Building a brand requires visibility to the right audience, AND
the right message — one that simply, clearly defines the brand around
the desires of your customers. That and a shot of critical
differentiation will help your customers define and remember what you
offer.
In this issue:
- Building the Successful Visual Brand - connect to your customer's experience
- Your Company Does What? - Does your brand clearly communicate?
- RECENT WORK: A Hot Media Brand - Tribal Fusion
BUILDING THE SUCCESSFUL VISUAL BRAND
Connecting to the
customer's experience
The visual brand. It can say a lot or little.
What it's NOT about is as important as what it proclaims. Pare
down to the core of your brand — carefully think through the value,
the messaging and most importantly, who the customer is and what they
want. It'll make your visual brand a persuasive and emotionally
connecting experience for customers.
Yes, we contend that even B2B and technology companies — who are
notoriously focused on the bits and bytes — need a visual brand that
wraps up their unique solution in a nutshell.
The visual brand is not just the logo or identity — it's the
entire family of items that convey the brand message, positioning and
personality. Each communication delivers the brand to the customer,
building a perception about the company or product.
Large Corporate Brands: Building on Past Equity — or not
For the well-known national and global brands, it's about
constantly reinforcing the brand, using supporting elements in
advertising and media to build an indelible, consistent experience of
the brand.
SouthWest Airline's visual branding carries forward it's
gold and red color scheme with application to planes and uniforms.
This corporate heraldry triggers the cumulative press, media and
customer experiences of the brand. In this case, the visual branding
doesn't make a promise - it represents and reinforces a promise that
customers experience consistently, firsthand.
Wells Fargo has extremely well defined rules about the use
of the colors, the type faces and the use of the iconic stage coach
image. A key brand element is the bank's history — a unique,
"ownable" feature of who the bank is. The brand is continually
reinforced with unique aspects of the bank's role in the West. After
all, what is the difference between Bank of America, Wells Fargo and
Citibank in the customer's experience? Not easy to say these days
with an ATM being a primary customer touchpoint with most banks.
Since 1852, a brand-building coffee table book produced by
BGDI for Wells Fargo, reflects this emotional, historical aspect of
the brand — a living player in the development of the West.
Lucent Technologies is a company that took nearly 100 years
of corporate brand equity (Bell Laboratories literally
invented the telephone!), threw it out the window and spent
nearly $300 million on a new brand that only defeated its original
intention — to establish credibility in the consumer telecom space. A
Japanese-style circular brush stroke in a stark black and red
environment put Lucent in a branding no-man's land. After Lucent
launched national advertising, the consumer still could not connect
to the brand — and the products did not represent a significant shift
in value for the customer. Lucent never made a significant connection
back to their Bell Labs origins until the company was already in
trouble and losing money.
YOUR BRAND DOES WHAT?
Smaller companies, new product launches and newly named or merged
corporations face the challenge of communicating the brand without
spending millions.
They need to focus on defining their brand and developing very
precise messaging, expressed through the name, visual brand and other
elements that should all come together as a unique and valued
customer experience.
Brand perception is like speed dating — you perceive potential
relationship partners through their "brand" — appearance, speech and
other cues. You find affinity — or not — within minutes. Your
customer needs to quickly find that same affinity with your brand.
Four Key Questions for the Visual Brand:
What environment will it live in?
Always keep in mind
where the brand will appear. On your web site, on your business card,
perhaps in signage. Keep this in mind — color, shape and form are
clear reminders of who you are to customers.
Who's our market?
Your visual branding must fit into
perceptions within your market and be distinctive. What are your
customer's attitudes, what are they looking for — security, speed,
radical new ideas? All these become part of the psychological profile
of the brand. Consumer goods companies know this, but the smae
factors are operating on a more subtle level in the B2B and
technology spaces.
What's our competition look like?
Customers are
perceiving you in the world of competitors. If you aren't
distinctive, don't present a clear alternative or aren't clear about
what you offer, your brand will disappear into the background.
Who DON'T we want to look like?
It's critical to know
what associations or positioning you don't want to trigger in your
audience---perhaps a similar company with a negative reputation or a
product category you don't want to be seen as part of.
BGDI'S RECENT WORK
TRIBAL FUSION: A HOT ONLINE MEDIA BRAND
The online advertising and marketing world has exploded with
growth even after the dot com bubble burst. Online ad expenditures
have grown by 400% in only three years. Tribal Fusion has been part
of this explosive growth, providing several hundred web sites in
categories from digital photography and automobiles to pregnancy. and
very specific targeting and optimization software that allows
placement of ads only on sites with the highest clickthrough
rates.
For Tribal Fusion, BGDI developed branding elements, marketing
materials and web site design. BGDI also created a series of ads
highlighting the channels Tribal Fusion offers. The hot, bright
orange silver and black brand look suggests the energy and speed of
electronic media, pulling in new media buyers who now look at Tribal
Fusion as a key player in their media buys.
NEXT ISSUE
Building a branded web site — extending your brand to your most
vital communication medium — what you need to include for customers
on your web site. Even the largest corporations miss many of these
key branding and marketing elements. We'll also discuss an online
brand that's survived the test of time. Stay tuned!
