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	<title>while coding &#187; marketing</title>
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		<title>Branding</title>
		<link>http://www.youell.com/matt/writing/?p=155</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:55:41 +0000</pubDate>
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		<category><![CDATA[problem solving]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[For Sale signs have been sprouting for about a year now in my neighborhood. Most go down after a few months, but several  stubbornly persist. One sign in particular has been up for the better part of a year. It&#8217;s a sign from one of those sell-it-yourself kits you can get at Home Depot. [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>For Sale signs have been sprouting for about a year now in my neighborhood. Most go down after a few months, but several  stubbornly persist. One sign in particular has been up for the better part of a year. It&#8217;s a sign from one of those sell-it-yourself kits you can get at Home Depot. It&#8217;s not fancy, but it is better than what the owner started out with. Originally he had a cheaper sign with handwriting, advertising &#8220;4 beadrooms&#8221;. Now they have a better sign with no &#8220;beadrooms&#8221; mentioned.</p>
<p>Beadrooms or not, the house has gone unsold. I&#8217;m sure it hasn&#8217;t helped that the owner is selling it himself. I think the old saying about having a fool for a client applies to more areas than just law.</p>
<p>I realized today that this guy&#8217;s For Sale sign is a brand. It&#8217;s not working for him, but it is definitely a brand. After all, what is a brand? It&#8217;s a tool that gets potential customers to stop thinking. Seriously. If you&#8217;re Coke, with an insanely huge brand and market presence, all that your brand does is get people to not think about alternatives. Smaller brands are a variation on this theme.</p>
<p>So here&#8217;s this guy with his For Sale brand. It&#8217;s there every day, rain or shine. And people have stopped thinking about it because it doesn&#8217;t change. It&#8217;s a brand. It&#8217;s sort of sadly fascinating that this guy has accidentally created something many companies pay a lot of money trying to achieve.</p>
<p>Worse, I think the handwritten &#8220;beadrooms&#8221; sign had more draw.</p>
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