On Friday I had the pleasure of attending a CreativeMornings session – a monthly meet-up organized by Tina Roth Eisenberg (swissmiss) and Carl Collins. This one, conveniently located in 45 Main by HUGE, (thanks for the tasty breakfast, neighbors!) featured Armin Vit, a man well-versed in design and its relationship to branding.
If I were to condense his thoughts into one point, it would be this: Reality gets in the way of branding. It muddles the way you experience and think about the companies, products, even logos that marketers work so hard to crystallize in your precious mind.
Reality is unavoidable (and, well, essential). In terms of brands, my favorite part of Vit’s presentation had to do with the Pepperidge Farm Soft Baked Chocolate Chunk Dark Chocolate cookie. In short, his wife loves this treat, as did he until the day he opened up a bag to find major skimping on the chocolate chunks. The bittersweet goods were nearly absent. (I wonder if this was an economic move by Pepperidge Farm to leave no scrap of batter unused?)
His example was simple and funny. But...it wasn’t about branding. It was about a flawed product. Branding can do little to fix that. It’ll only draw attention to it. On the other hand, if you have a solid product and kickass branding to boot, the disconnect that reality presents won’t do much detriment to the product. Example: the Target brand projects an image of bliss and joy emblazoned in red bullseyes. A lot of Target stores are a far cry from the clean, sunshine-filled oasis seen in ads. But Target is still crazy popular (and for good reason).
I consider branding to be perceived reality. As long as there are crowded store lines, glum employees, and an elephant of a recession, reality won’t parallel branding. So sometimes you’ll get a cookie lacking in chocolate. Worse yet, there are tastier cookies out there that you don’t even know about, thanks to uninspired marketing efforts.
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