Brand Personalities

Every brand evokes a particular emotion as a result of their corporate-identities. There are unemotional brands such as Kmart or Compaq, and emotional brands such as Wal-Mart or Apple; the difference between the two is the vision, visualization, and emotional connection the latter have been able to convey to the world.

From “Dictated” to “Emotionally Connected”, corporate-identity programs are the expression of a corporation’s culture, personality, and the products or services it has to offer - the very symbol and signature of the values that should inspire trust with consumers, employees, clients, suppliers, and the financial community. Logos and their colors - whether expressed as symbols (like Nike), logotypes (like FedEx), or a combination of both (Like AT&T) - have been an essential part of all major branding strategies since the center of the last century. Coca-Cola, IBM, and Mercedes are samples of successful identity programs that have withstood the test of time. Coca-Cola’s particular typographic script and powerful red color are unmistakable and memorable; the IBM logo - in its distinct blue - is recognizable worldwide; Mercedes’ three-pointed, encircled star logo is not only seen as a guarantee of superior engineering, but it acts as a symbol mark of cachet value of the automobiles and translates easily to a sign of excellent taste and status for the cars’ owner.

Powerful logo identities like these make advertising and public relations programs more effective by becoming a visual shorthand for the meanings attached to them and thereby influencing consumers to be receptive to a company’s message. Products bearing the logo of a well-known, high-quality corporation benefit from the perception that they are also of superior quality. The products’ appeal to the consumer is further enhanced by the comfort level that is evoked from a brand which the consumer is already familiar with. Logos can be very memorable and can take on many meanings. A logo by itself is not necessarily a communication tool, but it can most definitely act as a symbol of what a company represents and the resulting consumer perceptions. As the flag of a corporation, a logo is its most vital visual asset furthermore as a catalyst for good and bad feelings and thus must be managed with intelligent care. Today, this intelligent care means becoming more flexible and far-reaching.

Corporate identity programs in the new economy are far more vivid and effective if the identity has integrated elements such as: social sensitivity, cultural relevance, and an attempt to find a real connection point with people. Creative solutions are necessary to help find this combined and crucial “human factor”. A logo is a very visible aspect of a company, and thus should be humanized to introduce a sense of heart and familiarity. Without any humanization, it can give off an artificial and disingenuous feeling.

In order to reflect a changing business environment, corporate-identity programs have evolved over time from an approach based solely on the concepts of visibility and impact, to one based on the concept of emotional contact with consumers founded on interaction and dialogue. As we have been moving into this consumer-driven economy, corporate identities have begun to expand the expression of their character, becoming more flexible and dynamic in order to bring levels of added meaning and soul to consumer’s perceptions of them. Corporate identities are transforming from “dictated” visual identities to the “personal” style of the present and future. To balance a corporate-identity message today, it is also important to consider the power of its emotional message within the context of the strength of the visual message. Just as the emotional meaning of a brand evolves from dictated to personal, the graphic expression of the brand needs to evolve from “impact” to “contact”. Both aspects need to be managed to build the proper message. The dictated and impact models connote a more passive consumer stance than the newer personal and contact models do, which imply a closer, even bilateral connection. Indeed, logos are now being designed specifically to bridge the gap between corporations and people, and these “connected”, branded logo designs can help to better define and communicate the desired personality of the company.

In conclusion, understanding your consumer market is integral to choosing the proper corporate-identity. Using your identity, your brand is able to accurately form a visual style to market to your intended audience. A properly formed style is able to create an unmistakable and memorable brand in the eyes of your audience.

Branding Adaptation for a Modern World

The innovation of technology has progressed at blinding speeds in recent years - the everyday home phone became the supercomputer in your pocket, and an expensive and bulky desktop became the laptop became the paper-thin tablet capable of connecting us to anywhere, anytime - and it’s only getting faster. In an era where instant and open sharing of information is commonplace for nearly everyone in the world - on platforms ranging from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter - brands are contending with new challenges trying to communicate with consumers.

The modern brand is not simply a logo, a product or a promise anymore; but the collective whole of the perceptions, emotions, and projections that people place upon these elements, and the organization from which they originate. The emergence of powerful peer-to-peer networks allows individuals to share their brand experiences in real time and broadcast them to their peers without being filtered or censored. These networks allow consumers to tug back the curtain from the “great and powerful Oz” to reveal that brands don’t always have consumers’ best interests in mind.

There is a long history of skepticism about businesses’ ultimate goals - just consider the criticism volleyed at companies involved in the “military-industrial complex”, or the books The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. But the accessible, democratic forum of the internet is unlike any other medium, and it plays into the resistance we have to large, faceless institutions whose motives seem to shift as often as the waves of the ocean. We seem inextricably drawn to trust our fellow consumer; we have more faith in each other and less in brands. This trust factor, and the fact that technology levels the media playing field, has resulted in a situation where brand and consumer are engaged in a global shouting match. The contemporary day and age is a period of disruption: A brand can no longer simply rely on its long-standing heritage to guarantee business success - the rabble has much to say about particular products and company policies alike. Brands have had to adapt to this landscape by either fighting the noise or by employing a strategy of embracing or even joining in with the new dialogue. But simply participating in the conversation doesn’t mean consumers will talk back to you. In order to truly engage existing and potential audiences, many businesses have realized much more is necessary.

In the shift from mass-marketing to consumer segmentation in the 1960s, brands sought to divide the marketplace into manageable niches in the hopes that they could reach specific demographic segments with powerfully targeted messaging. And while that may have proven powerful in a pre-internet world, the new paradigm of the twenty-first century, the collective entity of the buying public is not so easily divided. This new informed public is a living, breathing organism populated by humans, which means it is messy, unpredictable and in a constant state of evolution. In order to truly prevail in their missions, in order to truly relate to modern consumers, brands must embrace the messiness. They must leave space for the consumer to not only be a part of the conversation, but even be a lively participant within the very messaging that brands have tried to control throughout history of consumption. By adapting to the current new model, successful brands are empowering their community of loyalists not only to amplify the brand message, but to do so on their own terms.

Obama ‘08 Political Campaign

Few events crystallize the very notion of building loyalist communities like an election. The 2008 U.S. presidential election saw new tactics employed - centered on the utilization of social media - to reach and motivate the bulk of the state to vote the first African-American president into the White House. In some ways, Barack Obama’s personal engagement together with his constituents can best be described as a populist technique right out of the Reagan or Roosevelt playbook, but with one important distinction: Whereas radio and television allowed former presidents to deliver only a monologue to masses, modern technology allowed Obama to be an active participant in the conversation among them.

By focusing on crystal clear, differentiated messaging and deploying a design system with a level of consistency that defied the expectations of even the most experienced of design practitioners, the Obama ‘08 campaign established itself together with the foremost iconic brands of the early twenty-first century. And served as a living case study as to how to successfully navigate a modern information world, and capture the attention of your audience, and even those outside of it. At the heart of the brand was a universal icon, a simple logo in the shape of an O: open, shining and patriotic; Obama’s vision of America for all Americans. Crafted by the designer Sol Sender to be a symbol of unity, the logo avoided the traditional red/blue state rhetoric inherent in most election graphics, instead expressing all the colors of the American flag. Also doing away with primary typographic-centered designs of campaigns past, the Obama ‘08 identity placed the graphic icon at center stage. It reinforced the notion of Obama as the human icon that people could believe in, no matter their age, race or gender. The logo projected the values mirrored through the broad range of interpretations utilized throughout the campaign. The gay community adopted the symbol to create web banners that read “Obama Pride” and featured the full-spectrum rainbow in place of the symbol’s red-and-white stripes. “Women for Obama” transformed the outer O into the Venus symbol.

While the O mark served as the visual anchor for the campaign, the identity system’s true engaging power can be attributed to its “ownability”. Using a sophisticated combination of metaphor and recognizable iconography to modify the mark, the campaign was able to establish direct associations with many groups within the population; even those outside it’s inherent audience. This allowed the identity system to simultaneously project and absorb different narratives, all involving the candidate: Obama. These were inserted into various campaign signs, web banners, and other materials that correlated to different subsets of Obama’s constituents among the fifty states and U.S. territories.

The campaign was an innovation in community engagement that still serves as a model to brands today. By utilizing social media platforms such as Facebook, MySpace, Youtube, LinkedIn, Twitter as well as text messaging, websites, email blasts, and other means of marketing, the campaign effectively disseminated information directly to supporters and promoters online - and allowed them to make the message, and the cause, their own. As brand strategist Marc Gobe observed, “The technology put in place by the Obama campaign and the programs made available to the volunteers helped create a movement because the actors had the freedom to act and [they had] the tools to operate and subsequently impact the community”.

While one memorable bit of evidence of this strategy is Shepard Fairey’s “Hope” poster, the campaign saw the O logo appropriated in almost every conceivable way, from stickers and signs to icing atop cupcakes at fund-raising bake sales. By allowing supporters to organize in essentially any way they saw fit, the Obama campaign was not only granting power to the people, but was, in fact, powered by the people.

In conclusion, the developing technologies available to us have shaped a new world for everyone, and long-standing practices in marketing are now starting to show their age. In this new era, to make your mark as a brand is to understand that the most powerful tool in your arsenal, are the very people that make you who you are. The more relatable your message, the more freedom granted to your consumer to make that message their own, the more effective that tool is.

Works Cited 6 Sinclair, Upton. “The Jungle.” Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Jungle-novel-by-Sinclair. Carson, Rachel, 1907-1964. Silent Spring. Boston :Houghton Mifflin, 2002. The wonderful Wizard of Oz . Chicago ; New York: G.M. Hill Co., 1900, 1900.