Branding Strategy Insider

The Brand Identity Checklist

What will our checklist reveal about your brand identity standards and systems? Simply answer yes or no to the following:

•    As St. James Associates says, some brands are “all symbols but no soul.”  First and foremost, does your brand have a soul?               
•    Is your brand’s name proprietary?  Does it differentiate the brand instead of just describing its products and services?               
•    Is your brand’s name suggestive of a key differentiating benefit, but not too narrow so as to decrease the brand’s ability to claim new benefits in the future?               
•    Do consumers like your brand’s name? Is it memorable?               
•    Do you avoid generic sub-brand names?               
•    Do you have comprehensive brand identity standards and systems that address all uses of your brand’s identity elements?               
•    Are those standards and systems actively in use?               
•    Are they available in manuals, on CDs, and through your Intranet?               
•    Are all business units and sub-brands subject to those standards, with none outside the jurisdiction of the standards?               
•    At a minimum, does the system include standards for the visual identifier, color, typography, backgrounds, contrast, staging area, relative size, positioning, key applications, and unacceptable uses?   

The Language of Branding: 'Brand Identity'

Brand Identity is a combination of visual, auditory, and other sensory components that create recognition, represent the brand promise, provide differentiation, create communications synergy, and are proprietary. Some marketers define brand identity more broadly to include most everything in a brand’s design: essence, promise, personality, and positioning. The more specific definition used in our blog reflects the most common usage of the term, especially by firms focused on the creation of brand identity standards and systems.

Names and nomenclature, logotypes, symbols and other graphic devices, distinctive shapes and colors, brand voice and visual style, sounds, jingles and other mnemonic devices, typography, theme lines or slogans, and characters that are uniquely associated with a brand are all components of a brand’s identity. Textures, scents, flavors, and other sensory elements also can be components of a brand’s identity.

Sponsored By: Brand Aid

Leveraging Corporate Brand Identity

When most people think about a brand’s identity, they usually think about the name, the logo, and maybe the tag line.  But the identity consists of so much more than that: it includes typestyles, colors, symbols, attitude and personality, brand voice and visual style, sounds and other mnemonic devices, characters and other spokespeople, product design, package design, and the list could go on and on.  The most powerful brands have a consistent brand voice and visual style from product design and packaging to retail environment and external communication.

Companies such as Procter & Gamble practiced the traditional model of brand management.  These companies managed a large portfolio of stand-alone brands  (Bold, Bounty, Ivory, NyQuil, Pepto-Bismol, Scope, Folgers, Pringles, etc.) and marketed them separately.  While this was highly effective for those companies, it requires substantial marketing resources. 

Today, more and more manufacturing companies are discovering the power of using their corporate brand names (General Electric, IBM, 3M, Ford, etc.) to market their products.  These companies have discovered that it is highly efficient to leverage the corporate brand name.  The name offers quality assurance and familiarity at a minimum and a coherent umbrella promise (example: 3M – innovative solutions) as well, if executed properly.

Sponsored By: Brand Aid

 

Brand Logo Basics

It is at least as important for a logo to be recognizable as it is for it to be readable.  Often, people are only able to get a quick glance at the logo, and then only at a distance.  In those instances, recognition, not readability, is all that counts.  That is why it is so important to integrate recognizable icons, shapes, type fonts and colors into a logo’s design.

Some logos were created during the era of big department stores and were designed as signatures to fit on the side of buildings.  So, these logos are more square in orientation than they are horizontal.  Many of these now seem outdated (if they haven’t been updated).  Hallmark’s logo belongs to this class. Others were designed as corporate logos to reinforce leadership and stability (AT&T, IBM).  Many of these now seem cold and sterile.  Some logos are more fun – communicating more of a personality (Apple, MTV, Ebay).

Today, logos must be designed with the foresight that they will be used in multi-media environments (from TV to the Internet).  That means colors, animation and sound sequences (like NBC, Intel, AOL, Harley-Davidson [engine sound], and Maxwell House) should be considered.

Sponsored By: Brand Aid

Evaluating Logos

Today I thought it might be useful to offer some thoughts on evaluating a potentially wasteful and expensive process: corporate identity.

If you've ever been in a corporate identity or logo meeting, you'll hear terms like glyphs, monoseals or dramatic angles. Colors are given feelings, shapes become dynamic or elegant or sensual. It can all be very confusing. So let's start at the beginning in an effort to clear things up.

Logos have been with us for thousands of years. A Babylonian clay tablet of about 3000 B.C. bears inscriptions for an ointment dealer and a shoemaker. The Roman legions had them. In the middle ages, every two-bit duke with a handful of knights had one plastered on their shields. There were crests or coats of arms everywhere. But none ever amounted to anything. What lived on were the names of the people involved or the places the big battles were fought. What does that tell you?

It's not about the symbol. It's about the name connected to the symbol.

The Brand Identity Delusion

Have you ever heard, or been asked, this question?  “If your organization, or brand, were a car, what make or model would it be and why?”  No?  You’re lucky.  I’ve heard it a lot.  In fact, too many times to count, and not once have I come across the perspective inherent in this response: “My brand would be a customizable, decked out limousine.  One in which I can give my customers the rides of their lives!”

Most organizations are obsessed with navel gazing; trying to discover “who they are” and “what makes them special.”  They hire consultants and spend countless hours pondering their unique identities.  And for what reason?  To help them create their brand personalities and craft their messages, of course.  There’s only one little problem with their approach: it’s completely backwards.

Business is not psychotherapy; it’s theater.  It’s not about going “in,” because your audience is interested in you and your unearthed identity.  They’re not.  It’s about going “out,” and ingratiating yourself to your audience by making them feel good about themselves, and their decisions, in your presence.  It’s about unearthing what they need to feel good, smart and special, and then giving it to them.

It’s easy to become hypnotized and confused by your own marketplace experiences. That’s what great brands  are hoping to have happen.  They want you to get lost in their carefully constructed brand identities and come to believe that it’s all about their uniqueness and passion for their coffee, equipment, motorcycle, phone, etc.  In fact, it’s really all about you.

Color & Brand Identity

Color is one of the most important components in creating brand identity. The purpose of a brand identity system is to encode a brand in people's memory and retrieve it from their memory. In a visual system, the two most powerful components are the consistent recognizable shapes and colors. (Scents and sounds are more powerful than visuals as understood by Cinnebons and Harley-Davidson.) It is best if these shapes and colors are distinctive (at least within the product category). Color can have a significant affect on people's perception of a product or brand. For instance, burgundy and forest green are perceived to be upscale while an orange label or package indicates an inexpensive item.

Third, colors can actually have an affect on a person's state of mind and cognitive ability as demonstrated by numerous research studies. For instance, pink has been shown to increase a person's appetite and calm prison inmates. Additionally, if your brand is sold outside of North America, be aware that colors can have different symbolic meanings (not all positive) in different countries and cultures.

Sponsored By: Brand Aid

Smash Your Brand

Back in 1915 Earl R. Dean, who was working at the Root Glass Company, was given a brief to design a bottle, which firstly could be recognized in the dark. And then, even if broken, a person could tell at first glance what it was.

Taking his inspiration from the pod of the cocoa bean, Dean produced a bottle with ridged contours. He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

This led to the Coca-Cola Company’s contourization strategy, which used the shape to emphasize the very brand. The bottle he designed was the classic Coke bottle, which has become one of the most famous glass icons ever. The bottle is still in service, still recognizable, and been passing the smash test for every generation over the last 80 years.

The Coke bottle story reveals a fascinating aspect from a brand-building perspective, because in theory all brands should be able to pass this sort of test. So if you removed the logo from your brand, would it still be recognizable? Would the copy stand up to it? Would the colours, graphics and images standing alone pass the test?

Can your brand survive being smashed?
It is an interesting exercise, which removes a logo-fixated mindset and brings you closer to a philosophy valuing all elements that create the brand that it is. Two black ears from a well-known mouse are instantly recognizable as Disney. A Singapore girl suggests Singapore Airlines. These are only components of the brand, and yet they’re unmistakable.

The trick is to create each element so that it’s so strong, so able to stand alone, yet at the same time so integrated and synergistic that it can take the brand to a whole new level of familiarity.

To place too great an emphasis on a brand’s logo carries risks. Least of all there is a danger of neglecting all the other potential brand-building opportunities. If paid due attention, there are many other aspects that become recognizable in their own right. Colour, navigation, texture, sound, shape. Even blindfolded, you’d know you’re holding a classic Coke bottle.

It’s time to kill your logo
Remove your logo, and what do you have left? This is a very important question because a brand is so much bigger than its logo. Are the remaining components easily identifiable as yours? If not, it’s time to Smash Your Brand.

The Smash Your Brand philosophy considers every possible consumer touch point with a view to build or maintaining the image of the brand. The images, the sounds, the tactile feelings and the text all need to become fully integrated components in the branding platform. Each aspect playing a role as vital as the logo itself.

Building Winning Brands - 2 of 16

The second most important thing to know about building winning brands is that your brand’s identity must be frequently and consistently presented.

The same Conference Board study that I referenced to earlier found that a well designed and consistently applied brand identity system also contributes significantly to a brand’s success.
 
Specifically, the following were deemed to be critical to brand strategy success:

•Consistent communication of brand identity and message
•Effective use of visuals/imagery in support of brand
•Ability to capture the brand in a slogan

A brand’s identity is a combination of visual, auditory, and other sensory components that create recognition, aid in memory encoding and decoding, represent the brand promise, provide differentiation, create communications synergy, and are proprietary. 

The most powerful memory evoking sense is scent (ever followed a cinnamon scent through a mall to Cinnabon?).  The next most powerful memory evoking sense is sound (Harley-Davidson sought to trademark the sound of its engines, also think about AOL’s “You’ve got mail”).  The visual identity system consists of names, tag lines, other nomenclature, logotypes, symbols, other graphic devices, distinctive shapes and colors, typography, characters, spokespeople and brand ‘voice’ (personality and attitude) and visual style.

A tag line is one of the most important brand identity elements.  It should simply and powerfully reinforce the brand’s promise and always accompany the brand’s name and logo for maximum effect.

These factors have the most significant affect on identity recognition and recall:

•Frequency of use
•Consistency of use
•Distinctive symbols, shapes and colors
•Use of mnemonic devices (memory encoders)
•Size
•Background clutter (less is better)

You should make your brand’s identity system and standards available to all employees and business partners who might use it.  Ideally, someone in your organization is responsible for maintaining the consistency of and otherwise managing your brand’s identity.

Brand Identity: The Importance of Color

Color is an important consideration in your brand identity system.  Colors have a significant impact on people’s emotional state.  They also have been shown to impact people’s ability to concentrate and learn.  They have a wide variety of specific mental associations.  In fact, the effects are physiological, psychological, and sociological. 

For instance:

•Non-primary colors are more calming than primary colors. 
•Blue is the most calming of the primary colors, followed closely by a lighter red. 
•Test takers score higher and weight lifters lift more in blue rooms. 
•Blue text increases reading retention. 
•Yellow evokes cheerfulness.  Houses with yellow trim or flower gardens sell faster. 
•Reds and oranges encourage diners to eat quickly and leave.  Red also makes food more appealing and influences people to eat more.  (It is no coincidence that fast food restaurants almost always use these colors.) 
•Pink enhances appetites and has been shown to calm prison inmates. 
•Blue and black suppress appetites. 
•Children prefer primary colors.  (Notice that children’s toys and books often use these colors.) 
•Forest green and burgundy appeals to the wealthiest 3 percent of Americans and often raises the perceived price of an item.
•Orange is often used to make an expensive item seem less expensive. 
•Red clothing can convey power. 
•Red trim is used in bars and casinos because it can cause people to lose track of time. 
•White is typically associated with cool, clean and fresh. 
•Red is often associated with Christmas and orange with Halloween and Thanksgiving. 
•Red and black are often associated with sexy and seductive and are favored by porn sites. 
•Black clothes make people look thinner. 
•Black is also associated with elegance and sophistication.  It also seems mysterious. 
•Black is the favorite color of Goths.