Brandmarks

Today I finished up the first third of Designing Brand Identity and took a peek at what was to come next.

In this first third of the book, we’ve taken a look at brand identity ideals and brand identity fundamentals. My next bit of reading will take an in-depth look at the actual process involved in a successful brand identity initiative.

Anyhow, I’m going to keep it short today and just touch on one topic -brandmarks.

Let’s take a look at several different types of brandmarks. The book classifies brandmarks into several different groups: wordmarks, letterform marks, pictorial marks, abstract marks, emblems and characters.

To make things fun, I thought I’d list some brandmarks that have resonated with me.

Wordmarks. These seem the easiest to remember because the name of the company is right there in front of you.


Letterform Marks. I like letterform marks but my question is.... there's only so many characters in the alphabet. What happens when two companies use the same letter? For instance, take Honda and Hyundai... They both use the letter "H" and in my opinion there is brand confusion.

Pictorial Marks. I really like the pictorial marks but I think it would take a real investment to educate consumers about the mark such that they correlate the brandmark to the brand.

Abstract Marks. I don't particularly like the abstract mark because I would presume that it is very difficult to get consumers to make the connection between brand and brandmark. In fact, I actually had a real hard time thinking of any abstract marks off the top of my head.

Emblems. Emblems are okay but what happens when you have to condense the image for web or print? I think emblems would be hard to manage on small scale touchpoints due to image distortion.

Characters. Everyone knows Ronald McDonald and Mickey Mouse. But, as the case above, how much of an investment is necessary to educate consumers? I would think it would be rather hard to establish an instant connection. With that said, Geico seems to have had some success with their gecko and Alfac has had some success with that duck.

On the Subject of Positioning

Positioning.... What an interesting topic. Positioning, of course, takes into account the mix of price, product, promotion and place to create openings in a continually changing market.

One of the examples cited in the reading was the positioning strategies of Wal-Mart and Target. Wal-Mart has traditionally positioned itself based upon being the lowest price. On the other hand, Target has positioned itself as a more upscale option that is competitively priced.

What’s interesting about Wal-Mart and Target is that Wal-Mart, the larger of the two companies, is actually repositioning itself to be more like Target. Wal-Mart is moving upscale. Stores are getting makeovers and higher end products are being introduced. When I was at West Texas A&M, we took a real in-depth look at Wal-Mart’s growth strategies. If you’re interested, take a look at this report my group put together.

Also, since we’re talking about positioning, another interesting example to look at is Federated Department Stores. I authored a really good look at the Macy’s brand and how Federated consolidated its retail assets (May Department Stores, Marshall Fields, Bloomingdale’s, etc.), with the exception of Bloomingdale’s, into the Macy’s brand. Why did Federated make this move? The truth is they had to do something to stay competitive. Their gamble was that positioning themselves around a national Macy’s brand was the right move.

Ideals That Advance the Top Brands

The reading today covered the ideals that characterize and advance the best brand identities. These ideals include: vision, meaning, authenticity, differentiation, sustainability, coherence, flexibility, commitment and value.

Without going into too much detail on each of these ideals, I would like to look at a couple topics of interest.

Steve Jobs and Apple were cited as examples of visionary leadership. I don’t know how much Jobs has to do with Apple’s current marketing initiatives; however, in my book the whole crew involved with Apple’s marketing has done a phenomenal job. To me Apple is the very definition of effective marketing. Just take a look at this image:

What does this image say? iPod. The digital media player field is so saturated; however, Apple created a must have iPod brand and differentiated itself through one of the most effective marketing campaigns I’ve ever seen. At some point in the future, I’m sure I’ll elaborate on my opinions of the iPod campaign.

The next thing that I wanted to talk about was the concept that the meaning of a brandmark often evolves over time. While I absolutely hate BP because of their unabashed pursuit to environmentally destroy the Four Corners, I can’t think of a better example than BP when it comes to the evolution of a brand. BP is British Petroleum. However, if you’ve tuned into their current marketing initiatives, you’d know that BP is now Beyond Petroleum. Just take a look at how they explain their brand:

'Beyond petroleum' is a summation of our brand promise and values. It's our way of expressing our brand to the world in the most succinct and focused way possible. It is both our philosophical ideal and a practical description of our work. - BP Website

While BP certainly deserves credit for evolving their brand, unfortunately Beyond Petroleum is a bunch of smoke and mirrors. BP is still the same dirty, ruthless oil company they have always been.

Lastly, I wanted to take a look at differentiation in the field of online search. I’ve been in the search engine marketing industry since 1998. Back then there were so many search options and a great deal of differentiation. Over the course of the last nine years, we’ve seen the monetization of search, consolidation beyond the wildest imagination and the emergence of the 10,000 lb gorilla, Google. As I recall, in about 2000, there were approximately 20 search engines that we really targeted. Nowadays, we target three main databases – Google, Yahoo and MSN. For fun, I thought I’d post an image of all the old school brandmarks to illustrate industry differentiation.


BTW - for those of you that notice.... Yes, this isn't all that old school. Overture's logo is there instead of GoTo. Northern Light's logo is missing. Etc.