|
A client of mine once called after I had given a presentation to him
about his company's brand. He was calling to say we needed to change
the shade of taupe we had all agreed upon for the firm's logo.
I
was surprised to hear this busy man talking taupe, convinced he had
more important things to attend to. I found it particularly strange
because just that day, he had approved the color scheme.
As the
conversation progressed, he confessed that his wife didn't like the
color. She had experimented with that very shade of taupe for their
living room curtains and hated it. Ignoring our strong suggestion to
the contrary, the color was changed.
What does this 20 year old
story have to do with anything? Most people think of branding as a
pretty logo. Instead, branding embodies the entire customer experience,
with the logo merely acting as the visual mark.
The brand
experience should reflect the soul of the company. More important than
whether or not you "really like" everything about it, your brand should
represent your company's "image attributes."
Image attributes are
adjectives and descriptive phrases that capture the essence of a
company and their creative project. They describe the core values of an
organization, the feeling that a brand should evoke or the essential
goals of a Web site. At the start of a project, I work with my
clients to elucidate a set of brief terms to identify the basic
precepts of their project. These image attributes become a list that we
can all agree on, easy-to-remember reference points that help everyone
on the team, both client and developer, stay on target throughout the
process. Developing them may be the most important exercise of
the project, because it helps ensure that the final result—the brand
identity or Web site—embodies those descriptors. For every project, I
have many levels of goals, but as long as my work reflects the image
attributes on presentation day, I have done my job.
So what do
image attributes have to do with my client's wife who doesn't like
taupe? One of the most common mistakes in purchasing creative services
is that clients judge results based on personal likes and dislikes.
Unlike
choosing a curtain color for your living room or buying artwork for the
space over your fireplace, creative choices related to business have
nothing to do with your (or your spouse’s!) personal preferences. They
have everything to do with solving your business problems and improving
your customers’ experience.
Many clients think they have to
“like” the artwork that creative services firms produce for them. But
what if those clients’ likes and dislikes don't line up with their
corporate needs? What if they aren’t qualified to determine what works
visually for their firm? By agreeing on image attributes that will
guide and gauge the outcome of an assignment, we assure ourselves that
the end result achieves the business goals that we set at the beginning.
Look
at brands that work: Coke, Nike, Apple Computer; their brands on
packaging and products, Web sites and brochures, carry a simple,
compelling visual message that elicit very specific feelings in their
audience. Whether or not people like the red used in the Coke lettering
or the simple apple icon used by Apple Computer, they are compelling
and significant icons that evoke strong recognition and often positive
feeling. That’s what a brand is about: embodying the attributes of your company or product. Everything else is window dressing...
Kara
Brook is the founder and President of Brook Group, LTD, a Web design
firm devoted to online branding and customer experience design. For
more FREE branding resources, visit
http://www.brookgroup.com/brand. To learn more about Brook Group’s branding services, visit
http://www.brookgroup.com/branding
|