Transcript
(00:00) foreign [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] hey [Music] all right you gotta turn the cameras
(01:05) back on and microphones each time so one day okay you got it Devin great Jason got it nice got the swag classes man look at that yeah these are cool yeah we a little bit of modifications they got the logo here see that it’s awesome right on on the side yeah on the side it has the logo and then just this side here is very good yeah well we want to make the most of this session I know you have a lot to share and I’m excited to hear myself so we had a show on Sky include Channel and uh about that’s not legitimate story and
(01:47) uh we we on a show I think we confirmed to do this so I you all have backgrounds in in various backgrounds that I think are very valuable for our community to share about branding and and building so I think I’m gonna pass it to Kirk and and I’ll I think I’ll hide off I’ll I’ll uh go backstage if uh call me if you need me but I think you can handle it thanks Mike I appreciate it and thanks for all of your hard work this this couple of days and and tomorrow it’s been amazing and the speakers that you
(02:18) put together and and all the handy competing you guys have been great so thank you so much yeah it’s our pleasure and the course was just on and others there’s much more stamina I think it’s just really uncovering amazing people like you and everyone that are working hard to just show the show everybody what we’re building because we’re all making stuff that’s that’s what’s amazing about this community so exciting exciting things happening absolutely thanks Mike thanks Mike uh hi everybody
(02:44) I I wanted to to say not only to to thank the whole handycon crew they’ve been fantastic but I’ve seen so many familiar faces uh from you know our communication and Twitter and and thanks everybody for all your support and um and of course and and encrypted and everybody who’s who’s done so much to make this happen uh and to be a speaker in handycon this year I was geeking out watching it last year so this has been fantastic um for those of you who don’t know my name is Kirk Salen I am one of the
(03:13) founding partners of the legit company uh some of you might have seen me on Twitter as dot legit or Kirk Salin uh I do really enjoy being part of the hns community um I’m excited to be here today to talk to you about the infinite possibilities of h s and TLD ownership specifically branding and why branding is so important uh so what is a brand simply put it’s a representation of your business and rules for how it communicates and interacts with your customers that every TLD and every sld for that matter has
(03:48) the opportunity to be its own brand and just as in life it is what you make of it so many people ask what’s in a name and I’ve heard over and over and over again in h s circles that everybody wants the sure easily recognizable names for their domain purchases my point of view has been that success is in the execution so just like in life your brand is what you make of it so let’s say you own a TLD and it’s a recognizable word how many definitions are there for it and how do you enforce the definition
(04:20) that you want so a couple examples say uh take Zac Brown and got records for example they’ve done a great job at defining that TLD around music whereas a lot of people could easily see that that would be legal records Financial records or something like that and of course everybody knows uh no Opera Mini TX he’s done a great job of branding that two-letter Tod to represent the state of Texas instead of what a lot of people uh first saw with representation of the word transaction so both of these are great examples of
(04:52) taking a vision and sculpting their brand into what they wanted to be and everyone faces challenges and guiding how their brand is seen and defined but you have the power to Define create and manage your brand and with well over 10 10 million tlds registered in handshake how are you going to stand out your brand is a way for customers to be attracted to you and interact with your business it’s demonstrating the personality of your company and letting people know what they can expect from you massive businesses have been built on
(05:27) names that were just made up these names that that now are so recognizable were once gibbered they meant nothing Verizon Pepsi Kodak Sony Ikea and.com none of these existed before the businesses built them into what they are by creating a brand your TLD is the ultimate blank canvas or block of clay you’re able to transform it into whatever you can envision here are some questions to ask yourself to help Define what your brand is what is the voice of your brand what is the message of your brand what does your brand look like
(06:09) what does your brand sound like who are your customers this is a specifically important question because that tells you who you’re trying to connect with what is your Brand’s Mission what is what is it built to do what’s special and specific about it use these answer answers and more to create a set of rules for how your brand operates these become the guides for everything a brand does and does not do this will help you build a connection between your customers and your brand that leads to customers taking actions
(06:42) like making purchases and letting other people know about your brand speaking of branding I am extremely fortunate to work with two of the best in the business whose talent in creating brands people love is unsurpassed and these are the other founding partners of of legit Devon Davis who will be talking today about uh Sonic branding he’s an impressive hybrid of business and creative Devon brings years of experience with independent investment and consulting firms along with professional music industry experience with Interscope
(07:15) Records Warner Brothers and advertising jingle experience working with such Giants as Pepsi Mountain Dew Jenny Craig and Levi’s he lets us see his platinum album on his wall if we ask nicely but first Jason fryer is going to be talking to us about visual branding Jason is an award-winning designer it had and he’s had a long career building and promoting Fortune 500 companies and Brands such as Apple Gatorade Pepsi Fiji Water Nissan visa and many more he brings a Powerhouse of design and brand identity skills to the team but
(07:50) before I forget uh disease Jason designed some uh swag just for handycon and it’s on legit.life and right now we’ve got a coupon code for everybody if you type in handycon at checkout uh you get 25 off so with that Jason it’s all yours awesome thank you Kirk and um you know we’ve got to give her some property with you one of the most amazing photographers talented entrepreneurs ever event so um very very lucky to be working with them um I am going to share a little PDF here for everybody all right so brand building
(08:36) um I’ve been as Kirk’s mentioned I’ve been doing this for you know 20 25 years now for some pretty big brands I think you grew just you know obviously can’t uh can’t give you 20 years in in five minutes but just you know um a very brief overview um you can work for anything um I know we’re talking about slds tlds but again this is um you know just a kind of branding 101 if you will I mean you know you know why is branding important um I mean look at the competition you know this is like a supermarket you know it’s
(09:10) like there’s a million competitors whatever whatever your your industry is your brand is um there’s there’s a lot out there and um you got to do everything you can to stand out so you know how do you do that how do we um how do we stand out how do we make ourselves become you know the crowd favorite if you will uh brandy101 you know Brandy’s crucial um it’s a process of creating unique identity in the image your company product or service a strong brand can help you differentiate yourself from your competitors both trust your
(09:49) audience ultimately Drive sales um you know so a couple key elements of branding um and again this this kind of just this is in general for whatever industry you’re in your brand identity um you know this can includes your company’s name logo your tagline any other visual elements that represent your brand how your brand identity should be consistent across all platforms to create a recognizable and memorable image number two brand voice this refers to the tone language and personality of your brain how do you communicate with your
(10:29) audience and the kind of relationship you want to establish with them number three brand positioning this is how you position your brand in the marketplace relative to your competitors it involves understanding your target audience your unique value proposition and what sets you apart from others in your particular industry and finally your brand story this is the narrative behind your brand that connects with your audience on an emotional level it can be used to build trust and establish a deeper connection with your
(11:01) customers so personally when I when I’m building a brand or you know helping a brand um a few things that I um I personally kind of look at um one you gotta be iconic um you know like here’s some some major brands here in just like you know I put little little piece of them and um you can probably recognize them just just from a little piece of their logo you know you got high making up there Adidas Toyota um you can see McDonald’s I mean just just a little piece of these logos um they’re so iconic and you you can’t
(11:40) you can’t they’re super memorable um you’ve got to kind of keep it simple and just say you know um obviously color plays an important role and moving on to color um you know obviously there’s a color theory is is very fast [Music] um things explore but um you know it’s very simply you know here’s a very quick overview um um uh with some some major brands and you know like yellow you know it kind of embodies optimism you know Clarity and warmth and you’ll see you know Nikon UPS IMDb Subway Best Buy kind
(12:18) of you know Embraces yellow friendly is orange you know Nickelodeon Amazon Payless Shoes Santa um you got your excitement cold it’s red you know Kellogg’s Nintendo Coca-Cola um purple tends to um suggest creativity imaginative wise like the Sci-Fi channel you know Yahoo um and blue stress you know you got Dell computers ATT Lowe’s American Express um and peaceful you know the calm sensibility of um like Animal Planet um you know we’ve got BP in here uh and then balance is kind of fresh silver
(12:57) color it’s called it’s Apple it’s the New York Times it’s it’s Honda it’s Nike um and then on the outliers out here on the top right you’ll see kind of more colorful you know it’s a little bit more about diversity and um you know it kind of kind of embodies um kind of a range of these of these feelings um and also um you know a lot of logos um have hidden meanings um which is kind of cool because it’s like you don’t notice it first I think everybody probably knows FedEx you know you’ve got
(13:32) the the arrow in between the E and the X um kind of signals moving forward your packages are you know um oh this one’s probably a little more well known but if you you know you zoom in on the two guys there um they’re they’re dipping a chip in the salsa um kind of cool um you know the Tour de France logo uh you know if you zoom in on the uh oh you are there it’s a guy riding his bike it’s uh you know there’s lots of meetings here the Baskin Robbins obviously the one they when they initially um launched their brand there
(14:15) were 31 Flavors they had first first ice cream company you know in the world to offer that many flavors so they uh you know damage I uh if you look at the paint there you know the 31 is uh in the bmvr uh Wendy’s uh when they rebranded recently um you know they’ve got their Wendy there the uh the red-headed girl but if you zoom on her neck there you’ll see it says mom because they um they want to uh they want a signal the Facebook mom from cooking a couple others let’s go obviously these lines represent um you know signals
(14:50) waves Wi-Fi whatnot but it also if you look at it it represents the Golden Gate Bridge and you know Cisco’s headquarters in San Francisco so they were referencing their uh their home down there division the V and the a there uh kind of a music wave and then the Ido is a one zero which is you know binary code BMW obviously the very Motor Works um you know they they come from boats and planes back in the day so that uh that blue and white in there represents a propeller or a boat impeller um so you know there’s a lot a lot of
(15:29) hidden meanings and logos and you know it’s important to um when you design your your brand to um really just speak all these things um yeah so when I when I joined um legit company um you know Kirk is a very talented and this is this it’s a great it’s a great start it is it’s a great time he came to me and he’s like yeah like I got this amazing opportunity company and uh you know we’re gonna be dot legit and um you know this is the logo and no it works it it communicates what we need
(16:08) to communicate but um you know um I we kind of tore it apart and um happy here but you know so how you know how do we get from here to here right um so you know lots lots of sketching lots of you know it’s a messy process um it’s the creative process it’s hard it’s it’s you can’t really Define it but um you know so we kind of took a step back and we were like okay legit is is about um you know it’s it we’re thinking of being legit as um you know how do I say like um thinking about like like the Twitter
(16:47) blue check you know you’re you’re you’re you’re verified you’re legit like so you know we started off thinking about this check mark and just just being um being legitimate and um so you know we explored that and again here’s some artboard um messy process nothing there’s no Rhyme or Reason it’s just it’s just you’re throwing a bunch of stuff down or sketching you’re you’re buying the computer um and you know we always for but not week but I I personally always kind of still down to about eight
(17:19) kind of logos and you know these were all again based on being legit check mark um verified if you will um maybe we looked at him we’re like okay there’s some good stuff here and hey we uh we came together with three of us and we’re like okay well this might not be the way to go you know that happens like there’s rounds and rounds and rounds we go um so we said okay well you know it’s about it is about being unique it’s about individuality you know so maybe the check mark doesn’t quite represent
(17:52) that well so we went back to the drawing board and again nothing messy messy like looking at looking at stuff sketching and drawing on the computers and all these things illustrator and we’re thinking okay fingerprint you know we’re going what makes people unique what makes people individuals you know as we again down down to eight again and um you know like the crown was kind of interesting it’s like you know you’re legit you’re the king you King the castle looks like you know and you know
(18:20) and then looking at these fingerprints kind of intrigued this on the top right here you’ll see um we were really um interested in that one so so we kind of basically picked a couple here we went back we like the star from the first round which is a star and check mark we’re looking at these and we’re like okay all right how do we pick you know how do you how do you decide because they’re all it makes it all work right so um back to drawing board you know we’re looking at colors we’re looking at
(18:51) variations on these things they said you know let’s just throw these on a T-shirt and look at color options you know for me personally the way I was the way I was um trained like if something works on a t-shirt it’s it’s good you know it’s a simple it’s basic it’s iconic so you know you look at these three logos on t-shirts and you know there’s one clear winner it was this guy you know it’s it’s a thumb print and if you look you know lgip you know this this fingerprint is made from the letters LG ID it’s a
(19:29) little abstract you’ll see it um and then you know going back to color theory we’re like okay like what color accommodations do we need and we’re like you know what this is about individuality so it’s everything is this this is a window to anything you want it’s any color any image um and it just it’s just that’s just the way it uh it it fleshed out and it could be it’s gonna be more happening and uh that’s that’s kind of you know every 10 minutes and how we we became uh
(20:03) how we got this this identity and I am going to pass it on to you The Talented Devon Davis thanks Jason so it was a uh a wonderful uh talk on our journey to our own branding um and it was an exercise that we all were able to um enjoy and participate in uh for something of our own that we’ve done for uh many clients in the past uh so a part of that process was also trying to find a way to express our our uh branding hourly for the years um it’s something that I’ve done for quite some time and uh can be
(21:02) um everybody’s challenging as you’re trying to find a way to connect with your audience emotionally through the through the through the expression of sound share me up here Okay so what is Sonic branding quite simply Sonic branding is a way to express the philosophy of your company the theme of your company is that your brand through sound that it is a great way for you to sustain a connection with your audience or your potential clients or customer
(22:07) base um along with or even outside of your uh visual branding um most of Sonic branding happens as a way to support the visual branding but it can sometimes be the the primary way that you’re communicating with folks the idea is that you want to be able to increase your your brand recognition so if you have someone who is already very used to your branding uh or maybe not but certainly if they are familiar with your brand they’ve seen your logo but they don’t have the ability to see it on a particular platform
(23:03) say I thought on a streaming service or whatever that may or whatever whatever the case may be that oral branding will help continue to keep you connected to your your customers to your to your audience um one of the great examples of that um I guess there are two examples uh reminded me of one that’s more I guess before the day one would be the NBC uh oral branding you hear retoned branding that they use and the other would be the sort of sound effect branding that comes along with Netflix which is the one that currently went to
(23:50) the upcoming um many of us who use that service can already hear that even as I speak of it so it’s just another way to emotionally connect to your your audience and uh keep your your your branding your your uh expression directly in front of your your audience and this just kind of uh reiter writes what I was talking about so if you’re uh you know one of the things I I can find myself doing during the day is I’ll have maybe a YouTube channel playing in the background not really watching it uh it’s just it’s playing for me uh just to
(24:40) kind of be a background for me keep keep my my day uh my busy day um to break up the monotony and uh so if I’m not actually watching my screen but I actually hear the RO branding or the Sonic branding of this particular company it automatically reminds me of what I know about that company that company’s logo their visual branding the whole the whole the whole bit of it all because of sound and this is something that all of the big companies do you know you can pretty much find in almost all of those visual
(25:23) brands that Jason touched on earlier um you’ll find that almost all of them have uh some form of Sonic branding so that when you’re not looking at them you’re still hearing them so in conclusion uh that’s a big part of what uh we do with legit um as a branding services company on The Branding Services side of what we do um we are not only looking to give you the one package that will catch you visually which Jason is so expert at doing um but we also look to support that with something oral so that
(26:14) all of the senses as many as you can capture uh when you’re reaching out to people and looking to connect them to your brand so that all of them are touched upon and uh that’s not about it thanks very much thanks Devon thanks Jason that was fantastic I appreciate that um we had a little bit of a poll going which is kind of cool um the poll is just simply do you have a TLD that that you want to brand and and we’ve got a little bit more than half that that do um for those of you that do or those of you that are planning to do you have any
(26:58) questions for us can can uh can we help you guidance on on any of that let’s see it’s coming down here thank you very much appreciate you um fantastic so like I said a little bit before in the beginning uh Jason did design some stuff with a handshake logo and legit logo um and uh that stuff’s on legit.
(27:37) life or available uh on handshake it’s just legit slash and then uh on varro or the slds that’s uh get legit uh let’s see Mike have a question coming in uh how much should one budget that is really an excellent question and it kind of depends on uh what you are planning to do with uh with your branding Jason do you wanna touch on that a little bit more yeah you know that’s a great question and it’s it’s just it’s it’s so it’s just something you need to talk to your branding agency about because
(28:18) um like for instance FedEx came to me and wanted to Rebrand you know versus a company like legit you know starting out um it’s this is very very very very very vastly different scope of work it just runs again I see something that I could give you off the top of my head and it’s something you have to talk about it can it can range from five thousand to 500 000 to be honest um it’s just something you need to do I say it it um to it’s bound upon what Jason’s saying it it is very much uh situational
(29:04) um I know when I when I’ve been a part of projects sometimes it was dependent on uh on the client themselves what their where they were in their uh growth process where they uh you know because I can’t necessarily charge a a startup a brand new startup the same way that I would charge say Pepsi and so we we try to uh sort of keep keep that in mind and it’s also how much how much work is going into the process it’s very much on an individual basis so yeah everything is is depending on exactly what the goals are set um I’ve
(29:52) got a couple other questions I know we’re running short on time um and for Mike’s question about time it’s uh depends on the goals that are set and how the communication is with the client because like Jason put in his uh in his step through of what we did with jit with legit we had to go back several times because it just wasn’t uh wasn’t getting us to where we wanted to go um so it kind of depends on what what that process looks like uh Alex had a great question um he said how did you decide to start
(30:25) with clothing and uh is there something else in the works coming maybe sponsor some people um we wanted to do something that wasn’t uh that was outside of of what h s traditionally is to try to reach out and bring more people into the community and so we decided a Lifestyle brand was very compatible with um with what legit was was all about and um actually in the video that Mike brought up uh earlier we go into into that a lot more uh and is there something else in the works yes we’re very excited about
(31:05) some of the products that we’re working on and we have some stuff that is uh very very different um that we’re super excited about and we can’t can’t disclose that right now but as as soon as it’s ready to go uh we will be putting that out there and we’re super excited about that and sponsoring people uh yeah actually we’re in discussions with somebody right now to be doing that uh and if you guys have I think you have some Insider information here and he’s you know and and I will say thank you Alex we
(31:34) just noticed you bought a shirt and we are very very um appreciative of that yes thank you thank you for that support um let’s see very kind of you Alex very and big fan of the rugs and I know that we we already we already talked about it but I think that you’re uh that we’re local too so um definitely we’ll have to talk about that more in the future uh we we love exchange of services you know I we’re obviously creative we don’t have a develop on our team so you know we know there’s a lot of developers out there
(32:15) and we you know if the stars align and there’s a developer out there and you guys need need some branding some design we would love to uh we’d love to talk let’s see one more question um Mike I don’t know how we’re doing on time but let me let me get this one last one uh people might want to Brand their slds separately true uh depending on the TLD something to keep in mind is how deep to get The Branding in that’s true and and people are going to uh have that opportunity just like in.com
(32:46) dot net um you know to to choose which uh which extension they’re going to go with and um and slds absolutely can be their own brand 100 so that that’s going to be an issue too truly all right thank you so much everybody uh for having us thank you everyone impossible that’s very kind of me thank you awesome um we are legit and uh our first name is our is our email so Kirk legit.
(33:26) life Devon legit dot live jsonet legit.life we’re also uh on Twitter at dot legit or Kirk Salen um we’d love to hear from you guys if you have any questions or we can help with anything please reach out awesome great thank you for you guys any any branding anything you want to talk about will work for app and help love people yeah it seems like it seems like you’re getting some good feedback I do agree I think I think there’s a lot of people in the community need need your Insight and help so I’m excited to see
(33:55) this develop all right everybody um so our we’re gonna wrap up here and then uh going to the final session for today with sajin about uh your name for the internet is the title and he’s also in the India register agaman I think he’s a great speaker so I’m super excited for this one so stick around for the last one and then uh we’ll check leaderboards and talk about tomorrow take care bye it’d be great thank you [Music] foreign