Truly Deeply/Madly

The very best brands are those that have their dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion — the thing that grabs the hearts of their cus­tomers and wont let go — built right into the prod­uct. Apple is a brand renowned for its abil­ity to do just that, with the result being fiercely loyal brand advo­cates — not just cus­tomers. Another brand who take the same approach is Mini. Owned by BMW, Mini under­stand that the emo­tional pull in their prod­ucts is as much in the styling and what’s under the bon­net as it is in the brand mes­sages it builds around its prod­ucts. Sounds sim­ple — but few brands really live by this credo.

When brands ‘bake’ their dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion into their prod­ucts, the release of each new model or inno­va­tion can build to what we call ‘brandtic­i­pa­tion’. Brandtic­i­pa­tion is the height­ened sense of antic­i­pa­tion some brands com­mand (cre­ate) around the launch of their prod­ucts. Car mak­ers have released pho­tos of pro­to­type con­cept vehi­cles for years in an attempt to build this very sense of excite­ment about new model releases. Mini is no dif­fer­ent in their ‘con­cept car’ strat­egy — except that they have the edge in brandtic­i­pa­tion, and their new Coupé Con­cept is a case in point:

“The body design of the MINI Coupé Con­cept also bridges the gap from the ear­li­est days of the Mini’s his­tory all the way to the more dis­tant future of the brand, empha­sis­ing the unique nature of the con­cept as well as its full mem­ber­ship in the MINI fam­ily. At the same time the indi­vid­ual and emo­tional design lan­guage arouses the expec­ta­tion of a par­tic­u­larly thrilling expe­ri­ence on the road.” — likecool.com

Nice one.

David Ansett, Bran­da­men­tal­ist
For daily updates of our brand think­ing, fol­low me on Twit­ter
Brand Designer

Tags: Apple, BMW, Brand Agency, Brand Design, brand designers, Brand Experience, Brand Personality, Brand Strategy, brand-designers-Melbourne, Corporate Image, Graphic Design Melbourne, Melbourne Brand Strategy, Mini, Mini Coupe Concept

This entry was posted on Monday, June 7th, 2010 at 8:00 am and is filed under Brand Agency, Brand Design, Brand Strategy, Brand-Storytelling, Corporate Image, Graphic Design Melbourne. 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.