Brand recognition with clout!

Increasingly brands seem to be leveraging a realm of different spaces and as a result we’re noticing some pretty awesome and unbelievable art installations. In saying that there comes some risk for brands big or small to attempt these installations because if they get them wrong they’re going to have the exact opposite of the desired effect.

A branded piece of art (like any art) is so subjective and can be viewed in many ways ranging from too promotional, too imposing, too loud and often an intrusion into ‘public spaces.’

But of course when done right, this kind of brand experience (whether a brand or not) can work wonders for brand recognition or simply make people take a second look and think, that’s a great creative idea.

Mega brands such as adidas, BMW, Coca-Cola and Nike have been doing this type of branded art for years and very effectively and why not? their budgets are enormous! As huge recognised worldwide brands they often tend to take new and up-and-coming artists under their wings generating a huge online buzz not only for the brand but also for the piece of art, the location and of course the artist.

Nike’s 20 metre high, 4.75 tonne ‘Ball Man’ made of 5,500 Brazilian skill balls was an incredibly huge hit during the recent FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Created by Leicester based Ratcliffe Fowler Design using a 3D image of Carlos Tevez, it was the centerpiece of a Nike installation in Carlton Mall Atrium, Johannesburg. Thoughtfully the man was designed so that the skill balls remained virtually intact enabling them to be donated to the community after the closing of the exhibition.

Also at the World Cup, Coca-Cola took advantage of the Crate Man craze and installed a 54-foot ‘crate fan’ in Cape Town at the Victoria and Albert Waterfront Harbour – it was built out of 2,500 Coke bottle crates and weighed 25 tonnes.

On the other foot take a look at the below that are purely original, fresh and fun – no associated brand but because they’re cool they create real viral attention.

If you’d like to see your brand create real viral attention why not give us a call, we’re ready to find a space to install your art and gain that recognition you’re after.

Dominic Guthrie
Client Account Director

The Most Comprehensive Trend Report on the Visual Language of Brand Identity
Trends in the visual language of brand identity are driven by many factors from the ‘me-too-ism’ of designers and their clients mimicking the visual language of market leaders, to new and emerging trends such as ‘sustainability’ that draw a similar and en-mass visual response from designers all over the world. Over the past 12 months we have collected more than five thousand different brand expressions spanning almost every major industry and category of the western world.

Our 2010 Trend Report has been picked-up and re-published in blogs and marketing publications around the world – so by request we’re providing the report as one, complete pdf download (even if it is a whopping 6.8mb in size).

The brand expressions we tracked included existing, new and refined brand identities, product packaging, newspaper, magazine and billboard ads. The scale and breadth of these brand expressions allowed us to identify the major brand visual language trends of a broad range of market leaders for the last year. Whilst the majority of the examples presented in this report are recent, many trends are not in themselves new. It is our interpretation of the groundswell of take-up of a trend and the influence exerted within their market by the brands involved, that leads us to define the most compelling and influential trends.

What’s the value of a Trend Report?
All brands project an image through their visual language. It is up to each brand to make conscious and informed decisions about exactly what they wish their visual language to communicate relative to the competition and to their market’s perceptions.The report includes hundreds of examples of brands and their visual language to illustrate examples of brands who leverage trends to their advantage, as well as examples of those who follow trends to their disadvantage. The examples cross industries from fashion to food, from transport to telecommunications and everything in between, as well as markets from Australia to Asia, from Europe to the Middle East and the U.S.

Valuable Insights for all Owners and managers of Brands
An understanding and mastery of the trends in brand visual language will allow business to ‘tune’ their brand’s image to ensure they’re consistently communicating the right messages to the right people. For every organisation seeking to best manage their brand identity, these trends must be part of the consideration process. For each brand there will be advantages and disadvantages to leveraging the cues and meaning inherent in these trends. The big question you should be considering is this; ‘does the trend provide an opportunity to leverage a set of visual cues to communicate the perfect brand messages to your market, or has the trend become so widely adopted as to compromise the uniqueness of the brands who follow it?’

Click here to download a complete version of our 2010 Brand Visual Language Trend Report (6.8mb pdf file)

© 2010 Truly Deeply. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. We’re delighted for you to share, blog or publish extracts of our articles, on the condition that Storm Design & Brand DNA are properly credited (and linked to) as the source, and that you include either our URL: trulydeeply.com.au or the link to this source.

For further information, questions and enquires, feel free to contact us directly.

David Ansett, Brandamentalist
For monthly updates of our thinking, click here to receive our free Brand Newsletter
Brand Designer and Trend Spotter.

Beautiful, Impactful Brand Story-telling from BMW
BMW stunned Singaporeans with an interactive 3D outdoor brand experience (a first in Asia) to promote its BMW 5 series. They transformed two busy office buildings at Suntec City from a symbol of work, into a symbol of Joy. The expressions and reactions of those who witnessed the brand show are testement to the power of big, bold brand gestures, and their ability to make the right brand impression for BMW.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Love it.

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

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

All Ads are not Born Equal
We spend much of our lives as a brand strategy & design agency watching the flood of creative brand communications from all over the world. Every now and then one gem of creativity stands-out from the rest, catches our eye and tickles our fancy. For me it was this ad from BMW for their factory approved second hand cars. Who says those Germans don’t have a sense of humor?

David Ansett, Brandamentalist

Today it’s more critical than ever for businesses to differentiate themselves from their competitors and make memorable connections with their audience by creating unique, recognisable brands.

Colour in Brand Design
Every touch point of a brand plays a vital role in brand recall, but the brand mark is the heart and soul of a brand’s image. Whilst it’s the interplay between colour, typeface, and symbol that creates a brand mark, colour is registered by the brain before either images or typography. A University of Loyola, Maryland study recently found the correct use of colour could increase brand recognition by up to 80%.

Standing out from the crowd
As awareness of branding grows and more businesses invest in their brand’s identity, colour is becoming more important for companies looking to differentiate themselves visually. Consider the success of Heinz Green ketchup. In the first seven months following its introduction more than 10 million bottles were sold. The result was the highest sales increase in the brand’s history, all because of a simple color change. Apple introduced colourful iMacs into a marketplace where colour had not been seen before. The Apple brand was the first to say, “It doesn’t have to be beige”. The iMacs reinvigorated a brand that had suffered $1.8 billion of losses in two years.

A World of Colour
Colour also provides communication cues for brand attributes such as traditional or cutting edge, calm or excited, as well as cultural cues, cues about environmental credibility, cues about political affiliations and a plethora of other meanings. In the world of brand design, choice and use of colour provides the potential for a wealth of carefully crafted and powerfully communicated messages about your brand.

Recognisable Brands Test
Most of the most recognisable brands in the world rely on colour as a key factor in their instant recognition. Below are snapshots of twenty of the world’s most recognisable brand marks cropped to show a clear representation of their brand colours, but only a fraction of their logotype of symbol. Test yourself to see how many of the brands you can identify with colour being the primary visual driver.

The answers
01. Heineken
02. adidas
03. Toyota
04. British Airways
05. BP
06. Google
07. BMW
08. Vodafone
09. Ford
10. McDonald’s
11. Coca Cola
12. Olympic Games
13. Microsoft
14. IBM
15. Nike
16. Pepsi
17. GE
18. Qantas
19. Nokia
20. Virgin

So how’d you go?
18 or more correct: You’re brand obsessed (you’d fit in well around here)
15-17 correct: You’re pretty brand aware (and probably addicted to TV)
10-14 correct: Observation skills are not your strength – likely to leave home wearing different coloured socks
9 or less correct: You’re suffering brand avoidance – might be worth getting checked-out for colour blindness

If you’d like to talk to some people who spend way too much of their life eating, sleeping, thinking about the role of colour in developing a highly recognisable and unforgettable brand identity give us a call.

Cassandra Gill, Design Director.

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.

A Snapshot of Brand Association
The clever people at Brand Tags have been busy collecting a comprehensive  list of more than 1.7 million associations that people have with brands. The result is a unique opportunity for those brands to compare the meaning and messages of their brand communication strategy with the brand associations of a cross section of the market.

Audi Vs BMW
Today we compare the brand associations of German Luxury, Automotive brands Audi & BMW.

A Comparison of Brand Association
As expected, both car brands have a high level of association with German-made, expensive, luxury and quality. When comparing either of these brands with cars manufactured in Japan, the US or Korea, these brand attributes would be seen as an advantage. However, when comparing these two brands to each other, German-made, expensive, luxury and quality as brand attributes are no more than table-stakes – they merely represent what is expected. The real differentiation comes with the other strong attributes.

The Audi Brand
Audi’s investment in aligning their brand with the values of the Olympic games continues to pay-off. Through their sponsorship of the 2010 US Alpine Olympic Team and smart campaign placements deliver a remarkably high level of association with this pinnacle of sporting events. The shared symbol of interconnecting rings provides a powerful visual link that reinforces the brand relationship. As a brand it is closely associated with an image of ‘cool, nice and classy.’ The appearance of individual Audi models in the list of top brand associations including the Quatro, tt and A4 suggests the brand has successfully built differentiated market propositions for the brands in its product portfolio. Further, the description of the ‘Audi rings’ reflects a high level of awareness and association of the visual properties in Audi’s brand identity.

The BMW Brand
BMW shares further brand associations with Audi including ‘fast, nice, class & cool.’ The concern for BMW is the combination of other associations that play out distinctly in the list creating a less than aspirational image of ‘rich, yuppie, asshole snob.’ Whilst no brand should wish to be all things to all people, Automotive brands are very conscious of the role cars play in the image their customers project of themselves to the market. I would imagine these negative brand associations would be a cause for concern for BMW. Interestingly, BMW the brand is associated with being ‘overpriced’ where the Audi brand is not. With no substantial brand association for their brand identity or range of models there is plenty of scope for BMW to improve their brands image and its associations.

If you’d like some help to define the meaning for your brand and create your communications in order to create a consistent association with these layers of meaning in the minds of their customers, why not drop us a line?

David Ansett, Brandamentalist
If you’d like daily updates of our brand thinking, you can follow me on Twitter here.
Corporate Image

I love simple and clever ads! When I first saw the BMW ad I thought, “yep that’s clever and simple” but this was just the start of a chain of ads that would follow all based around a similar theme – congratulating yet taking the piss out of their competitors through promoting themselves as a better brand of car. Audi’s response was, I think, a little weak yet surprisingly Subaru’s was rather witty and to the point making BMW and Audi look, putting it simply, like a boring beauty contest. Each of these three ads all have the common attributes – clever and witty copy along with your standard glitzy product shots. After digesting these ads I thought to myself, where to from here? Is this going to be one of those scenarios where we just go round and round in circles? Clearly not! Whilst all the hype and talk was about how clever these ads were Bentley just waited for the time to strike and came out of nowhere with what I’d have to say is one of the cleverest ads in a long time. In one foul swoop they nailed not only BMW, Audi and Subaru’s brand but I feel the rest of the car market. No copy or glitzy product shots were required, just their brandmark and a smug looking man sitting on a chesterfield couch (so on brand for Bentley) giving you the ‘bird’! Say no more – BENTLEY TRUMPED ‘EM ALL!!

Dominic Guthrie
Senior Account Director