The Final Chapter in our Comprehensive Trend Report
Over the last month we’ve published the first five chapters of our research report into trends in visual language. This Monday and we publish the final chapter of the report. In this week’s chapter we’re exploring trends in brand visual language relating to colour, as well as posing the 10 most critical questions you should be asking yourself about your brand’s visual language.
Flicking through the news today I came across a post on John Gruber’s Daring Fireball blog. Canon is beginning the process of acquisition for the .canon top level domain name. Based on the new generic Top Level Domain (gTDL) registration system which will allow a company name, brand name, geographic region, or service type to be used as a gTLD within website and e-mail addresses. The new system is expected to be approved in the second half of next year from then on you can expect to see all the major international brands doing the same. It wont be long before we see .nike, .coke and .apple
All Brands Have Meaning
Whether carefully and strategically considered or by default, all brands hold associated meanings in the market place. Well considered brands establish a competitive brand proposition (their brand strategy) with layers of meaning to both differentiate themselves from their competitors and to connect with their audience. These brand reinforce their meaning through all of their actions or brand touch points. As a brand agency we help brands to define their meaning and create the brand design for all their communications in order to create a consistent association with these layers of meaning in the minds of their customers.
Apple Vs Microsoft
Today we compare the brand associations of consumer technology icons Apple & Microsoft.
The brands we choose reflect how we see ourselves
Each day we make thousands of conscious and sub-concussion decisions about the brands we wish to include in our lives. Our choice of which brands we choose to connect-with is often a reflection of how we see ourselves and how we wish the world to see us. Some of these brand associates are more overt than others, but when mapped as a whole they create a sense of personal brand identity. ‘Brand Mapping’ as we call it forms part of the Insights process we use on our commercial projects. Brand mapping helps us to immerse our thinking into the lives of target markets our clients’ brands wish to connect with truly and deeply.
Here’s my brand map for Christmas Day 2009.
Finally it’s Here.
After much anticipation fueled by rumors, half press releases, leaks and on-line buzz, the Apple iPad was released overnight our time. To update this blog which was written last year looking at predictions of what the new Apple Tablet would look like, we’ve added some pics of the real thing. Interesting to compare the real deal with the guess-work of the images below:
The Difference Between Message and Value
In the past week I’ve had several conversations with clients, colleagues and our creative staff about the difference between brand messages and brand value. Brand is still a relatively young business concept and continues to evolve, mature and become more valuable to companies with each passing year. When I think back even just five years ago to the types of brand briefs we were working with, they were mostly Brand Message Centric – ‘what can we tell the market about our products or services that will compel them to choose us over our competitors?’ Typically these days our brand projects have a very different philosophy, our clients are rightly more focused on “What must we be delivering through our products and services so that our market can’t wait to include us in their lives?”. This is the compelling and critical difference between brand Value and brand message.
Apple, a brand obsessed with building customer value from the inside-out. Read the rest of this entry »
Word on the Web
As the rumor-mill turns into a tidal wave of anticipation for Apple’s new tablet, we take a snapshot of what’s being discussed, tweeted and mentioned on the social networks and blog sites. A glance at the Social Sentiment word cloud below shows the on-line universe abuzz with the rumored product name of ‘iSlate’ following a leak onto the net of URL and trademark registrations by Apple for that name. As always, it’s the interesting reading is between the lines (literally) – the smaller words often tell the story of current sentiment – and the further you look, the more intriguing the narrative. Click on the wordcloud pic to see a larger version.
David Ansett, Brandamentalist
If you’d like daily updates of our brand thinking, you can follow me on Twitter here.
Apple Does it Again
Continuing their fine tradition of festive season ads, Apple releases a campaign for Christmas 2009 featuring the iPhone and it’s ever growing store of apps. A great example of brand strategy creatively translated into memorable (and blogable) entertainment.
What an intriguing battle there is playing out between Australian supermarket chain, Woolworths and Apple. The question at the center of the struggle is; when is a stylised green W (Woolsworths new logo) really an apple? At first glance we may feel that Apple is being a little too precious about their logo. I must declare for as long as the new Woolworths logo has been in the market I have not looked at it as anyway associated with Apple. But then again I am not the custodian of the Apple brand.
