Articles Page A.5
Select a brand that reflects your organization's ideals
©2009 Mickey Hager
It is true that Brand is more than just a logo or mark. Brand is both a visual representation of your mission statement as well as a presentation of your intentions and your commitment to your customer. I like to say that Brand is the promise you keep with your customers. It’s the equivalent to stating: “This is who we believe we are, and this is what we believe we can do for you.”
An excellent example of Brand use is the Sprint mark that evolved from the “You Can Hear A Pin Drop” advertising campaign from the company’s inception. This mark picks up the refracted, slow motion bounce of the pin drop and transposes that movement into the Brand mark. The mark also implies the visual shorthand for sound, similar to the sound cues you likely have on your computer keyboard (volume up and volume down)
Choosing elements
Choosing elements to visually represent your appeal, you intentions and your philosophy is essential. A helpful start to narrowing your options is by thinking of your target audience. Is your brand going to appeal more for women? Is your brand intended to be intriguing to men? Is your brand intended to reflect a sense of high technology? Answering these basic questions can help steer you in direction that will ultimately refine the visual symbolism you establish.
The examples below describe visual cues and implied values for two proposed Brand marks developed for a non-profit. The non-profit stated their mission as “acting as a bridge, or intermediary resource, to help move families in serious need out of poverty and back to stable ground.”
Setting standards
After selection of your primary brand, further consideration must be made for color, size, scale, treatment of font and proportion. In many instances your primary Brand may be more likely viewed by your customer online. Your Brand standards need to have the flexibility to translate into multiple medias: online, TV, billboard, business cards, etc.
A professional designer can help refine and define the scope of the Brand’s visual guidelines and additionally set the restrictions of how the Brand should not be treated.
For examples of effective Brand Standards, see these resources:
branding.lilly.com/external_branding/standards.cfm
www.nortel.com/corporate/corpid/brand_elements/logo_tag.html
A Brand mark should have a lifespan of 20-30 years. The basic value of the brand seldom changes, however due to changing styles and evolved media, the Brand mark will alter or modify to reflect modern sensibilities.
Source: www.neatorama.com/2009/01/22/stories-behind-10-famous-food-logos/
Other resources:
www.identityworks.com
www.stealingshare.com/content/1185372777609.htm
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What's the Big Idea?
©2009 Mickey Hager
What is the difference between promoting a product or service and elevating a Brand? In easy terms, a Brand is solely interested in itself and a product or service promotion is directed to the person who buys it or uses it. Let me clarify. The Brand and Brand promotion deals with the aspects of the Brand and the Brand’s well being. For this reason, promotion of the Brand, through advertising, social media or PR, is speaking in a language that values the promotion of the Brand. It is not a benefit associated promotion, in that the reasons to believe in the brand are not anchored in psychological trade offs. This means that the consumer has affinity for the Brand based on values associated with the Brand, not based on benefits that the Brand brings to the consumer.
Okay, that’s a lot to think about, but basically I am intending to clarify the difference between promotion in the traditional sense of promotion—as in 50% off, or buying this product will make you thinner—versus the elevation of the Brand itself through the Brand’s implied values—as in Built Ford Tough. I prefer to think of this as “presence” instead of “promotion.”
When developing creative, it is important to make a distinction between the two. If your advertising is intended to generate a response, then the creative you use must speak the language of your consumer segment. You are selling in a benefit-oriented system that guides the consumer through reasonable arguments that ultimately lead to a “yes.” The yes answer is devised by reiterating benefits—the Brand is less important and the benefits of the purchase are more important. The Brand is secondary to the consumer’s need for a result. By contrast, creative that is Brand focused is 180 degrees from this form of advertising.
Creative that is Brand focused begins with the assumption that the Brand is singularly the only important benefit. The Brand has implied value because of status, previous experience or emotional connection. The benefit of the Brand is inherent in the Brand.
It is this method of Brand promotion that leads to advertising that really isn’t advertising. It is more aligned to the PR world than to the traditional advertising world. This is advertising that is about making noise and making sure that you are seen and heard. It is event driven promotion. When creative professionals are tasked to come up with ideas that drive Brand, often the real intention is to drive Brand elevation.
One example of this may be the Burger King campaign for the Subservient Chicken. Ultimately the purpose of the campaign was to increase discussion about the Brand, not to sell benefits of the Brand or influence use of the Brand. The win of the campaign was its viral implications and therefore its word of mouth appeal—more people were more likely to be thinking Burger King. That is Brand elevation.
This is a dilemma of advertising creatives who are tasked to find new and inventive ways of getting their Brand’s noticed. It’s possible we live in a world in which it is more important to be talked about than to ever have done anything. Ultimately, I still believe that a product or service will be devalued over time if it does not deliver some sense of gratification to the consumer. Nike excels as a Brand because they actually have a very good product. They deliver on their promise.
Ultimately, no matter how creative or inventive a campaign is, good campaigns succeed if backed up by good product delivery.
Online opportunity or invasion of privacy?
©2009 Mickey Hager
In my previous article, I researched the updates to the Quaker Oats trademark. Because I use Yahoo search (along with my Yahoo mail), I return to my mailbox to find that a Quaker Oats ad is now waiting for me.
Is Yahoo spying on my searches and then serving up advertising that they deem appropriate to coincide with my needs? You bet they are, and they are working to make more use of this in the future. The question for me is: Is this acceptable?
Since I work in this industry, I tend to overlook these ploys as reasonable marketing vehicles. In the golden age of television, if you watched a particular show, which was sponsored by a particular advertiser, you were sure to understand if the show was interrupted from time to time so that you could see “a word from the sponsor.” In my view, the Yahoo feed of ads that relate to my search is not a lot different.
I have a relationship with Yahoo. I use their mail service as my personal account and I use it for free. There is a trade off for the free service. The trade off is having ads served to me. Yahoo knows who I am, where I live, and they track my searches through cookies. In some way, they are helping me to connect to advertisers with whom I am already associated. In others, they are attempting to connect me to new advertisers. So be it. If I don’t want to view ads, I can pay for the service that excludes them.
Ultimately, this business will continue to grow and evolve as savvy marketers understand how to make tools like Yahoo search work best to their advantage. In the days of cataloging, we knew that if an individual had a propensity to purchase from one catalog, they were also likely to purchase from another. The catalog list was gold. The same is happening with online purchases and online marketing. If I have a propensity to click on an ad served to me from Yahoo, I am allowing Yahoo to use that information to tell other advertisers about me and my propensities. That’s how it works.
Note this quote from the Yahoo Advertisers website: "Dodge leveraged Yahoo!'s behavioral targeting capabilities to deliver different ad units, ensuring they were hitting the right people with the right message. According to Dodge, a Homepage buy on Yahoo! is worth the equivalent of four 30-second spots during a hit prime-time show. Now that's must-see programming."
For more information about how Yahoo is marketing this service, see this link:
http://advertising.yahoo.com/advertisers