoxville Entrepreneur Center (KEC) is changing lives through entrepreneurship, and one of the ways the organization is doing so is by helping founders establish solid branding.
Bandcamp is a biannual day-long workshop that empowers entrepreneurs to create the most recognizable, memorable, honest, and consistent brands for their start-ups. Chris McAdoo, the Chief Experience Officer for KEC hosted the session, leaning on national and local brands to guide the way to best practices.
The session’s attendees consisted of many of “THE WORKS” program participants and a range of start-ups from two years old, to two days old.
“The one thing that everyone in this room has in common is clarity, we all need clarity for our brand,” McAdoo said.
The first step in doing that is identifying who you are, what you offer, and why you’re the best choice for the customer. The founder must know the mission, the reason, and the why like the back of their hand.
“Most people get stuck when they think the brand is about the color and the logo and the font. When really, the brand is all about how it makes people feel,” McAdoo said.
Some of the most successful brands on the planet have a feeling attached to them. For example, Chik-Fil-A’s “My Pleasure” phrase is known across the country and makes the customer feel valued. Apple and Tesla are phenomenal examples of brands that can be trusted to push the boundaries of innovation, offering only the latest and greatest technology. Amazon thrives off the premise of consistently offering fast delivery at competitive prices – technology, delivery methods, and the products may change but the overarching theme does not.
“Branding is about promises made and promises kept,” McAdoo said.
Interestingly enough, branding isn’t just for companies, organizations, and products. It’s also for people, campaigns, and events. Ideally, every facet of your company would have a brand, and they would all be connected.
Using one of the examples above – Elon Musk is known as an innovator and forward-thinker, which connects to Tesla’s brand and tagline of “accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”
A local example of successful branding is StoragePug, founded by Tommy Nguyen, Richard Jeffords and Matt Huddleston. It is a website builder for storage companies, allowing small business owners access to their data, appointments, bookings, and clients in one place, at one time. The company’s bright purple pug logo stuck out in the space. It was different, unique, and caught the attention of the industry.
What started as a company of four guys in a garage, six years later has 40 employees generating more than $10 million in annual revenue. Branding matters!
McAdoo shared the eight elements that founders need to think about when creating their brand: logo, color, shape, tagline, tone of voice, fonts, imagery, and positioning.
The participants in the summer 2024 Brandcamp spent the rest of the day in workshops, breakouts, and meetings with experts to create the best possible brands for their start-ups.
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