Truly Deeply/Madly

The big wait is over. In Sep­tem­ber 2009 Aus­tralian Trade Min­is­ter Simon Crean announced the call for ten­ders from cre­ative agen­cies to assist with the task of enhanc­ing Australia’s brand over­seas. In the last week we have seen the launch of a new visual iden­tity for Brand Aus­tralia, cre­ated by Re, a small group of design­ers work­ing out of M&C Saatchi’s Syd­ney office.

Mr Crean said, “We want a clear vision of how Aus­tralia should be seen by the rest of the world in the 21st cen­tury. We will be look­ing for agen­cies to build a con­tem­po­rary national brand – one which cap­tures the essence of Aus­tralia – not just a great place to visit but a great place to live, work, and invest – a trusted trad­ing part­ner and a great place to pur­sue an edu­ca­tion. This is not just about a slo­gan and it goes beyond the on-going pro­mo­tion of Aus­tralia as a global tourist des­ti­na­tion — a rep­u­ta­tion that is well estab­lished. Build­ing Brand Aus­trali­ais about pro­mot­ing Aus­tralia as a nation pro­duc­ing qual­ity prod­ucts and ser­vices across a diverse field of activ­i­ties. We need to get the mes­sage out that we are an inno­v­a­tive nation and a qual­ity sup­plier to the world of key prod­ucts such as clean energy and clean food.”

So with Mr Crean’s aspi­ra­tion in mind what do you think of Australia’s new brand mark?

Brand Aus­tralia
In the past week it has been described in a vari­ety of ways. The most com­mon being, boomerangs as arrows fram­ing a map of Aus­tralia. How­ever you describe it, it does have a cor­po­rate, busi­ness to busi­ness feel about and that is con­sis­tent with the brief. But the flip side in the lively debate that has taken place in our stu­dio is that it does not evoke any emo­tional appeal, that is is a lit­tle one dimen­sional. Read other blogs and the com­ments vary from very tech­ni­cal design savvy appraisals, such as….’the typog­ra­phy is a bit drab’… through to more emo­tive com­ments regard­ing the per­ceived rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the boomerang….’lets use boomerangs again like every cheesy sou­venir shop out there. Does this rep­re­sent Aus­tralia in a con­tem­po­rary 21st Cen­tury manner’.

But I wish to park the debate about the mer­its of the design. For the record how­ever, as some­one who works in brand strat­egy (not as a designer like many of my leaned col­leagues here in the stu­dio), I have to declare I don’t mind the new logo. It works well as a visual geo­graph­i­cal marker of Aus­tralia and has a pro­fes­sional busi­ness like air about it. But the actual logo is not the real pur­pose of this blog, it is rather to remind us all that logo is not the brand. The arrows or the boomerangs or what ever descrip­tors we use to describe it, that is not brand Aus­tralia. Brand Aus­tralia is what mean­ing peo­ple over­seas attribute to Aus­tralia when they think of Australia.

The logo is sim­ply an iden­ti­fier of which coun­try is bring­ing a par­tic­u­lar prod­uct or ser­vice to an inter­na­tional mar­ket. Brand Aus­tralia on the other hand is how peo­ple in that mar­ket think and feel about Aus­tralia in terms of qual­ity, capa­bil­i­ties, exper­tise or what­ever rel­e­vant attrib­utes they use to assess the mer­its of a prod­uct or ser­vice from Aus­tralia, over those from another coun­try. Yes, the logo may act as an impor­tant cue to what is on offer. It also serves to build a pres­ence in mar­kets, to act as an impor­tant aggre­ga­tor for the diverse prod­ucts and ser­vices that come out of Aus­tralia by pro­vid­ing a com­mon brand mark. But as a brand build­ing strat­egy it will be very very slow, because by def­i­n­i­tion we are say­ing our brand is everything!

I am there­fore more excited at see­ing what Mr Crean and his team does in phase two of the brand Aus­tralia project. What is the essence of brand Aus­tralia that they are aspir­ing to com­mu­ni­cate to the world. What are going to be Australia’s sig­na­ture expres­sions to cap­ture the hearts and minds of over­seas cus­tomers. What are we going to stand for? Cur­rently the expres­sion ‘Aus­tralia Unlim­ited’, that forms part of the lock-up in the new logo, does lit­tle to drive an under­stand­ing of what we are set­ting out to ‘own’ in inter­na­tional mar­kets. In fact, in many respects the Unlim­ited expres­sion may even com­mu­ni­cate neg­a­tive sen­ti­ment in some mar­kets, par­tic­u­larly those who have laid claim to the posi­tion­ing already, such as Unlim­ited Turkey (yes an inter­est­ing posi­tion­ing line) and Lon­don Unlimited.

So, Mr Crean what is the defin­ing essence of the brand Aus­tralia? If we think it is ‘every­thing’ as in ‘unlim­ited’ then we really are going to strug­gle to cre­ate a brand in Inter­na­tional mar­kets that is under­stood, dif­fer­ent and valued.

As we reg­u­larly say to clients,

‘…a Brand that wants to be a lit­tle of every­thing will even­tu­ally amount to a lot of nothing’

Peter Singline
Brand Scientist

All pic­tures found at http://www.brandaustralia.gov.au/index.htm

Tags: Australia-Unlimited, Boomerang, Brand Agency, Brand Design, Brand DNA, Brand Experience, Brand Strategy, Brand-Australia, brand-scientist, Corporate Image, Graphic Design Melbourne, Interior Design, M&C-Saatchi, Melbourne Brand Strategy, peter-singline, Truly Deeply

This entry was posted on Friday, May 21st, 2010 at 9:10 am and is filed under Brand Agency, Brand Design, Brand Strategy, Brand Voice, Brand-Storytelling, Corporate Image, Creative, Experiences, Graphic Design Melbourne, Small Brands Big Personalities, Thinking, Visual Language. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.