Everyone running a blog or business on the Internet is doing the same thing. Trying to build their brand. With Facebook and Twitter, you can get instant brand recognition, compliments, complaints or general mumblings. It’s never been easier to see how your brand fares or if it’s even known at all. Google Alerts allows you to measure exactly where and when your brand is mentioned. I just experienced the coolest brand on the net and need to tell you about this.
The American Eagle Brand
I will preface this by saying, I do not shop at American Eagle except for the holidays for gifts. Not really my type of digs. Yesterday was the first time I ever purchased anything from AE online. I quickly became a fan of their marketing and IT people.
You know by now those of us in the online business arena are always checking out other websites when we visit; even if it’s outside of business hours for us. I check out eBay, Overstock, all of them while I am shopping. It’s easy to say, oh that’s cool; but what I saw at AE, I was awed.
Many of you may have already shopped at AE online and will know what I am talking about here. Here’s the story. I’ll make it brief. Needed a Christmas gift yesterday…some crazy looking furry boots. Went to AE online, saw a great pair, purchased them. Entered all the info they requested; delivery address, credit card info, etc. Then I hit submit.
Typically while a website is processing your payment information what you will see in the meantime is a little round circle. This circle will move round and round until your payment is approved and off you go. Well, not so with American Eagle. AE has built their brand around the eagle and when you see that lone eagle on clothes in the corner of a garment, you know it’s American Eagle. They take that brand building a step further in their checkout process.
After hitting submit, while your transaction is processing, you see a stellar eagle moving while your payment is processing. I was seriously in awe. I thought it was the coolest thing I had seen as far as building a brand. That is brand building from top to bottom…leaving no stone unturned. Check it out below.
The moral of this story is brand building takes a lot of work and thought. You need to incorporate your brand into everything you publish or put out there for the world to see.
Thoughts on this my friends? What cool brand have you seen?
