Whatever

Branding. What is a brand? And what isn’t it? A brand is not a logo, nor a trademark. A brand is a character, and people instantly recognise what it is; it is a person’s gut feel about what the product or service or company is about. It’s everything about a company. Yes, the logo is important. But so is the way you answer the phone, or how you dress when you go to a meeting – every point of customer contact. There’s no point in having a smart, professional visual identity and then turning up at an important meeting wearing torn jeans and trainers. Having a funky, modern, young visual identity and turning up in a suit and tie is equally self-defeating.

Fairly obvious stuff, but so many people fail to look beyond the logo. In order to create a successful brand identity, the designer needs to really understand the company. But first, the company really needs to understand itself. To really analyse what it stands for, what its personality is. And if the company hasn’t done that, it’s up to the designer to ask the right questions.

Once everyone’s agreed on what the real ethos of the company is, hopefully distilled down into a pithy sentence or two, then the brand can be built. The misconception is that a brand is built from scratch. It isn’t. The designer or marketing expert should merely be taking what’s already there and enhancing and amplifying it.

So why is it important? Well, there used to be a thing called a ‘USP’, or ‘Unique selling proposition’. It was the essence of a company, the thing that made them different to their competitors, and it was this that the advertising gurus of the day would try to sell. The problem is, there are now so many companies in every area, it’s very hard to find a really unique thing about what they actually do. One beer is pretty much like another, even cars are all fairly similar nowadays. The brand is what differentiates them, gives them a personality, makes them appeal to a particular target market more than the next identikit euro-mobile or tasteless lager. Sometimes, the brand personality is completely spurious, based on nothing more than a random thought plucked from the air by a marketing executive. Those brands don’t tend to last long. The ones that succeed are the ones that are based on something more tangible, a real personality or company ethos. Virgin is an obvious example, being based on the actual personality of Richard Branson, but there are plenty of others. Nike – another fairly obvious example – have built a really strong brand based on serious sportswear for serious athletes – the trainers live up to the hype, otherwise those famous sportspeople wouldn’t be wearing them, right?

The internet has also changed things when it comes to branding, particularly social media. Twitter, Facebook etc can be great for enhancing  your brand positioning, but they can also spread negative stories incredibly quickly. Apparently, the average consumer mentions specific brands over 90 times per week during conversations with friends, family and co-workers.

Sounds fantastic for marketers. But here’s the problem: not all of these messages are positive. What’s more, dissatisfied consumers are typically more vocal, taking to platforms like Twitter and Facebook to complain. Companies that aren’t quick to respond to these messages can find themselves overwhelmed with negative mentions, rapidly losing control of the situation… and their reputation. Brands that don’t live up to their promises are found out quickly, making it even more important that the branding is right, that is doesn’t overpromise and underdeliver, and that it’s saying the right things to the right people.

A good brand will deliver whatever message you’re trying to put across more clearly. It should make a company appear credible – assuming it’s an appropriate brand for that particular marketplace (back to the suit and trainers again). It should connect in some way with the target audience, and providing the reality lives up to the brand, it should bring them back again.  It’s a promise to the customer. A brand isn’t just something cooked up on a computer by those guys in skinny jeans and rimless glasses. It’s the essence of a company. The branding should simply reflect what the company already is. So what’s your brand?

Spec work, crowdsourcing, free pitching, whatever you call it, it’s big news at the moment. In one particularly ironic example, the UK government have just launched a site called Startup Britain. I’m not going to give it any traffic by linking to it here – it’s basically a load of big companies offering 10% off if you use them to startup your business. The idea has it’s heart in the right place I guess, but it’s turned out to be a massive own goal for the Government, who evidently didn’t count on the power of bad internet PR. I’ll give it a month till it’s taken down or at least radically altered. Anyway, part of it that’s got the design company fuming is the bit where it says you should get  a logo designed for your business (true) and  - here’s where it gets good – that you should go to the short list of crowdsourcing sites they’ve decided to include, at least one of which is based in America to get it done. I’m so appalled by that I can’t even begin to put it into words of more than four letters. The reasons crowdsourcing is bad news for both designers and clients are myriad, and if you don’t know what they are, you bloody should. Nospec.com is probably the best site for bringing all the information together about why crowdsourcing your design is a Bad Thing.

So if you’re a client, or a designer, please don’t. Thankyou.

Some more links on the subject…

Leighton Hubbell Logos

Graphic Design Forums

Logodesign Love

12ft Interactive – Why spec work is bad for the client

Monkeyshine media – it’s bad for business

And many many more…

So, Starbuck’s have rebranded and everyone, it would seem hates it. Really? Or is it actually that a load of keyboard warriors with nothing better to shout about hate it? It’s becoming easier and easier to comment on things, give your opinion on it. And that’s fine. But when large companies start listening to those opinions, and even scarier, acting on them, that’s not fine. It happened recently with the Gap logo redesign, The difference with that one was that it wasn’t very good. But I still think it was the wrong decision by them to go back once they’d announced it. To cave in to the anonymous, unhelpful, unfounded, uneducated  nonsense that’s spouted in a lot of comment threads.

Everyone has the right to their opinion, sure, but that doesn’t mean your opinion should actually be listened to. Do the same people, I wonder, comment on the design of their car’s braking system, or the way the surgeon is cutting them up – “Actually doctor, I think you’ll find your incision sucks! A five-year old could do better! lmao.” Everyone has an opinion, but there seems to be an idea that everyone’s opinion is equally valid; symptomatic, I think, of the idea of people being born with the ‘right’ to everything without having to lift a finger in order to get it.

Duffy and Partners, after the recent ‘Crowd slating’ for Pentagram’s Big Ten ID, put it like this:

“Of course we have our personal opinions, but this latest example just shows how ridiculous things have become. We are in an instant response world with the internet and now every armchair designer has a platform to tell you what they think. And sadly, some companies are listening, requiring designers to defend themselves. We put something out there and we get instant feedback from the masses. People are not only throwing out their opinions but also sending in their own free design solutions. It’s becoming a beauty contest, the exact thing that we try so hard to avoid with every design project. We challenge every design blog critic with an opinion out there to at least include a link to their work so everyone can judge the validity of their criticism.”

Pentagram, incidentally, are probably the best design studio in the world.

Another blog, Graphicology, put it like this:

“Clearly the design of a brand will be engaged by the public in some way, and it’s important they know for what it stands. But it’s not important that they like how it looks. The growing design critique from the masses should be ignored for a lot of reasons.

1. The majority of people don’t know enough about design.
2. They can’t envision the context in which it will be used.
3. When asked, some companies simply won’t generate positive feedback on anything. Starbucks is an easy target, but yet they have what is considered one of the strongest in-house design teams around. “Oh, you want my opinion on something Starbucks related? I hate it. What are we talking about again?”
4. The identity is not the entirety of the brand and it’s more important for the public to like the other stuff (experience, customer service, price, personality, and oh yeah – the product.)
5. And most importantly, the public really doesn’t care. At least about the type and color over the short term. They say they do, but they don’t. They do care about it being authentic and how it connects with them over time. (This is what you pay the experts for, by the way.)
6. The public’s attention span is shorter than yours. Usually, the masses will forget the controversy and the new look will be established in short order.

Sure, this blog and many like it critique design and communication just about everyday. But some of us have a history of commentary, a design education, experience and a portfolio to back all of that up. Anonymous commentary from the masses is bad enough, the fact that companies are listening to it is borderline insane. Sure social media and the instantaneous ‘dialogue’ it engenders between companies and the public is powerful and can be used in many, many useful ways. But it shouldn’t be used for crowd-sourcing or group-thinking your entire design approach. Research. Hire experts. Do something. Evaluate it. And don’t listen to people who don’t matter.”

Absolutely spot on. Design and advertising quality is being eroded enough by clients who think they’re designers, never mind random members of the public who think they could do it better. Technology has helped us in lots of ways, but it’s made the whole process of design look a bit too easy. I personally started off by being good at drawing at school. Nobody ever said to me – don’t you think it would have been better if you’d used a different pencil? Or moved that guy’s arm over there? They just admired the craft. Sometimes they even said “I wish I could draw like that.” Well, just as much, actually more craft and skill goes into coming up with a good corporate ID. It’s a shame they don’t engender the same kind of reaction.

Anyway, back to Starbuck’s. For what it’s worth, here’s my vaguely educated opinion: I personally like it. Initially, I wondered whether dropping the type was a mistake – I don’t think the mermaid has quite the recognition of the Nike swoosh. But the one thing Starbuck’s do have is massive brand exposure. It’s going to take about 10 minutes for people to get used to and recognise the new logo. I also don’t think it’s going to appear in isolation. I’d be very very surprised if the stores don’t say ‘Starbuck’s’ somewhere on them. Besides, you’ll be, um, in a Starbuck’s. The final reason I think this is a good move for them is that everyone and his dog is now using type around a circle for coffee related logos. Almost certainly, whether consciously or unconsciously, influenced by Starbuck’s.

If things continue as they are, I think we’re going to end up with a lot of very bad design and advertising with about 10,000 thumbprints on it, and one or two really really good pieces by companies that stuck with their convictions, used their brains and listened to people that matter. And that’s not me, and probably not you, either.

Innocent drinks is a great brand. No two ways about it. Great design, lovely copy, good ethos and above all, good products.

So it’s not surprising that everyone seems to want to copy them. “I want to be like Innocent Drinks.” Why? do you make smoothies? No. And do you run your business, in a quirky, unconventional way? No. So why do you want that kind of image? A company should want the image that fits them. And it’s up to the branding expert to find out what that image is. How do they work? What kind of ethos do they have? And most importantly, what do they do? Those kind of questions should be at the heart of every branding and marketing project, rather than that off-the shelf type solutions that seem to be getting more and more prevalent.

It used to be that everyone wanted to be like Audi. Now it’s Innocent. Maybe Twitter next…