Bombshell Branding - Phase I Lesson 1 - Preview by Lauryn Doll

Bombshell Branding

pHASE I

Disclaimer + Copyrights Bombshell Branding ™ is a registered trademark of Wild Topaz Media and Lauryn Doll. Every effort has been made to make the information within Bombshell Branding accurate, insightful, and creatively on-point with the readers whose full intentions are to take responsibility for their brand and brand development. By engaging in Bombshell Branding, or participating in any work with Lauryn Doll and assigned official affiliates, you understand that my work does not replace any rightful duties assigned to psychologists, health professionals, or legal teams. I am not a lawyer, nor a guarantor of your success. I’m simply a path along the way, and hopefully illuminating your steps as you move. My information (and coaching/consulting, where applicable) is in no way to be construed or interpreted as legal or medical counseling. I at all time exercise my best professional efforts, skills, and care in the outcome of your business, however I cannot guarantee the outcome of my efforts or recommendations, either in this course, or in my communications, digital, verbal and otherwise. At the end of the day, business is a risk. It’s something that stretches you spiritually, emotionally, financially and in general. With great risks, come great rewards. If you’re uncertain or uncomfortable with these things, tap into your inner source and trust what you feel. If that means we end things here, that’s perfectly fine. And as always, if you feel the need to get a legal opinion, feel free to consult with a professional legal counselor. Namaste, Peace, Love and Sexiness. Lauryn Doll Copyright 2009 - 2015.Bombshell Branding ™ Wild Topaz Media and Lauryn Doll ™. All Rights Reserved.

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Phase I Before you can build a brand, you have to know what a brand truly is. There are plenty of assumptions and definitions of brand but at the end of the day, Bombshell Branding defines a brand as someone’s gut feeling of you. You are the centrifugal force of your brand, and anything your brand produces and puts out. Whether you’re the owner of Los Angeles’ top pole dance studio, a 6-figure diva with a hair fetish in charge of one of the world’s most exclusive hair extension collections, or simply a celebrity whose hiatus has run its course, everything you put out is reflective of you and the brand you possess. Phase I covers three fundamentals of brand design: understanding what a brand is, defining how you want it to feel, and then discovering the points of vulnerability that make your brand real, so people can form the proper associations and attachments to your brand that lead them to supporting your brand energetically (and financially).

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LESSON I Branding (Like Pimpin’) Ain’t Easy OBJECTIVES: By the end of this lesson, you will: v Define our working definition of a brand. v Recognize brands as a “living, breathing” representations of energy. v Understand why your brand is more than a logo.

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Brands surround us all the time. You can easily recognize brands by their associations. Think about it: You associate Apple with elegant white, cutting-edge digital gadgets iPhones, iPads and iPods. You associate companies like Pepsi, Coke or Sprite with soda. You may associate sports cars and racing with NASCAR or Indy 500. I associate the word sexy – undoubtedly my favorite word in the English language – with:

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People - Jennifer Lopez, Beyoncé, or Kim Kardashian,

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Books – The Joy of Sex, 50 Shades of Grey, Passionista

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Retail Brands - Prada, Agent Provocateur, Victoria’s Secret.

(For the record, I associate the word “douche” with Summer’s Eve, Massengil and George Zimmerman.) Look around the room. From where you’re sitting brands are surrounding your existence. Every item you’ve purchased, from your cell phone to your your shoes and dishwashing liquid, represents a brand you’ve given energy and trust to. Heck, even your toilet and refrigerator were created and sold with brand energy. Great brands are easy to spot, yet tricky to define. If I asked you to name popular brands, you could easily give me names, like: v Starbucks v Nike Copyright 2009 - 2015.Bombshell Branding ™ Wild Topaz Media and Lauryn Doll ™. All Rights Reserved.

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v Prada v Cheesecake Factory v Louboutin (Also known as “Red Bottoms” for their signature red soles) v Godiva v Victoria’s Secret …Yet if I asked you to define what a brand is, you’d probably twist your face in uncertainty, then lightly respond with something like: v “ Uh… a popular product or service.” v “A company logo.” v “A guitar string when you pluck it.” (Not really, but…) … And I’d lean forward, on the edge of my seat, bursting at the seams with excitement, listening intently to your answer. Then, when you’ve finished,

I’d

smile

and

clap

enthusiastically,

telling

you,

“Congratulations, honey! You’re totally wrong!” (Please excuse my dear aunt Sarcasm. *wink*) Don’t feel bad, though. Because as I said, defining what a brand is, isn’t easy. Even Google, the Internet’s most powerful search engine, doesn’t know what a brand is. In fact, when you “Google” the word brand, Google’s immediate definition describes a brand as “a type of product manufactured by a company under a particular name.”

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Proof that, like Autocorrect, Google doesn’t know everything. Take that, Google!

Yeah, uhm… try again. Your brand is neither you nor your company’s glossy logo or visual identity, although this is a part of your branding. Your brand’s neither your product nor service either. So what is a brand? Best described, a brand is a person’s gut feeling about your product, service or organization. It’s their gut feeling about YOU. Brands are intellectual assets with a human energy to them. Your brand, essentially, is your business’ personality. She’s the living, breathing spirit who personifies your (company’s) emotions, values,

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perceptions, hopes and dreams into a specific profile. She’s utterly human, multidimensional, communicative, and highly opinionated. Your brand possesses a personal sense of style (“brand identity”) that consumers either love, hate or feel indifferent towards. Since your brand gives you an overall “identity” within your industry, people emotionally connect with your products and services, humanizing them as a result. In other words, when people “like” your brand, what she’s about and what she stands for, they’ll idealize – and gravitate towards – your products and services because they associate the positive attributes of your brand with what you’re offering. On the other hand, if they don’t, well… we’ll get into that later.

BOLD, BEAUTIFUL… BUT ONLY IF THEY SAY SO Personality is key to great branding; therefore Bombshell Branding shows you how to design a brand that naturally reflects your bold and beautiful personality. Everything from conceptualizing your brand tenets, to taglines and even your brand colors and logo for visual identity – it’s all going to pull from your natural sensual essence. And this is going to be so dope, because by the end of the course, you will be able to develop a style guide for your brand. Style guides provide a professional, controlled look for your brand, making it easy for you to maintain consistent brand design. Consistent brand design Copyright 2009 - 2015.Bombshell Branding ™ Wild Topaz Media and Lauryn Doll ™. All Rights Reserved.

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gives you the cohesive appearance and allows you to fully control your brand identity, even if you outsource aspects like web or graphic design, logo design and copywriting.

GUT FEELINGS & BRAND PERCEPTION Although you’re going to complete this course with sophisticated design tools to craft your sexy, stylish brand from scratch, you should also know the true power and influence of your brand is not determined by what you say it is. It’s determined by what your audience says it is. Designing incredible brands is about knowing how to positively influence your consumers’ gut feelings, because how they each perceive it individually factors into how successful your branding is. Marty Neumeier, author of The Brand Gap, wrote: “Brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or company. It’s a GUT feeling because we’re all emotional, intuitive beings, despite our best efforts to be rational. [BRAND] is a PERSON’S gut feeling, because in the end your brand is [collectively] defined by individuals, not by companies, markets, or the so-called general public. Each person creates his or her own version of it.” You can’t control the collective perceptions of your brand. Everyone is free to perceive your brand however they elect to perceive it. However, you can refine your brand’s identity to influence their brand perceptions, because many of the things people generally think have

already been sculpted to conform to those things they’ve been taught, as opposed to what they truly feel. (Sad, very fuckin’ sad, but true.) Properly cultivated branding communicates and evokes desired qualities, responses, and emotions that differentiate your product or service from others. When enough people communally share the same desired “gut feelings” regarding your brand, specifically ones that are in alignment with what you want them to feel – or better, which is totally possible – that is when you’ve perfected the art of Bombshell Branding.

WHY ARE BRANDS IMPORTANT? During the development phase of her new blog, my client questioned the necessity of branding. Her website wasn’t built around a tangible product or service; it was about a highly niched topic of interest targeted to a certain audience. She only planned on making money through Google ads, and because of that, she didn’t care about the audience she attracted. She didn’t think proper branding would affect the AdSense hits. I assured her that it was. AdSense is all about optimization. If you want to make money with AdSense, you need highly targeted traffic that’s attracted to your content, finds it relevant, and feels equally attracted to the ads your site serves. To attract any and everybody is to attract madness and accomplish nothing. Cultivating a polished brand is important for your business no matter what industry you serve. Brands have been in existence for over 5,000 years – and with today’s economic shifts, they’re more important Copyright 2009 - 2015.Bombshell Branding ™ Wild Topaz Media and Lauryn Doll ™. All Rights Reserved.

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than ever, especially during “tough” times. Prior to the recession, the US was a highly industrialized nation focused on mass production. As the recession started to get underway, consumers, careful of the changing environment, began to hold on to their cash more. Everyone seems to be busier than ever these days, and most seem to hold on to everything they have, except for when it comes to buying things they either really, really want or really, really need. (In fact, this is why luxury brands are thriving. Everyone’s cutting corners, but people are not giving up their luxuries – however that’s another course for another day.) Your Soul Tribe – aka your ideal clients/customers – are savvy. They’re information-rich, time-poor and financially selective when it comes to spending. Before she spends money for your pole dance classes, your hair extensions, or your hot new sex book, your Perfect Client is going to scrutinize your brand to see whether or not you have what she needs. She’s going to: •

Google you and your brand

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Look all in your website

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Click all over your Instagram pictures, comments, and follows.

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Read your Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter posts

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Check your Yelp reviews

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Opt in to your website for a freebie

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Purchase a very inexpensive item from you

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Read your content

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Ask people about you

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… and possibly much, much more, before she decides to do business with you. Don’t take it personal. She’s going to do the same for any other business she’s considering spending money with. If she can’t tell what makes you different from other businesses, then you won’t stand out. That means she’ll go to another business, or worse, try to call and see if you match “competitor’s prices” or discount her for the honor of doing business with you. Now, price matching and discounts aren’t necessarily bad, but they should not be vehicles through which you’re only attracting clients, particularly the ones you want long-term. Distinction is a key element of influential branding that sets you apart from industry peers. If you’re currently struggling with comparisons to other businesses or engaging in price wars with other companies, then branding – or rather, rebranding – helps you reset customer perceptions so you’re no longer swimming in the “sea of sameness” with other businesses who are struggling to stay afloat.

NO BRANDING: BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH Entrepreneurs who fail to deliberately construct sophisticated brand identities tend to have lukewarm brands. Lukewarm brands are bad for your health and success as a business owner. If people can’t tell that you’re refreshingly unique from other businesses – and in a great way, at that –getting valuable clients will feel impossible. Even worse, keeping a steady flow that more than covers your expenses and helps you enjoy life will continue to be impossible.

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To illustrate the effects of lukewarm branding, I’m going to share a story with you… When I first started out, I was broke and desperate to work for the illustrious “Anyone.” I didn’t care who you were, what your business was about, or what I should charge you for the work I was doing. I worked with candy buffet businesses, journalists, affiliate marketers, construction owners… You name it, and I probably have a story for it. Since I had no business focus or specialty, my experiences in varied industries gave the perception that I was unpolished and lacked skills. Because I was so damn hungry for work, I did any and everything. I was a fucking hooker. As a result, clients didn’t respect my talent, ran over my boundaries, and negotiated strongly against my pricing. And I was bent over and taking it without any lube – just to “get paid.” ‘Cuz mama, I’m a hustler, and that’s what hustlers do! (Or nah.) One particular client drove me crazy. This client had anywhere between 8 to 10 businesses at any given second, and websites for all of them. I ended up working for them at a price that was 60 percent lower than the minimum entry-level salary for my industry. I was still expected to deliver 100 percent – but at a 30 percent payscale. I took the job because I thought this was how I would get ahead: through blood, sweat, tears and hustle. Oooh, was I wrong. Imagine working as the entire marketing agency for 8 to 10 businesses, all with their own needs. You’re practically working for 8 to 10 clients,

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and only getting paid for one. Great value and bargain for them… eternal pillage for me. Working below decent wages left me with steep financial, spiritual and emotional deficits. I forced myself to work longer, harder hours in an attempt to make up for the difference in pay. I failed to realize working like this would only have me caught up in a never-ending, exhausting cycle. During cyclical periods of burnout, I would find myself staring in the mirror, very slowly taking me apart, gnoshing on massive amounts of brownies while singing along to sad R&B songs, Drake albums, and talking to my cats. (Can we light a candle for this memory?) You get the point though, right? I couldn’t figure out:

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why I couldn’t get ahead

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why my bank account wasn’t as bootylicious as I was

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why I just wasn’t good enough to get the props I deserved

And I burned out. I took a break. I spent a few weeks secluded in an extended stay hotel room on the outskirts of Atlanta (hey Memorial Drive), and contemplated the challenge I was facing. During this “life sabbatical,” I discovered 3 profound truths: 1. Telling people that I went to Full Sail University not once, but twice, for two Master’s degrees would not trigger them to pay Copyright 2009 - 2015.Bombshell Branding ™ Wild Topaz Media and Lauryn Doll ™. All Rights Reserved.

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me what I was worth. It was certainly nice to know I had that experience, but that experience in and of itself didn’t translate to them seeing the value in my work. Why? Because my branding sucked. In fact, I didn’t have any branding – because my brand was “HIRE ME! I WORK FOR ANYBODY!” (And that’s one of the first things that turns you into a Biz Hooker. You’ll do anyone and anything strange for a piece of change.) 2. Since I EPICALLY FAILED to brand myself properly, it was MY FAULT that I was overworked, underpaid and burned out all the time. It was also my fault that I wasn’t able to secure the kinds of projects I wanted at the prices I wanted. Therefore, I was the only one to blame when I had to wait 2 or 3 extra months to save up for a new pair of sneakers instead of wearing the same ones I had worn every day for over a year. 3. There was only one way to change my circumstances: Take responsibility, and own my brand. I can’t hold other people responsible for the fact that I didn’t:

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Develop the Lauryn Doll brand further

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Fiercely align myself with authentic branding that reflected me

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Design offerings that honored me – and my Soul Tribe

Since I didn’t know the value of branding myself, I couldn’t fully articulate my value to clients. As such, my pay was negotiated upon the basis of how much I could get done – and clearly, for the lowest price possible.

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Instead of being able to design products and services that allowed me to do the best possible work at the best possible price for everyone involved, I ended up scrambling to do as much work as possible, desperate to gain respect from my clients. Once I learned how to develop my brand, things shifted dramatically. I developed products and services that appealed to the right clients – my Soul Tribe – and improved my confidence, because they saw the value, they believed in their investment, and they loved their results. I took things a step further. I found coaches and mentors who accepted me as I was and helped me embrace my brand. Some of these coaches will be mentioned later on, because I truly believe in their value and all they’ve done for me – and others. Over the span of several months, thanks to improved branding, I experienced accelerated business growth. Ideal clients and projects began to manifest themselves regularly. Before long, I no longer needed to work with difficult clients who insisted that I deliver Snow Queen results on paid on Boone’s Farm budgeting. (FYI: Snow Queen is a premium brand of vodka. It’s solely marketed through word of mouth. Boone’s Farm is available at every corner store. And while it’s my family surname, it’s a cheap alcoholic beverage that leaves me curiously ill every time I drink it.) Now, I’ve told you about my experience to give you insight on the profound effects of building a superior brand for myself. Although the journey continues, my point is:

Superior branding gives you the ability to acquire the money, power and respect you need to experience the business of your dreams. When you can experience the business of your dreams, you can live the life of your dreams, which may or may not include:

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Having time for the man of your dreams

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Having the family of your dreams

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Nurturing, feeding, and supporting your family and friends

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Having more time for yourself

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Having more time to travel

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Having more time to do things you’ve only fantasized about

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Never worrying about paying your cell phone again

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Moving away from a less than ideal neighborhood to a new one

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Being financially independent

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Believing in yourself more than you’ve believed possible

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Amazing multiple orgasms (because yes we deserve them)

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More time to commune with God/Goddess/Spirit/Universe

So, if anything else, remember this: Building an extraordinary business requires you to wrap yourself (and your biz energy) in the warm embrace of an incredible brand that authentically reflects your natural essence.

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LESSON 1 ASSIGNMENT: List any 3 of your favorite brands. It doesn’t matter what industry they’re in, or whether the brand’s a person, product, or service. State your gut reactions to them. Examine them. What is it that you love about them? BRAND #1: ________________________________________ Gut Reactions: ______________________________________ Why I Love Them: ___________________________________ _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________ BRAND #2: ________________________________________ Gut Reactions: ______________________________________ Why I Love Them: ___________________________________ _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________ BRAND #3: ________________________________________ Gut Reactions: ______________________________________ Why I Love Them: ___________________________________ _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________ To know these things allows you to see your personal expectations and preferences as a consumer, and gives you insight as to what you’d like to add to your own brand. Copyright 2009 - 2015.Bombshell Branding ™ Wild Topaz Media and Lauryn Doll ™. All Rights Reserved.

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DID YOU ENJOY THIS LESSON? This

lesson

from

Bombshell

Branding, and is available for home study on LaurynDoll.com. Bombshell Branding

provides

thoroughly

designed and researched modules on brand

infrastructure,

design,

and

management. Bombshell Branding is designed with the intention to assist bold, beautiful, and confident women create seriously sexy and sensuous brand identities that illuminate them as flawless solutions for their Soul Tribe: the group of people theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re perfectly meant to serve. Get Bombshell Branding Here Learn More About Lauryn Doll Here Questions + Comments? Contact Lauryn Email Lauryn: Lauryn@LaurynDoll.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/lauryndoll Twitter: www.twitter.com/lauryndollbaby