We all know that bad spelling can affect a customer’s opinion on your attention to detail, but sometimes it can have an even more painful effect. Today Chelsea FC not only embarrassed themselves by letting a 3-0 lead against Manchester United slip through their fingers, but also rather than advertise their own Chelsea Football Club merchandise on the boards, they instead misspelled their own club name and pointed budding fans to the cybersquatted site chelsefc.com (registered 2004)

It seems that the registrant of chelsefc.com has now blanked the page, but it was allegedly selling quit smoking products and advertising a Leicester city fansite.

Check everything at the design phase before signing the release, check it twice, thrice even! Sleep on it and check it again with fresh eyes! Ask someone else to check it. Once you have signed off any design, it’s done and you have nobody to blame but yourself.

Another thanks to Yahoo! (http://uk NULL.eurosport NULL.yahoo NULL.com/06022012/58/premier-league-chelsea-fc-spell-own-name-wrong NULL.html) for this one and the image.

Our new branding has finally unofficially launched. When we’re split between paid work and our own updates, it’s obvious which gets shelved. Yes we’ve got some wording issues and typos to correct, some pages to beautify but we’re pretty much there! Be sure to check out and ‘Like’ our Facebook page (http://www NULL.facebook NULL.com/ZakoMedia/) for more updates, tips and tricks to getting your website noticed in the sea of indifference known as the Internet and hopefully attract some business in the process.

Your website deals with a lot of potential customers for you. It’s the passive salesman standing out of the way of the customer, but always there when needed. It’s very easy to forget about him and ignore the people he’s dealing with.

DON’T!

I just unsubscribed from a newsletter after seeing a fantastic example of a company with poor understanding of their audience. (at least the online marketing team)

The company in question I use to buy car parts; brake pads, calipers, spark plugs, timing belts etc. for the rare car I have. They are a nationwide company and very popular for the DIY amateur car mechanic, of which I am one.

Today I received their newsletter of offers, the first in 3 years of my dealings with them. The featured “grab my attention” article forcing me to open the email, wasn’t about squirrels chewing through brake lines, or budget vs branded air filters or the benefits of winter tyres, it didn’t introduce me to a new technological advance on biofuel engine conversion possibilities or a spark plug revolution. The article instead used 6 paragraphs of prime “let’s show ‘em what we got” newsletter space to tell me:

How to check your oil level.

I would guess that 90% of drivers know how to check their oil levels, so the 10% might be worth aiming for…  However lets go back, this is a company selling car parts, not air fresheners and baby seats, but wishbones, utility belts, distributor caps and suspension struts. Of the 10% of people who don’t know how to check their oil levels, how many are realistically buying these parts online?

If this were Halfords, or a similar high street car bits and bobs for your every day driver, then educating the 10% of people running on low oil will make them a small fortune, but this is a company who focusses almost entirely on selling parts to DIY mechanics. Any diy mechanic who can’t check the oil level should not be allowed within 10 miles of a motor vehicle.

Your website is a salesman, he should be completely up to date about your company or business, he should have all the information and be able to give it at the right time. If he is trying to educate people, make sure his information is tailored to the people standing in front of him. Don’t alienate 90% of your clients to attract the final 10% who wandered in by accident while looking for Homebase. Alienate the 10% and keep your 90% of good, quality, loyal customers coming back.

I will continue using this car parts company, they are good at what they do, but they’ve lost the ability to market to me despite me being their perfect customer.

Starbucks is a huge name, some say it’s better known than any car company in the US and one that is known and trusted in the UK.

But does the Starbucks brand image goes against everything it stands for? If Starbucks want to be the local coffee shop and not an overused high street cliché, then the billions of dollars building the Starbucks empire has gone slightly off-track.

To tap into the ‘local’ market, Starbucks have just opened a remodelled coffee shop called ’15th Avenue Coffee & Tea’ in Seattle. No green logo, no motif on cups, just a nice, modern, friendly, local coffee shop. They will be open throughout the night and provide tailor-made drinks and atmosphere. After covertly researching other local coffee houses, they realised that there is a massive untapped market of independent coffee drinkers who aren’t interested in going corporate.

Few others seem to understand this move, but having been brought into business almost entirely through social networking, it makes sense to see someone trying the small business approach. How will it work? Watch this space.

The lesson to learn here isn’t actually that branding can work against you, it’s about making the branding reflect the image you want to give out. Virgin has always been the rebel brand, ‘Ryan air’ the budget, pay only for what you want brand. Would Ryan Air now be able to offer a full first class service like BA? Absolutely not, consumers would be confused at the apparent price-hike and Ryan Air’s branding would go kaput.

McDonalds, like Starbucks has built it’s own niche empire, they keep trying to dip in to the local market, but they will forever be known as a fast food chain with little or no personality in it’s stores. A McDonalds in Venice is identical to one in North London. If McDonalds wanted to launch a proper cuisine and expensive exotic menu, they would fail. It makes perfect sense therefore for Starbucks to introduce a new concept to differentiate itself from the brand and give it a little flair. You’ll never see a chain of ’15th Avenue Coffee & Tea’s, but that’s the point, that’s the brand. The strength of Starbucks and the personality of an independent, such a beautiful combination. We know Starbuck’s underlying ethics, we know the quality, but now we get the personality.

A brand doesn’t have to be attached to a logo, especially if that’s exactly what you don’t want. Branding is much much deeper than a swanky logo and colour scheme. It’s everything.