Idiologie / branding & everything else

An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do

“The Culture Code is the unconscious meaning we apply to any given thing — a car, a type of food, a relationship, even a country — via the culture in which we are raised. The American experience with Jeeps is very different from the French and German experience because our cultures evolved differently (we have strong cultural memories of the open frontier; the French and Germans have strong cultural memories of occupation and war). Therefore, the Codes — the meaning we give to the Jeep at an unconscious level — are different as well. (…) It is obvious to everyone that cultures are different from one another. What most people don’t realize, however, is that these differences actually lead to our processing the same information in different ways.”

However trivial the starting point of Clotaire Rapaille’s “Culture Code” may seem, the marketing (and cultural) guidance deduced from the anthropological study is quite puzzling. The analysis of several fundamental archetypes (ranging from shopping to sex), abundant in examples from Rapaille’s practice, seems to assure consistent results in any commercial endeavor. [continue reading]

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. [continue reading]

PKO BP and PEKAO SA announce rebranding

Two of Poland’s biggest banks announced within a week the forthcoming rebranding. There would be nothing unusual in the fact considering the amount of rebranding processes that happen every day. But the details of the announcements might make it a rare example of — nonexistent in Nature — mutual mimicry.

The story goes like this:
Both banks history goes back to the 1920s, when they were established as a single, state-owned institution (detailed historical outline: pko bp, pekao sa). Until the reform of the Polish banking system in 1989, the banks state-monopolized the financial industry, PKO being mainly a savings and lending bank for retail customers and PeKaO specializing in foreign currency services to the public (which became feasible in 1970s, with foreign exchange regulations liberalisation).

During the post-communist transformations, the bank split into the present duo. Both retained the name, spelled differently but pronounced the same (PKO BP and PeKaO SA respectively), and unfortunately — navy blue & white colour scheme. PKO BP retained its old logo (known as “piggy bank”) designed by Karol Śliwka, whereas PeKaO introduced a new aurochs symbol (apparently designed by Semafor). [continue reading]

ING Direct Café Case

Ray Oldenburg coined the term The Third Place in his 1990 book: The Great Good Place. He described it as “nothing more than informal public gathering places“; the name itself derived from considering our homes to be the ‘first’ places in our lives, and our work places the ‘second.’

“The character of a third place is determined most of all by its regular clientele and is marked by a playful mood, which contrasts with people’s more serious involvement in other spheres. Though a radically different kind of setting for a home, the third place is remarkably similar to a good home in the psychological comfort and support that it extends. (…) They are the heart of a community’s social vitality, the grassroots of democracy, but sadly, they constitute a diminishing aspect of the American social landscape.”

With as much as 30 millions Americans being a part of Kinko’s generation (spending significant time working outside of a traditional office), more and more businesses and organizations try to encourage people to hang out. For some of them it comes naturally; the most obvious: cafés, coffee shops, bookstores, bars, and hair salons are listed in the subtitle of Oldenburg’s book.

The Third Place characteristics: regular clientele, psychological comfort and playful mood make it a marketer dream-come-true, so sooner or later the concept had to expand beyond its natural hosts. [continue reading]

Information design one step further

I’ve always thought that information design could extend far beyond the sole purpose of displaying information effectively and attractively.
So when I first came across a self-organizing system of particles-emotions, it had immediately become one of my favourite sites.

Several new interactive information aggregators have been created since (msn Spectra being the latest), yet very few exceed simply visualizing same content in a different way.

Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar once again took another path: [continue reading]

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: [continue reading]

(or when to say no)

John Ruskin once wrote, that the best work never was and never will be done for money.

The truth is most of us work to keep a paycheck coming in. Yet, a sense of accomplishing something that really matters (gasp), of excellent quality, creatively fulfilling and most of all – serving the client’s needs – seems essential to keep one’s sanity. Otherwise you risk losing your heart and gradually drifting away from your initial moorings (Presupposition: we all aim at more than little).

So you care about the output of your work, strive to keep the standards and use all your experience and knowledge to convince clients, that some of their revisions or modifications would bring conspicuously shoddy results (And I’m talking about significant alterations, not changing type from 10pt Garamond to 12pt Caslon).

The problem starts, when although you’ve clearly articulated your reasons, the client says: ok, we understand. Still, we want it our way. [continue reading]