WHERE ARE COMPANIES HEADED?

To be able to address any kind of ambiguity, it helps to have structure so that one knows where to start and can see a few steps ahead. In attempting to figure out where brands a headed, more than 50 brands we broken down in terms of their mission/vision statements, slogans, typical story arcs, core beliefs, value propositions and business mantras. The process involved in the selection of brands made sure that the top players in each sector were chosen to be pitted against each other to reveal how brands selling the same commodity attempt to stand out.

The findings have been boiled down to the following points:

1) Companies are seeking to portray more honesty Every company is looking to garner greater trust. This leads conversations centered around better products and ethical production.

2) More and more brands want to avoid looking corporate and cold. Brands putting up rainbow display pictures for the LGBT movement gives the image of being more up to date, open minded and supportive.

3) Brands are not just a set of visual cues. They are everything from the visuals to the tone of speech to the sounds to kind of photography used. The mess of rebranding is to prepare for the stresses of being a modern brand. Changing media makes brands go through cycles of rebranding. The design systems in place in place at a given time need to be retrofitted to cope with this. Therefore the challenge today is not only to stay at pace with time but to design systems that can work and adapt as the brand evolves.

4) The consumer is more more educated and well read - he/she doesn’t just stick to Colgate or Coca Cola because the brand means something to them. We switch to whatever product is better designed and has more value in the blink of an eye.

5) The simplifying of Logos and other brand touchpoints is part of the zeitgeist of creating a better and more efficient design system to support better designed products.

6) Personal brands have emerged as a another way to promote companies. Elon Musk’s following is more than that of Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCity combined. While people may not trust the corporate faces of these companies, they trust Elon musk since he comes across more as a person who wants to save the world than a person who want to just make money. Personal Brands are aspirational. An individual may not have anything in common with the people they follow but it’s their lifestyle and achievements that draw a person in.

7) There a certain level of wave of premiumization that has happened across all sectors. All companies need to be able to frame their offering as something that is elite and luxurious without really excluding anyone.

8) Brands start looking generic within their sector - there is a fixed reason that was identified for this, but within a given sector, all brands start following the same visual language of the Sector. An example of this is the usage of bespoke sans serif typefaces by Tech Giants - Google, Facebook, IBM, Spotify, AirBnB, etc.

9) Converse to this is brands like Glossier. Created by a beauty editor, their products aren’t revolutionary or game changing but their visual identity is everything - it puts a skin on their products. Their Instagram page is full of images shot by regular people - it isn’t a design marvel but feels colloquial to millenials who love makeup.

10) Branding is not everything - the frills of branding are not going to hold up if the product or service is bad.

Differentiation depends on what sector you are in and it can be about what your product is and who is endorsing it. With respect to watches, it worth noting that the appeal of watches is sometimes beyond function. All watches do the same thing, thus are they closer to jewellery than products? However, the idea of looking at the watch as a platform indicates the zeitgeist of a return to function.

Watches are objects of value and thus they make great gifts.The price point at which they are offered by Titan make sense for a watches as a gift. However, when we look to buy something for ourselves then we need to justify the price tag. In that case, either the price for beautiful objects comes down or the value comes from it being handmade, unique, made to order or cause serving.