How Product Evolution Creates Endless Possibilities for New Brands

“One of most difficult things to understand is the dynamics of marketplace. Why some companies win and others lose. Why some consumers prefer one brand and other consumers prefer another brand. Why a brand that is hot today can get cold tomorrow. Charles Darwin provides the theoretical concepts to understand the dynamics of the marketplace. The laws of nature apply equally as well to brands and categories.”

The idea behind Al & Laura Ries’ “The origins of brands” is quite simple: take Darwin’s idea of evolution and apply it to the branding process. Captivating as it is as a purely intellectual pursuit, the analogy results in four basic rules to follow:

Divide and conquer
Categories of products and services diverge. Think of computers: started with so called mainframe computers. Now desktop computer, home computer, laptop computer, PDA, wearable computer and so on are widely available. So instead of converging several features into one (f.e. camera with a mobile), the opportunity lies in divergence. Create a new category, be the first in it and move the minds. When you’re first in the marketplace, your brand is just another brand; when you’re product is the first recalled by consumers in a given category (energy drink — Red Bull), your brand creates a powerful emotional connection with consumers.
Exploit divergence
Nature favours extremes. When the category is dividing into two or more subcategories, don’t try to fit in between. For instance, a laptop computer might be a full featured, heavy machine or Apple’s Air. If you think of the customer as a single identity, the computer needs to be full-featured AND ultralight. Obviously, it’s hard to differentiate such product between two strong competitors, not to mention that it will be neither ultraportable nor powerful.
Survival of the secondest
If you’re not first, you can still become a strong No. 2 brand by being the opposite of the leader. Coca-Cola was consumed by older people, so Pepsi-Cola became a strong No. 2 brand by appealing to younger people (the Pepsi Generation).
The power of pruning
If a brand tries to cover every aspect of a diverging category, it’ll almost certainly forge to lose its dominant position. The brand should stand for a single idea in the consumer’s mind.
Emerging new brands might need the support of the core brand, but when the branch grows bigger and stronger, it separates itself from the core branch and then a line extension name becomes a severe disadvantage.

I’ve got to admit though, that the greatest part of the book is a fiery philippic against convergence, brought up as The Curse of the Clock Radio (a.k.a Swiss Army Knife Thinking — every macho male has one, but when was the last time you saw actually use the scissors on a Swiss Army knife to cut something?). However convincing it gets, personally I’d rather refrain from conceding, bearing in mind Google Mail/Cal/Reader as one of many counter-examples.
Evolution might be a useful analogy for branding, still the authors’ bias towards coherence leads to sticking the “brand label” to every success or failure just to support the idea, which might not necessarily be the case.

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Ogilvy’s principles of management

1. Remember that Abraham Lincoln spoke of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He left out the pursuit of profit.
2. Remember the old Scottish motto: “Be happy while you’re living, for you are a long time dead.”
3. If you have to reduce your company’s payroll, don’t fire your people until you have cut your compensation and the compensation of your big-shots.
4. Define your corporate culture and your principles of management in writing. Don’t delegate this to a committee. Search all the parks in all your cities. You’ll find no statues of committees.
5. Stop cutting the quality of your products in search of bigger margins. The consumer always notices — and punishes you.
6. Never spend money on advertising which does not sell.
7. Bear in mind that the consumer is not a moron. She is your wife. Do not insult her intelligence.
[via: Patricia Sellers]

For the Love of Culture

“For 75 percent of the eighteen million books in our libraries, the rule of the plaintiffs would have been a digital death sentence. For these works–presumptively under copyright but no longer in print–to require permission first is to guarantee invisibility. These works are, practically speaking, orphans. It is effectively impossible–at least at the wholesale level–to secure permission for any use that triggers copyright law.”
Lawrence Lessig’s, as always insightful essay on Google, copyright and our future.

Milton Glaser: Ten things I have learned

1 You can only work for people that you like.
2 If you have a choice never have a job.
3 Some people are toxic avoid them.
4 Professionalism is not enough or the good is the enemy of the great.
5 Less is not necessarily more.
6 Style is not to be trusted.
7 How you live changes your brain.
8 Doubt is better than certainty.
9 On aging.
10 Tell the truth.
full post here & a short documentary.

Design Imperialism

“A key point of failure in today’s global design landscape lies precisely in the jargon — we need to invent new ways of writing, talking and thinking about concepts of “humanitarian design”; we need new language that doesn’t homogenize entire cultures, new vocabulary that better reflects the intricate lace of the world’s biocultural and psychosocial diversity as a drawing board for design.” Maria Popova on The Language of Design Imperialism. Insightful.

Of Frog Wines and Frowning Watches: Semantic Priming, Perceptual Fluency and Brand Evaluation

“Visual features that have no meaningful association with the product itself can actually make consumers like the product, provided that these features are something that the consumer can easily identify with.This means that critters on wine labels, however odd that may be, can be a good sales strategy. It allows a marketer to target a certain consumer by using images on labels that represent an important aspect of that customer’s life. Moreover, there are potentially many ways to make that label as unique as possible because a logo would be chosen based on who the target customers are and not on what that product is.” Building a Better Brand: How feelings shape product evaluation.

The Sins of St. Paul

“I did not know Paul Rand. I did not work for him or study under him. My understanding of his importance, then, has been gained in the same way as students and practitioners in years to come will gain theirs: through books like Modernist Design. (…) So it’s with some trepidation that I wonder if I might lodge a few complaints about Mr. Rand as a model for graphic design practice. But here goes.” M. Bierut on Paul Rand.

“Any design student could do a better job”

“I never knew a designer that got hundreds of thousands of dollars to design a logo. Mostly, designers get paid to negotiate the difficult terrain of individual egos, expectations, tastes, and aspirations of various individuals in an organization or corporation, against business needs, and constraints of the marketplace. This is a process that can take a year or more. Getting a large, diverse group of people to agree on a single new methodology for all of their corporate communications means the designer has to be a strategist, psychiatrist, diplomat, showman, and even a Svengali.
The complicated process is worth money. That’s what clients pay for. The process, usually a series of endless presentations and refinements, persuasions and proofs, results, hopefully, in an accepted identity design” What they don’t teach you about identity design by Paula Scher.

Steven Heller on Olympic Pictograms

Briefly and to the point (& video): Olympic Pictograms Through the Ages.

Quiet logos

“Lindstrom suggests that too much messaging on a product’s packaging can actually prevent a sale. Logos and words can engage the rational mind, causing people to actually think harder about making a purchase. It’s a counter-intuitive notion, but then think about the effectiveness of the quiet logos on a bottle of POM Wonderful pomegranate juice, or a Method product, or the entire Apple product line up.” The Myth of the Rational Buyer: How Too Much Thinking Can Hurt Your Brand

Meetings, the Google way

Not exactly on the main subject of this blog, but hey, branding actually IS about meetings. Meetings, the Google way:
1. Set a firm agenda. 2. Assign a note-taker. 3. Carve out micro-meetings. 4. Hold office hours.
5. Discourage politics, use data. 6. Stick to the clock. [via: supervolatile]

Idiologie / branding & everything else

The Origin of Brands