When I think about what makes a brand work I realize that capturing the attention of a specific audience through design, reputation, and emotion are all strong aspects of what breaths life into our creation, but without brand evolution there is a chance it will not survive.

Just as the best hitters of the Major League try new batting stances to bring a better approach to the plate (and to hopefully produce better results) brands should continue to evolve to be effective over time.

Does that mean that a staple design and brand be completely disassembled after a few years, not really, but it may depend on the survival of your product. Overall, re-developing a brand will be always be a way to reach the current clientele who have supported your product, to keep them interested in your changes and progress.  I also believe it shows them you’re your product is still relevant and that you are still looking to bring something new to the table. Sparking interest and possible longevity.

Companies like McDonalds (an example of taking this concept to the maximum, with an almost unlimited marketing budget) will constantly reprise their brand, logo, slogans, and even the renovation of their restaurants to adjust to the current market or a specific group within the market. Of course they have an unlimited market, but they are a company who see the value in adjusting their brand to produce profit and target untapped markets with updated campaigns.

(Example of how the Coca-Cola Company has continued to prosper throughout the years by re-inventing and updating its brand.)

From personal experience, and working for the T. Rowe Price group, they felt it was imperative to update their brand and logo identity once the 2008 recession was on a decline and headed in the right direction. Beginning in mid-2012 they started to change the color scheme, feel and presence of the company so it gave the client the impression of a solid organization/reputation, which had a straightforward approach to serving their clients needs. A very clean, straightforward approach in a time where consumers didn't feel comfortable about their finances, particularly when dealing with financial institutions.

T.Rowe Price site set to New Brand

As noted on the site peopledesign.com

Certain graphic elements age better than others. Companies pin the fate of their illustrative logos on the longevity of the particular drawing style they chose. Typefaces are increasingly susceptible to looking dated, which may account for some degree of graphic identity reinvention. Like hairstyles and clothing, certain graphic embellishments go out of fashion as quickly as they come into favor.

What makes a good brand work?

It’s difficult to list the tenets of good branding without restating the obvious: Trust. Reliability. Something you can depend on. Consistency. It sounds like a Buick commercial. Allow me to brainstorm a few alternative descriptions that can be taken with or without a grain of salt. 

When you order Chinese Food, you know what to expect, right? Everyone knows what it is. You don’t even really need to look at the menu because it hasn’t changed in 50 years, and every place has the same menu. You know how it smells, you know how you’ll feel after. You know to ask for extra duck sauce and hot mustard because they never give you enough. You also know that they don’t actually eat that stuff in China. “Chinese Food” is greasy American comfort food. It’s delicious. If you haven’t eaten in 4+ hours, you might be getting hungry reading this. Why is that? You can imagine the whole experience of Chinese Food because it has delivered the same satisfying calorie bomb to your stomach for as long as you can remember. They give you a consistent level of quality in relation to the money you must spend, and it tastes good and makes you feel good. Imagine a world without Chinese Food…the humanity!

Let's shift gears.Take personality traits, which are an extension of your personal brand: A-Student, slacker, go-getter, suck-up, sweetheart, ladies man, loner, extrovert, bookworm. You know somebody who fits into each of these character profiles. It’s no big shock when they act a certain way because that’s how they’ve branded themselves, whether or not they know it. People create and perpetuate their personal brands every day. 

Let’s try comedians: Will Ferrell, Kevin Hart, Louis C.K., Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock. Consider each one for a few seconds…different brands of humor, right? They make you feel a certain way? What if Jerry Seinfeld told Chris Rock’s jokes. It wouldn’t work, right? What if Will Ferrell played a serious character? Oh wait, he did in Stranger than Fiction. He actually did a great job, which says something about his acting, and the fact that it was so eery seeing him not play a buffoon says something about the strength of the brand identity he has created.

These may be reaches, but this is what I was able to brainstorm when considering what makes a good brand work. It boils down to consistency, and occupying a niche. You want to be focused on your audience, and must always strive to produce quality work that is within your budget. 

Re: What makes a brand work?

Bouncing off of Erin's post, I wanted to research branding from an agency's perspective. Lippincott, one of the world's most well-known branding agencies in New York, has designed logos for the many of the Forbe's Top 100 Brands.  To name a few: Starbucks, WalMart, American Express, and Coca-Cola. 

Lippincott released this article, "Positioning a brand in the marketplace," which gives a good understanding not only about branding in today's world, but an insight to their strategy. Some key points from the article are:

• "Critical to any brand's success is its ability to make all the various factors align-to “make sense” when subconsciously associated and brought together to form the big picture of the brand. We call this impression “brand image” or “brand reputation,” and it can be positive or negative-or somewhere in between."
• "the three components essential to developing a clear brand definition are vision, meaning and parameters of relevance."

The article then gives examples of companies that have successfully branded themselves by following the previously mentioned 3 components: Disney, Nike, and Ralph Lauren. It also touches on the point about extensions (which could be helpful when thinking about your ancillary brand): "The experiences of Disney, Nike and Ralph Lauren underscore the point that you can successfully extend a brand into new areas provided you do not lose sight of what the brand means and what its parameters of relevance are."

RE: What makes a brand work?

While reading Erin's post, particularly the part about how successful brands are effective at persuasion via connecting with and identifying with their audience, I immediately thought of the branding for a start-up company I read about earlier this week called Push for Pizza.

Push for Pizza is an app that allows users to order pizza almost instantly without having to call a pizza place or even log in online. A user simply opens the app, builds a pizza, hits the button, sees options for pizza shops, then completes the order. The pizza is delivered to their location. This app is clearly targeting millennials and generation Z--the hyper-connected, smartphone-attached generations that prefer to communicate electronically with as little effort as possible. In fact, the company was started by college students.

Perhaps because the company was created and is run by the very generation it is trying to reach most, Push for Pizza's branding is spot-on in knowing with and connecting with its audience. A frequent tagline used is "Pizza is Bae." Bae is an acronym of endearment (meaning Before Anyone Else) that emerged just a few years ago and is used almost exclusively by 13- to 24-year-olds.

Push for Pizza uses similar lingo in its social media along with the type of humorous, hyperbolic imagery popular among millennials and gen Z, complete with hashtags and emojis.

For more examples, see Push for Pizza on Instagram.

What makes a brand work?

As we went through the overviews for all of our projects for the semester last night, it was clear that this class will test our skills in not only design but also our ability to communicate a concept and message consistently through branding. Since our first project is focused on branding specifically, I thought it would be a good way to start the blog talking about what makes a good brand “work.”

I feel like there are two sides – the nuts and bolts: beautiful, cohesive design that fits your organization’s style and tone and the emotional side: how you communicate to get people to connect and stay loyal to your product or service. To me, a brand is not what you tell the public you are – it’s how they perceive your work.  If you have ever read The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier/ taken Design-Business link/work in this field, you are probably familiar with the author’s concepts – here’s a slide share of the book’s main points. Super long but it illustrates his this idea in the first few slides and talks about playing the right/left brain to create a charismatic brand and the importance of creating a “tribe.”  Anyhow, with everything so connected now, how third parties talk about you makes or breaks your brand in my mind. So how do you think companies get it right?

In addition to of course the visual side, as a designer how could I not say that, my vote is identification (ala Kenneth Burke if we are going to get technical) when it comes to persuading an audience to take stock in your brand. The idea that, when persuasion occurs,   "one party must 'identify' with another; the one who becomes persuaded sees that one party is like another in some way." You can have an amazing design, but if your message isn't on point it could be a big flop. 

I think this concept is a great determining factor in the success of a brand -- getting people to identify with your organization through design, words and ideas, a style/mission that reflects their personality, etc.  How do they see themselves in what you are selling or offering? How does using/wearing/experiencing your product or service make them feel?  Tell a story about who they are to the world via using your product/service/wearing your clothes, etc. Without getting all scholarly journal article on us, this post on Business Today discusses the idea of brand identification.

What’s your opinion? Here’s a list of Forbes top 100 brands– how do you think some of these brands (or others – plenty of great small, local businesses out here) identify with their audiences successfully through design/messaging? What else do you think makes a successful brand work? How does great design make an impact on a brand?