The brand gap: How to bridge the distance between business strategy and design

By: & Marty Neumeier
Finished: August 29, 2021
Status: #notesInProgress

Intro

What is a brand?

• A brand is not a logo
  • Logo: Short for Logotype, design speak for a trademark made from a custom-lettered word
    • LOGOS: Greek for WORK
  • What really matters here is that a logo or any other kind of trademark, is not the brand itself. it's merely a symbol for it.
• A brand is not a corporate identity system.
• A brand is not a product
• A brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, service, or company. It's a gut feeling because we're all emotional intuitive beings.
  • When enough individuals arrive at the same gut feeling, a company can be said to have a brand.
• Brand management the management of differences, not as they exist on data sheets, but as they exist in the minds of people.

A brand is not what you say it is. It is what they say it is.

A charismatic brand

• A charismatic brand can be defined as any product, service, or company for which people believe there's no substitute.
• There are no dull products, only dull brands. { Leadership, Strategies, and Tactics#^6673e2.
• Among the hallmarks of a charismatic brand are:
  1. A clear competitive stance
  2. a sense of rectitude
  3. a dedication to aesthetics
     • Because it's the language of feeling, and in a society that's information-rich and time-poor, people value feeling more than information.

The 5 Disciplines of branding

Differentiate

Three questions { Start with Why

• Who are you?
• What do you do?
• Why does it matter?

Remain clear on what you are. If you (the company) begins to add on too many unrelated products and services to your line, your message will turn muddy and the brand will get stuck.

The traditional view of design is that it has four possible goals:

1. To identify
2. To inform
3. To entertain
4. To persuade

With branding, there is a 5th

1. to differentiate.

• While the first 4 are tactical, the fifth is strategic, with its roots deep in aesthetics—a powerful combination of logic and magic.

The evolution of the marketing model

• 1900: What it has

• 1925: What it does

• 1950: What you'll feel

• 2000's: Who you are

• With so many brands, create a tribe of customers.

  When one of your gods falls from Olympus, you can switch to another one.

Focus

• The danger in branding is rarely too much focus, but too little.
  • an unfocused brand is one that doesn't stand for anything
• A focused brand knows exactly what it is, why it's different, and why people want it.

Can't be the number 1 or 2 of your industry? Redefine your category.

Collaborate

No Entity, natural or economic, evolves in isolation. —Jane Jacobs
The successful company is not the one with the most brains, but the most brains acting in concert. —& Peter Drucker

• Over time, specialists beat generalists. The winner is the brand that best fits a given space. Survival of the fittingest.
• How a brand should fit its space is determined by the brand community. It takes a village to build a brand
• By asking left-brainers and right-brainers to work as a team, you bridge the gap between logic and magic. With collaboration, one plus one equals eleven.

The one stop shop

Advantages:

• Ability to unify a message across media,
• ease of management for client

The brand agency

Advantages

• ability to unify a message across media
• freedom to work with best of breed specialists

The integrated marketing team

Advantages

• Ability to unify a message across media
• freedom to work with best of breed specialists
• internal stewardship
  • brand knowledge accrues to the company internally, not to the firm you work with

The Hollywood Model

• Thanks to the Hollywood model, design managers are now learning how to assemble top-notch teams of specialists, inspire them to work together productively, then disband them when the project is over, only to reassemble them in a different configuration for the next project

Prototypes

The script is the prototype for the story,_ the storyboard is the prototype for the production.

• Instead of a script, brand collaborators rely on a creative brief; instead of a storyboard, they use mockups or drafts
• Prototypes create a creative playground for collaborative ideas, allowing ample space for the right side of the brain to work its magic

Innovate

• Execution is the most difficult part of the branding mix to control. It's magic, not logic, that ignites passion in customers
• Innovation lies at the heard of both better design and better business. It magnifies drive inside the organization.
• MAYA: Most Advances Yet Acceptable solution

How do you know when an idea is innovative? When it scares the hell out of everybody

• Some companies are so afraid of appearing less than dignified that they settle for proud, stiff, or inhuman
• Where will innovation come from? From people inside who think outside.

The 7 criteria for a good name

1. Distinctiveness: Does it stand out from the crowd, especially from other names in its class? Does is separate well from ordinary text and speech? The best brand names have the "presence" of a proper noun.
2. Brevity: Is it short enough to be easily recalled and used? Will it resist being reduced to a nickname? Long multi-word names will be quickly shortened to non-communicating initials
3. Appropriateness: Is there a reasonable fit with the business purpose of the entity? If it would work just as well—or better— for another entity, keep looking
4. Easy spelling and pronunciation: Will most people be able to spell the name after hearing it spoken? Will they be able to pronounce it after seeing it written? A name shouldn'y turn into a spelling test or make people feel ignorant.
5. Likability: Will people enjoy using it? Names that are intellectually stimulating, or provide a good "mouth feel" have a head start over those that don't
6. Extendability: Does it have "legs"? Does it suggest a visual interpretation or lend itself to a number of creative executions? Great names provide endless opportunities for brandplay.
7. Protectability: Can it be trademarked? Is it available for web use? While many names can be trademarked, some names are more defensible than others, make them safer and more valuable in the long run.

• Today, marketers realize that branding is not about stamping a trademark on anything that moves. It's about managing relationships between the company and it constituents, conducting a conversation among many people over many channels.

When conceived well, an icon is a repository of meaning. It contains the DNA of the brand, the basic material for creating a total personality distinct from the competition.

• Aristotle: "Perception starts with the eye," and "The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor."

Validate

Cultivate