The subjective perception and mindset created by a business, a company, a service, or an individual in order to enforce association or identification to a trait, a quality, or a characteristic that is unique or distinct, is BRANDING.

Nature of the business, delivery of services, marketing platform, mission-vision, as well as essential characteristics such as reliability, relevance, and client relationship are some basic pieces of the branding puzzle. The essence of branding is to position your business, service, or yourself to an advantage that your target audience or market will put them on top of their minds.

Personal Branding

The trend of cocooning , or making the home a business front, has surpassed the fad stage, and has permanently become a way of life. Some effects of the global crisis, such as downsizing, take the home as a fallback hub for enterprise. Imagine pitting opportunities against the rest of the freelancer sector, mere self-advertisement is not enough to gain awareness among your target clients to notice that you exist and are ready to take on jobs.

Personal branding is a more complicated, yet more challenging way of advertising yourself and defining your stance in the midst of a great mob of competitors offering almost identical propositions as yours. Once you have established personal branding for yourself, you already have the edge to withstand the pressures of change in consumer behaviors and economic demands. It takes thorough inward investigation of what you are, what you can do, and how you do what you can do. On a smaller albeit personal level, what it takes to create a personal brand is similar to creating brand for a company. Some books say it is easier to do personal branding as it only takes into consideration one variable—you—to brand. We think otherwise. There is a lot of self examination when one starts personal branding. In our personal experience, it is more difficult to defy one’s own realities than those in the external. Nonetheless, the basic steps to implement branding are more or less the same.

Planning to Brand

As in every major endeavor, planning is an important step and fundamental to succeed. A brand plan is reinforced by strategic methods to effect branding. A handbook, Branding for Export Q&A, published by MATRADE in 2004 reveals that brand strategy consists of: brand vision; brand personality; and brand positioning statement.

The brand vision delves on the aspirations of a company or an individual. It hits the sentimental, emotional and even the psychological needs and wants of its or your clientele right off the bat. Whatever intangibles you wish to harness in your audience—creativity, happiness, inspiration, motivation, contentment, convenience, family bonding, hard work—may constitute your brand vision.

Brand personality translates vision in terms of more comprehensible and relevant values. It taps on the emotions of the market for recall. A positive emotion generated is good brand personality created.

Brand positioning ensures your edge over your competitors. The public’s choice is influenced by qualities that can make their decisions swing over your direction and in your favor. More than public relations skills, it takes true dedication to stand by your brand vision and personality to have an effective brand positioning.

Two Branding Pitfalls of (most) Pinoy Businesses

While we are in the services business, we are also consumers and many times we encounter service people and company staff who fail miserably in the branding test.

To cite, there was a time when a business colleague bought a branded door lock from a known hardware store. The brand of the lock is synonymous to Infallible . It has good features and gives warranty for the merchandise. However, just a few months lapsed and our colleague had to go back to the store to complain that the lock would not budge when he inserted the key. He could not call a local lock repair to avoid forfeiture of the lock’s factory warranty . He went back to the hardware store but was advised to dislodge the lock again from his door and bring it back to the store. This meant that his door would have no lock for several days while the service center repaired the lock. Aside from the irony of its brand name, the procedure of the repair was an inconvenience at the same time defeating the purpose of the lock, which is to provide safety and security.

Another incident: A printing store located in a part of Manila that is known as “Diploma Mill” was commissioned by an organization to work on a handful of collateral. The printer promised a lead time of three days. But after three days, the printer asked for another two days extension. Two weeks had passed and several returns and arguments ensued between the printer and the organization staff and printing of the collateral were not yet completed. The sad thing was, this printer already asked the organization for 50% down payment.

Failing to comply with deadlines is not an isolated case for a number of Filipino service providers. If they ever stick to the deadlines, the work quality is sacrificed.

Another pitfall is the use or misuse of communication technology. How many times do we hear of clients who complain about emailing inquiries to several businesses, only to receive a reply after about a week or so; or ,if they are lucky, will get only one reply from the 10 or more inquiries they send out .

Worse, there are service providers that include their mobile phone numbers in their posted advertisements . However, they do not reply (promptly) to SMS inquiries, let alone, receive calls (EXCUSES: Either it is lunch break or it is almost office closing time).

Basic Literature for Industries who are Hiring Editors

One incorrect notion about an editor is that his or her task is confined to proofreading. Proofreading is spotting typographic and grammatical errors in a manuscript. This is only the tip in an editor’s humongous iceberg task. Proofreading is a skill that can be acquired with the mastery of a language medium; or an AP stylebook. What sets an editor apart from a proofreader or a writer is his or her keen perception of what the manuscript is about: the story it tells; and the ability to pull together the loose ends of the story to effect congruency and continuity ; as well as make the story an easy yet interesting read.

Sadly, the global outsourcing trend perpetuates this limiting notion about what editors are, and what they really do. The larger aspect that an editor develops over time of discipline and performing his or her task is the eye to determine, which story is worth reading, and which deserves to go to the bin.

There are basically 3 ways to an editing process:

1. Scan. The editor goes through the manuscript and reads it. The objective is to get a grasp of what the story is about. Usually, an editor looks for a story that is relevant to the given topic, the publication, or target readers; and engaging, in a sense that a reader of the manuscript will want to read through the end. It is also important for an editor to get the “feel” of the manuscript as this will help him or her “improve” the manuscript.

2. Proofread. Here goes the error spotting with grammar and typograph. In this sense, a good editor acknowledges limitation of eyesight capability. Meaning, reading through manuscripts can be tiring and eye straining. There are times when even a brilliant grammar editor can overlook errors. Some editors allow up to 3^rd reading of the manuscript. An associate editor, an editorial assistant, and the writer get to look at the manuscript and sieve it word for word, line by line, and paragraph by paragraph.

3. Improve. This is the defining factor of an editor. He or she, after getting the point of the story , starts to flesh out the lines, tie loose ends, rearrange paragraphs, replace words used with more appropriate ones, delete unnecessary lines or paragraphs, and puts sense in the story.

Editors Vs. Writers

In the editorial room, it is common notion that editors are the writers’ nemesis. There is a “non-fiction” article published in TIME .com , entitled Writers Vs. Editors: A Battle for the Ages.

There are several points written there that ring true. Writers cringe when their articles get a scrutiny from their editors. Writers feel and think that editors do not care too much for their creativity, and that their editors are selfish, heartless, and lack art. Especially if their manuscript gets the classic chopping—a term we are familiar to using that means a story gets a lot of cutting and deleting . A 1,000 word story, after undergoing a chop, is reduced to a 500-word article or to a story caption short.

Similarly, there are many writers who dislike mutilation of their work. It is not egotistical attitude but a normal emotional surge typical of a progeny of art ( writing is an art, remember?)

It is deemed a disrespect if their story is altered or critiqued. And editors are good at critiquing too—and many of them are quite blunt in doing so.

If an editor is the chop-happy type,. Meaning, he or she simply enjoys cutting or deleting segments of the manuscript, and sometimes re-write the manuscript to the point of actually altering the essence its writer desires to convey. While many writers expect people—their editors included—to respect their work by keeping it intact as much as possible, it is rare for editors to actually advice their writers about an imminent chop session.

Are editors obliged to tell their writers about how they are going to “edit “their manuscript? Not necessarily so. It is because editors are bestowed with the so called Editorial Call. His or her judgment of a story is entirely his or hers, and is, most of the time, final.

The Editor’s Choice

In our careers, we have encountered three types of editors: the chop happy which was described earlier, the content happy, which seems too happily contented with any manuscript, as in ANY manuscript that he or she does not do anything else on it ( a lazy bad sign, really), and the damn good editor which is a self-explanatory term.

What makes the latter type? A good editor respects a story as well as knows how to treat, correct, and improve a story without

Tin cans are versatile packaging option that can give more visual value to a simple gift. There are only a few specialty packaging stores in Metro Manila selling tin cans. One shop called Chocolate Lovers in Quezon City sells tin cans . These come in metallic colors of red, green, and gold. There are also ones with motif prints. Most of the tin cans are imported from China. Check out the Alibaba website for information on tin can suppliers and manufacturers overseas. Choose generic tin cans for your giveaways packaging .Our team has an outsourcing advantage to avail of tin cans (guaranteed NEW and CLEAN) in bulk purchase.

For purchase inquiries, feel free to contact us.We can also provide you label and presentation concepts upon request.

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