I ❤ NY – Reloaded

In 1977, during the deepest recession New York had seen in decades, the state launched what would turn out be one of the most successful “Place Branding” campaigns in history.

The campaign comissioned Milton Glaser, a graphic designer, to design a logo and he came up with the now iconic I❤NY image above. More than thirty years later the logo is still being used and is recognized around the world.

In 2008 a new I❤NY campaign was launched, run by legendary ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi. The relaunch includes different themes for the logo (see below, click for a larger version), one version for every season and so on.

The brand guidelines for the relaunch are available online and make for a very interesting read. Have a look and see examples on how not to use the brand, read about the brand’s history and learn the lyrics to the theme tune. It’s all there.

When it comes to the roll-out of such a campaign, a product like Brand Capital would help give access to all of the brand’s digital assets to whoever needs them. The brand guidelines can also be built into a user’s account in Brand Capital so that downloading a shopping-themed logo or a jingle for an answering machine becomes an easy, understandable, three-click process.

Internal branding

Making a successful brand starts within the organization. The values of your company, internally and externally, should be in sync. That is why getting your employees to represent your brand, is extremely important.

A few weeks ago I wrote about Kaupthing and the Icelandic banking crisis. Kaupthing actually used internal branding to encourage their employees, to emphasize on their superiority and how successful they were. Here you can see video that was made for the eyes of Kaupthing employees.

What do Martin Luther King, Albert Einstein, Mother Teresa and Neo (you know, The One in The Matrix) have in common with Kaupthing? I don’t know but looking at this comparison while listening to U2, I got to admit, I AM PSYCHED!

This video has similarities to the propaganda movies the Nazis used to promote their ideology. According to Goebbels:

“The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never escape from it”

If you replace the word propaganda with internal branding, and Goebbels with David Ogilvy this would be a great quote, a little excessive, but still great.

NHS Online Brand Guidelines are so spot on

Last year, while doing research and competitive analysis for online versions of brand guidelines, I came across the NHS Brand Guidelines site and I must say it is still one of my favorites.

It’s intuitive, easy to use and tackles the issue of representing guidelines for all the different sub-brands by reusing a lot of the content. For instance to logo guidelines are the same across all the different types of organisations while signage differs between National Organisations and treatment centres.

Reading through the copy, you get this strong message that it’s written by people who have been around the branding block a couple of times. There are clear, to the point guidelines. Dos and don’ts like the following:

Do:

• make sure you use the NHS logo consistently and correctly;
• only use original digital graphic files.

Don’t:

• alter the NHS logo in any way;
• embed the NHS logo in a line of text;
• use the NHS logo more than once on single sheet, unless on a graphic display.

… and the second link under tools and resources is this baby. The most popular destination of any brand site.

The only thing I would add to that site is a good file repository and download basket.

Our aim with Brand Capital is to supply you with the application, tools and guidelines to build something as intuitive as the NHS guidelines for your company.

Sign up now and get notified when we launch.

Does the Apple logo you shaved on the back of your head comply with the official brand guidelines?

In a previous blog post, Agnar discussed celebrity brand ambassadors. Another kind of brand ambassador however is the grassroots volunteer: The passionate user who constantly sings praises for a brand they love.

When Steve Jobs founded Next Computers, before rejoining Apple, he had the branding legend Paul Rand (who designed the IBM logo among others) design the Next brand and provide the company with its brand guidelines. The brand identity cost $100,000 and was delivered complete with a 100-page guideline brochure. There is little doubt that the brand guidelines for today’s Apple are even meatier.

One application of the Apple brand we doubt is covered in the brand guidelines however, is shaving the logo on the back of a brand ambassador’s head. Or applying the brand as a tattoo.

You know what I’m going to say next, don’t you? Although tattoos and hairdos will probably not be set as default Brand Capital “toolboxes” as we’re calling them, Brand Capital is easy to customize. With Brand Capital, you can make sure that brand ambassadors, celebrity or otherwise, are complying with the brand guidelines when they decide their loyalty is undying and they invest in a tattoo – with your logo.

Sonic branding

Even before I did work for Nokia I was amazed by the free marketing done by all those Nokia owners turning on their phones the moment a plane landed. You know the tune, it’s ringing in your head now.

The Nokia tune is played more often than the Coca Cola tune and the Birthday song combined (or there abouts). Just take every Nokia phone out there, assume that at least 20% don’t change the default ring tone and multiply that with the number of calls. Whola, the most played sonic branding in the world…

This got me thinking that Apple might have missed a trick by not incorporating the famous boot up sound that they have on the computers into the iPhone as well. Would that classify as a big branding blunder?

Sonic branding takes many shapes and forms and a good friend of mine studying this topic informed my that for instance Audi takes great care to design every sound in the car. Including the closing of doors, clicks of buttons and swipes of wind screens. It all helps building that feeling of quality and enhances the brand experience.

Have you ever wondered how many takes are required and how much it costs to get that Tssschhh sound just right for a Coke advert? I also wonder if the old classic Christmas song is still played outside Iceland :p

Managing a sonic brand for your average company might just include audio files created as background music for video presentations, background music for telephone service or jingles for radio advertising.

Brand Capital will support all major audio formats and help you organize and redistribute those files where needed.

Please, sir, I want some more

In John De Bello’s classic movie “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” from 1978 a voice on the radio is advertising beer: “Schmidt – Because you’re never too drunk to ask for more!”

In a sense this joke captures the essence of why companies care about brands.

When you have a strong brand, your customers can

• Discover you
• Recommend you to others
• Ask for more

In fact, as we mentioned in an earlier post, the first ever registered trademark in Britain was for a beer brand: The Bass Ale Red Triangle. Registering the Red Triangle provided the brand with legal protection. Bass knew that if customers would see the Bass Red Triangle on any pub sign or bottle of beer, that triangle was in effect the company’s promise of a certain experience for the customer.

These days it’s not just signs on pubs and labels on beer bottles. And it’s not just the logo. To apply a brand today a company needs a way to consistently apply any part of their identity wherever their audience is. This could be a logo on a coffee mug, a template for a PowerPoint presentation or animations for digital banners. Or even a radio commercial in a remake of a classic B-movie.

Branding might be the answer to the Icelandic banking crisis

After the collapse of the Icelandic financial system it was vital to restructure the country’s banks quickly to maintain basic banking services. New banks emerged from the old ones, and over the next couple of months they should be able to function like business as usual. But will they be able to grow? If the publicly owned banks ever plan on getting new investors and rebuild their reputation, it is essential that they build a brand from scratch. Let’s take Kaupthing as an example; the bank was alleged to have lent millions to its owners. It was one of the fastest growing banks in the world and over night the bank – and the brand – was ruined.

Kaupthing Bank is now known as The New Kaupthing bank. I’m not sure that the connection with the old brand is a good idea, because you immediately associate it with something bad. But there is an opportunity in every problem. This might be the time for ad or branding agencies to show what they are made of. If they are able to help make a brand that regains the trust of customers and lenders, they might even save the Icelandic banking system.

They say your brand is your company’s most valuable asset. If that is true, Kaupthing, or the other Icelandic banks for that matter, aren’t worth a lot. But with a solid branding strategy there might be hope for them yet.

I believe our app, Brand Capital, will be beneficial to banks, local and global. It might not save the Kaupthing brand, but that is not our intention. With Brand Capital our ultimate goal is to increase brand consistency and reliability by making your brand available to those who have anything to do with brand implementation and thereby make sure that when a new, redesigned brand rises from the ashes, it is used to its full potential in every aspect of a business.

The best thing since sliced bread

When the Australian firm Goodman Fielder Watts (GFW) mounted a bid for a hostile takeover of one of Britain’s best known branded goods businesses, Rank Hovis McDougall (RHM), RHM came up with a brilliant, game-changing defense strategy. They had all their brands, including Hovis sliced bread, valued financially and included their value in their balance sheet. GFW could no longer afford the acquisition.

RHM had invested in their brands, just as companies invest in buying car fleets or building factories, and now this investment was reflected in their balance sheet. Others followed suit and the brand officially became a financial asset.

A brand is an asset not only because it takes an investment to build it up but also because the result generates revenue. A brand also acts as a barrier to entry to the competition. It’s easy to make a soft-drink, but competing with Coca-Cola isn’t.

Our goal with Brand Capital is to help maximize the return companies get from the brand building investment. By providing easy access to every and any digital asset that relates to the brand the rollout of a new brand or the application of a classic brand becomes easy, consistent, reliable and measurable.

Buying and selling brand asset management – what’s going on?

It’s a very messy industry, the one we are entering with Brand Capital. I kid you not.

Some things are moving forward, along with the times. I am seeing content and digital asset management vendors moving up from selling purely to IT clients to selling to marketing and brand clients who are the actual business owners of brand assets. At the same time, IT clients are collaborating with internal marketing and brand teams because in these economic conditions budgets get slashed so easily and even most acutely needed projects are frozen without a rock solid business case to defend them. Every person is accountable to the highest degree, and most of us have to prove our worth every 6 months if not more often. Having to think about what you are doing and why exactly is a good thing.

However, I am also seeing marketing and brand clients with digital asset management and marketing resource management needs still predominantly surpassing any talks with their IT team and going directly to their digital creative agencies. And then the IT folk going mad trying to integrate all these bespoke solutions that can be brilliant for their purpose but mostly unsuitable for any integration without pretty much reinventing the wheel. And then the brand or marketing client despairing over the sky-rocketing costs for the project that was meant to be straight-forward and low maintenance. Sound familiar?

So where is it all going wrong? Why aren’t demand and offer meeting? There are an extremely clever group of individuals, consultancies, and vendors in this industry who are doing a great job in educating clients and industry alike, but their work seems most appreciated amongst those forward-thinking companies who already know the value of good brand asset management tools. On the other hand, business is actually booming for some who are working hard to adjust their proposition and to offer not just process efficiency and financial gains, but also support for engaging and inspiring the brand communities they are serving. But even they are struggling to find the right clients to sell to.

What else is needed? There are 4 core groups that need educating about each other’s needs and requirements: the brand clients, the IT clients, the vendors, and the creative agencies. Even with the best of efforts, one of these always gets to join the conversation after decisions have already been made, and then it’s too late.

How will it ever happen? Through open discussion and debate about the role and value of brand asset management to different parts of an organisation, to a company’s creative agencies, and most importantly, to the brand itself.

Umbrella branding: Vatnajökull region

When a series of products unite under the same brand and message, the result is often called an umbrella brand.

I came across a successful execution of umbrella branding in Höfn í Hornafirði, a town on the south-eastern coast of Iceland. “Wow! – Vatnajökull region” is a brand used by a wide array of local food producers. As soon as you see the Wow! sign you know you’ve found some of the high quality food produced in the region.

Among the benefits of a successful umbrella brand are

• Economies of scope
• Reputation linking

As the number of products promoted within the ubmrella brand is increased and broader media used, economies of scope kick in and more people can be reached with each dollar spent. Also, the reputations of products within the brand are linked and once the consumer disovers one of them he is more likley to try another.

Our goal is to make Brand Capital a perfect fit for brand managers of umbrella brands like Vatnajökull region. With Brand Capital, downloading and applying the relevant digital assets becomes fast and easy. Whether your product is icecream, freshwater fish or lobster, downloading the right asset for a sign for your door or a photo for an ad in the local newspaper will only be a click or two away.