You’re probably familiar with famous brands of course like Coca-Cola or Hallmark.

The thing to realize is that what backs up the value of these brands is their registered trademarks, and so the names, the slogans, the logos that are used to identify them are that backstop.

So, we work with your branding specialists. We work with your marketing department in order to identify and capture the value of those brands.  This begins by both identifying the brands you’re currently using as well as the ones that you would like to use.  So, typically, this engagement takes place over about 4 to 6 weeks. And in the first meeting, we’re going to spend it identifying down to fine detail the brands you’re using, and most clients are really surprised to learn how many marks that they’re actually using. And sometimes you don’t even realize the phrases and slogans and words you’re using could be registrable under Trademark Law. You just got to decide to do it.

In addition, we want to take a look at what your projected product and service paths are.  This is where working hand-in-hand with your branding specialist becomes really important.  Because typically, these are really creative guys and ladies, and they’re working at aligning the look and feel that you’re trying to establish for your customer and express that through the brands that they’re trying to develop.  One of the last things they typically think about, however, is can you actually use and register this mark so that you can make it your own? And will you be sued if you choose to go and use that mark?  That’s unfortunately a situation I’ve run into when many people call me for the first time.  After taking an inventory of what marks you have and what you’re looking to develop, we next want to Evaluate. And Evaluate, like in the E5 System, simply means doing searches.  So, we want to broadly search the competitive landscape for the logos, names, and slogans they’re using to identify their brands and then show you where your branding fits in this competitive space and where it looks like your branding is going again within the competitive space.  The 3rd step in the process is to prioritize the marks particularly for where you are trying to build your brand looking forward.  My experience is that if you’ve not been through this process before and when clients haven’t been through this process before, they typically come in in this early step 1 with five or ten marks that they want to use in the future.  And by the time we’re finished doing the evaluations and prioritization steps, frequently they’re going to have to let go of as many as two-thirds of the names and slogans that they’ve selected as their highest desirable ones.  Either because they’re not protectable or because someone else has already established branding using a name that would be too similar to those. The 4th step in the process is to Equip, and now we’re back on the E5 path. Because Equip just means to file for registrations for the marks.  And then, again along the E5 path, we look at Enforcing the marks that do get registered.  Look at this as a long-term process. So, again, when it comes to strategy for your branding as opposed to just a single mark, now you’re looking – you’re going meta. You’re looking at how your branding and the marks that you register fit in the overall market space, and how you can position that branding to increase your value and increase the affinity that your consumers have with you moving forward. So, I look forward to working with you and seeing you in the next video. Of course, we have more information below. And if you’d like a consultation, send me a note.