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INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
What a Brand Isn't
Let's start with a clean slate. If we wipe away some of the
misconceptions about brand, we can make more room for its
truths.
Ready?
First of all, a brand is not a logo. The term LOGO is short for
LOGOTYPE, designspeak for a trademark made from a customlettered
word (LOGOS is Greek for WORD). The term logo caught on with people
because it sounds cool, but what people really mean is a trademark,
whether the trademark is a logo, symbol, monogram, emblem, or other
graphic device. IBM uses a monogram, for example, while Nike uses a
symbol. Both are trademarks, but neither are logos. Clear? What
really matters here is that a logo, or any other kind of trademark,
is not the brand itself. It's merely a symbol for it.
Second, a brand is not a corporate identity system. An identity
system is a 20thcentury construct for controlling the use of
trademarks and tradedress elements on company publications,
advertisements, stationery, vehicles, signage, and so on. Fifty
years ago, lithography was the communication technology du jour;
identity manuals were designed to dictate the sizes, colors,
spacing, and architecture of the printed page. Today there's still
a need for identity manuals and the visual consistency they bring.
But consistency alone does not create a brand.
Finally, a brand is not a product. Marketing people often talk
about managing their brands, but what they usually mean is managing
their products, or the sales, distribution, and quality thereof. To
manage a brand is to manage something much less tangiblean aura,
an invisible layer of meaning that surrounds the product.
So what exactly is a brand?
A brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, service, or
company. It's a GUT FEELING because we're all emotional, intuitive
beings, despite our best efforts to be rational. It's a PERSON'S
gut feeling, because in the end the brand is defined by
individuals, not by companies, markets, or the socalled general
public. Each person creates his or her own version of it. While
companies can't control this process, they can influence it by
communicating the qualities that make this product different than
that product. When enough individuals arrive at the same gut
feeling, a company can be said to have a brand. In other words, a
brand is not what YOU say it is. It's what THEY say it is. . A
brand is a kind of Platonic ideala concept shared by society to
identify a specific class of things. To use Plato's example,
whenever we hear the word "horse" we visualize a majestic creature
with four legs, a long tail, and a mane falling over a muscular
neck, an impression of power and grace, and the knowledge that a
person can ride long distances on its back. Individual horses may
differ, but in our minds we still recognize their common
"horseness." Looked at from the other side of the equation, when we
add up the parts that make a horse, the total is distinctive enough
so that we think HORSE, not COW or Bicycle.
A brand, like Plato's horse, is an approximate yet
distinctunderstanding of a product, service, or company. To
compare a brand with its competitors, we only need to know what
makes it different. Brand management is the management of
differences, not as they exist on data sheets, but as they exist in
the minds of people.
Why is Brand Suddenly Hot?
The idea of brand has been around for at least 5,000 years. So
why is it such a big deal now?
Because as our society has moved from an economy of mass
production to an economy of mass customization, our purchasing
choices have multiplied. We've become informationrich and timepoor.
As a result, our old method of judging productsby comparing
features and benefitsno longer works. The situation is exacerbated
by competitors who copy each others' features as soon as they're
introduced, and by advances in manufacturing that make quality
issues moot.
Today we base our choices more on symbolic attributes. What does
the product look like? Where is it being sold? What kind of people
buy it? Which "tribe" will I be joining if I buy it? What does the
cost say about its desirability? What are other people saying about
it? And finally, who makes it? Because if I can trust the maker, I
can buy it now and worry about it later. The degree of trust I feel
towards the product, rather than an assessment of it's features and
benefits, will determine whether I'll buy this product or that
product.
InVeriSign We Trust
The history of American currency provides a good demonstration
of how trust relates to branding. After the Revolutionary War, when
paper money was reduced to a fortieth of its previous value, gold
and silver were the only types of currency people could trust. It
was nearly a hundred years before people were willing to accept
Silver Certificates as a substitute for the real thing, even though
the new bills were backed by metal reserves. It took another
hundred years before we were ready to accept Federal Reserve Notes
as a substitute for Silver Certificates. These weren't backed by
reserves at all, but by pure faith in the brand called America. Now
we've learned to trust in a system of credit cards for a large
percentage of our transactions. Will we soon be ready to accept
international cybercurrency as an improvement on credit cards?
Sure, if we can trust it.
Trust creation is a fundamental goal of brand design. The
complex flourishes and intricate images employed in the design of
the Silver Certificate were no accidentthey were conscious
attempts to encourage trust in what was little more than a symbol
for money.
The concept of trust is equally important when we trade our
currencywhether metal, paper, plastic, or cyberfor goods and
services. Trust is the ultimate shortcut to a buying decision, and
the bedrock of modern branding.
What's Your Brand Worth?
Can you place a dollar value on your company's brand? You can
certainly try, and for some companies the estimates are
astonishing. The brand consultancy Interbrand routinely publishes a
list of the top 100 global brands by valuation. The leader today is
CocaCola with a brand worth of nearly $70 billion, which accounts
for more than 60% of its market capitalization. Halfway down the
list is Xerox with a brand valuation of $6 billiona whopping 93%
of its market cap.
If a company's brand value is such a large part of its assets,
why isn't it listed on the balance sheet? Good question. But while
companies ponder this, they're already using brand values as tools
to obtain financing, put a price on licensing deals, evaluate
mergers and acquisitions, assess damages in litigation cases, and
justify the price of their stock.
There's an old saying in business, "What gets measured gets
done." As brands become more measurable, companies are focusing on
ways to increase their value.
One way is to follow the example of currency: Use design to
encourage trust.
Brand Happens
So far, the eyeopening valuations on Interbrand's list have
happened as much by chance as by design. While the figures
undoubtedly represent a huge investment in time, energy, money, and
study, they're mostly a side effect of caring more about sales,
service, quality, marketing, and the myriad other things that
occupy a business. For most of us, brand happens while we're doing
something else.
But what if you could isolate brand from those other endeavors?
What if you could study it, measure it, manage it, and influence
it, rather than just let it happen?
This is precisely what companies are trying to do. They're
appointing brand managers, who are building brand departments,
which are populated by brand strategists, who are armed with brand
research. What they're discovering, however, is that it takes more
than strategy to build a brand. It takes strategy and creativity
together.
Which brings us to the premise of this book.
The Brand Gap
Strategy and creativity, in most companies, are separated by a
milewide chasm. On one side are the strategists and marketing
people who favor leftbrain thinkinganalytical, logical, linear,
concrete, numerical, verbal. On the other side are the designers
and creative people who favor rightbrain thinkingintuitive,
emotional, spatial, visual, physical.
Unfortunately, the left brain doesn't always know what the right
brain is doing. Whenever there's a rift between strategy and
creativitybetween logic and magicthere's a brand gap. It can
cause a brilliant strategy to fail where it counts most, at the
point of contact with the customer, or it can doom a bold creative
initiative before it's even launched, way back at the planning
stage.
The gulf between strategy and creativity can divide a company
from its customers so completely that no significant communication
passes between them. For the customer, it can be like trying to
listen to a stateoftheart radio through incompatible speakers: The
signal comes in strong, but the sounds are unintelligible.
Introducing the Charismatic Brand
There are two ways to look at the brand gap: 1) it creates a
natural barrier to communication, and 2) it creates a natural
barrier to competition. Companies who learn how to bridge the gap
have a tremendous advantage over those who don't. When brand
communication comes through intactcrystal clear and potentit goes
straight into people's brains without distortion, noise, or the
need to think too much about it. It shrinks the "psychic distance"
between companies and their constituents so that a relationship can
begin to develop. These gapcrossing, distanceshrinking messages are
the building blocks of a charismatic brand.
You can tell which brands are charismatic, because they're a
constant topic in the cultural conversation. Brands such as
CocaCola, Apple, Nike, IBM, Virgin, IKEA, BMW, and Disney have
become modern icons because they stand for things that people
wanti.e., joy, intelligence, strength, success, comfort, style,
motherly love, and imagination. Smaller brands can also be
charismatic. Companies such as John Deere, Google, Cisco, Viking,
Palm, Tupperware, and Trane all exert a magnetic influence over
their audiences. When an AC contractor reads the tagline, "It's
hard to stop a Trane," he thinks, "Damn straight."
A charismatic brand can be defined as any product, service, or
company for which people believe there's no substitute. Not
surprisingly, charismatic brands often claim the dominant position
in their categories, with market shares of 50% or higher. They also
tend to command the highest price premiumsup to 40% more than
generic products or services. And, most important, they're the
least likely to fall victim to commoditization.
Among the hallmarks of a charismatic brand are a clear
competitive stance, a sense of rectitude, and a dedication to
aesthetics. Why aesthetics? Because it's the language of feeling,
and, in a society that's informationrich and timepoor, people value
feeling more than information.
Aesthetics is so powerful that it can turn a commodity into a
premium product. Don't believe me? Look at Morton. Ordinary table
salt is the ultimate commodityunless it has a little girl on the
package.
There are no dull products, only dull brands. Any brand, backed
by enough courage and imagination, can become a charismatic brand.
But first you need to master the five disciplines of branding.
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