Graphics Essay

!

What are the important features in a successful brand, and what could make something unsuccessful?

Branding is the most important thing about a company as it is what makes a company stand out. If there was not a whole branding concept to a company then that company wouldn’t be as easily recognised, resulting in a poor growth in profits and popularity. The best designs are the simplest ones.

Logos like Nike, with just a tick, or coca cola with just the name are the most famous brands and logos, but why?

!

In this essay I will look into why some brands are more successful than others as well as seeing what impact this will have on those companies and their successes. I will look into 3 main brands, with some that are very successful and some that are not. I will include brands which have not been very successful and look into whether the branding of the company could have been at fault. I will give personal opinions and compare with my own and others to come up with a non-biased explanation.

!

Brands give potential customers the availability to know what they are buying before they actually buy it. This means if a company is selling a product, the branding should reflect the product in the best and simplest way. Successful branding should result in the product and its logo being recognisable at a glance. Potential customers may become confused with a brand if the logo is too complex and complicated, so a simple brand would allow all customers to be able to understand the brand and product. How you create this image makes the customer fall for all the techniques used without even realising it. Colour can be very important too, some brands can be recognised simply by the colours they use. For example, the McDonalds logo can be recognised easily from just the colours red and yellow. This is the kind of things I will be looking into in my essay.

!

I have been analysing what makes up a brand, and what is the different between a brand, and the brand identity, Eau Rouge, a design agency from Buckingham said;

! !

‘The term ‘brand’ should not be confused with Brand Identity or Corporate Identity. Brand Identity is an element of the brand experience.’

I think it is important to think of branding not just as the physical designs of the brand, like the logos, the websites and posters, but as the branding as a whole. What are the types of things that make everything come together in a uniform way and what makes customers fall for the product and everything that goes with it?

! ! ! ! !

Mae Bradshaw A2 Graphics

! ! !

A Model on Brand Personality: ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Nike !

Nikes logo is one of the most recognised brands in the world. !

The brand is not only for shoes itself, but an all round fitness and athletic company. Its said that this brand could be ‘the definition of sports themselves’. The ‘swoosh’ logo has made the company one of the most successful brands today and also one of the most highly valued. This is the perfect example of a brand that can translate the importance of ‘creating, protecting and maintaining a brand for a company’

!

Branding is one of the most crucial thing in a company’s identity. Creating value, brand visibility, and making a product desirable are a series of steps that a company must take to create there brand. A brand should give the product substance and meaning, giving consumers something to identify the company by and therefore give them brand recognition. Nikes brand has had success and dominance in the world of sports and has thrived on there ability to construct there brand image, visibility and giving the company logo extremely high value.

!

One way that nike has created superior value is introducing celebrities into their brand. For example Michael Jordan, using his name in a pair of shoes, which has lead to them being one of the most expensive and desired products which they sell. The idea of the celebrity image is embedded into the consumers mind and will cause them to associate this with Nikes products. By using iconic sportsman in there branding and advertising, this makes the consumers want to buy the products as they strive to become as great as these heroes.

!

Mae Bradshaw A2 Graphics

! !

Nike only spends around 3% of its annual revenues on capital expenditures, where as they spend 10% on advertising and promotions. 10% is a lot of money per year to keep there brand visible. In 1997, Nike spent $978 million on advertising, marketing and promotion. This shows that even a successful brand such as nike needs to still spend a lot of money per year to keep there branding up to scratch. This is because branding techniques change all the time with new technology and ways of accessing potential customers become greater and more accessible.

!

Google & Apple

!

Google began in March 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin as a research project. They were both students at Stanford University, and while searching for a dissertation theme, they were considering the world wide web and discovering its link structure.

!

The website was formally known as ‘google.stanford.edu’ as it was using there universities domain but the recognisable ‘google.com’ was registered on september 15th 1997.

!

Everyone knows that Google is the No.1 search engine, but not for the reason we all think. Google didn't make money until it started auctioning ads that appear alongside the search results. 99% of the companies revenue goes on advertising which is a staggering amount seen as they take in now tops of 100 billion dollars. This is a huge amount of money spent on advertising purposes and this shows that compared to nike the brand can be seen as even greater for different reasons.

!

Apple Inc. is an American Multinational Corporation that designs, develops and sells electronics such as the Apple Mac, IPhones and IPods. The company was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne.

!

‘Apple is the worlds second largest information technology company by revenue after Samsung Electronics, and the worlds third-largest mobile phone maker after Samsung and Nokia’ - Wikipedia

!

Google and Apple rose to the top two spots, kicking out Coca Cola who was on the top spot for 13 consecutive years. These two companies are only 9 miles apart and are both technical companies, rising greater than McDonalds and Coca Cola.

Mae Bradshaw A2 Graphics

!

Apple and Goggle use a lot of visual qualities in there company and this gives high value to there brands. If you imagine these brands your mind is filled with the professional advertisements and products that they sell. You also see with Google, images with the primary colours they use automatically link you to the brand.

!

The design of both brands are fluent and professional, more recently for google. There designs and work that they produce are simple and they use a lot of white space. This is because they don't need to be fancy to create effect, there products and facilities are good and keep all of customers happy. People trust these companies and this works well with there branding ideas.

!

They both use many multimedia platforms to promote there work. They have there own websites, on mobile, TV, Movies and for Apple, there own stores.

!

Recently, there was a film called ‘The Internship’. This was a comedy that doubles as in infomercial about the Google Brand and company culture. As the production was filmed mainly in the Google Offices in the USA the brand was shown as a fun loving, interesting company to work for. in one shot they were showing off there ‘sleep pods’ a pod that any employee can go into to have a nap in in there break. This shows that the company is valued by its employees and can really help a brand in this way. The image above is a screen grab of one of the characters in the film in one of the ‘sleep pods’

!

Unsuccessful Brands - Why Did They Fail? !

Brands fail more often than we think. Kodak is a great example because they became so self absorbed that they didn't go digital until early 2000’s.

The same with Blackberry, who were ahed when it came to smartphones, but forgot to improve the user experience, resulting in a loss of sale.

!

Here are 5 reasons why brands fail: ! !

1. Loss of Focus !

GAP is an example of this by defining a target market too broadly. Originally GAP clothing was for teenagers, which could be seen as cool, affordable clothing. They then introduced baby

Mae Bradshaw A2 Graphics

and maternity GAP and this brought down the teenage feel to the brand, resulting in the loss of many of there original customers.

!

Creating to different marketing messages - Coupons were eliminated by ‘JCPenney’ and it didn't go down well with customers. This led to new marketing techniques like ‘on sale’, ‘month long value’ and ‘best deal’.

After this there was more change as prices went from being ‘everyday low price’ at for example ’£29.99’ to £30 stopping the penny less scheme. This got so con fu sin g t h a t a lmost immediately the rules got reversed back to normal, confusing customers and making the trust in the brand.

! !

Launching products or services that have nothing to do with the core brand values - Many brands in the past have come up with ‘new products’ for there company such as:

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Colgate Kitchen Entrees

Clear Pepsi

! ! !

New Tasting Coke

2. Deception - Whether it is intentional or not, being untruthful can be very bad in the eyes of a brand and its customers.

Sketchers like of Shape ups and Tone-Ups resistance runners were a collection of trainers to help people loose weight and tone specific muscles. In the end there was no proof that these trainers could actually help you in anyway and this resulted in a bad review from the public. This shows that you should make sure that what you say is genuine before you brand it.

! !

Mae Bradshaw A2 Graphics

! !

!

3. Fatigue - A loss of excitement for a brand and what it stands for from senior management can be devastating for a brand.

An example of this would be Tropicana. They did a rebrand and it was clear that the designers were not as involved and excited about the brand as its customers were as the new packaging had a decrease in sales of 20% which is $33 million. After 7 weeks the companies owner brand PepsiCo pulled the new packaging from the shelves. With some focus group testing this problem could of been solved before it was made and put on sale resulting in a very expensive mistake.

!

4. Loss of relevance - Every brand must try to stay current, fresh, and ahed of the competitors. If this happens it looses ‘Brand Equity’ and your brand will become irrelevant and stale. Kodak would be an example of this is they failed to adopt digital photography. They didn't want to threaten there traditional film business by developing digitally. In 1975 Kodak was ahed in developing digital photography but when they finally realised what they were doing wrong it was too late.

They emerged from bankruptcy in September 2013 saying: “as a technology leader serving large and growing commercial imaging markets”.

!

5. Overconfidence - This is when a company believes that they can predict customer expectations and will forget about using innovation in there ideas. Blackberry being an example, believing themselves to be invincible and refusing to include customer experience in there company.

! !

A brand identity, name and logo is a company’s public face. This said you would think that companies would take a lot of time and effort to carefully revamp there image for the good.

!

This is where you are wrong because many companies over the years have attempted this and the result was far from what they had hoped.

!

Mae Bradshaw A2 Graphics

An example of this failure is Pepsi. It is reported that the company spent $1 million on there latest logo design and it turned out like this:

As you can see the change is minimal and lots of people have said it was a real waste of money.

!

The white stripe on the new logo varies across the Pepsi products, getting wider or thinner depending on the product. The design team claim that this new design with the white stripe can be seen as ‘smiles’ but many people do not agree.

!

The pepsi logo has been changed at least once per decade over the last century and the Coca Cola logo has barley been touched. This just shows who could be the better brand and why.

!

My Work !

I have done two branding projects in my work this year. The first project i created a brand. For this i researched into brands and similar brands of my theme which was Nail Varnish. i researched into existing nail varnish brands and came up with my own company. I chose the name ‘Kuko’ because i thought it sounded catchy and also it means Nail in another language. After completing this essay i knew more about brands and what worked and what didn't. I knew i wanted to make a simple brand and logo and i really liked the idea of geometric shapes. I used a simple idea to create a nail shape vector image and the simple text underneath it. By using lots of colour this made the logo stand out and look professional. Underneath there is an image of the final designs that i created.

Mae Bradshaw A2 Graphics

I also did another branding project in my exam. For my exam the theme was Growth and Evolution, and using this title i wanted to do a re-brand for a successful company. I chose to use Fortnum and Mason the department store in Piccadilly, London. This is because i wanted to use a successful brand but one that used traditional design techniques and do a modern day range for the younger generation. i decided to use the London theme as the store is famous for its classic London style. I feel this rebrand went well and didn't take away the core values that the store had as some company’s in this essay went wrong in there re-brands.

!

Conclusion !

The question that i was answering in this essay was: !

What are the important features in a successful brand, and what could make something unsuccessful?

!

I feel that in this essay i have clearly answered this question. I have looked at some big brand company’s that are very successful and also some brands that maybe weren't or slipped up in some of there branding techniques.

While researching for this essay i discovered that it is more technology company’s which are rising to the top spot in the most successful and are racing past the classic drinks and food company’s. i feel that the rise in technology and people being more digital minded has left a massive gap for major company’s to up there game and compete for the best branding and advertisement and they have come up top.

!

I feel the future for these company’s and branding in general is looking bright and by writing this essay has helped me a lot in understanding brands and what i can do to make my designs better and more appealing to new customers and existing ones.

! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Mae Bradshaw A2 Graphics

Bibliography: http://www.eaurouge.co.uk/index.php/why-is-branding-important http://provalisresearch.com/solutions/applications/what-is-brand-image-analysis/ http://quick2launch.com/blog/27-the-importance-of-branding-how-nike-re-definedthe-power-of-brand-image http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc. http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2006-03-05/the-secret-to-googles-success http://www.forbes.com/sites/netapp/2013/10/16/apple-google-best-brands/ http://www.dailyfinance.com/photos/top-25-biggest-product-flops-of-all-time/#! slide=982944 http://www.businessinsider.com/rebranding-failures-2010-3?op=1

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Mae Bradshaw A2 Graphics