KBR Technology Assumes a Brand of Distinction – and Distinctiveness.

The new brand [or sub-brand, to be precise] for KBR Technology was born when two concepts came together in my mind. First came how the client described her business unit:

KBR Technology is a distinctive global business whose core technologies have significant impact on the productive success of industries, people and countries.

The second was seeing a major work called “Needle Woman” by Korean artist Kimsooja at the Museum of Fine Arts-Houston. In this video installation, the videographer stands utterly still, her back always to the camera, while crowds of people flow by, around and past her.

Her crowds are different from segment to segment; they are ordinary people on the streets of Nepal and Cuba, Chad and the Yemen, Brazil.

KBR Technology’s current and potential customers are in markets in the Middle East, India, China and the rest of Asia – not in Western Europe or North America. The crowd idea allows for the clearest possible contrast for the business unit among companies with similar profiles and “products.”

[KBR Technology licenses technologies which are just as cutting-edge as laser guidance or optical interconnects; but they’re far more focused on the basics of process industries. You will not frequently notice the application of advanced techniques in the more efficient production of ammonia, for example; or in improved ethylene and propylene yields. But for the world’s developing and expanding economies, these produced materials are the building blocks of new and vital societies. These technologies measurably improve the lives of people everywhere and are real examples of a successful global knowledge economy.]

Beyond the rapid business booms and the towering new skylines in so many far reaches of the world, there are the people - always.

So Part 1 is our “world photography” that puts the new sub-brand into a distinctive context, increasing differentiation from the KBR corporate look itself. On the top level, this business unit’s communications feature vivid color, movement…and life, culture after culture.

Part 2 is the contrast (in the ads, at least) with the individuals who offer the technologies. It is not only the corporate entity or business unit which delivers the know-how – it comes via KBR’s own people. A brand has the opportunity to refer to the total experience of an organization. So each combined photo-set can help form the mental picture stakeholders will have of KBR Technology. (Brand voice here is quintessentially visual.)

The repeating headline, Part 3, begins to make the brand package more concrete. KBR Technology is the global company that literally helps put the “HOW in Your World” with specific technologies and processes. These capabilities help customers reach out beyond each plant perimeter to the peoples of their society at all levels.

Then the expanded tagline, KNOW-HOW DELIVERED, ties everything back to the KBR corporate slogan. That’s Part 4.

Well, you know it is never so simple except in hindsight. Even in a sub-branding program there are many moving parts and many people helping to make the concept come true. For the initial steps, getting the new brand up and running, let me first mention and thank my frequent collaborators at Prism Design – Terry Teutsch, Stacy Allen and Susan Reeves.

None of this would look and feel as good as it does without the Prismatics’ touches from the get-go – colorful, dramatic and specific.

And my maximum appreciation goes to the KBR Technology client who has been supportive of the creative and incredibly capable in rolling out the brand internally. She has never been shy about her feelings; at one point, she emailed:

Just a quick note to say thank you. The work is terrific.

Can’t beat that.

Bean Blog

True confession: I am associated with the firm responsible for a new blog, Use Your Bean. It’s the new online thing from Prism Design here in Houston. Principal Susan Reeves says it’s “evidentiary.”

I take that word in several different ways, presuming that I’ve spelt it right from the starting blocks). It’s evident that the Prismatics are interested in fresh ideas. More important, in the “worth a thousand words” category, the blog posts offer photographic proof of Prism’s design thinking.

Now that Sister Mary Ignatius explains it all for you (with apologies to Christopher Durang) I’m certain you’ll just rush right over there…to the blog. It may be even more compelling that one neat idea coming out of this idea blog is the swag offer, “Want to trade?” It makes me feel a bit sad that I already have this stuff. If you don’t though – and have something you want to barter – check it out.

…To China

Flying to China, traveling
“Via regions closer to the North Pole,”
You can save three hours.

Dashing through the gemstone sky,
You note, besides the ice,
Some tiny speedy dots in line ahead.

Seeing with a sharper eye than ours,
You will discern the shapes of that odd chain,
The antlers of the reindeer in their harness.

Bringing up the rear, the black stuffed sleigh
And tiny, red-robed figure – infinitesimal:
The sacred Santa weighs the naughty and the nice.

Flying to China, if you’re good,
You’ll see this sight just once in life.
Or roving (very lucky) at the right time of year.

“Flying to China” was created for and first read aloud at John and Susan Reeves’s Christmas Party. Thanks to everyone for giving me a chance to read this – and to Susan, who suggested a poem in the first place. Merry/Happy. Copyright © 2008 Richard Laurence Baron. All rights reserved. Photo by Orin Zebest, San Francisco, CA.

Guarding Trademarks

For brand marketers, there's a good, quick briefing on the proper selection of trademarks: Read the “What’s in a Name?” article from BevNET Innovation, Issue 2, by lawyer Gregg R Sultan, here.

Long-form, though, it struck me that it’s relatively rare when information technology and copyright protection intersect. Today’s one of those days.

We’re at the dawn of what WIRED is now calling the “Petabyte Age.” That’s when there’s so much information available to us, the sheer mass of data demands what WIRED editor Chris Anderson says is an entirely different approach. He further pronounces: The new availability of huge amounts of data, along with the statistical tools to crunch these numbers, offers a whole new way of understanding the world.

Very cool thinking, yes? Except that one of the examples in the WIRED feature article is a DOD program called Essence – the Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Epidemics. Though “100 megabytes of data come in every day,” the government can’t nail down the source(s) of the current salmonella outbreak that’s clobbered 1,000 people.

Big data may well become miraculous. But mistakes will still happen if your project is “untouched by human thought.” So we come back to creating and protecting a trademark and Sultan’s article. Here’re some snippets:

Businesses tend to pick names which describe a product to immediately alert the consumer to the product’s nature (e.g., “Lemon Lime Soda”)…in the long run, you probably won’t be able to distinguish your beverage from others or protect the name.

Sierra Mist for lemon-lime soda…is considered a suggestive mark because it doesn’t describe the product, but conveys the idea that it’s refreshing. Marks like these are easier to protect and enforce…

As I said up top, the entire article is concise; worth your reviewing as a “best practices” reminder. Radio Corporation of America was fine in 1919. Now, 90 years later, it wouldn’t hold up as a corporate or brand name. This is what lawyers are for in our day and age, along with creative people who understand what makes one brand name more powerful, more useful and more protectable than another.

It doesn’t matter how much data you crunch (and there are software programs that’ll invent brand name options by the thousands). Creating a great brand is a human endeavor; guarding its IP value is up to human beings every time. Every time.

Appreciation to Gregg R Sultan, Esq., for his white paper, © 2008, BevNET.com, Inc. Post art by Prism Design, Inc. Many thanks to Susan Reeves and Stacy Allen. The art is the binary (data) form of a client brand name – a free bottle of wine to the first person who identifies it.

The Client

Grant Johnston, Wood Group Gas Turbine Services, at WINDPOWER 2008.

Wind Power

Marketing and advertising folks presume it is self-evident that marketing is essential to organic growth. That’s not a universal truth, or even a revealed one, as far as many engineering and sales professionals are concerned. But if it’s true, some people at Wood Group Gas Turbine Services are getting it right, IMO.

I did attend WINDPOWER 2008 last week to visit what is now Renewable Energy Services – a new business unit for client GTS. This part of the global energy services company maintains and repairs all types of turbines and generators, from aviation engines (smaller) to heavy industrial units (much, much larger). And effective power generation from the wind depends on…turbines and generators. So Renewable Energy Resources is taking its extensive MRO experience into the wind energy sector.

Prism Design created a booth and handout materials specifically for this new unit, and for this trade show. I’m glad to have participated in it all – particularly since this was another opportunity to adapt the KEEP ON TURNING brand I helped GTS create and maintain over the past two years.

It has also meant that the company can market its brand (as well as its services) much more strongly to an up-and-coming industry sector, like wind energy.

Now, recall what we said here about brand consistency? It’s a good idea (and a good return on investment) to build on elements that are already in the client’s brand vocabulary.

The branding challenges for GTS at WINDPOWER 2008 were graphic – all wind turbine pictures look the same. Susan Reeves, Terry Teutsch and Stacy Allen turned what could have been an ordinary photo into a landscape artfully fitted to the 20-foot-long booth space.

Take a close look at the top photo – a lot of art went into that horizon line. It stretches from one end of the booth to the other and reinforces the KEEP ON TURNING line beautifully.

By using the GTS brand elements in the handout materials, and ensuring that everyone who staffed the booth was fitted out with the distinctive Wood Group “gold” long-sleeve shirt, this new Renewable Energy Services group accomplished two marketing goals.

First, it picked up a bit of a…tailwind…from the Offshore Technology Conference, where Wood Group had a strong presence. Second, it introduced its targeted services to the wind energy market in a targeted – and branded – way. Think of this, then, as brand power.

The real compliment goes to the client, for recognizing what needed to happen at WINDPOWER 2008.

PS: Susan suggested I label this post “Show Turn Two” because it’s a look at another Wood Group Gas Turbine Services booth effect. Cute headline fer shure. But Signalwriter headlines are two words long and I try to stay consistent – even if I don’t always achieve the ideal.