The Brand Handbook
Wally Olins
First published in United Kingdom 2008 by
Thames & Hudson Ltd,
181A High Holborn, London
WC1V 7QX
2008 Saffron Brnad Consultants Ltd
What Is A Brand?
A brand is simply an organisation, or a product so why all the fuss...branding can encapsulate both big and important and apparently superficial and trivial issues simultaneously.
Brands and branding are all-pervasive and ubiquitous. The media are obsessed with brands, and everybody now uses the 'brand' word.
Brands and branding are all-pervasive and ubiquitous. The media are obsessed with brands, and everybody now uses the 'brand' word.
Supermarkets
For some people, brands are still just where they began - heavily advertised consumer products; groceries that you can buy bring home and use. Such as soap washing powder and coffee, or more sophisticated goods like scent, suntan lotion and over-the-counter pills that ease digestion and similar ailments.
And yet, by some kind of osmosis, the stores and supermarkets on which these branded products are sold have also morphed into brands, and many people have very strong views about them. In Britain for example, people view the Tesco brand and the Waitrose brand differently. The Waitrose brand is generally admired, even cherished, while the Tesco brand - despite its extraordinary success in attracting customers - is unloved, even loathed.
And yet, by some kind of osmosis, the stores and supermarkets on which these branded products are sold have also morphed into brands, and many people have very strong views about them. In Britain for example, people view the Tesco brand and the Waitrose brand differently. The Waitrose brand is generally admired, even cherished, while the Tesco brand - despite its extraordinary success in attracting customers - is unloved, even loathed.
Brand Names
Manufacturers either used their corporate name, such as Heinz or Kellogg's, to brand their products , or increasingly they created special names - brand names - like Sunlight or Dove, which were intended to embody specific product characteristics and which enabled manufacturers to put a multiplicity of overlapping good on the market. But the big companies behind these products bands stayed in the background. They may have had a corporate identity but it was only promoted in a very limited way to a small and carefully selected audience.
Brand Competition
It is becoming increasingly evident that the nature of competition is changing. It was once possible to choose between competing products and services on the basis of price, quality or service - rational or quasi-rational factors.
Being as good as the best of the competition is now sufficient only to enable an organization to stay in the race. In such situations, emotional factors - being liked, admired or respected more than the competition - help the organization to win. And that is why so many organizations now invest so heavily in what is increasingly being called 'corporate branding'. They want a complete and overlapping range of audiences - both internal and external - to respect and admire them. And that is why we now have a situation in which corporate brands exist side by side with product brands.
It is becoming increasingly evident that the nature of competition is changing. It was once possible to choose between competing products and services on the basis of price, quality or service - rational or quasi-rational factors.
Being as good as the best of the competition is now sufficient only to enable an organization to stay in the race. In such situations, emotional factors - being liked, admired or respected more than the competition - help the organization to win. And that is why so many organizations now invest so heavily in what is increasingly being called 'corporate branding'. They want a complete and overlapping range of audiences - both internal and external - to respect and admire them. And that is why we now have a situation in which corporate brands exist side by side with product brands.
Brand Architecture
Organisations have a number of different models to choose from when they develop systems to control and modulate their own brands or to absorb new brands. These systems come under the term 'brand architecture'. But there is no doubt that the 'corporate brand' - that is, the organization using its corporate name to project the whole - is becoming increasingly important.
Every organization needs to create a framework into which its brands fall. This is called 'brand architecture'. The architecture should be clear, easy to comprehend and consistent.
Organisations have a number of different models to choose from when they develop systems to control and modulate their own brands or to absorb new brands. These systems come under the term 'brand architecture'. But there is no doubt that the 'corporate brand' - that is, the organization using its corporate name to project the whole - is becoming increasingly important.
Every organization needs to create a framework into which its brands fall. This is called 'brand architecture'. The architecture should be clear, easy to comprehend and consistent.
- Corporate or Monolithic - The Single Business Identity
- The organization uses one name and one visual system throughout (e.g Yamaha, Virgin, HSBC, Easy)
Examples
Virgin is a striking example of an organization that uses a corporate brand system to best advantage its name and identity, stemming from the original music business, now embraces amongst other things an airline, a railway, financial services, a mobile phone business. When a product or service carries the Virgin name, it stands for a relaxed, informal, jaunty, friendly style. For many people evidently Virgin is not only a seal of a certain kind of quality, but a symbol of a way of life.
- The fundamental strength of the corporate or monolithic brand is that because each product and service launched by the organization has the same names, style and character as all the others, everything within the organization by the way of promotion or product supports everything else. Because every audience sees the whole entity, relations with staff, suppliers and the outside world are clear, consistent, relatively easy to control and usually economical to manage.
- Companies with corporate brands tend as a consequence to have high visibility and a clear positioning, which can be a great advantage in the market place.
Identity
Identity in its various manifestations has grabbed our hearts and minds, because we are desperate to express our need to belong but also overtly to differentiate ourselves and out aspirations from those around us. If identity is the idea that marks the twenty-first century, then branding operates at its point of delivery.
Looked from the outside, the brand seems to consist of a few elements - some colours, some typeface, a strap-line of an apparently allegorical nature but frequently consisting of a simple typeface. Sometimes a brand also embraces sound or music, and even smells. All of these ingredients seem to be mixed up and then plastered apparently more or less at random over everything that the organization owns or influences.
Brand Visibility
All organisations have a brand or corporate image whether they especially manage it or not and whether they are aware of it or not. Of course when the organization is very small - one or even a few shops or offices, say - it is possible to manage it in an informal, implicit way. But when it becomes bigger, the range of activity becomes so vast and the manifestations of the brand so complex, that it all has to be managed explicitly. This is the point at which branding becomes a significant, mainstream management activity.
Branding embraces and is associated with marketing, design, internal and external communication ad human resources. It becomes the channel through which the organization presents itself to itself and to its various external worlds. It influences every part of the organization and every audience of the organization - all the time, everywhere.
The fundamental idea behind the brand is that in everything the organization does, everything it owns, and everything it produces it should project a clear idea of what it is and what its aims are. The most significant way in which this can be done is by making everything in and around the organization - its products, environment, communication and behaviour - consistent in purpose and performance and, where this is appropriate, in appearance too.
All organizations are unique even if the products/services they make/sell are more or less the same as those of their competitors. It is the company's history, structure, strategy, the personalities who have created and driven it forward, its successes and its failures, that shape it make it what it is.
There are some organizations in which the communications process is the prime means by which the identity emerges. Coca-Cola, like many fast-moving consumer brands, has an identity largely created and consistently fostered through promotion and advertising on an immense scale over more than an hundred years. Thats why people say that Coke has a powerful brand image. There is nothing particularly special about the product that separates Coca-Cola from other drink: it's just a maroon, fizzy, sweetish drink that is monetarily refreshing. There are plenty of other drinks that do the same job. So why is Coke one of the worlds best known and loved products? Because of consistent, ubiquitous distribution and promotion. Wherever you go there's Coke - and they're not kidding. Coke is not just about advertising, of course. Coke tries to become, and often succeeds in becoming, part of the consumer's lifestyle.
To take a more extreme example of drinks brands that are communication-led, look at bottles water. Why is bottled water so fashionable? Water is, we are told, very good for us. We should drink lots of it. But why does it have to be imported into, say, Japan from France, Italy or the Highlands of Scotland? Does this kind of water taste so very different from local water out of a tap? Not really. Some people claim they can tell the difference. But after just one gulp? Doubtful. Even if it has bubbles they're often added by machine. But bottled water has emotional connotations of health, purity, activity and fitness which seem to have a special resonance. And very many people...are perfectly prepared to pay relatively large sums of money for the emotional satisfaction they derive from drinking it. It's primarily communication that makes Badiot, Perrier and the rest so successful.
Visual Elements
The prime identifier for almost all brands is the symbol or logo. The other tangible elements - colours, typefaces, strap-lines or slogans, tone of voice and stye of expression (sometimes called 'look and feel') - are also very important, and collectively form the visible recognition pattern. But the central element of that visible recognition pattern is the logo itself. This usually lies at the heart of a branding programme. Its prime purpose is to present the core idea of the organization with impact, brevity and immediacy. The logo encapsulates the brand.
Symbols are immensely powerful. They act as visual triggers which work many times faster and more explosively than words to set ideas in the mind. Many symbols are, as we know from Jung and others, an intrinsic part of the human vocabulary of expression and comprehension.
Together, the core idea and visual elements mark out the brand territory.
Four Vectors Of Brand Tangibility
The clearest way to understand how the brand makes itself tangible is to look at it through the four vectors through which it manifests itself. These are product, environment, communication and behaviour. They are the brand's four senses.
- Product - What the organization makes and sells
- Environment - the physical environment of the brand how it lays out its stall
- Communication - how it tells people, every audience, about itself and what it's doing
- Behaviour - how its people behave to each other and the world outside.
The significance of each of these four vectors varies according to marketplace in which the brand performs. Sometimes each vector is of equal significance in contributing to the overall brand personality.
Research
I believe research is useful in telling you what people currently think an feel.
Is it practical to research the whole programme or individual parts of it - names, colours, symbols - before it is launched through focus groups? The argument goes that such research, while it may not tell you what will work, will definitely tell you what won't. I don't agree.
Research
I believe research is useful in telling you what people currently think an feel.
Is it practical to research the whole programme or individual parts of it - names, colours, symbols - before it is launched through focus groups? The argument goes that such research, while it may not tell you what will work, will definitely tell you what won't. I don't agree.
