TapestryWorks have always argued for and emphasised the importance of distinctive brand identity in building successful brands. It makes complete sense in terms of the brain science and the importance of pattern recognition and the building of mental associations linked to emotional needs and context. And now the data is in! Read more »
There are many frameworks for developing brand identity, including prisms, onions, pyramids and a multitude of shapes and structures. In Brand esSense I use a simple framework of Why, What and How to think about the different touch points that communicate brand identity, and this is the framework that TapestryWorks use in our Brand esSense® workshops with clients, taking the ideas beyond touch points to consider all relevant elements of brand strategy and execution. This is a powerful and simple way to think about the most important truths of your brand and business.
“Turn up the signal, wipe out the noise” – Peter Gabriel, Signal to Noise
Successful marketing builds the physical and mental availability of a brand. Robert Woodruff, former Chairman of Coca-Cola once said that the brand should be “always within an arms reach of desire”. Coca-Cola does a great job of building physical distribution. How do brands build salience in customers’ minds? The key is to create a rich network of relevant associations with the brand and ensure that the brand’s signal is always heard above the noise of the marketplace. Read more »
Recent work by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA; Binet & Field, 2012) has reinforced the difficult truth that emotions are key to long-term brand success, outperforming the efficiency and profitability (ROI) of advertising which is rational, and even that which is a combination of rational and emotional (by 2 to 1). Their analysis does support that rational messaging can have strong short-term effects (eg promotional campaigns), but long-term effectiveness is very weak compared with campaigns that create an emotional connection (implicit or explicit) with target customers. Read more »
I’ve been intrigued reading about the J.C. Penney debacle. While I think there is a lesson to be learnt about the communication of promotions, I don’t believe the lesson is that simplicity does not work. In fact, J.C. Penney’s strategy of simplifying shopper decision making failed in two fundamental ways. Firstly, the communication of the new strategy was ineffective, making the store proposition more complicated rather than less. Secondly, in many other ways, J.C. Penney made shoppers’ lives more complicated by losing the focus of their brand identity and sending mixed messages to customers about what they stand for. Read more »
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.” – Salvador Dali
Salvador Dali epitomises the idea of disruptive imagination, combining elements of the Joker and Rebel archetypes. In a previous article we discussed the importance of the archetypes and how they relate to basic human motivations (link here). In the article, I cited Virgin as an example of a trickster brand, combining the fun and enjoyment of the Joker archetype with the rebellious values of its owner Richard Branson. I will discuss the Rebel archetype in the next post in this series. Read more »
