I Need Your Help In Rebranding Leechon for Digital Marketing Services
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Background For Context
In the past I’ve had a lot of people ask me a question along the lines of, “Why call your company ‘Leechon’? Won’t people associate negative emotions to it?”
When I was in high school I had this idea of starting a subscription online service like Napster. However, instead of downloading music, you’d be able to download movies and other like entertainment. The idea was that it would be an online system where I as the service provider enabled people to download full movies for a nominal token fee which they could watch to their enjoyment and fulfillment and the file itself would disable or self-destruct within a given time.
The service would be called “Leechon.”
On the Internet, a “leech” is someone who benefits, usually deliberately, from other people’s information or effort but doesn’t offer anything in return, or they make only token offerings in an attempt to avoid being called a leech.
- Wikipedia
The idea behind the name “Leechon” is that it’s a command. Meaning, go ahead and benefit without the concern of whether or not you’re sharing as well. There’s plenty of bandwidth for me to share, you don’t have to worry about having to share yours.
I went ahead got the company registered, but I soon found out that my idea was well ahead of its time and the technology available wasn’t going to be able to make it happen. Its only recently that companies have been able to offer such entertainment on demand via multiple channels of distribution through services such as iTunes, amazon.com, Netflicks, Blockbuster, etc.
The concept however still remained in my mind.
Most people are consumers. I am someone who wants to benefit people by understanding what they want or need and be able to say to them, “Leechon! There’s plenty more where that came from!” (marketing simplified). Similarly I want to enable other like-minded people to stand up and say the same to their people and deliver.
From the perspective of being a marketing services company, I’m working with companies and organizations that have a lot of offer society on a local, national and even global level. They want help in getting their target market to leechon to what they have to offer and that is where my company comes in!
Evolution of Leechon
Back when I registered the company in and realized that I wouldn’t be able to achieve what I wanted to achieve at the time, the corporate entity sat around for a little bit.
I started doing other creative projects ranging from online marketing to graphic design and video production. When I started making money from it, that’s when I decided to dust off the old corporate entity and start doing my work professionally.
Initially since most of my commissioned marketing worked was in the form of video, I naturally opted to name the company “Leechon Films.” However as time progressed and more and more of my work was focused less on video and more on digital marketing in general. I realized that I’d need to adjust the way I’m presenting Leechon.
Re-branding Thought Process
I needed to understand where I am and where I want to go and define my branding as such. The question for me was, which one of the below represented Leechon most accurately?
- “Independent” production studio - ie: NewsCorp -
Self financing, producing and distributing my own content through multiple established channels of delivery. Past projects that could possibly fall under this category are: The Strangers, Darkness2Light, Browntourage, Free Parking (fail), Love Noted (never produced), Tufaan (incomplete), MessageMastery.com
- “Dependent” Production Studio - ie: Warner Bros. -
Either producing and distributing your own content and brands with the help of financiers such as Relativity Media or Summit Entertainment — or — Producing distributing content/media commissioned by other entities such as Walden Media. I haven’t done any projects that fall under the first part. However, past projects that could possible fall under the second part are: The Opener (Faraz Khan), Abdullah Puppet (Minbar Media), Back2School Giveaway (ICNA NY).
- Private Equity Fund – ie: Relativity Media or The Carlyle Group -
Financing projects via private equity with your own risk and business analysis systems in place. I wish I had this.
- Advertising Agency - ie: WPP or MediaCom -
Producing video and print media for advertising purposes — and/or — Having digital ad services in place that can be digitally monitored and accurately measure reach and impact. When it comes to adsoftware and systems, I don’t have any of my own propitiatory stuff. However, I have leveraged Google Ad words and Social ads for clients on several occasions. Regarding production design material in the form of print, digital and video for the purposes of advertising – projects that can fall under that category are: AlMaghrib Trailers and other graphic work I’ve done for them, DawahCorps and AlMishkat. - Public Relations Firm - ie: Edelman Digital or Fleishman & Hillard -
Levering contacts in traditional and/or social media to bring forth positive publicity and third party trust for a project over an extended period of time to in the process of building and establishing a brand. I personally haven’t done much in terms of leveraging traditional media. However client projects that I’ve helped in leveraging social media are: AlMaghrib Institute with the use of GemReel.com and IlmCast.com coupled with activism and social networking. iAmAmmar.com and Bayyinah with the initial launch of the Divine Speech seminar.
Having gone through the above I realized that the work I do would be better categorized under “digital marketing” as opposed to “films.”
