Many companies turn to Bluetext for a rebrand to increase visibility and market share, to better compete against other major challengers, and to enter new markets with a compelling message. In the case of some of our clients, the goal is to launch their product or service into the market with a look and feel that will attract attention and result in an acquisition. It’s always gratifying when our work pays off for our clients.

So we like to brag just a little when our rebrand clients succeed in a transaction that takes them to the next level. That’s the case with NetWatcher, a mid-market cyber-security service, that was just acquired by Qualsys, a cloud security provider that has been making a lot of noise in the market.

Our client came to us two years with a service that presented a new approach to the mid-market cyber challenge facing many medium-sized businesses: How to protect against threats such as weak passwords, unsecured assets, unsafe employee behavior, and outdated software that leave their networks vulnerable to attack. Their solution was a network appliance that monitors traffic inside the firewalls for anomalies that could spell trouble.

As the main focus of the rebrand, Bluetext developed a brand look and feel and name – NetWatcher – to reach the large mid-market audience the company was targeting for growth. We designed and built a new website designed to help customers and MSPs – managed service providers who are key channel partners for the business – understand the benefits of the solution to their organizations. And we launched this new brand at the MSP World Conference in Las Vegas. During the awards portion of the conference, NetWatcher was honored with the “Best in Show” award for its innovative and promising solution designed specifically to address the security needs of small and medium-size businesses.

Congratulations to the NetWatcher team for building a successful new brand in the crowded cybersecurity space, and for achieving your goal of an acquisition by a major player, taking your solution to an even larger audience. Bluetext is proud to have been a part of your success.

Looking to rebrand so you can rise to the next level? Learn how Bluetext can help.

Bluetext has always prided itself as one of the leading naming agencies in the U.S. market. Our laser focus is on how a brand communicates its key attributes through the look and feel of its visual identity, and of course, through the name itself. Naming is, in fact, one of the more challenging elements of a brand, and the one that often stumps top branding agencies. There are several reasons for this, including finding a URL that is available along with the trademark.

That’s why we were so gratified to learn that Bluetext has been tagged as one of the top 10 naming agencies in the market by Clutch, the leading agency review site that provides market insight to guide business buying decisions. Clutch recently analyzed agencies that provide naming as part of its services and divided the leading contenders into those that are proven market leaders. Of the hundreds of agencies that Clutch evaluated, based on the ability to deliver, strong reviews, and focus on service, Bluetext ranked as number eight on the list of top agencies.

One of the reasons we believe that we rank so high on the Clutch list is our proven methodology that delivers strong name options for each of our clients who are seeking to rebrand either an entire organization or develop a naming system that includes products and services.  We’ve renamed and rebranded major corporations in the technology, defense, consumer and enterprise sectors, as well as challenger brands, start-ups and new divisions and product lines. We seek to understand our client’s place in their markets as well as where they aspire to be in two to five years. Our proven process includes a thorough analysis of the competitive landscape and how a new name can help a brand stand out in its market. It also assesses where the market is heading, and how the right name can position a brand for success.

But don’t just take our word for it. Read through the independent analysis from Clutch and the various recommendations of our clients. They tell our naming story far better than we can.

In search of a new name for your brand? See how Bluetext can help. 

The plan by the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission to end the net neutrality regulations developed by the previous Administration is generating intense response across social media as well as news coverage. Whatever the outcome of the policy debate, it could have a significant impact on every brand’s digital strategy. If you haven’t been thinking about how you are going to prepare for this change, now is the time.

The debate over who controls the Internet is more than a decade old, and the carefully laid plans to implement a net neutrality system across the digital landscape has been thrown into turmoil by the new head of the FCC’s announcement that he would reverse these regulations has everyone scrambling. The depth of this issue and the debate can get complicated, but at heart, it’s about whether internet service providers such as Verizon and Comcast can charge different prices to different customers depending on their bandwidth requirements. On the surface, that seems like a reasonable request. After all, if you need more bandwidth, why should you pay extra for that?

On the other side, those in favor of net neutrality, are the content providers, including Google, Facebook, and Netflix, who stream high content including video that requires increased bandwidth. Their fear is that the service providers can discriminate against their content by charging more while favoring their own competitive content offerings, creating an unfair playing field. Regardless of how you feel about net neutrality and what the final outcome of this dispute will be, the FCC’s move could mean a lot to your digital strategy.

For example, if you have e-commerce capabilities that you are planning on expanding, or if you include high-quality video as part of your website content, you may be facing an entirely new regime of costs to have the same quality and speed of delivery. And as numerous studies have shown, slower website speeds, load times and latency all can have an impact on online sales. The Internet Association, which represents Amazon, Dropbox, eBay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Uber, and Spotify, issued a strong statement this week criticizing the FCC’s move. In reality, those companies have the resources to purchase the faster services. Other Internet-reliant brands may not have that same luxury.

As Jason Citron, co-founder and CEO of the video game-centric chat and video-conferencing app Discord, recently told Wired Magazine, “Net neutrality is incredibly important for small startups like Discord because all internet traffic needs to be treated as equal for us all to have access to the same resources as the big companies.”

Nolan T. Jones, managing partner and co-creator of Roll20, a video-conferencing and community platform for tabletop role-playing gamers, went ever farther. “We believe this would affect more than just our voice and video equipment, but our entire ability to host folks interacting across our services,” says Nolan T. Jones, managing partner and co-creator of Roll20, a video-conferencing and community platform for tabletop role-playing gamers.

The new rules will most likely hit mobile apps first, as many internet services include limits on data use for mobile platforms. Having a solid mobile strategy in place that recognizes these limitations will be key.

Learn How Bluetext Can Help With Your Digital Strategy

WASHINGTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Bluetext, LLC, one of the fastest growing branding, digital marketing and strategic communications agencies in the U.S., is becoming part of the Eastport Holdings portfolio of agencies.

This transaction provides Bluetext a strong national platform to deliver a wider and more integrated set of services to its clients with the deep experience in digital media and marketing of Eastport’s network of agencies. Don Goldberg, Michael Quint, Jason Siegel and Rick Silipigni, who founded the agency in 2011, will stay on in their day-to-day operating roles. The company expects no staffing or organizational changes as a result of the deal.

“When considering our next phase of growth, we wanted to identify a partner that could provide our global client base a wider range of strategic services to expand their marketing efforts,” said Quint. “Unlike the holding companies who answer to Wall Street rather than their clients, Eastport’s approach is to acquire successful agencies and let them continue to operate independently with decision-making and control remaining at the agency level.”

“This approach will enable us to continue to deliver world-class service and tap into agency network partners as needed. Any client or prospect who has considered Bluetext should set up a time to learn more about our expanded services offering and how we can help take their marketing efforts to the next level,” he added.

Eastport Holdings is a privately-held company based in Memphis, TN.

Bluetext has one of the strongest branding, digital marketing and strategic communications practices in the U.S., and possesses the creative resources and strategic firepower demanded by organizations looking to increase visibility and drive demand in the markets that matter most. Companies ranging from the largest global enterprises to the most promising start-ups turn to Bluetext because of our reputation for designing and executing industry-leading solutions that differentiate and deliver for our clients and meet business and revenue goals.

Hiring a top branding agency can be stressful. We know from our clients and from top corporate CMOs that making the decision to bring on an outside firm in the first place – let alone deciding which firm to bring on, is a major decision. First and foremost, it’s a marketing cost that might not have been allowed for in the budget. Justifying the ROI, especially off-cycle, looks like a heavy lift from a distance. Second, shifting work on something as integral to a company as their brand raises fears of losing control to a team that’s not in your office or under your control. Key to making the case for a top branding agency is recognizing that an agency with the right experience and creativity will help your business grow, and can be one of the most important investments you make.

Here are five reasons to hire a top branding agency:

1. It’s the Creative. Even if a company has a top designer in-house, it’s often better to turn to an outside source for several reasons. Number one, a top agency will have a range of creative designers bringing different options and creative approaches to the project. An in-house individual or even a small team will never have the range of styles of an agency. Pretty soon, all creative tends to look the same. In addition, we can bring our team specialists in strategy and content to the job.
2. Consistency. What we often see with in-house teams is that they turn to the branding task in their spare time and that they never have enough spare time because their services are always in demand around the office. As a result, the work is inconsistent, both in quality and in tone. A top branding agency recognizes the importance of consistency to your brand.
3. Brand Management. A top branding agency isn’t valuable only on the one project but will be with you for the long-term. That means that as your brand grows and evolves, it lessens the risk of diluting it as new ideas are explored and boundaries pushed. An agency team can make sure that new directions are kept within the context of the brand style guide. A great branding agency can lead the development of new deliverables and can deliver on the vision for the brand.
4. Industry Insights. Top branding agencies work across a variety of industries and keep on top of trends and styles across many verticals. That is not something that an in-house team can do.
5. Creating a Vision and Sticking to it. A top branding agency has the expertise and creativity needed to develop a comprehensive brand that is consistent and tells a compelling story. It takes lots of work to develop that skill and requires significant know-how and ability to both see the vision and execute on that vision.The right firm recognizes the intricacies of taking a brand from concept to completion at different stages in their client’s business lifecycle. That skill – to see the big picture of your organization and help you bring your brand to life – is critical and valuable.

Considering a Branding Agency? Learn how Bluetext can help.

Top branding agencies are always looking for new and refreshing approaches to logo designs that resonate with customers. Every designer’s dream is a new logo that is memorable and unique. But customers react to logos that interesting and different, but not too different. If a logo adheres to a style that is out-of-date or too far out of the mainstream, it may stick out from the crowd, but it won’t generate the positive feelings that it would if it were within the boundaries of the top logo trends that are hitting the market. With that in mind, here are six top logo trends that we are seeing both with our clients and across the industry:

1. Flat Designs Retain Their Strength. When Microsoft released its latest new logo, the design was flat with no shading or 3-dimensional effects. The result is a logo that is straightforward, maintains its integrity and brand equity, and looks good across all channels and in all sizes. It’s also easy to print and reproduce. A flat design shows off the brand and colors well and shows off the brand in its simplest form.  
2. Negative Space is Your Friend. Pinterest, Instagram, Toyota and scores of other iconic brands all use negative space – sometimes with hidden shapes and symbols includes. As an article in Lifebuzz.com reveals, the three ellipses in the Toyota logo represent the heart of the automobile, the technology, and the customer. More importantly, negative space can draw attention to the brand in a way that is memorable and different. 
3. Stacking is Back. For many years, the logo with letters had to be simple initials in a simple design. But as a way to grab attention in a way that stands out and is easy to see and absorb, stacking can be a strong alternative – often with different fonts for each word. This offers a solid way to highlight different fonts to challenge viewers while giving them something they can quickly comprehend. Here’s an example of a recent refresh (minus the different fonts) from the American Library Association. 
4. Turning a Flat Logo Up a Notch. One recent trend is taking otherwise flat logos and adding a two-tone approach to add depth to the color but also to give it a hint of three-dimensionality. Dividing symmetrical images into two “zones” of shading gives depth and visual interest to a flat design. It can also add a symbolic touch to convey the brand’s core mission and direction. Check out how Pineapple Resorts turned its logo up a notch to make it more distinctive. 
5. Go Wide. Shapes that elongate from right to left are thought to be more recognizable for humans that narrow, tall images. With online platforms (such as websites and social media) favoring a wide design, strong brands are turning to this approach with their logos. When combined with contemporary fonts and colors, it can also convey a brand that is on the move and ready to dominate its market.
   

Want to explore how to apply top logo trends to your brand? Bluetext can help.

As every top branding agency knows, the brand style guide is a key component in a brand’s visual identity. It sets out how brand elements, including color palette, imagery, iconography, and layout should be incorporated into every piece of collateral or content that represents the brand. In essence, it’s the brand bible for every designer and marketer in the organization.

Yet, for a typical top branding agency, it’s often an afterthought. Only after the new brand elements are designed, options are provided to the client, the visual identity is applied to the website, collateral templates, and signage, and all is approved, does the team turn to the style guide. And even then, it is often lacking in the type of detail and content that will make it useful for more than a brief period. It needs to be thorough and future-proof.

Let’s face it: The brand style guide isn’t the sexy or fun part of the project. Oftentimes, it’s delivered as a thinly printed document and other times as a PDF with limited detail. We understand that digging through a lengthy document to find out precisely how to use the logo, fonts, and imagery can be frustrating. Here, then, is the Bluetext guide to a good – and useful – brand style guide.

1. Make sure the style guide is comprehensive. The goal of the guide is consistency, in how the brand is represented regardless of platform, outlet or venue. It will be used by a wide variety of people, ranging from employees to partners to media. This doesn’t mean it has to cover every random or infrequent scenario, but more detail works in your company’s favor.
2. Go deep in coverage. Even the term “brand guide” is sometimes misleading. While it is important to include details on the specific usage of a creative asset, such as how much white space needs to pad a logo or how a logo should play out depending on the background color, this should be only a part of the what the guide includes. Don’t neglect core brand-building guidelines, such as what the organization’s tone and voice need to be in different contexts, or how employees should use branded imagery on social media. Provide enough detail so that anyone reading the brand guide from cover to cover will feel like an expert on every aspect of the brand.
3. Update the guide on a regular basis. With the prevalence of eBooks, articles, and infographics, brands are experiencing a faster rate of evolution than ever before. That means it is important to do a regular review of the guide to keep it up to date.
4. Make it easy to find, share, and update. Many style guides look great in a printed, bound volume. But those are hard to find, hard to distribute, and really hard to keep updated. And if the brand guide requires time and money to update, executives will be reluctant to refresh the guide to match their evolving brand until they absolutely have to.

Our recommendations as a top branding agency: Make the style guide a dynamic window to your brand. Include intangible elements that come from the brand’s core message platform, like tone, voice and the types of language to use. Use a digital platform that is easy to share and easy to update. Make it comprehensive. And make sure you review it at least once a year.

Style Guide Examples:

Learn How Bluetext Can Help With All of Your Branding Needs!

There’s good news and bad news for companies hoping to make their mark in the cyber security universe. First the good news: The market for these products is huge and growing exponentially. Security Analyst and researcher Richard Stiennon, in a column on Forbes.com and extrapolating from Gartner data, projects a ten-fold increase in IT security spending over the next 10 years- to $639 billion annually by 2023. That’s a number that would have any company executive working overtime to tap into.

But here’s the bad news: This is not exactly a secret. The competition is fierce and growing, as the growing number of solution providers races to meet this demand and take advantage of the opportunity.

It’s easy to have a marketing plan that pushes key messages out to prospective customers. At Bluetext, we think an influencer strategy is essential as part of that plan, and especially in such a crowed space as cyber security.

How any company—from established household names to challenger brands—can break through the noise and the clutter to attract the attention of this market requires an engaging and creative marketing approach that clearly sets it apart and above the competition. This demands a fine understanding of the value it brings to its customers and why it’s the best solution for any particular challenge.

Yet, simply having great creative is only half the battle. Getting that message out to the market is a whole new challenge, and needs both a direct approach and an in-direct strategy—the bank shot to reach the intended audience. Direct tactics are obvious—direct mail, email blasts, online and print advertising, a digital presence, trade shows and webinars; these are all direct appeals to potential customers.

The indirect approach is in many ways more difficult. It requires using industry influencers to reach their larger audiences with your content and messages. That is no small task, and it takes a dedicated investment in time and research. Here are some of the required elements to implement an effective influencer strategy:
1. Identify the best influencers for cyber security.
2. Recruit those influencers as allies and advocates for your thought leadership.
3. Engage those influencers through social media and direct outreach so that they will spread the word to their audiences.

Let’s take these one at a time.

Identify. Identifying the right influencers for any market, and in particular for cyber security, takes some research and digging. The key is finding the leaders who not only have the most followers on social media, but whose content—including tweets, blog posts and news articles—are shared the most frequently. When Bluetext executes an influencer campaign for its clients, we look first at the number of twitter followers and LinkedIn connections for each influencer candidate. But that’s only our starting point. More important is researching their history of shares among that audience. If a particular individual has a large number of followers yet few who share and rebroadcast that content, it could mean that his followers don’t find his content to be valuable, or that he doesn’t post content very often. If there are a lot of shares, retweets and comments, that’s a good indication that the person is read and taken seriously across the industry.

Recruit. Recruiting an influencer doesn’t mean offering them a job. It means building a relationship so that that person knows you are reading his content and pushing it out to your audience. The best way to do this takes work. The first step is to follow that person on Twitter, and to subscribe to his feed if he has a syndication service. The second step requires that the person’s content be reviewed on a daily basis. Any time there is a post that is relevant to your market, share it, follow it, retweet it, comment on it or call it out and add your own perspective. The idea is demonstrate that you are an active fan and follower who is paying attention to the expert.

Engage. Engaging with the influencer is a long-term project. After you have shown interest and built a credible track record of reading and sharing his content, he can be approached as an industry expert, a colleague and a reporter. That might include asking for his opinion on a new development, offering to share an announcement that he might find interesting, and even giving an advance look at a new piece of research or development. The goal is to be viewed the same way that a reporter would view a valuable source—with credibility and interest. When that engagement is solidified, the influencer is much more likely to pay attention to your content and to share it with his audience.

This may seem like a cumbersome process, and Bluetext dedicates a fair amount of energy to make this happen for our clients. But the payoff is significant. Using the bank shot to reach a much broader audience through sources that they trust can help rise above the competition in a crowded and growing market. A smart influencer strategy takes time and commitment, but it’s worth the effort.

A few weeks back, I posted a blog about over-used PR terms to avoid. Needless to say, that post generated lots of responses and even a clever email from an old colleague that tried to use all them in one friendly note to me. The list of pr terms to avoid seems to be endless. So many to choose from, so little time.

So, due to popular demand, here are seven more PR terms avoid – to debate, disagree with, eliminate from your online dictionary, but above all else, to please stop using. And as with my previous post, I too am guilty of using some of these terms and will take my own medicine. I also recognize that language is defined by common usage, so that even though some of these terms may not be allowed in the Queen’s English, dictionaries reflect how people actually use words, regardless of the Queen. Nevertheless, I am fighting a last stand to get these words out of the PR world, at least for now.

• Leverage. This is a tricky one because as a noun, I think it’s perfectly fine. The problem is when it is so frequently used as a verb, its meaning becomes vague and just seems lazy.
• Impact. I know I’m losing this battle, but the word “impact” is a noun, not a verb or a gerund (ending in “ing”), and certainly not “impactful.” That’s just removing whatever impact it had in the first place.
• Their. As in, “Bluetext is a cutting-edge digital marketing agency – their work is amazing!” While the sentence may be accurate, it still doesn’t work. Agencies, companies and inanimate objects are “its”, not “theirs.” This is a pet peeve of mine, and I always correct this whenever I see it.
• Unique, when preceded by “somewhat” or some similar modifier. The word “unique” is binary – something is either unique or it isn’t –  there is nothing in-between.
• Disruptive. This is a big red flag in a PR pitch or press release. Unless when talking about a student’s behavior in kindergarten, let’s all agree that this is both over-used and not used correctly. We can only look backward to see if a new product or technology was in fact disruptive. Predicting this in advance is wishful thinking.
• Authentic. I was once guilty of using this word far too often. The idea was that campaigns would resonate better with target audiences through content such as social media and blog posts if they were “authentic” as opposed to “artificial” in their voice.  In fact, everything we do for our clients should be authentic, and pointing this out just undermines its credibility.
• State-of-the-Art. Doesn’t every client want to describe their product as “state-of-the-art”? Let the product speak for itself. The audience can decide whether it’s new and different or not.

Part 3 of PR terms to avoid will be forthcoming.

Looking for an agency to take your PR results to the next level?  Contact us.

Budget deficits, sequestration, program cut-backs—these are scary times for technology companies that view government agencies as a key vertical market. With spending down at all levels of government, many IT decisions have been slowed down or put on hold, especially those lacking the urgency of mission-critical programs. In the first half of the Federal government’s 2013 fiscal year, the IT budget across all agencies was cut by nearly $300 million. Yet, at least one type of government spending, cybersecurity, is going in the opposite direction, increasing year-after-year as cyber threats increase exponentially.

Marketing executives at enterprise companies who target government agencies need to increase their efforts with smart programs that break through the clutter in this increasingly crowded space. As companies recognize that their competitors are also ramping up efforts to go after these mission-critical opportunities, a business-as-usual approach to marketing could leave them behind the curve.

Scarcely a day goes by that doesn’t include news on new threats to government agencies from adversaries. According to US-CERT—the agency that tracks cyber attacks—cyber threats have increased 782 percent since 2006, from 5,500 to nearly 49,000 last year. Attacks jumped 13 percent last year alone. As a result, budgets are on the rise. A recent article in The Washington Post projects increases from $10 billion on cybersecurity contracts in 2012 to over $14 billion in 2017—a growth rate of 7.6 percent. A survey by Deltek of industry and government technology leaders finds that they expect cybersecurity spending to be the fastest growing area of Federal IT investment over the next few years.

IT company executives will find this new landscape a marketing challenge. As one Deltek official has stated, “it’s a chaotic, evolving field that isn’t easy to crack.” Federal buyers will look for industry partners who recognize the difficult budget environment and can offer technologies that combine hardware and software products into more efficient and effective security solutions.

Perhaps most important, companies need to be aware of their reputation within the government. As Deltek’s John Slye wrote in the Post, “Cybersecurity is a nerve-wracking subject for the federal agency leaders who will likely be held accountable for any highly public failures. Enabling the government to secure its technology resources on a tight budget is as much about trust and cultural acceptance as any new piece of hardware or software.”

That’s where effective marketing comes in. Marketing executives need to reinforce not only the technical capabilities of their products, but also the value that they can bring to the agencies. This requires multi-touch campaigns that alert government decision makers to their offerings, educate them on the benefits of their solutions, and that also bring a comfort level that communicates the reputation and trust that comes along with their brand.

This is what we call a smart campaign, and the messaging it contains must be as well thought out as the tactics used to deploy it. To be effective in this market, it must span direct outreach, have engaging and eye-catching digital assets, leverage social media channels, and employ both earned and paid media—all working together to reach decision-makers at each point in their journey from research to purchase.

It’s both an exciting time for companies with cybersecurity solutions and a challenging time for marketing executives. Learn more about cybersecurity marketing.