The practice of branding is a distillation of activities that were first developed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as marketing, advertising, public relations, graphic design (once called commercial art), and corporate identity. These intertwined areas deal with sales, recognition, reputation, customer loyalty, and, last but not least, visual aesthetics. Because these areas all converge on one thing—a brand—and their purpose is to build and promote that brand, they can all be considered aspects of a unified field: branding.

What relationships between branding and these other practices have evolved over the last 20 years? Which should lead the others in the future?

Marketing has traditionally been guided by the "four Ps," being product, place, promotion, and price. In his book Married to the Brand, William J. McEwen adds a fifth— people. A company's people need to believe in the brand in order to be able to convey it convincingly to customers. These are the essential elements that every brand manager needs to master in order for a brand to be successful.

Historically, advertising was seen as the leading tool for brand building, but by the start of the twenty-first century, the power of traditional advertising began to decline. While still useful for fashioning an image, telling stories, and maintaining awareness, advertising has limited power to launch a new brand or communicate change in a brand. Thanks to its own ubiquity and intensity, advertising is simply tuned out by large numbers of people and so has difficulty reaching many types of customers.

Many critics of advertising look at how sellers use ad campaigns to control what customers perceive, and rightly point to a loss in advertising credibility. But branding fulfills a broader role by trying to control what customers actually receive, and by taking into account customers' feedback and definitions of brand meaning.

Public relations (PR) is now a preferred means of getting initial publicity for a new product, handling a crisis, or repositioning a brand. PR agencies use various methods to get the word out, mostly by staging events and feeding stories about a client's offerings to the media, which then carry them to the public. PR firms pride themselves on acting invisibly: their message is more effective if the public thinks it comes from an impartial source, such as the nightly news, rather than from an advertiser.

Graphic design, which has long had a defining voice in brand identity, offers more than the decorative trappings or superficial aesthetics of a brand. By bringing creative thinking to bear in solving challenges; by staying on top of fashions and aesthetic trends; and by integrating left-brain and right-brain insights into one solution, with the benefit of long experience, graphic designers are often better positioned than their counterparts in advertising, PR, or marketing to determine how appearances and perceptions can make a brand relevant and compelling, and to present a real solution to abstract questions.

When a great design becomes the icon of an era, the design becomes a brand itself. This has happened with several popular cars. The New Beetle and New Mini are examples of carmakers seeking to capitalize on the brand appeal of a particular model by reviving its design. (Interestingly, the New Mini was produced by BMW rather than its original maker, but BMW smartly made no attempt to link the little car to the BMW brand.)

Package design performs a vital supporting role. Sometimes, as with the BP oilcan, it becomes the product, more often packaging serves as a handy container and store sign saying, "Buy me," but most of all, a package has to tell the customer what to expect: it has to convey the brand promise, not just in words and pictures, but also through the subtle suggestion of shape, function, materials, colors, typeface, and graphics. Design is also a key element of advertising, and of collateral material such as gift items and clothing. A marketing campaign must maintain a visual consistency across all advertising media—web, print, TV, outdoor— while also keeping a clear relationship to the product and its package design (which usually exist prior to the campaign).

Ad designs change more rapidly than product or package designs: each marketing campaign cycle is new and evolves to meet new expectations. This difference in the speeds at which the designs of a brand change can present big challenges to the brand manager, who must keep the brand meaningful and coherent.

Package design 

Design development can take a long time. Testing is often done to determine whether the designer's insights and hunches are borne out by contact with real customers in lifelike situations. When MinaleTattersfield were commissioned by BP in the 1980s to design a new plastic oil container, the process lasted six years.

The result was a good example of how a package can be more important than the product. Motor oil is fairly generic. I doubt if customers can tell by examining it whether it's the right one for their car; labeling has to guide them. Motor oil is also rather messy, so a package has to ensure that the customer won't come into contact with the product. With its clever drip-proof, drop-proof, leak-proof, and flameproof design, as well as its strong brand identity, Minale's new BP oil container revolutionized the industry and immediately became the standard. The package had become the product. Most of the other oil companies soon copied it, but BP was ahead of the pack and the brand gained a lasting benefit from being a leader—six years well spent.

Product design 

Money is the other thing, besides time, needed to achieve great design. Gillette invested around US$700 million on researching and developing the Mach3 razor, and hundreds of millions more in marketing it. Worthwhile? The Mach3 was popular and hugely profitable, earning Gillette hundreds of millions in worldwide sales during the years when it was their top-of-the-line razor. Any man who opened a packet of new blades and wondered how a few slivers of steel and plastic could cost so much gained an understanding of the role played by design and branding in product success. The Mach3's appearance, and the way it works, didn't happen by accident: it is a $700-million-dollar razor.

Regards,
Andrew Faridani

Every brand needs to tell a story. People love a great story, and the best storytellers have an uncanny ability to forge a personal, emotional bond with their audience. The experience of enjoying a good story is a powerful one that pulls in all of our senses and immerses us so that we feel as if we ourselves are actually living the story.

Many brand practitioners say they focus on branding the experience of using a service or product. Experience is the best way to appreciate something; the experience is usually the most memorable aspect of each thing we buy.

Scott Bedbury, in his book A New Brand World, points out a fundamental paradox of branding: as competing products in a category become more alike in their design and basic functions, all that differentiates them is the superficial attributes that are trivial to the object's purpose. These are, in fact, the stories that tie us emotionally to the brand.

When you rent a car, you can be confident that you will know how to drive it, even though you've never sat at the wheel of that make or model in your life. All cars are designed to be familiar; all the controls sit more or less in the same place and work the same way. So what distinguishes one car brand from another? Style, luxury, little extras—things that make little difference to the function of getting from A to B.

Few of the decisions we make in life are strictly the result of rationally weighing up the pros and cons. More often—whether or not we are aware of it or admit it—emotions drive our behavior, including our buying.

Bernd Schmidt, one of the first advocates of the concept of "experiential marketing," says all our purchase decisions are essentially made in order to engage in a certain experience. The best brands, according to Schmidt, are those that communicate their promise of a unique experience in a clear and compelling way.

Why does all the "soft stuff"—stories, emotions, and experience—matter? The left half of our brain is the rational half. It adds up facts, compares prices, and dutifully ranks the pros and cons. The right half of our brain is the intuitive half: it desires something because it's fun, because our friends have one, because it'll look terrific. Nowadays, successful brands use every means available to create-an emotional, story-based experience: retail environments, web experience, brand ambassadors, word-of-mouth campaigns. These work for the simple reason that they appeal to our right brain.

Sometimes the culprit is a small detail, almost an afterthought. Since brands with a long tradition seem to generate greater loyalty, many brands pretend they've been around—and loved—for years in their place of origin. Stella Artois was first brewed in 1926, but its label says "Anno 1366" in small letters. Sounds impressive, but in reality, the only thing dating that far back is a deed on a certain house in Leuven, Belgium, which later happened to hold a brewery. There is nothing of Stella Artois that dates back to the fourteenth century.

Likewise, the restaurant chain Red Lobster, which originated in Florida, decided to strengthen its brand by telling customers it originated in Maine, which is well known for its many lobsters. However, there isn't a Red Lobster restaurant within several hundred miles of Maine.

Sometimes, the "lie" is a big one. When Bailey's cream liqueur was created in the early 1970s, its producers fabricated an image of Irish tradition, despite the fact that the product is not from Ireland and had no tradition whatsoever. After the drink caught on, the brand story was refined to give it a sexier appeal.

What each of these and many other brand stories—truthful or not—have in common is that they are credible, and they somehow make the brand more attractive. Customers accept them as part of the bargain: I'll pay more for your brand, and you'll let me take part in a tale.

Regards,

Andrew Faridani

Cars, furniture, computers, appliances like washing machines or TVs, jewelry, sports equipment, and many other items fall under the category of what economists call durable goods—things that are meant to last. It's also fair to consider some business-to-business categories, such as construction equipment, under this rubric. What these items all have in common, from a branding perspective, is that because they represent a bigger purchase, customers tend to consider their options more deliberately, and choose more rationally than emotionally. However, that doesn't mean the brand isn't important. On the contrary, it is more important because more is at stake in creating the right perception of value.

The branding of cars is probably more scientific than that for any other item, simply because there is so much at stake. Cars are the second most expensive thing most people buy in their lives (after their house), and car companies stand to earn (or lose) billions of dollars a year depending on the success of their brand.

Clotaire Rapaille, the Swiss-American anthropologist and expert on brands, believes each culture has what he terms a "code" for the things they buy. The American code for automobiles, he says, is identity. Americans want to be known by what they drive. For them, a car is not just a useful gadget for getting from A to B; it is an expression of their selves.

Rapaille's ideas have been very influential on the design and styling of a generation of cars in North America. Why do enormous, inefficient Hummers sell so well? Americans like to feel dominant. When you drive one, you feel on top of the world.

Germans, on the other hand, identify cars with engineering. They like cars that are well made, fast, safe, and long-lasting. The slogan Vorsprung durch Technik—which, loosely translated, means "progress through technology"—resonates with a European customer, but not an American one.

In Rapaille's thinking, a specific car can also have its own code. For example, in Americans' minds, Jeep is associated with the idea of a horse. It'll go anywhere. Rapaille recommended changing the Jeep's headlights from square to round to reinforce this association, and American advertising successfully pushed the idea of a Jeep as a "go-anywhere" vehicle. In Europe, on the other hand, Jeeps have a close cultural association with liberation. Chrysler's marketing of Jeeps in France and Germany played up the symbolism of freedom.

Car companies seem to spend the lion's share of their energy staying up-to-date, constantly revising styling, adding options, and tweaking performance. Nevertheless, when it comes to branding, many automakers strive for a traditional look. This can be seen in cars' logos, some of which date back nearly a century. A surprising number of car logos incorporate some kind of heraldic symbolism.

Many car manufacturers give their advertising agencies and graphic designers very precise instructions regarding how to depict their cars in ads, web pages, brochures, and PR materials. The brand image depends on the car being perceived in a certain way, so things like the angle of photography are carefully specified. This ensures that the car won't look too long or too short, too fat or too small. Of course, most drivers want the actual experience of driving a vehicle before they buy it, but the marketing materials can get a buyer interested and put them in the desired frame of mind before they open the door and sit behind the wheel.

Regards,

Andrew Faridani

The marketing of computers and consumer electronics has gone through a similar development to the marketing of soap, but in much less time—three decades as opposed to more than ten.

When computers and other advanced electronics were first introduced as consumer goods, around 1970, magazine ads touted basic capabilities. "This gadget can do this." (As they were a novelty, this was presumably reason enough to want to buy them.) Later ads gave the message, " You can do this because this gadget can do this." (One step up the ladder, from feature to benefit.) Later still, the message became "Your life/work/fun will be fantastic if you buy this gadget." (The final stage in the hierarchy of needs: self-actualization.)

Even after establishing a lifestyle (or workstyle) benefit, advertising for computers and electronics still emphasizes technical specifications, whereas the advertising for soaps rests firmly with lifestyle. Presumably, this is because the audience for these devices cares more about their technical capabilities than the audience for soap cares about its constituents.

Building a luxury brand is the ultimate exercise in positioning. A luxury product needs to be more than just top-quality and well designed. It needs to be offered in the right venue, by the right sort of person, for the right price, which means high enough to be exclusive.

The trick of branding a plentiful commodity such as diamonds—convincing people to pay a high price for a rock of no particular rarity or worth, and then to attach sentimental value to it—surely qualifies as one of the greatest positioning successes of all time. Starting in the 1940s, De Beers and its partners managed to convince Hollywood screenwriters to write scenes into their movies in which leading men chose a diamond engagement ring for their leading ladies, cementing the association between diamonds and romantic commitment in the public mind. Strangely though, it is only in the twenty-first century that diamond retailers such as Swarovsky and Zales have begun to build their own brands. And, as awareness of so-called conflict diamonds has made buyers more concerned about who profits from the diamond trade, origin branding for diamonds is also becoming important, with "safe" countries like Canada etching miniature logos on the sides of diamonds they export.

Regards,

Andrew Faridani