Reality Upgrade

There are five major car companies in Germany, and to the outside world they could easily seem very similar. After all, they are all “German Engineering,” they are all luxury models, high quality, and stylish. In fact, they all have rather similar symbols, all of them based around a circle in some way.

However, each different manufacturer has a different brand. BMW is about sporty, classy, and fast. Mercedes is also classy, but more about luxury then sport. Audi is young and hip, but with sophistication. Volkswagen is a more affordable brand targeted at young people. And there’s Opel, which I had never even heard of until I started looking into German car manufacturers. (more…)

Once you have a simple message that is relevant to the client and appropriately targeted at their feelings rather than their logic… keep repeating it.

This sounds rather simple, but be careful. It is easy to forget about some great opportunities here. Your brand should be on, or in, everything you do. Eat, sleep, and breathe your message. Every time you have any communication with a client, reinforce your brand. You need to associate yourself and your product so strongly with your brand that it stops being something separate from you and becomes who you are, at least in the mind of the client.

The memory neurons in the brain form memories by building patterns of connections between neurons. If a new pattern is similar to an existing pattern, the new pattern is easier to remember. Similarly, if a pattern is repeated, it becomes easier to remember.

If you have a hard time remembering the names of people when you first meet them, you are probably familiar with this concept. It might take you four or five times of hearing someone’s name before you remember it. Some of the tricks people use to remember names, like associating someone’s name with something else about them, tend to work using this concept as well. By tying together a name and something else, you have reinforced that pattern, and therefor make it easier to remember.

Unfortunately, your clients are not likely to try to remember your brand. They are not going to use memory tricks, or songs, or anything else to remember better. You have to do the work for them, by repeating it over, and over, and over, and over, until they remember it.

One thing to note, before we move on, is that it is very important to have a consistent message. It is one thing to repeat it all the time, but if you are not repeating the same thing every time, repeating it is not reinforcing the memory. In fact, it is probably just confusing.

Step 1 - It’s all about them

Step 2 - Hearts, then minds

Step 3 - Keep it simple

Step 5 - Keep it short

KISS: Besides being a band of relative success and questionable taste in facepaint, it is also a great acronym.

Keep It Simple, Stupid.

This is very appropriate when it comes to branding. A simple brand is incredibly important, for several reasons.

1: A simple brand is easy to remember. It is important to have a brand that is easily associated with you or your company, and so it has to be easy to remember.

2: A simple brand is easy to incorporate. In order to stay congruent with your brand, everything from your advertising to your slogan to your shirts should point back to your brand, and if you have a complicated brand image, this can get hard to do.  After all, how do you make a slogan that implies your company “has a great work ethic, cares about animals (but mostly pandas), likes long walks on the beach, and does software really well, mostly in the military field.” 

Actually, a panda made of lines of code and carrying a rocket launcher would be pretty cool.  But you get the idea.

Examples of great brands that keep it simple are everywhere, from Nike’s Just Do It to Geico’s Save 15% (or more!). The trick is not so much to have a short slogan, but to have a simple concept.

For instance, Coca-Cola does not exactly have a slogan like Nike or Geico, but it does have a concept, which can be nicely summed up by “Ahhhh…” - refreshing, fun, tasty, etc.  Simple, yes. Easy to remember, on a feeling basis, yes. Easy to associate with all kinds of advertising, yes. Check plus for Coke.

So learn from the best, and keep your brand identity simple, stupid.

Step 1 - It’s all about them

Step 2 - Hearts, then minds

Step 4 - Keep repeating it