The 3 Ingredients to a Memorable Brand

In the span of less than a second our brain takes an image, splits it up into 3 core parts and then shoots back information that either passes one of two checks “like it” or “disregard it”.

Sometimes people can instantly tell how they feel about an image the moment they see it and other times it takes hours to come up with a proper response. All the same our brain still deconstructs an image into 3 core parts.

These core parts are color, image (logo) and text (name).

Colors

Our brains are hardwired to react to color. We stop at red lights and go at green, we know flashing red and blue lights mean the police and even assign emotions to color. It’s no surprise that color has a huge impact on a brand.

It’s hard to get a color that not only stands out but resonates well with as many people as possible.

There’s a good brand test that focuses on color here  but I modified the image (shown below) to show the true importance of colors. Can you guess all the brands correctly? (Answers and colored version in the link)

For more on the power of color and branding see here and here.

Image

This is where you let the creative juices run wild. Some brands choose to not have images, not every brand needs it. 

To make it easier you can break down what the image will be like a mascot, a logo that describes the business or something completely abstract.

An image needs to grab attention, be bold and interesting and most importantly be memorable. If a person walking on a busy New York street who sees thousands of images a day specifically recalls your image after just seeing it once then congratulations you have a very successful brand image.

Some shapes already carry a meaning and changing them even slightly can truly alter a meaning.

AT&T is a good example of how slightly changing an image dramatically alters the meaning behind it. Taking the classic globe image with blue bars and shading it slightly gave it the illusion that it is a sphere and not a circle. One interpretation of the new logo is cellphone signals wrapping itself around the globe, a meaning that was not present in their previous flat logo.

Text and Name

The last thing that people absorb is the text and name. If your brand has an image than it doesn’t need text, in some cases even if you put text next to the image it can be just as memorable without it (the above AT&T image is again a good example of this). In most cases the brand image is the name itself.

Did you know that Google over the years has slightly changed its font bit by bit in order to keep a modern appearance?

Text is something that a lot of companies think doesn’t matter as much but it does.  Just like everything else text is another way of conveying the personality of your company. What if Google had used the Comic Sans font instead of its current font?

Google

The text of an image is often overlooked and is just as important in representing the brand as all the other components.

Although some brands get away with never changing their text, it all depends on what type of text represents your brand.

A good test is the image below which swaps to extremely popular brands. Why not tell me what you see at first glance. 

It proves the point that a memorable brand has a personality and a story to tell and swapping it with another brand makes it lose all of that relevance. If you did glance your brain would immediately tell you that Yahoo is left and Google is right.

Stay tuned for more posts and comments are always appreciated! Also take the brand test (both in monotone then color) posted above, see how good you are in recognizing brands!

Repairing a brand – How Microsoft and Sony made the Fatal Mistake of Over-Relying on Their Brand

Repairing a brand – How Microsoft and Sony made the Fatal Mistake of Over-Relying on Their Brand

A company has many tools in their arsenal but none are quite as powerful or as delicate as what can only be described as a glass cannon, their brand. A company’s brand is their image, their perception, their success (or failures). A name alone is strong enough to do away with most competition.

A brand is not constant, it is always improving or decaying but never remains neutral. Even the biggest of brands can fall into irrelevancy with just a few wrong moves. Research in Motion for example used to be a household name, with Blackberry being THE phone to have. This once great brand is now grasping for life, already forgotten by the people who loyally used them for years.

Today’s post is about two behemoths in the tech industry, Sony and Microsoft. Both have been influential, creating new technologies and revolutionizing how we go about our day to day business. Both have brands that can be recognized across the globe and both made the mistake of assuming their brands were untouchable.

This begs the question, can a withered brand fight its way back to relevancy?

Sony’s Arrogance and the Road to Humility

When Kaz Hirai took over as CEO of Sony Corp, the company was already victim of brand decay. Caused by their own arrogance, the company poured countless money into new technology almost recklessly. Many were failures (UMD discs) but a few were successful (blu-ray).

Their television brand was swallowing profits as Samsung and others started to get more aggressive in the quality of their TV’s. Their mobile lines were becoming irrelevant in favor of Apple and Google phones. Even their PlayStation brand was suffering severely due to the high price, lack of games and lack of proper advertisement.

Sony was sure that their high priced (in some cases) lower quality products could send consumers in droves to buy them only to be met with the cold shoulder. Kaz Hirai was tasked with saving a troubled company.

His plan was “One Sony” a plan that would downsize the company in order to shift focus on 3 core competencies (phones, images & gaming). Was he successful?

In 2012 Sony reported their first net profit for the fiscal year in over 4 years after taking consistent losses. Their phone brand the Xperia with its unique design and durability proved to be a success. The PlayStation brand became the leading HD console globally thanks to aggressive price cuts and a healthy stream of exclusive games and services.

You can just tell how humbled the company has become through recent conferences and press releases where it’s all about the customers and developers and not investors and shareholders.

Microsofts 8 Debacles

Whereas Sony was at risk of going under a few years ago, Microsoft was thriving like never before.Windows 7 was setting the world on fire as the company’s fastest selling product to date. A year later they announced a reinvigorated mobile line called WP7 (Windows Phone 7) which seemed poised to take a chunk of the market in the Apple and Google-centric smartphone environment.

Even their videogame market was making strides as the Xbox brand grew ever more influential in becoming the living room product in every household.  

Unfortunately everything started unraveling as the following generation of products failed to catch on. Windows 8 was met with heavy criticism due to the difference in aesthetics and removal of some features such as the iconic start button and became the slowest selling product to date.  WP7 was abandoned after a year in favor of the upgraded line WP8 angering early adopters.

It didn't help that the reveal of the Xbox One was so mishandled that it can be considered one of their most botched products pre-release in the company’s history. With negative rumors that was damaging the Xbox brand that painted the yet to be revealed console in a bad light the reveal of confusing, even anti-consumer policies where met with harsh criticism. It even lowered their stock and raised Sonys due to how tremendously mishandled the entire conference was. 

Product after product the company seems to be spiraling out of control. Their lack of communication mixed with an over-reliance on their brands led to these failures. Recently the company had a huge shift in management so it remains to be seen if Microsoft can learn from these mistakes. 

A Long Road Ahead for Both

Both companies made the grave mistake assuming that these products would sell themselves based on the strength of their name.

By radically changing the design, policy even functions of these products they ended up breaking their brand. Although Sony is currently hitting all the sweet spots they still have a long road ahead of them to match to the success the company had years ago. Microsoft’s major shift in management looks hopeful as it's in the same vein as Sony, so much so that their plan is called One Microsoft (sound familiar?).

These two contrasts in strategy show the importance of maintaining a brand and the limits of relying on past successes.