Posted by Todd Major on Wed, Jul 21, 2010 @ 11:25 AM
Distility Branding receives angel-led funding
1day1brand system delivers an innovative and collaborative process for building brands
TORONTO, July 21 /CNW/ - MaRS, a Toronto-based not-for-profit innovation centre, is pleased to announce that one of its clients, Distility Branding, has closed a round of angel funding totalling $350,000. Proceeds of the investment will provide operations support and allow Distility to further its marketing and sales efforts.
The Distility team is comprised of self-titled "brand technologists" with a passion for inventing new workflows that make branding quick, collaborative and trouble-free-a passion that led to the development of Distility 1day1brand, a breakthrough business method and collaborative software system that makes it possible for teams to develop a brand promise, position and personality in just one day.
"The recent funding will allow us to extend our workflows to make even more branding activities quick, collaborative and trouble-free," says Axle Davids, CEO of Distility. "Furthermore, it provides the capital for us to aggressively expand our sales networks and pursue businesses and marketing partners who find traditional branding too slow, complicated and expensive. Lance Laking and the MaRS advisory team have been committed throughout the process."
Distility has been a client of MaRS since 2009 and recently moved its offices to the MaRS Incubator. Through the guidance of the MaRS Advisory Team and lead advisor Lance Laking, Distility is now poised to shake up the traditional branding industry.
"I always felt that marketing and branding service firms had an aura of 'black magic' about them, making the process more complex, time consuming and expensive," says Lance Laking. "Distility is looking to disrupt this perception by making branding more tangible and affordable for small to medium-sized businesses. Distility's technology makes the branding process engaging and scalable." MaRS worked closely with Axle Davids and the private investor to ensure Distility was investment-ready.
About Distility Branding
Distility Branding is a Toronto-based branding technology company that creates new workflows that improve brand marketing speed, quality and buy-in. Distility's innovative approach has been tapped by organizations including AT&T Mobility, Applied Biosystems and AutoShare Car Sharing Network. For more information on Distility Branding, visit www.distility.com.
About MaRS
MaRS Discovery District (www.marsdd.com) is a large scale, mission driven innovation centre located in Toronto and networked across Ontario, focused on building Canada's next generation of technology companies. MaRS works closely with entrepreneurs to grow and scale their ventures into global market leaders in life sciences and health care, information, communications and entertainment technologies, clean tech, advanced materials and engineering, as well as innovative social purpose businesses.
For further information: about Distility Branding, please contact: Andrew F. Stewart, T. 416-413-7777, ext. 3, E. andrew@distility.com; For more information about MaRS, please contact: Linda Quattrin, MaRS, T. 416-673-8104, E. lquattrin@marsdd.com
http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/July2010/21/c5764.html
Posted by Andrew Stewart on Wed, Feb 24, 2010 @ 12:37 PM
Sprouter Talks…to Distility about the new branding
By: Erin Bury, Community Manager at Sprouter. Tues Feb 23rd, 2010
If you’re an entrepreneur at some point you had to sit around with a whiteboard trying to think of a name for your company. You probably sent ideas to your peers and family, and had graphic designer friends come up with concepts for logos and colour schemes. This sort of do-it-yourself branding is popular (and at most times very necessary) among startups since they don’t have the resources to outsource to a large agency. A new company is taking that DIY approach to branding and making it their business. Distility Branding helps entrepreneurs and small businesses build their brand identity and strategy through their 1day1brand workshops, and has also worked with big-name clients like AT&T. Distility Founder/CEO Axle Davids believes in the power of new branding technology, and talks to us about his company and his top 3 branding tips for startups.
Sprouter: Tell us about how you got the idea for Distility and how you started it.
Axle Davids: Our work in the field made me realize that big agency-style branding was suited to times when business moved slowly, budgets were big, and television was an exciting new medium. Equally, do-it-yourself branding was an unchartered grand adventure, like going for a drive in the country with no map and a quarter tank of gas.
Thus began our quest to invent a branding technology that could change the rules of the game with a workflow that would be fast, agile, and keep pace with today’s exhilarating speed of business.
To develop this breakthrough technology, we used funds we had saved in our war-chest by having served great clients like AutoShare, AT&T Mobility and Applied Biosystems. Distility also benefited hugely from the expertise and support of family and friends. Entering the MaRS Incubator in September has given us another tremendous boost.
S: What were your biggest challenges starting Distility?
AD: Being strategic with limited time. Not just in terms of using our time well, but also maintaining balance so we can be a team that consistently delivers great results.
S: What are the top 3 tips you’d give to early-stage entrepreneurs?
AD: What do you think is worth more? The BlackBerry brand? Or BlackBerry related patents? The Coca-Cola brand? Or Coke’s secret formula? Ask a good IP Lawyer and they’ll tell you that for most successful innovators, their brands are their most valuable intellectual property. So with that in mind…
- Develop a brand strategy. Know your brand promise, positioning and personality before you do any design or brand marketing.
- Avoid over-naming. Build value in one corporate brand name. Instead of giving every product and service a unique brand name, just give it a descriptive name. For example our corporate name is “Distility” our products are called “Distility 1day1brand” and “Distility Namer”. This way, your audience is focused on just one brand name which is much stickier than asking them to remember many. It works for many of the Fortune 500, so you should be able to make it work for Sprouter community members.
- My designer friends will hate me for this one: avoid logos. People don’t realize that a wordmark is different than a logo. A wordmark is the actual word, made up of letters and sometimes designs that are integrated into or around the letters. Think Coca-Cola or Bell’s recent wordmark. A logo is a separate stand alone symbol that accompanies a wordmark. Think Pepsi’s hopeless ying-yang beachball revamps. Think of the AT&T Death Star-like symbol. The majority of the Fortune 100 use wordmarks because they are more efficient and easier to protect as trademarks.
S: What do you think can be a game-changer for an early-stage startup?
AD: Conviction.
S: What’s coming up at Distility?
AD: Right now we’re beta testing our new Distility 1day1brand technology here at MaRS, with MaRS clients. We’re calling the beta 10brands10days. After that we’ll be launching the new Distility 1day1brand in May. We’re looking forward to a great spring, summer and beyond.
You can reach Axle on Sprouter here.
Posted by Andrew Stewart on Fri, Dec 04, 2009 @ 09:44 AM
Free Billboard Ad To Build a Brand
BY FC Expert Blogger Dana Severson Fri Oct 23, 2009 at 11:44 PM
I must confess, I really have a soft spot for anyone with a larger-than-average size forehead — myself included. So, when I received an email from a fellow bold forehead compadre, I was all ears. (Bold forehead. All ears. Get it?). Anywho, Mr. fellow big brain introduced me to a new, Toronto-based start-up branding agency, Distility, who refer to themselves as brand technologists. They’ve managed to incorporate their knowledge of branding and technology, to build a one day branding system that offers quick execution and minimal expense. Sounds cool, right?
So what’s the problem? Why would he send out electronic smoke signals (that’s how I know if someone’s in trouble) if things were going so well? Well, as it turns out, they do need a little heroic intervention. Their challenge: As a start-up, they find themselves in a very common pickle. Great product, but without the proper amount of exposure, no one will know that it exists. Can you imagine the horror?
Call it serendipity -- or maybe just a hero’s intuition — but I just happened to be thinking about a marketing idea that would be perfect for their situation.
Distility, here’s what you do:
First things first. Secure a digital billboard for a predetermined amount of time. For simplicity sake, let’s say three months. Keep in mind, you’ll want to secure a location with a significant amount of drive-by traffic, but, don’t break the bank. Next, develop a program that will be available on your website, allowing visitors to choose from a handful of pre-designed billboard backgrounds. Additionally, this program should allow visitors to upload their logo, product images, etc. and perform some simple layout functions. Now, recreate that same program into a free iPhone app that will be available for download. Finally, hit enter, figuratively speaking.
Here’s what you’ve created: For lack of a better title, will call it, Build-A-Brand. Small to mid-sized businesses (your core prospects) will be offered the opportunity to visit your website and/or iPhone app and build a personalized billboard ad that will appear in rotation for a set amount of time, on your dime. A webcam — positioned across the street from the billboard — will capture the participants ad, while it’s live. This live video feed will also be available on your website and iPhone application. Armed with traffic statistics from the billboard company, you’ll know be able to go back to these prospects, provide them with a still shot of their ad-in-action and wow them with your branding knowledge.
You’ve now effectively used technology and brand exposure (as brand technologists are known to do) to create buzz and develop client relationships. Now, just imagine if you were to do this in more than one market? WOW!
Posted by Axle Davids on Thu, Nov 26, 2009 @ 10:10 PM
Using technology to create memorable brands - the Distility story
Posted by Karim Kanji on Sun, November 15, 2009 8:06 PM · Filed under Toronto , Web 2.0, Start-up
One of the major buzz words these days in marketing is branding. And one of the questions that marketing professionals ask their clients is, "What is your brand?". Axle Davids understands this problem, which is why he started Distility Branding.
Previously aXle Branding, Distility was recently launched in soft mode. It launched what it considers to be a breakthrough business method and patent-pending software system that makes it possible for marketers to develop a brand promise, positioning statement and personality in just one day. "Traditional brand development is slow, expensive and unsuitable for the techno-speed of marketing today," says Mr. Davids. "Our approach brings brand development into the 21st century with a solution that is fast, collaborative, and authentic. By employing cutting-edge collaborative decision support technology, we are able to streamline and accelerate the branding process."
The patent-pending Distility 1day1brand System brings together all stakeholders for an intensive, one-day brand development session. Using special software that encourages uncensored brainstorming, Distility coaches lead the team through idea generation, review and refinement, rapidly achieving consensus at each decision point. At the end of the day, the team emerges not only with the distillation of their best ideas, but also with a strong commitment to those ideas.
"Our approach creates a brand that fully embodies the ideas of the people behind it," says Mr. Davids. "This creates instant marketing momentum, because team members can immediately begin to communicate what they have created to the world."
I asked Andrew Stewart, Distility's Public Relations Manager, why Mr. Davids thought Distility was offering a service not yet provided. "Axle realized that conventional branding was too slow, too complicated, and often meaningless." And how are their client's liking the results? "Our clients like our pragmatic approach to branding, doing the simplest thing that works without sacrificing branding best practices. We had been doing branding workshops already, which our clients liked, and we recognized the opportunity to use collaborative technologies to take the branding workshop to a whole new level. Thus was born the idea behind 1 day + 1 team = 1 brand."
Today's changing economy coupled with an increased use in new technologies is giving rise to many new start-ups. As more players enter a hyper competitive economy they will surely be looking to brand themselves in a way that their potential clients will appreciate and which will make them stand above their competition. Mr. Davids is banking on the idea that these new entrepreneurs will see the value in creating a brand that is simple and compelling. And if it's possible to create this in one day, instead of weeks or months, maybe Distility is the brand they will choose.
Read more:
http://www.techvibes.com/blog/using-technology-to-create-memorable-brands-the-distility-story#ixzz0XzcEkmRB