Brands started as a stamp on a product, and became a gadget designed to get people to buy, an emotional lever. Now they’re becoming something bigger and different. Brands are becoming platforms.
More and more, customers are invited not just to buy things but to do things. On the platforms of eBay, Wikipedia, flickr and YouTube, people sell things, share knowledge, broadcast visual ideas. Through Zopa, people lend to and borrow from each other. On Sellaband, you can launch your favourite unknown band, and then share in the profits.
Sony Ericsson shows how its mobiles enable people to do what they love. Peugeot now invites customers to become car designers, and crowdspirit gets large numbers of people to invent new electronic products.
Newspapers like the Guardian have become less promoters of an ideology, and more a platform for a spread of voices, including those of readers.
Across the developed world, consumers are becoming active, even activists, and brands their platform. It’s a less emotional, more practical relationship – people don’t love eBay, though they love what it allows them to do.
As consumers are invited not to buy but to work, functionality really matters. Creating a brand, and designing the service behind it, are becoming inseparable.
Web 3.0?
Amazing things happen when you combine thousands of people’s flickr pictures: see an extraordinary demo at TED
It’s not just individual customers who use these platforms. Other organisations do too, and brands increasingly link organisations together. The corporation of the new century is more like a constellation, and brand is becoming the link, the multiplier.
Amazon may seem like a bookselling corporation, but actually it’s a constellation of retailers of electronics, homewares, toys and more – plus the wider constellation of people who review and recommend. Creative people increasingly work in consortia, forming communities through conferences like TED or websites like worldchanging.com. Cities like New York are creating a city brand to connect and multiply the impact of the myriad of agencies who promote the city.
Fairtrade is a German charity whose brand is a multiplier for 600 producer companies. Companies from Gap to American Express have created new products for (RED): a percentage of profits goes to treat AIDS/HIV in Africa. The London 2012 brand embraces sponsor and partner organisations.
This new world of branding isn’t about self-contained citadels, or force-fields that repel other brands. Brands like (RED) embrace the organisations they work with.
As brands become less the property of an organisation and more the banner of a movement, ownership will become even looser. Logos will be things other organisations, and individuals, can borrow and adapt.
Red squared
(RED) visually embraces the brands it works with – the device implies the mathematical power of one brand acting on another.
As brands become platforms and links, they get used and abused. People want to make them their own – which means they may no longer be the same everywhere. Brand becomes not one tune, but a theme with variations.
As ideologies compete, as cultures become more multi, organisations are getting much more sensitive to context, to localness. Even Starbucks – the great exponent of a repeated formula – now believes in ‘identity, not identical’.
The BBC has moved from uniformity to create distinctive channel brands. Mandarin Oriental thinks of its hotels as a family, not a chain, so that San Francisco looks and feels different from London and Hong Kong, though there’s a unifying oriental sensibility.
Brazilian telecoms company Oi has different ways of being with ‘extreme’, ‘mass’ and ‘business’ customers. The London cultural venue Southbank Centre has a new logo that has an infinite number of variations.
The new brands have many ways of doing things, many ways of speaking. They experiment and change over time. The brand is not a perfect blueprint, and brand creators are less architects and more inventors, learning by adapting. What unites the organisation (or constellation) isn’t the surface logo but the underlying idea.
Off the podium
The London 2012 brand is a theme that partners adopt and adapt. Here’s sportswear partner adidas, using the theme to connect London 2012 to its own ‘impossible is nothing’ brand idea.
Brand = Portfolio Owner
So I think there are actually four kinds of business:
1. Consultant/Editor/Aggregator 2. Service/Product Creator 3. Delivery Platform 4. Portfolio Owner
Brands will exist in each of these; some B2B, some B2C, some hybrids.
The biggest brands will be Portfolio Owners; owning stakes in all other kinds of company.
Thoughts?
12/05/2008 | Posted by Dan Jackson | http://
Brand = Spirit
...and the theme has a spirit. A spirit which follows the brand in each cultural environment.
11/05/2008 | Posted by The logo design guy | http://www.relogodesign.com
Brand = Human
Historically, I think that previous eras failed to touch a key element - the element of human experience. Experience is really the language that unites us all because it transcends any barriers that a culture can have. Humanizing our brands - creating experiential stories - and engaging with people in their every day lives with tools and services that enhance lifestyle is critical to the brand of today.
10/03/2008 | Posted by Sarah | http://www.sarahdoody.com
Inferred rewards...
Nice article and idea, however, my feelings are that current brands are successful through the association of their offering with understood identifiers rather than actual experiences.
For example, I have no "real" experience of the Product Red brand, from contribution to involvement to analysis and reward, yet my expectations of the brand and understanding of how I could interact with it seem real through a complex system of signifiers.
Therefore Brand Next is stuck in "great idea" land as the potential involvement and rewards I could receive and understand in the real world will be dwarfed by the endless blogs, referrals, media attention and group acceptance/denial signifiers that exist in our "real" visual realm (where brands actually exist after all).
It will be interesting to keep tabs on this project as it unfurls all the same.
10/03/2008 | Posted by Jon Marshall | http://www.jonmarshall.co.uk
BRANDS = CONTEXT
What matters is what people can do together...brands can help connexions to happen but people don’t care about brands life, that’s what brand managers should worry about.
21/02/2008 | Posted by jeremy dumont | http://pourquoitucours.Fr
BRAND=DIALOGUE
I believe you have just opened a Pandora box. What we can all attest is that your brands are talked about and inspire a dialogue across blogs and your own site. I believe there is a difficult balance to respect between "being controversial" and "developing a meaningful purpose". Hopefully the meaningful purpose will take over the controversial in this dialogue between brands and consumers.
13/02/2008 | Posted by Gregory Moulinet | http://www.nomadesign.jp
What a Great Question
Sally, consumer is a transaction derived concept traceable back to micro economics and has no relation at all to the experience we have of brand providers. It’s also ’inside out’ judging product satisfaction by transaction rather than what should be the case today when brands need to be defined and referred to by the individual. Products don’t need to have attributes, they need to have a purpose. The platform concept hints at an answer, business needs to be theatre, we are an audience, we are fans. Business is no longer about transaction, it is about relationships founded on an emotional exchange.
02/02/2008 | Posted by Gerry Kerins | http://
Just a thought....
There must be another way to identify all of us other than the word consumers. I’ve always hated this word. We are all much more than the products we consume and it’s like an us and them thing between marketers and the rest of the world, the consumers.....it just bugs me and under values who we are as human beings. Any ideas?
31/01/2008 | Posted by Sally C | http://anothernameforablog.blogspot.com
blabber
A brand is what the consumer imprints on it - a brand is a hint, our minds do all the rest.
Niche = minimal + expensive = quality Mass = logical + cheaper = general
13/01/2008 | Posted by Barry watkins | http://
’Identity, not identical’
’Even Starbucks – the great exponent of a repeated formula – now believes in ‘identity, not identical’
Really? In what way? Last time I looked they seemed to be the epitome of identical.
03/01/2008 | Posted by Mac | http://
I.D. = Internal Dialogue
I’ve made a long study of consumer behavior and brand identity. First impressions are key but long term identification and satisfaction from use are most important. How people reflect their interaction with products through word of mouth endorsements or complaints is the result of how a consumer is left feeling about the exchange or purchase/usage experience.
10/12/2007 | Posted by Michael Ratner | http://www.RatnerMedia.com
BRAND = FEELING
Aren’t brand strategists and marketeers getting a bit too hung up on the strategy behind comms and perhaps a tad narrow and rigid in the way they want the creative brief played back to them by consumers? They seem to have lost sight of arguably the most important component of advertising:’EMOTIONAL RESIDUE’. There’s nothing like a bit of plain old ADVERTAINMENT (you heard it first here!) to get consumers talking. I’m sure my good friend and new ad icon the Cadbury Gorilla would concur.
30/11/2007 | Posted by MC MAGIC | http://
"Alive Logos"... I just talk about this (for example):
"To show diversity, the mark itself is moveable and ever-changing and can be used as a frame that can be populated with this different content." (wolffolins.com > News > NYC logo launches)
I like this graphic concept, it is similar to Google’s visual strategy, with a logo that can adapt to express different stories* (Father’s day, Valentine’s day, Halloween, Edvard Munch’s Birthday...)
One idea, many stories; one logo, many variations.
*http://www.google.com/holidaylogos.html
26/11/2007 | Posted by Juan Carlos Otoya | http://
any colour you like
..."a croos(sic) is a cross", but a cross that can change its color or graphic content (textures, images...) is more exciting and surprising.
I hope you’re underestimating here Juan, if that’s all that alive, or less consistent means. I know Wolff Olins are aiming higher.
All of the business mentioned here (and some of them aren’t brands) have simple and consistent identities, and are occasionally umbrellas for some cute sub-brands. There’s certainly a case for the demise of the masterbrand concept.
However, the truth remains, if your in business and need to build awareness, you want recognition, and you need to be able to protect that. The rest is marketing, aimed at communities rather than market segments.
24/11/2007 | Posted by miles | http://newlyn.com
Standing out!
I’m not a fan of the 2012 logo, I’m also not keen on the Macmillan charity typeface either, I think they are both ugly. I have to admit though, that I find some of your thinking very interesting.
You seem to be predicting a change in the way brands are constructed and the way the customer interacts with a brand.
You say that the Macmillan brand ‘stands out in a cluttered market’. Would it do this if the typeface was designed to look good? Is there a middle ground where beautiful design meets ’standing out’ and fresh thinking? Is the world saturated with good design?
18/11/2007 | Posted by Mark | http://
"Alive Logos" (continuation)
..."a croos is a cross", but a cross that can change its color or graphic content (textures, images...) is more exciting and surprising. To have the option to create graphical variations in a logo is to have the power to say more, to tell thousands of histories with a single emitter. Sometimes consistency is monotonous, and monotonous is boring. Its about the identity of constant change, but with a clear criteria of change and a flexible visual structure that allows it. If brands are becoming platforms and consumers are becoming active, logos (and the entire visual system) must become scenes that present diverse situations or decorations, according to the communication necessity.
16/11/2007 | Posted by Juan Carlos Otoya | http://
“people don’t love ebay”
You’re right, they don’t. But “they love what it allows them to do”
Does that make ebay a strong or good brand? Or just a useful platform? Or both?
You overplay the functionality point to the detriment of the emotional. The fact is that if a better platform than ebay sprang up tomorrow people would switch to it immediately – witness the decline of friendsreunited since the emergence of facebook.
Good platform does NOT equal great brand.
15/11/2007 | Posted by Toby Martin | http://
Well said
I’ve been playing around with an idea very similar to this in my head that I am working on writing out for a post. I really like what you’ve said here and will most certainly be referencing this. Excellent work and thinking.
14/11/2007 | Posted by [ paul isakson ] | http://paulisakson.typepad.com/planning/
Love this new identity
Simple, clean and direct! Speak volume on modern design and branding.
14/11/2007 | Posted by Richard White | http://
Brand=Art
great brand like any great artists they give you a surprise and memorable images.
06/11/2007 | Posted by Winton | http://www.hanjiaying.com
identity, not identical
There’s confusion here, caused by the concious blurring of the line between a business and its identity;
"Since there is no definition of ’brand’, let’s make it mean that blurry line".
I’ve been exploring the limits of what constitutes consistency in identity for a decade: a name is a name, a cross is a cross. It’s business as usual.
26/10/2007 | Posted by miles | http://www.newlyn.com
lé brand!
brands it self, never change. its we who change the brands, so if we want it to be a platform, it will be a platform. with we, I mean us in the creative dept.
ciao, ( å )
26/10/2007 | Posted by akrok | http://www.akrokdesign.com
Comments...?
Amazing views and ideas. Love the layout as well. How about BrandNew? The Brand is alive. Looking for artists to collaborate with. Get in touch. Peace BNC
25/10/2007 | Posted by Kinder | http://www.brandnewclothing.com
Brand = Trust
What about gaining and holding the trust of your customers?
With society’s increasingly refined advertising filters, is it becoming more key to build trust and community rather than themes?
22/10/2007 | Posted by Martyn Reding | http://www.preview.co.uk
a ’no name’ brand
what is the future for a ’no name’ brand ?
I love that you highlight in yellow the catchphrases you think are important, because that is how I read things but the whole piece actually resonates with me as a consumer.
well done !
22/10/2007 | Posted by Sanisha | http://sanisha.wordpress.com
"Alive Logos"
I love the idea of "identity, not identical". Wollf Olins inspires me to design "alive logos". Logos that can adapt to express the day to day reality of the organization. Think logos like a closet that contains a dress for each occasion, but who wears it is always the same. Juan Carlos Otoya, brand designer. Bogotá, Colombia.
22/10/2007 | Posted by Juan Carlos Otoya |