Brand Perfect Tour - 25th May 2011

Last Wednesday was the London leg of the Brand Perfect Tour, which had some really fascinating talks by the likes of Scott Ewings and Kon Papagiannopolous from Fjord, Simon Manchipp of SomeOne, Neil Christie from W+K and Marina Willer from Wolff Ollins, amongst others.

I can’t hope to go into every talk in the depth that each deserved - the morning flew by in a haze of great ideas and fantastic soundbites - but in this post I’ll focus on just the talk by Fjord’s Scott Ewings and Kon Papagiannopolous and later this week on one by Simon Manchipp of SomeOne.

Scott and Kon’s talk, ‘Where the Brand Breaks’ discussed the issues of branding across multiple digital channels. The primary point made by Scott showed the impossibility of the task facing designers in the new digital world – AT&T now recognise more connected ‘smart’ devices than connected humans. This being the case, argued Scott, designers can't stress the technology, they need to learn to design for context.

Part of this is killing the brandbook - the ‘logo monolith’, with rigid colour, font and usage guidelines is now missing the point. In the digital space, brand guidelines need to be much looser to allow designers to play with the brand within the context of use.

“Brands that travel well in the digital space play to the user's desire to be in control ,” said Kon, who referenced a number of brands for whom traditional graphic branding was becoming less important than the way they behave. One example is Amazon, whose visual branding takes up less and less of their website, but have made the ‘1-click purchase’ system inherent in all of their customer interaction, giving the brand a consistency above the need for invasive branding.

Three main strands were identified which might go to make up a brand’s DNA –what makes it uniquely identifiable in the digital world. These were:

·      Appearance – the visual consistency of the brand. Far from being a rigid identity defined by a set of brand guidelines which can’t hope to encompass all possible digital platforms, the appearance of the brand must be fluid and scalable

·      Behaviour – unique ways in which the brand behaves or interacts with consumers in the context of consumption

·      Presentation –  the performance, language and tone of the brand should be consistent

Although each of these elements require consistency to aid recognition and the building of trust, consistency in terms of slavish adherence to brand guidelines is not going to help a brand to deliver on the specifics of their messaging. To do this, brands must consider the context in which their messages are consumed, building experiences that take into account the audience's immediate situation.

Fantastic stuff,  I was really struggling to take down all the important points as they came up so apologies for any paraphrasing here! More to come from last Wednesday as I decipher my frantic scribbles.