Brands aren’t what they used to be.
Back when we had fewer choices and experienced change at a slower pace, people had more time to form loyalties to the products and services they used.
Now, in our everyday real and virtual landscape of continually emerging and merging and morphing , and vanishing , products and companies, it’s a whole lot harder to capture and hold our attention, much less convince us to care.
In the new building of brands, packaging and logos and other time-honored elements still have their place. But to create strong, high-speed emotional connections, we’ve found a need to go deeper.
For us, that means looking at brands as stories. While business strategy will always drive brand strategy, by thinking of brands as stories, we’re able to keep their individual, human, compelling qualities at the forefront.
– A Brand Is A Story
For the most part, the story of a brand is told in the marketplace , in words, pictures and graphics. It is told through the media of packages, brochures, ads, commercials and Web sites.
The story can also be told through employees, and how they interact with their customers. It can be told through the music playing in the background. It can even be told by the design of a building or an interior space. Ultimately, however, the story is told through the products and services these other tools support.
A good story is believable. It’s memorable. It’s engaging. And it appeals to our emotions and relates to our experience. A good story is what transforms the ordinary purchase of goods into a shopping experience.
Will a good story compel us to buy a product or service? On occasion. How else do you explain certain irresistible impulse buys? More to the point, a good story will help us choose one product or service over another. Because we can relate to it better, we see more clearly how it fits with who we are or who we wish to be.
When we believe it more readily, it becomes more authentic and valid. When a story stands out in our minds, we simply enjoy it for its own sake.
Just like every good story, strong brands share a few things in common: a clear point of difference in the marketplace, a consistent point of view across a range of products and communications, and a compelling emotional appeal to a given audience.
By thinking of brands as stories, with characters and backgrounds and plot points and short, clearly defined premises, we achieve these fundamental branding goals.
– Stories Develop Brand Strategy
Clients, of course, aren’t ultimately looking for stories. They’re looking for tools to help achieve business objectives. And that, in the end, is the purpose of brand development. Our recent experience provides several examples:
o A startup manufacturer of communications peripherals developed a powerful brand story and image to hold its own against established brand leaders. By telling its story through packaging and point-of-purchase materials that emphasized the safety, comfort, and efficiency of its product, the company captured customers’ imagination as the leading innovator in its category.
o An enterprising manufacturer of life sciences research products used the power of its brand to support an aggressive acquisition strategy that ultimately led to the purchase of its largest competitor , a global sales powerhouse three times its size.
The company’s unmistakable personality and story of adventure and discovery on the frontiers of life science was so clear , and clearly defined , that it was able to integrate its former competitor’s brand into its own, without major turmoil in the marketplace, or Wall Street.
o An independent, family-run company tells a powerful story based on a tradition of craftsmanship and care to carve out a sustainable niche in an industry dominated by global conglomerates. By telling its story consistently across every ad, display and sell sheet, the company has built an unassailable perception of quality and value.
– Branded By Design
If the brand is a story, then design is the way the story is told: a process of creating, interpreting, selecting and organizing visual and verbal elements across a range of media , sometimes narrow, sometimes vast , to make sure the story hits home.
Design is composition. Design is delivery. Design lives at the crossroads of creative sensibility and critical intellect. Therefore, design is interpretive, and good designers are skillful interpreters of business and culture who bring sensibility, perspective, passion and even genius to the art of giving brands form.
Without design, the brand remains a blueprint , a plan for something not yet created. Design that is uninformed or uninspired risks leaving a brand unsatisfying, undistinguished or unbelievable. Good design imbues brands with credibility and the semblance of life. The very best design allows a brand to be told and retold again and again, and brings something new to each telling.
Ultimately, brand, story and design are inseparable: A brand will be told poorly, or it will be told well. Either way, it will be told.
Ball is a principal at Mires Design, a San Diego-based firm specializing in the development of brand identity and packaging.
