Restrained labeling
How companies deal with their customers’ sensory overload
Cayce Pollard, the protagonist of William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, suffers from a rare disorder: psychological sensitivity to corporate symbols. She reacts to logos and advertising as if to an allergen, suffering panic attacks at the sight of Louis Vuitton luggage. Acutely sensitive to branding, she laboriously removes every trademark from her apparel or appliance.
Although entirely fictional, the novel seems to have anticipated a prevalent epidemic of sensory overload with brand labels. In bygone days marques used to be the most prominent feature of a product, providing a sense of identification and affiliation. Luxurious, heavily branded products used to be an evidence of wealth and social status. The equivalent products nowadays would most probably result in status asthmaticus at the most.
There may have been some exaggeration on the part of the asthma reaction. But the shift in the way product logos are perceived and often looked down upon is far from fictional. The corporate obsession to brand lifestyle rather than mere products brought the repercussive no logo and anti-consumerist & anti-corporate resistance.
What once was marginal, now gradually gets mainstream. Consequent increase in trademark consciousness makes people think twice before, for example, wearing apparel were every garment is heavily plastered with a logo. The customers have been paradoxically sophisticated by excessive labeling (along with the overall refashioned social context) and now require a significantly subtler approach.
Thus, creating a brand that people identify with to the extent of wearing it as a statement has become a strenuous endeavour. There are a few strategies companies have been undertaking to keep pace with the shift:
- Attract and appeal.
Great brands started to attract like-mined customers rather than serving their targeted audience. Targeting specific and often multiple audiences still plays a huge role in creating a brand, but in the meantime brand loyalty evolved into brands loyal to their customers. Think of Apple’s religious user group. - Hold to your values and beliefs.
Their behaviour ceased to be driven by customers’ insight and fulfilling their verbalized demands. Polls and surveys so often provided what people say, rather than what they mean, that the results were frequently misleading and useless. Instead, the conviction brands emerged, i.e. brands vigorously held together by a central belief or purpose. - Brand is more than a label.
Instead of labeling tangible items, emphasis is now on expressing the values beyond the logo: on branding the experience, interactions and impressions with both: customers and staff. - Bland uniformity challenged.
As far as visual identity is concerned, predictable consistency has been replaced by variety. Either the logo itself is adaptable or the execution is varied to keep the brand “on-message”. Yet, holistic view of brand design enables consistent and easily identifiable advertising. The well-known SAS wetwipe branded only by the use of corporate typography became the most popular item in the industry. It doesn’t carry a logo at all. No risk of repetition. - “No brand” branding.
Some companies pursue “no-brand” strategies, where products are not branded at all (Japanes Muji being the most known example). Alternatively, the entire shopping experience is branded. As in Muji’s case: focus on moderation in all things except quality and awareness that “modesty and discretion are the better part of a style“. [slideshow about Muji]
One might object that some of these strategies have a niche status and represent companies with a minor share of the market. I have to admit that I have no proof whatsoever for whether the shift will have gone mainstream by next year or decade.
However, more and more often something “unbranded” (in the traditional sense) becomes the most strongly branded piece of communication that people actually want to own and take home with them. While not meeting your audience’s expectations might be a vice, underestimating your customers might be a deadly sin.
IMG src: Hank Willis Thomas, Branded Chest, 2003, from the the B®anded series.
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