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I have flicked through a staggering number of very inspiring and well made brand guidelines in my time. But last night my friend Brian Suda showed me one that tops them all.

Christopher Doyle created his personal Identity guidelines last year, long before peronal branding entered the hype cycle.

Not only is it funny and a brilliantly executed idea. It’s also of great quality as a brand guideline template. Your company should put it self in Christopher shoes (literally) and think about how to implement each chapter.

Color palette

Clearance space

Incorrect use

You can download the PDF here

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about how a toothbrush destroyed my experience of an otherwise fine brand experience.

It seems that I’m haunted by brand undermining peripherals. Now, I find myself compelled to complain about my new iPod Touch. Sure, the iPod is one of the greatest products ever and Steve Jobs is a branding genius. But what bothers me are the headphones. Annoyingly, after I had used the iPod for only a few weeks, the headphones kept falling apart. Eventually they broke down completely, and I had to bury them in my “ruined electrical gadgets drawer”. I can’t return the headphones because I bought the damn thing in London. I certainly can’t use my perfectly good black Sony headphones because that ruins the look of my beautiful iPod Touch – and thereby undermines my brand. So I have to buy new certified Apple iPod headphones.

Did you notice that even though the product failed me, I still think it is awesome? Why can Steve Jobs use cheap accessories with his products, when others can’t?

Maybe the iPod emits a sound frequency that makes people only think happy thoughts about Apple. Whatever it is I am going to buy new headhones as soon as possible, because I see people looking at me funny when I’m at the gym, working out, with my iPod Touch and my Sony headphones.

When a series of products unite under the same brand and message, the result is often called an umbrella brand.

I came across a successful execution of umbrella branding in Höfn í Hornafirði, a town on the south-eastern coast of Iceland. “Wow! – Vatnajökull region” is a brand used by a wide array of local food producers. As soon as you see the Wow! sign you know you’ve found some of the high quality food produced in the region.

Among the benefits of a successful umbrella brand are

• Economies of scope
• Reputation linking

As the number of products promoted within the ubmrella brand is increased and broader media used, economies of scope kick in and more people can be reached with each dollar spent. Also, the reputations of products within the brand are linked and once the consumer disovers one of them he is more likley to try another.

Our goal is to make Brand Capital a perfect fit for brand managers of umbrella brands like Vatnajökull region. With Brand Capital, downloading and applying the relevant digital assets becomes fast and easy. Whether your product is icecream, freshwater fish or lobster, downloading the right asset for a sign for your door or a photo for an ad in the local newspaper will only be a click or two away.

What is the world’s coolest music festival? Is it Roskilde, Glastonbury or maybe Lollapalooza? This is a question me and my friend asked ourselves after attending the music festival “The Camel” which is held every July in Myvatn, 6 hours drive from Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland. But what makes a cool festival, is it the bands, the venue or maybe the attendees?

We Icelanders believe that we are best at everything. Our products are the best, our country is the greatest, our music excels any others and nothing compares to our great Viking sagas. The same went for our way to do business, which ultimately led to the collapse of all of our banks. A bad way of putting it would be saying that we are arrogant bastards. On my way to “the Camel” I met a girl from Australia, she had been here maybe a week, and she kindly pointed out to us, that we claim to have a lot of things that are “The best in the world”.

The most famous Icelandic festival is without a doubt Iceland airwaves, which is held in downtown Reykjavik on many venues. Icelandair sells packages on its website where they quote David Fricke of the Rolling Stone who claims it is “the hippest long weekend on the annual music festival calendar”. Thank you David, you proved my point, the coolest festival is held in Iceland.  It focuses on Icelandic bands, but it always features semi famous bands like Vampire weekend, Sparta, Flaming lips etc. A full access to the festival costs around $65 which is a lot and since it is held on venues, you will probably spend at least another $65 on alcoholic beverages. Bear in mind that a pint of beer costs $7 and a 2x gin and tonic costs $10.

The Camel featured only Icelandic bands. And most of them will play on Iceland airwaves. There was no admission and only one stage which was in a barn that could fit 400 people. The venue was decorated with candles on the wall, trees hanging from the ceiling and Christmas lights above the stage, so at first I thought I was entering a techno club for Elves. There, I met Ozzy Osbourne and a sheep called Angus that was running around all over the place!

In short, the atmosphere was electric. When Angus, Ozzy and myself come together what can go wrong? Everyone agreed that this was one of the best and weirdest music festivals they had been to. After the concert, I and the rest of the elves went to the woods where we sat by a campfire, watched the morning sun and enjoyed one of the most memorable weekends of the summer.

So what does this have to do with branding? Well, “Camel” is a 2 year old nonprofit festival that is mostly advertised by word of mouth. So this festival has everything to do with branding, it proves that if you are passionate about your idea and if you execute it correctly, your brand will be successful.

I think it is fitting to end this with a quote from my good pal Rihanna “Please don’t stop the music”

50 Lessons is a company that publishes video lessons from high profile business leaders. Among the videos available on the site are interviews with Lord Bilimoria founder and CEO of Cobra beer, Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell, Jimmy Wales founder of Wikipedia and Clayton Christensen, of Innovator’s Dilemma fame.

50 Lessons is also in the book business and in association with Harvard Business Publishing publishes the book series Lessons Learned. Below are four book covers from the Lessons Learned series (discovered via the Book Design Review).

Extending a brand to a book series is an interesting challenge. Each cover needs to provide a potential buyer with

• A unique cover that stands out in a book shop
• A cover that has the warmth and comfort of a strong, familiar brand

In fact, this applies when any series of products is being branded. The 37 Signals suite of web applications all have a similar design, yet each one is distinct.

Stretching the concept even further, buildings by architects such as Richard Rogers (e.g. Lloyds, Pompidou) or Norman Foster (e.g. Gherkin, London City Hall) stand out on their own but adhere to a certain style, reinforcing the architect’s brand.

A brand is a one of the most valuable assets a company has. Some companies however, have a tendancy to devaluate their brands, even when it can easily be avoided.

Dental hygiene is important to me, so a few weeks ago I needed some essentials and went to my local supermarket to buy toothpaste and some mouthwash.

My options were

• Toothpaste and mouthwash from Colgate for $10
• The same plus a toothbrush in a value pack from Dentol for $4

“What a great deal. And a toothbrush as well!” I went for Dentol .

When I got home I couldn’t wait to try the new product as I had never heard of this brand before. We’re not in the business of reviewing products but suffice to say, both the toothpaste and the mouthwash were pretty damn good and I couldn’t tell any difference between my usual high end, expensive products and Dentol. But then I tried the toothbrush.

Now, the average toothbrush usually lasts me for at least 6 weeks. The Dentol brush lasted two days. Furious, I threw away the brush and opened a brand new Colgate Extra Firm brush which I still use.

I didn’t buy the product for the brush so to me it was just a bonus but when it turned out to be a total disappointment what was meant to add value made the brand look cheap.