The main reason brand guidelines exist is to keep consistency in check. Consistency is key, especially for brands that extend across multiple touch points. Imagine your favorite bottled water brand featuring volcanoes in a TV commercial but fairytale castles in print. Or Easyjet aircrafts painted in an apple green livery because it’s the new brand manager’s favorite color. At best you’d be confused. At worst the brand would go unnoticed, having missed out on an opportunity to refresh memory structures to get your attention. It is only through consistency that brands become familiar, trusted – and grow.

But to work effectively, brand guidelines don’t have to be a set of rigid rules and regulations. In fact they should allow for flexibility. Or else you might soon have to answer to stale, uninspired creative that locks your brand at idle.

A few years ago, McDonald's bent the rules with a series of outdoors billboards featuring food pictures. No copy, no logo. Just close-ups of BigMacs and McFlurries. A bold move given McDonalds’ guidelines most probably don’t point out logos are optional.

Good brand guidelines manage to guard a brand from getting too far from its focus, all while giving it enough room for emotional engagement. Contact us today to see how we can help you design effective brand standards.

(Image: McDonald's)

A recent study even suggests that nostalgia makes people value money less, which in turn makes them less resistant to spending. When M&Ms ran their 75^th anniversary campaign, it turned out consumers had no reluctance paying more for their favorite candies if wrapped in a retro packaging design.

Nostalgia is used to sell everything from foods to beverages to toys. But there are categories for which the retro theme should not be the way to go. Think pharmaceutical and healthcare products – no one would pick up a box of aspirin if it looked like the expiration was past due by a decade.

To find out more about how throwback packaging can help your brand tap into consumer emotions, contact us today.

(Picture: Mars, Inc)

That’s the challenge brand managers in pharmaceutical companies have to deal with. And they have their industry’s strict regulatory compliance requirements to thank.

It’s no secret branding doesn’t feature much in pharma, and outside of projecting bigger logos on larger screens at seminars and conferences, there’s not much unchartered opportunity to build a drug’s brand awareness. Or is there?

1. Expanding the frame of reference

Thinking beyond the branded product itself can give pharma marketers more leverage in the long run. A physician who has prescribed a drug that has shown to work well with patients will equate that quality and trustworthiness with the manufacturer. The recent rebranding of large pharmaceutical companies like Biogen Idec and Sanofi Aventis signals that new focus on a more prominent corporate identity drives sales and product portfolio exposure.

2. Packaging it right

That’s tried and tested – the way a product looks influences customer recall and perception. And there’s no better way to make a product stand out than with packaging design. While the spectrum of creativity in pharma packaging design won’t allow much of a contribution to this objective, there are still opportunities worth giving thought to. When AstraZeneca orchestrated an OTC launch of its acid reflux prescription drug Prilosec, it built an image around the physical characteristic the Rx formulation had come to be recognized for - its purple color. The brand is now so closely associated with that distinctive hue AstraZeneca recently went to court to protect it from copy-cat competitors.

3. Going for consistency

With heavier caseloads and longer workdays, physicians tend to turn down meetings with pharmaceutical representatives. Instead they’ve increased their reliance on the Internet as a source for health and medical information. Pfizer is one of many to have rolled out video detailing while both GSK and Merck have launched their own e-sampling programs to enable physicians to order and manage prescription samples online. This calls for new approaches to get and compete for a doctor’s limited attention. And the ability to cut through the clutter starts with a consistent use of visual systems to drive an emotional connection and favor brand value and distinctiveness – not just online but across all channels and touch points.

Contact us today to discuss how our experience developing top drugs with Sanofi, Roche, Novartis or Spirig HealthCare, can help your product grow into a healthy brand.

(Picture: Reuters)

As I write this article, I’m drinking from my red holiday Starbucks cup, the one that caused such a massive social media outrage due to its plain, no-frill look. Some people linked it to a deconstruction of Christmas, others called it nothing less than an attack on Christianity. All because one company decided to no longer adorn its cups with holiday patterns.

This proves once again that packaging has never been so powerful.

Surely mega-chain Starbucks must have considered that their cups’ design -- or lack thereof -- wasn’t going to go unnoticed. Maybe it was orchestrated in an effort to differentiate from the mawkish and ubiquitous snowflakes, candles, and gingerbread men designs out there. Maybe it just does a better job relaying the brand’s premium pricing to an exclusive target market. Or maybe Starbucks is really going minimalist – like their most recent logo redesign may suggest. Whatever the reason, it’s clear that Santa’s already given the company its Christmas present with all that free publicity.

Coffee drinking brand managers click here to see the evolution of Starbucks’ red cups over the years.

For a brand to have a chance to make it on the marketplace, most marketers will agree that it needs to stand out from the competition, that it needs to be differentiated. Think of UPS, the shipping company. Their entire branding strategy is built on what many would consider a dull, unsexy color: brown. Everything from their trucks to their drivers’ uniforms, even their advertising slogan «What can Brown do for You?», gravitates around that color. Similarly, when the Swiss postal services spun off in the late 1990s, the new entity got a new logo and a new slogan but chose to retain its predecessor’s yellow corporate color. Color made so much sense, the company even tried to trademark it.

Color is also a great strategy for brands operating in categories where advertising is highly regulated. Take pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca for example. By referring to Nexium as the ‘Purple Pill’, the company not only found a way to promote its acid reflux drug in markets where the mention of brand names is prohibited, it also managed to create awareness of both the brand and the condition. Although it was released almost 15 years ago, hearburn sufferers still ask their doctors and pharmacists about the ‘Purple Pill’. Talk about effective color branding!

We all know some colors are best fit to trigger certain emotions. While this is influenced culturally, in Europe blue is calming and does a better job conveying the qualities of an insurance company like Zurich than red, a color often associated with danger. Orange conveys something cheap while burgundy says expensive. When Chiquita Brands International asked us to rethink their visual identity to add a notion of freshness and naturalness, we had their logo’s blue and yellow to work off from. See how we did it here.

In many markets, Coca-Cola markets its ‘Diet’ variety as ‘Light’. And yes, ‘Light’ and ‘Life’ are dangerously similar in pronunciation. Try ordering a ‘Life’ in a noisy concert venue, chances are you will get a ‘Light’. At least the packaging clearly sets the green ‘Life’ apart from the gray ‘Light’. You might have better luck getting what you want if you order the ‘green Coke’!

While some will argue that drastic repositioning actions may jeopardize brand strength over time, it remains a notable move to drive a brand’s relevance beyond its original market. For example, Heineken recently introduced a new brand of cider – a traditional male drink – to a female audience. Jillz is sparkling, fresh, fruity, and contains less alcohol than regular ciders.

Exotic Flavors

In Europe and North America, the most popular beverage flavor launched in 2012 were mango, pomegranate, and pineapple. While women tend to favor sweeter tastes, they also tend to monitor their calorie intake.

Premium is Key

On average, women interact with high-end products more often than men. Think perfumes, jewelry, and cosmetics. Women will be quicker to rate a product’s exclusiveness by its visual codes.

Smaller bottle – or bigger

Smaller servings are a favorite among women – they mean fewer calories and fewer trips to the bathroom. Wine, champagne and cocktails help exemplify this preference. Contrastingly, 13 percent of women say beer would not be a first choice because it cannot be readily shared with one’s friends (2014).

New category?

Back in the 1950s, European and North American demand for a fruit called “Chinese gooseberry” was virtually nil. A smart importer blamed the negative Cold War associations the name conveyed. Thus the fruit was renamed “kiwi”. It was a sound success: global demand soared ever since.

According to a 2012 research, 79% of UK women rarely or never drink beer. Even if it is fruity and visually appealing, it's still a beer . Could the category name have something to do with this indifference? Women may elect not to purchasing beer because of the intrinsic and latent associations that “beer is a man’s drink.” Stripping off all beer connotations for instance helped the brand Eve to position itself as a woman’s new drink of choice!