Being “better” than the competition is no longer enough to create sustainable advantage in today’s business environment. To rise above the sea of sameness in your product category, your brand must show it’s different. Let’s take a look at 3 ways to get there.
A logo is not a brand. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have one of the most important roles when it comes to expressing the brand’s identity and positioning. Because it goes out with every one of your marketing materials, the logo is the face of your brand. It makes it stand out, builds your reputation, and helps you connect with your audience.
Sometimes outlined as part of the company’s mission or vision, purpose gives the reason a company is in business and what motivates it to do what it does, beyond making money. Take Ikea for example. Its purpose is more than just selling furniture – this is something every furniture company does – Ikea is about “creating a better everyday life for the many people”. And their business idea supports this purpose with a wide range of functional, well-designed products that are affordable by as many people as possible.
Trust is what makes brands grow – it attracts prospects and makes current customers loyal. But with growing skepticism towards brands, consumers increasingly turn to friends, peers and figures of authority, like celebrities, to help them guide their decisions. Brand owners know this and that’s why influencer marketing is making it on the strategic priority list. But can such endorsements be translated onto the packaging touch point?
Together with packaging design, a brand’s name is perhaps the most important factor influencing brand personality and perception. But with only 26 letters to work with, chances to create a name that’s short, memorable, distinctive – and legally available – are low. No wonder then that finding nomenclature has become somewhat of a science.
Some are very comprehensive and cover everything from logo usage to type style, website layout, and editorial tone. Brand guidelines – also known as brand standards, style guides, brand books, even brand bibles – are an essential tool to help design a successful brand. They specify how the different elements of a brand work together to form a brand identity. They help make sure everyone involved in the making of a brand is looking in the same direction.
They started out as keyboard character combinations to help bring meaning and emotion to the online chat rooms of the late nineties. They’ve now evolved into a full crowd of pictograms able to convey specific non-verbal meanings and some of the most complex human emotions. Like it or not, emojis are taking over text-based communication. And the Oxford Dictionary’s selection of “Face with Tears of Joy” as Word of the Year 2015 is the ultimate confirmation these small-scale images are here to stay.
Using past memories is a powerful marketing strategy. It brings us back to an idealized past where life was easier and simpler. On packaging, retro artwork not only serves to express the brand’s heritage, it also helps kick up its perception of authenticity and quality.
Creating new brand names is no easy task. Names have to be short to be remembered and distinctive enough to break through the clutter. Looking for potential negative connotations is best-practice as no global brand manager wants a name that means poop in a relevant language. But are all bad names, or names with some negative association, an automatic no-go?
In brand development, country of origin has been shown to have a significant influence on the attitudes and perceptions consumers hold toward a brand. It clues them in on that brand’s quality, performance, or suitability based on the country’s image and stereotypes. And in a world offering increasingly internationalized product selection, country of origin has never been more relevant – so much that some companies even consider it a brand in itself.
Imagine that your job is to maximize value and revenue for a brand whose name can’t be pronounced on the first try, whose packaging can’t reference a single product feature or benefits, and - above all -, a brand that can’t be promoted to its end users directly.
There won’t be any trademark protection for the Kit Kat shape in the UK. The British High Court ruled a few weeks ago against Kit Kat’s manufacturer Nestlé in the long-running battle opposing it to confectionery rival Cadbury. The shape of the four-fingered candy bar is just “not distinctive enough” to warrant a trademark, the judge presiding over the case concluded.
What’s the name of the orange airline? How about the red cola? And the blue one? If you are asked to think about a purple chocolate bar, what brand comes to mind? Because our brains process it faster than any other visual information, color is an essential element of brand communication. Those of you contemplating corporate identities or packaging design, this post is for you.
I recently took my team out to the local restaurant to celebrate the win of an exceptionally difficult pitch. We are regulars there so we usually all get the business menu. When one of the teammates ordered her beverage, I was amused she settled for tea after the waiter told her he didn’t carry her brand of water. “Doesn’t water taste the same no matter what brand it is?” I asked. She replied in the most serious tone, “No, I just can’t drink anything other than Evian.”
Ten years after the launch of Coke ‘Zero’, the Coca-Cola Company is introducing Coca-Cola ‘Life’, a low calorie version from stevia extract. The name is short, memorable and easy to say in a majority of the world’s languages. However it might prove inconvenient and downright confusing.
