Apr. 16th: Ken Wisnefski Discusses the Importance of Branding with ABC News

Kenneth Wisnefski on ABCKen Wisnefski, Founder & CEO of WebiMax, recently discussed the importance of branding with ABC News.

In the interview, Ken explains that the rising cost of Masters Tournament ticket prices is “100 percent related to Tiger (Woods)” and details the impact of Tiger’s name value as a brand for the Masters.

Read More on ABCNews.com

Oct. 18th: WebiMax Announces the Launch of BrandManagement.com on Yahoo! Finance

Kenneth Wisnefski, Founder and CEO of WebiMax, the fastest growing private company in New Jersey on the Inc. 500, announced the unveiling of a new website aimed at providing valuable information on brand management and reputation management for medium and large-sized businesses.  Read more about the debut of BrandManagement.com on Yahoo! Finance.

Sept. 25th: NFL Referee Debacle Illustrates the Importance of Building a Powerful Business Brand

The Washington Post

In Ken Wisnefski’s latest article in The Washington Post’s “On Small Business” section, he discusses the NFL referee lockout and its possible effects on the NFL’s brand and fan loyalty.  Read more at WashingtonPost.com.

Does the NFL Really Need to Protect its Brand?

Recently, the National Football League has been at the center of a controversy surrounding its replacement referees and the ongoing labor dispute with its regular officials.  In my last article on PR News Online, I discussed the importance of utilizing public relations to address the issues at hand and keep the situation from becoming a significant problem for the NFL brand.  Additionally, I contributed a piece to The Washington Post in which I discussed the strengths of the league’s fan base and how their loyalty has helped the organization remain successful.

Thus far, the continued support of the NFL fans is effectively minimizing the impact of the referee labor conflict.  Currently, the league is witnessing an example of brand loyalty playing a very dominant role, which does not seem likely to subside.  The fan base has not substantially diminished and no real backlash or protests have emerged from that audience, despite the media coverage the NFL has received due to the referees and blown calls.

In fact, the situation presents the NFL with an opportunity that they are failing to capitalize on.  That is, the league and Roger Goodell can further strengthen their commitment to their fans by coming to a resolution with the regular referees, thus demonstrating to their patrons the importance of delivering a quality product.  Although many news reports and industry insiders have indicated that a new deal to return the regular referees to the field is currently in the works; the NFL should address the negotiations publicly in order to maximize transparency and gain greater trust with fans.

The NFL brand is secure, but could always benefit from a more direct and proactive approach to such issues.  The league has learned a valuable lesson from this incident and due to the loyalty of the fans, has not suffered.  However, the brand shouldn’t hesitate to utilize platforms such as public relations and social media in order to better engage their audience and maintain their loyalty going forward.

What’s In A Name?

This weekend, I read a blog post by our own Todd Bailey in which he discusses Scott Van Nuzer’s recent photo opportunity with President Obama at his pizzeria in Florida.  After reading Todd’s blog (and subsequently, watching the the video which accompanied the post), I decided to research the topic a bit further and surprisingly found that according to Google’s suggested search… Scott Van Nuzer doesn’t exist.

Where in the World is Scott Van Nuzer?
Google Instant, a feature that was designed to supplement suggested search, (A.K.A. autocomplete) has been around for a while now and has actually proven to be fairly accurate and effective at predicting queries as users enter them.  However, the term “Scott Van Nuzer” offered no Google Instant results.  Instead, the search engine recommended the term “Scott Van Duzer”, which yielded a plethora of relevant results from legitimate, authoritative sites including news outlets and popular blogs.

Digging a bit deeper, I found that “Scott Van Nuzer” also provides results from sources such as ABC News, CBS News, Yahoo! and New York Magazine.  The pages and articles found within the SERPs for both terms are clearly referring to the same individual, but obviously, only one name can be correct.

Van Nuzer vs. Van Duzer
As far as Google is concerned; the pizzeria owner question is in fact Scott Van Duzer, although many other sites refer to him differently.  The nomenclatural nightmare seems to stem from his restaurant’s Yelp profile.  In various comments that appeared on the page following the “bearhug” incident, several commenters referred to the Big Apple Pizza owner as “Van Nuzer” and many news and media outlets followed suit.  Google’s algorithm was able to sort out the confusion in the SERPs, but other small businesses may not be so lucky.

The Butterfly Effect
A simple grammatical error could have significantly affected Scott Van Duzer and his business’ online visibility following a publicity stunt which should have actually helped his brand gain awareness on the Web.  Such issues validate the usefulness of digital brand management and should serve as a reminder to business owners that it is absolutely critical to carefully monitor their company’s presence online.

Virtually every company can benefit from incorporating brand management techniques into their marketing initiatives; online and offline.  If Scott Van Duzer’s story has taught business owners anything, it should be the importance of both their name and brand and how these terms are being presented throughout the Web.