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Why We Care About Corporate Logos

by on January 23, 2011 in Branding

I’ve been thinking a lot corporate logos, their meaning, and what it contributes to the customer experience. In a bit of serendipity, today I read this post from Derrick Daye at The Blake Project entitled Branding Debate: Does Logo Design Really Matter?. He writes:

What’s important are the associations people have with a logo–not the logo itself. A logo (trademark and its associated visual language) is the symbolic representation of a whole narrative story built into an organization over time. Brand equity is the result of successfully delivering on the promise your brand represents in the hearts and minds of consumers. Indeed, there are some time-tested design guidelines all enduring trademarks share, but that is not what enables them to endure. What makes a logo endure (and be cared about) is not the design, but the promise it represents.

When The Gap changed their logo (then backslid after an uproar in social media channels), I started to think about this enduring quality of logos and their meaning to consumers. At first, I was actually critical of the company for reverting their decision on the basis of a minor uproar. No one likes change so it’s always going to be a battle when a company decides to change something meaningful like a logo. And there’s always a segment of design creatives that will bitch and moan about anything that doesn’t please their own narrow aesthetic philosophy.

But then, I got curious about what all this might mean to the relationship between a company and their customers. Approaching it this way, a consumer’s attachment to a company’s brand, logo, and promise is a far more interesting exercise in seeking out symbolic meaning. The anthropologist, Victor Turner, argued that symbols are important because of their ability to both condense meaning as well as contain a multiplicity of meanings. While it may sound paradoxical, it actually illustrates the various layers in which a symbol – such as a logo – resides.

Let’s take Southwest Airlines, for example.
When we think of Southwest Airlines (even if we’ve never actually flown with them before), images and ideas come to mind. We know certain things about the business and the promise it represents. The logo becomes a sort of shorthand for how customers and company relate to each other. If Southwest decided to change their logo, it might signal a potential shift in this relationship. And because each customer has their own personal experience with the airline, the customer generates several meaningful impressions when confronted with the logo. We might think of their “Bags Fly Free” commercials or a memorable time we flew with them. We then attribute positive or negative meanings depending on these experiences.

Now, let’s juxtapose that with Enron.

A very different set of meanings are involved, right?

Here’s an exercise. Take a look at these logos and think about what the business is trying to convey to you. Now think about what that brand means to you. What feelings does it invoke? What brand promise does it represent? What’s the overall symbolism?

Logos and brands are just simplified, symbolic constructs that make it easier for customers to recognize and related to your business. Whether or not you decide to change your company’s logo, think about all the different ways you generate meaningful relationships with your customers. And then consider how your customers have created (or want to create) relationships with your business. It’s these relationships – embodied in your logo – that will prove a strength in good times and bad.

Buzz Is Overrated – Do This Instead

by on May 3, 2010 in Branding, Customer Experience

Last week, Reuters published an article called Americans more loyal to brands, country than company. For employers, it poses a wake-up call. But what I found most interesting was this statement at the end:

When asked how companies could improve loyalty the top answers included offering cash awards to consumers, replacing automatic answering machines with real people, making good products and not raising prices.

I think this shows why consumer opinion and sentiment shouldn’t always be taken at immediate face value. The way we think about things is complex and requires us to go exploring for more specific answers. This is were doing more qualitative work is an important complement to the quantitative work of surveys and polls.

Thinking about the snippet above from the Reuters article…What does making good products mean? How about not raising prices? Before you go thinking you know exactly what the answers are, take a step back and consider how many different possible answers are possible here. A good product can have a multitude of meanings in the mind of the customer. Now amplify it by hundreds or thousands of customers. And the desire to not raise prices may be contradicted if there is the possibility of adding more value to the product.

As an anthropologist, we’re trained to not just look at what’s said, but also look for what’s not said. Interestingly, what’s omitted here is listening. Well, sort of. We might be able to extract listening from the desire to talk to real people instead of answering machines. But…

What would happen if our companies set up experiences that encouraged customers to talk, to share ideas, to voice frustrations?

What would happen if we genuinely listened to what was said and not said?

What would happen if we took all of those opinions and sentiments and put them to action so our customers would feel heard?

Can you imagine how powerful that might be? Forget short-term buzz. Think long-term customer movements.

photo credit: abrinsky (via Flickr)

Hush Up And Just Enjoy Those Super Bowl Ads

by on February 8, 2010 in Branding, Media

I’m always fascinated with the day-after fallout of the Super Bowl adfest. There are plenty of people doing their Monday morning armchair quarterbacking thing, lamenting how terrible the commercials were and how much they continue to suck year after year. It’s at this point I try to take my branding hat off and recognize something I think is rather important. The commercials were not made for us. They were made for the 95% of everyone else who wants to be entertained. They were made for people like my dad who could give two craps if there was an overabundance of slapstick violence and dudes trying to pick up chicks (Love you, Dad!). The only metric here is whether the ads were amusing and some of them were very amusing and entertaining, indeed.

Time for all of us who claim to be brand and online cognoscenti to get off our high horse and recognize that Super Bowl ads are not Shakespeare and they don’t need to be earth-shatteringly original. These commercials are made to appeal to a broad population and that population sits right in the middle of America. Like it or not. They like watching Betty White and Abe Vigoda get creamed in a football game, they like dudes wearing Doritos and attacking people, (and I guess they must like guys wandering the African savanna in their underwear).

Of course, feel free to not take my word for it. I grew up on Benny Hill and The Three Stooges so dumb, risque, slapstick humor is part of my cultural heritage.

Community, Not Campaigns For Small Business

by on January 13, 2010 in Branding, Communities, Social Media

Lego People CommunityIs your business still thinking of marketing as a set of campaigns? It might be time to switch gears and start thinking more about connecting with prospects and customers via community. Today, we learned that two major brands are rethinking their strategies (also read here):

Coca-Cola and Unilever are shifting their digital focus away from traditional campaign sites and towards community platforms, such as Facebook and YouTube, as social media begins to dictate their marketing activity in 2010.

Yes, these are the big kahunas of the corporate branding universe…but can their strategies work for small and medium-sized businesses? Not only do I think the answer is a resounding “100% yes!”, I believe that building community over campaigns is an absolute must for nearly any enterprise today. Why?

Read the full blogpost at BaileyHill Insights…

photo credit: scoobay (via Flickr)

Are All Passionate Fans Worth Listening To?

by on September 3, 2009 in Branding

A few days ago, I managed to wade into a bit of a crapstorm that we’ll just call the Ikea Verdana Incident of 2009 (AKA Verdanagate). I heard last week about Ikea’s decision to stop using their customized version of Futura and switch to more universally available Verdana for their catalog. Now if that last sentence sounded a bit like ancient Greek to you, don’t be alarmed. Futura and Verdana are fonts and apparently Ikea’s decision has been construed by certain circles as one more sign that the apocalypse is upon us.

Here in the States, this news has been covered by Time, NPR (via Associated Press), and BusinessWeek. Meanwhile, other than this article from The Swedish Wire, there is very little hubbub about this in Sweden, where Ikea is based. And even more interesting is this article from the Norwegian Afterposten (translate) where some groups actually are welcoming the font change decision.

So, what’s going on here? And what is the connection between Ikea, their customers and their passionately loyal fans? Further, what how does this relate to other businesses that engaging in the work of creating strong relationships with their customers?

Passionate fans or passionate customers?
One of my core issues with this whole imbroglio is that the most enraged folks – graphic designers and typographers – are being labeled as Ikea’s most passionate fans. I’m certainly not going to devalue their feelings over the use of Verdana font (because it really isn’t as attractive as Futura) or dispute their disappointment with the company (their ideals concerning design have merit). They have every right to have their opinion and share it with others. But I think it’s incredibly lazy and disingenuous to call these very same designers and typographers Ikea’s most passionate fans. That ignores Ikea’s passionate customers who not only provide strong word-of-mouth, but actually purchase the company’s products. Sometimes passionate fans don’t sit in the same circle as passionate customers.

Which passionate fans are worth listening to?
Each of the news items above – along with several blogposts from folks I respect like Jackie Huba – make the mistake of assuming that all voiced outcries on the web are equal. In this case, a relatively small number of designers are treated as being the definitive source for whether Ikea’s decision was sound. But what about those individuals who shop the stores and purchase from the catalog and online? What do they think about all of this? Well, what’s interesting is that none of the bloggers or mainstream media sources bothered to ask that question and talk to actual customers. The assumption seems to be that any outrage, regardless of where it originates, constitutes the end-all, be-all of the discussion.

What this suggests about journalism…and our own media consumption
Somewhere along the way, journalists decided to gather one angle of a story and just stop there. Nothing new there – this point has been lamented for the past decade or so. Literally, none of the stories about “Verdanagate” bothered to include perspectives from customers. And it would have been so easy to gather this information. Hell, if journalists wanted to stay lazy, they could have just asked the average “person on the street” to take a look at the catalog and ask if they noted any problems. Or they could have went to the local Ikea store and gathered opinions.

Why the hell wasn’t the Ikea customer community involved?
IKEAFANS is an online community of 112,000 members. It’s unaffiliated with the Ikea corporation, but still a fantastic example of truly passionate customers coming together to share their love for all things Ikea. If this whole font issue is going to be a problem for passionate customers, this would be the first place to look for trending, right? I spoke with Susan Martin, one of the community managers for founder and owner of IKEAFANS and there has been zero chatter on their forums and blogs. Meaning that the people Ikea should be most concerned about don’t give a hoot about Verdana or Futura…they simply want the same quality of furniture they’ve come to expect from the company. It’s truly a damn shame that no one bothered to ask Susan or her community members for their thoughts.

The tyranny of the instantaneous (and the minority)
What’s somewhat more troubling is that far too many respected bloggers covering word-of-mouth and online marketing just blithely accepted the mainstream media’s portrayal of the issue. There was little critical thinking along the lines of “Wait! Does this actually constitute a problem for Ikea’s business?”

All of which leads to something that is causing me some concern. Is social media and our demands for instantaneous opinion undercutting our ability to think deeply about issues? It’s taken me a couple of days to put together this post because I needed to research the issue and think through different perspectives. Will I miss out on the buzz of the Ikea font debate? Maybe, but this post is really not so much about Ikea as it is about the issues it surfaces.

Are we suffering from thought erosion?
And another problem I see arising with social media is how easily a minority of individuals can grab public attention and convince us that their way of seeing things constitutes the majority. When our own attention is so scattered and thin, it’s not hard to see why this is. In nature, when plants are unable to take root in the soil it’s called erosion. Similarly, when critical thinking doesn’t have time to take root in our minds, we might call it thought erosion.

What are your thoughts? Should a company listen to every passionate fan? Maybe so, but should it alter its course of action when core customers are not among the vocal critics? Hope we can have a passionate and deep dialogue about this here.