The Brand Gap

by Marty Neumeier

  Hollywood isn’t unique, just more evolved than other industries. In the 1980s, Silicon Valley faced a similar challenge when Japan threatened to walk away with its franchise in microchips, duplicating their features and undercutting prices. Valley companies quickly discovered the value of open collaboration, producing ever-more-advanced systems and components that kept them one step ahead of the copycats.

  In the mid-1990s I was privileged to be a member of the superteam that launched Netscape Navigator, along with related products and services. My firm developed the Navigator icon and the retail package, while other firms, including an advertising agency, a web design firm, a PR group, and an exhibit design firm, worked on their own pieces to help launch the product at warp speed. This example of “parallel processing” showed how collaboration can yield not only quality but quickness. Netscape was formed in 1994, went public in 1995, and was absorbed into AOL by 1999. During this short period, it launched more than a dozen products and changed the direction of computing.

  Thanks to the Hollywood model, design managers are now learning how to assemble top-notch teams of specialists, inspire them to work together productively—even joyfully—then disband them when the project’s over, only to reassemble them in a different configuration for the next project. The lesson hasn’t been lost on other industries. Soon every knowledge-based business will adopt some version of the Hollywood model, and, years from now, many will undoubtedly agree with Noel Coward’s statement that “work was more fun than fun.”

  The Netscape Brand Was Built On The Hollywood Model.

  The Power of Prototypes

  Not all Hollywood movies are hits, but very few are bombs. They’re usually saved from that ignominious fate by the use of prototypes—scripts and storyboards. The script is the prototype for the story, and the storyboard is the prototype for production. Any major problems with the movie can be corrected at the prototype stage, long before much money is spent. The script and the storyboard, once approved, keep all the collaborators on track, from the director to the continuity person.

  Branding projects use prototypes as well. Instead of a script, brand collaborators rely on a creative brief; instead of a storyboard, they use mockups or drafts. What makes prototypes so powerful, to borrow a phrase from Tom Kelley of the industrial design firm IDEO, is that they provide a “near life” experience for the collaborators. Everyone on the team, from the brand manager to the design intern, can immediately sense whether the concept will work in the real world. No amount of talking or arm-waving can accomplish this feat as well as prototypes.

  Prototypes can also cut through the “red tape” of marketing documents. Instead of starting with a list of features and working toward a concept, team members can go straight to a concept, then add whatever features are needed to support it. And if the concept looks like a loser? Hey—it’s just a concept—start over with a new one. Since a brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or company, gut feeling is the fastest way to get there. Prototypes create a playground for collaborative ideas, allowing ample space for the right side of the brain to work its magic.

  Discipline 3. Innovate

  Where the Rubber Meets the Road

  A combination of good strategy and poor execution is like a Ferrari with flat tires. It looks good in the specs, but fails on the street. This is the case for at least half the brand communication done today. Don’t take my word for it—pick up a copy of your favorite magazine and leaf through the ads. How many actually touch your emotions? Will you remember any of them tomorrow? If not, it’s probably the fault of execution, not strategy. Execution—read creativity—is the most difficult part of the branding mix to control. It’s magic, not logic, that ignites passion in customers.

  Our cultural distrust in creativity goes back to the Enlightenment, when we discovered the awesome power of rational thinking. The movement became so successful that rational thinking became the only thinking—at least the only thinking you could trust. Yet in spite of our continuing reverence for rationality, we don’t really do many things by logic. Our best thinking depends more on the “illogical” skills of intuition and insight, which may explain why logical argument rarely convinces anyone of anything important.

  Benjamin Franklin, despite being a child of the Enlightenment, showed both intuition and insight when he observed: “Would you persuade, speak of interest, not of reason.”

  Innovation requires creativity, and creativity gives many business people a twitch. Anything new, by definition, is untried, and therefore unsafe. Yet when you ask executives where they expect to find their most sustainable competitive advantage, what do they answer? Innovation. Because the truth is, innovation lies at the heart of both better design and better business. It magnifies drive inside the organization. It slashes the costs of inefficiency, duplication, and corporate ennui. It confers the ability to produce uncommon, yet practical, responses to real problems.

  When Everybody Zigs, Zag

  Would-be leaders in any industry must come to grips with a self-evident truth—you can’t be a leader by following. Admittedly, it’s difficult to zag when every bone in your body says zig. Human beings are social animals—our natural inclination is to go with the group.

  Creativity, however, demands the opposite. It requires an unnatural act. To achieve originality we need to abandon the comforts of habit, reason, and the approval of our peers, and strike out in new directions. In the world of branding, creativity doesn’t require reinventing the wheel, but simply thinking in fresh ways. It requires looking for what industrial designer Raymond Loewy called MAYA—the Most Advanced Yet Acceptable solution. Creative professionals excel at MAYA. While market researchers describe how the world is, creative people describe how it could be. Their thinking is often so fresh that they zag even when they should zig. But without fresh thinking, there’s no chance of magic.

  An effective use of the MAYA principle was the career of The Beatles. They began in the early 1960s with songs that were commonly acceptable, then raised the bar of innovation one record at a time. By the end of the decade, they had taken their audience on a wild ride from the commonplace to the sublime, and in the process created the anthems for a cultural revolution. Their formula? As one critic observed: “They never did the same thing once.”

  Audiences Want More Than Logic.

  Brand or Bland?

  Q: How do you know when an idea is innovative?

  A: When it scares the hell out of everybody.

  A friend of mine once observed that the only thing worse than the fear of death is the “fear of stupid.” Some companies are so afraid of appearing less than dignified that they settle for proud, stiff, or inhuman. Against this backdrop of stuffed shirts, smart companies have an excellent chance to stand out—to zag. The Volkswagen Bug did it to great effect in the 1960s (and again in the 1990s) by using self-deprecating humor as a strategic weapon. But humor is only one way to surprise people. Mostly it just takes the guts to be different.

  Of course, while audiences may reward guts, corporations usually don’t. Japanese salarymen have a saying: “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.” Corporate America has a similar saying: “Don’t rock the boat.” No wonder people are afraid of signing off on new ideas—by keeping your head down you’re more likely to keep it attached. Then where will innovation come from? Most likely from the outside, or from people inside who think outside.

  Those Crazy New Names

  Agilent, Agilis, Ajilon, and Agere. Advantix, Advantis, Adventis, and Advanta. Actuant, Equant, Guidant, and Reliant. Prodigy, Certegy, Centegy, and Tality. Why are there so many sound-alike names? The short answer is this: Most of the good names are taken. Between a rising tide of startups on one hand, and a flood of URLs on the other, companies are continually forced to dive deeper for workable names. The latest trend is to push the boundaries of dignity with names like Yahoo!, Google, FatSplash, and Jamcracker. Where will it end?

  It won’t. T
he need for good brand names originates with customers, and customers will always want convenient ways of identifying, remembering, discussing, and comparing brands. The right name can be a brand’s most valuable asset, driving differentiation and speeding acceptance. The wrong name can cost millions, even billions, in workarounds and lost income over the lifetime of the brand. George Bernard Shaw’s advice applies to brands as well as people: “Take care to get born well.”

  Of course, some names haven’t been created so much as inherited. A good example of a heritage name is Smuckers, which marketing people have often cited as a bad name with a clever spin. “With a name like Smuckers, it has to be good,” goes the well-known slogan. But Smuckers was a good name from day one—distinctive, short, spellable, pronounceable, likable, portable, and protectable. And while the company presents it as slightly silly, the name benefits strongly from onomatopoeia. “Smuckers” sounds like smacking lips, the preverbal testament to a yummy jam.

  Another heritage name is Carl Zeiss, the maker of optical lenses. Does Zeiss make great lenses? Who knows? But the name makes the lenses “sound” great. The word “Zeiss” has hints of “glass” and “precise,” and evokes thoughts of German technological superiority. The name works so well that it can stretch to include high-end sunglasses and other precision products without the risk of breakage.

  Generally speaking, high-imagery names are more memorable than low-imagery names. Names constructed from Greek and Latin root words tend to be low-imagery names. Accenture and Innoveda come to mind. Names that use Anglo-Saxon words, or the names of people, tend to be high-imagery names, producing vivid mental pictures that aid recall. Think of Apple Computer and Betty Crocker. Some of most powerful names are those that combine well with a visual treatment to create a memorable brand icon.

  * * *

  The 7 Criteria For A Good Name:

  1 Distinctiveness. Does it stand out from the crowd, especially from other names in its class? Does it 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’t 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 headstart over those that don’t.

  6 Extendibility. 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, making them safer and more valuable in the long run.

  * * *

  Avatars Run Circles Around Logos.

  Icons and Avatars

  A brand icon is a name and visual symbol that communicate a market position. An avatar is an icon that can move, morph, or otherwise operate freely as the brand’s alter ego. For icon, think Shell; for avatar, think Cingular. Icons can sometimes be upgraded to avatars, as AT&T has done by animating its striped globe icon in its TV spots.

  Logos are dead! Long live icons and avatars! Why? Because logos as we know them—logo-types, monograms, abstract symbols, and other two-dimensional trademarks—are products of the printing press and mass communication. They evolved as a way to identify brands rather than to differentiate them. Today marketers realize that branding is not about stamping a trademark on anything that moves. It’s about managing relationships between the company and its constituents, conducting a conversation among many people over many channels. We still have the printing press at our beck and call, but we also have the Internet, TV, telemarketing, live events, and other media to work with. Icons and avatars respond to this new reality by jumping off the printed page and interacting with people wherever they are.

  Aristotle was a born brander. He believed that “perception starts with the eye,” and that “the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor.”

  These two principles create the basis of brand icons. Cognitive scientists estimate that more than half the brain is dedicated to the visual system, adding weight to the argument that a trademark should be strongly visual. Yet it can also involve other senses, including smell, touch, taste, or hearing. Take for example, the auditory counterpart to an icon, sometimes called an “earcon.” The experience of flying United Airlines is now inextricably linked to Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” and the Intel Inside brand would be less memorable without its “bong” sound bite.

  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. The meanings that are packed into the icon can be unpacked at will and woven into all the brand communications, from advertising to signage, from web pages to trade show booths, from packaging to the products themselves. An avatar goes even further by becoming the symbolic actor in a continuing brand story. As trademarks go from two dimensions to three and four dimensions, the old-style logo may begin to seem more like a tintype than a motion picture.

  Who Can Hear Rhapsody in Blue Without Thinking of United?

  It’s All Packaging

  While not all brands are products and not all products are sold at retail, a book on brand would be remiss to ignore the importance of packaging. For many products, the package is the branding. It’s also the last and best chance to influence a prospect this side of the checkout counter.

  In some retail environments, such as the supermarket, it’s possible for a package to reach 100% of people shopping in that category. For several seconds, or even a few precious minutes, the shopper is completely focused on the differences among brands. Previous intentions to buy one product over another are suddenly put aside and memories of past advertising are shoved into the background as the competing packages go “mano a mano” for the shopper’s attention. This is known as a branding moment.

  Retail brand managers funnel a large portion of their marketing budgets into package design, because the return on investment is likely to be higher with packaging than with advertising, promotion, public relations, or other spending options. For many retail products, packaging not only makes the final sale, it strikes a significant blow for the brand, since experience with the product is often the best foundation for customer loyalty.

  Marketers know this, but they’re not sure what makes it work. How, exactly, does one package beat another at the point of sale? How much of the battle is won by logic and how much by magic? Is it science or art? As you might guess, it’s both. But since most marketers favor left-brain thinking, most packages end up heavy on facts and light on emotion, the ingredient customers want most. Instead, customers are greeted with features, benefits, and what one shopper I interviewed called “scientific mumbo jumbo.”

  Before you can create emotion with a package, however, you need to understand the natural reading sequence of your category. It so happens that customers process messages in a certain order, depending on the product, and messages presented out of order go unheeded.

  Here’s an example of a typical reading sequence: 1) the shopper notices the package on the shelf—the result of good colors, strong contrast, an arresting photo, bold typography, or other technique; 2) the shopper mentally asks “What is it?,” bringing the product name and category into play; 3) then “Why should I care?,” which is best answered with a very brief why-to-buy message; 4) which in turn elicits a desir
e for more information to define and support the why-to-buy message; 5) the shopper is finally ready for the “mumbo-jumbo” necessary to make a decision—features, price, compatibilities, guarantees, awards, or whatever the category dictates.

  When you present these pieces of information in a natural reading sequence, you increase their resonance and create a sympathetic bond with the customer. But if you lead off with features when the customer simply wants to know why she should care, the message that may come through is this: “Our product’s features are more important than your interests.” Advertising pioneer David Ogilvy often claimed that by changing a single word in a headline one could increase effectiveness of an advertisement by up to ten times. In my own practice, I’ve proven (at least to myself) that by getting the reading sequence right, and by connecting product features to customer emotions, a package can increase product sales by up to three times, sometimes more.

  But what if you don’t sell at retail? No matter. The principles used in successful packaging—clarity, emotion, and a natural reading sequence—apply to every type of brand design. When you think about it, branding is simply a convenient package for a business idea.