The Best in Branding

• Rick and Joyce Miner have set themselves apart with duckin.com. From the webbed feet that form the “www” on their site to the “quack talk” features to the duck-bill yellow color, the site gives new meaning to distinct. The Miners reinforce their brand with yellow duckbilled caps, yellow rubber ducks emblazoned with their URL, and very duck-yellow VWs. The result: 90 percent of their business comes from the Web.

• Diane Davies^{GRI, CRS,} of Panhandle Kaniksu Real Estate, uses the beauty and abundant wildlife of her Sandpoint, Idaho, area as a big part of her branding. A significant part of Davies’ business is second homes, so selling the area is a big part of her focus. Along with her photo in a casual turtleneck and her name and slogan, “the Difference in Sandpoint,” in a stylized logotype, Davies’ print materials (even her business cards), yard signs, newspaper ads, and Web site feature elk, eagles, clear mountain stream, and unspoiled mountains. The site reinforces the natural beauty with chatty personal messages from Davies about seeing an eagle on her way to work and the beauty of the mountainside in its brilliant fall colors. Her marketing line—“chasing the dream in Sandpoint”—also reinforces the appeal of the area. Davies said her switch to a branded image doubled her sales volume and income in one year.

• Alice Held of Coldwell Banker Success Realty in Scottsdale, Ariz., uses a whimsical family of human-like saguaro cacti as a branding symbol of her business, which focuses on relocation clientele. Held began using the cacti on her Web site in 1995 to add a distinctly Southwestern feel. (The saguaro is indigenous only to the desert Southwest.) Soon, the clever cacti were everywhere—on her stationery, on the labels of water bottles she passes out to clients, on her listing materials, and lately on the label of a personalize relaxation CD she is sending to past clients. For Held, the saguaro says the desert; to the public, the cute cacti say Alice Held.

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