Last week, AIG CEO Edward Liddy told Capitol Hill, “I think the AIG name is so thoroughly wounded and disgraced that we’re probably going to have to change it.” Rep. Paul Hodes (D-N.H.) added that AIG now stands for “arrogance, incompetence and greed.”

There’s an important branding lesson to be learned here–namely, if you’ve screwed up royally, changing your name and rebranding your business is a good idea. Just make sure you can back up your new name with a better business strategy. In the current crisis, business owners are changing the way they run their businesses. But many after revamping their strategy, forget to translate that into their marketing materials.

“That’ll raise questions about the company,” says Roger Cline, owner of graphic design and branding studio CLINE&CO. Mixed messages can confuse your customers and even cheapen your brand. That’s why it’s important to create a strategy, and then stick to that strategy in your branding efforts.

While branding looks simple enough–some clip art here, a splash of color there–the root of successful branding is actually more complex. The internet, for one, has complicated things. Instead of a one-way conversation, “a business’s promotional efforts are now a dialogue between business and customer,” Cline says. That means your brand is constantly changing.

Websites like Yelp mean your brand changes with every review, which can be beneficial, or it can be extremely damaging. “These days, you post anything on the internet. Customers that have had a bad or good experience are gonna let the world know about it.”

Since word-of-mouth may backfire, the best way to keep your brand polished is to have integrity in your business practices. Cline says that will prevail over any of the gripe you get on the internet, or otherwise. “If you run your business with integrity, it’s going to show.”

Remember, the flashiest logo and all the marketing materials in the world can’t save a business that doesn’t have fundamentally strong values. And for AIG, which is now AIU, a quick-fix, one-letter change doesn’t omit the bonus scandal or where the $170 billion bailout money goes–but at least it’s a step in the right direction.

–Jessica Chen

Successful companies turn to independent design studios that focus on quality design for the solution to their marketing and strategic graphic design needs and many other companies are following suit in an economic downturn.

“It’s critical for businesses to maintain the company image they have worked hard to create, especially in a tough economy,” explains Roger Cline, owner of CLINE&CO Design, an independent design studio operating here in the Sacramento area, servicing nationally.

Companies have many options to consider when researching what type of establishment to use for their graphic design needs. Many are turning to the small handful of independent design houses that focus on high-end strategic design and that possess a business plan that allows their customers to pay only for the services they need. By doing so businesses avoid the added expense of overhead fees often charged by large companies.

Roger owner of CLINE&CO Design created his business plan with this approach in mind. “I used my 15 years of experience to develop a strong team of outstanding business associates; we design everything from logos to catalogs to e-commerce websites. My clients receive exceptional quality design services, resulting in unique and effective products every time.”

Throughout its life span, a company invests large amounts of money, time and research to create a solid company identity and its components, including logos, websites, catalogs and all other marketing collateral. An investment in good design creates strong customer confidence and instant company credibility with existing clients, potential clients and competitors. Cutting corners on quality design inhibits customers’ confidence by raising questions about a company’s stability. The price companies’ pay in an attempt to recapture customers’ confidence far outweighs the costs of doing it correctly the first time. Resilient companies maintain their industry lead through effective marketing and excellent design, by taking advantage of the services offered by high quality independent design studios such as CLINE&CO Design. Please visit www.cline-company.com to learn more.

]]> http://www.cline-company.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=51 http://www.cline-company.com/blog/?p=50 http://www.cline-company.com/blog/?p=50#comments Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:10:42 +0000 Roger http://www.cline-company.com/blog/?p=50

]]> http://www.cline-company.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=50 http://www.cline-company.com/blog/?p=49 http://www.cline-company.com/blog/?p=49#comments Wed, 29 Oct 2008 02:49:27 +0000 Roger http://www.cline-company.com/blog/?p=49 Los Angeles based entertainment company “Eagle Ear Entertainment” had contracted Cline & Company for logo and web development for their production company. Below is the final logo and screen shot of their main website.

Logo Design

Web Design and Development | VISIT SITE

About Eagle Ear:

EagleEar Entertainment’s leadership team of sisters Stephanie Farrar and Jennifer Young strive to provide musical platforms for family friendly entertainment and to showcase popular culture in a relevant, endearing, and cutting-edge way. By utilizing music as its muse, this organization makes every effort to give an eagle ear to mediums of the internet, television, product sales, and artist development.

The idea for this catalog was to deliver an exciting presentation along with developing a systematic and easy to follow product and chart layout. We designed the catalog using a 4×6 & 3×5 grid which plays a great role in maintenance of consistency and readability in the catalog design. The main user of the catalogs will be auto parts distributors, so it is essential the catalog not only looks great but also functions well. Keep an eye out for their newly designed web presence coming in the next couple months.

The team at AMI are a great group of people, they are great to work for and allowed us to do what we do best. The job of Design and Marketing is always much easier when you are developing it for a quality product. And this IS a quality product. AMI takes tremendous pride in what they do and that is why the are the leader in the industry.

Front Cover

Single page layout

Center Spread

Cline & Company has had the pleasure to recently complete the identity and web development for San Diego based restaurant Crescent Heights. Here is a excerpt from crescentheightssd.com to give a brief overview of the establishment…

Crescent Heights Kitchen & Lounge features innovative California Modern cuisine focusing on artisanal and seasonal ingredients in a chic downtown setting. Helmed by Chef David McIntyre who brings ten years of experience working in some of Los Angeles’ top kitchens including Wolfgang Puck’s Spago and Cut, along with Joachim Splichal’s Patina, Crescent Heights blends culinary creativity and attentive service in a sophisticated yet relaxed ambiance. Designed by the renowned firm Akar Studios, Crescent Heights occupies the ground level space of San Diego’s most stellar skyscraper at 655 West Broadway. Welcome to San Diego’s newest portal to fine dining.

Here’s a great script I found which makes it easy to export your entire address book from Mac Mail into a CSV file. I had very little luck with other Mac Mail scripts but this one worked very well. To get it to work you’ll need to edit the saveCVSExport line to your liking. Once you run the script give it a couple seconds before you hit cancel, it looks like nothing is happening but, in a couple moments the file will show up. I didn’t want all the names and physical addresses in my csv file so I just removed the call outs in the script.

Download the AppleScript file here
or
Download the txt file here