I've spent most of the past 20 years making brands work. It’s not brand building or “creating an iconic brand”, it’s just trying to make them work. And it's difficult. Through some incredible successes and some miserable failures, I've developed strong beliefs about how these weird things called “brands” work.
One of the most central is that design is the biggest tool. It's the most powerful thing you can use to make your brand work. Think about brands that have maintained great results over time. It's very hard to think of a brand with bad design. There are a lot of weak brands with great design, but strong brands, iconic groups that we all want to be a part of, all have great design. So why does this happen? I think there are three main reasons.
First, you can't ignore design. About seven years ago, Bruce Duckworth was assigned to explain design to my team at Carlsberg, a multinational beer company. I will never forget what he said then. “Design is marketing that people can't or don't want to do.'' Ignore it. 'Increasingly, we hear that consumers are actively avoiding marketers' efforts to invade their lives and invade their conscious and unconscious minds. They are getting smarter about this and increasingly have easy ways to opt out (at a cost).
I see a lot of design briefs that are basically “make things look good.”it's not an overview
But they can't opt out of the design, and even better, they don't want to. They like to see the new iPhone, they like to pick up beautiful products on the shelf (even if they don't need them), they obsess over the design of Nike's latest releases, and they like beautiful things on their social media channels. I'll post it. Share with all your friends. All of this is driven by design, not by intrusive content that we have to beg, trick, or pay to see or hear. People welcome beautiful things into their lives. And let's be honest, most of the things we create as brand people, they don't do that.
Second, design communicates branding more clearly than anything else. We always hear the cliché “seeing is believing,'' but even in a world where most video content on social media is watched on smartphones and audio is turned off, clients and agencies are still relying on words and words. I'm obsessed with storytelling. picture. When trying to explain a brand's idea, they foolishly start with the question, “What would a TV ad look like?” I see a lot of design briefs that are basically “make things look good.” That's not an overview. Sometimes I try a little harder and write phrases like “make it stand out/look modern”, but it's the same thing. You can't simply ask for something to be “better.” That's lazy and beside the point. You need to be specific about what you want to convey with your design. All elements of design must be intentional. You have to tell your story. Because it tells. Your job is to make sure it's telling you the right thing. As Bruce said, “Everything tells something.”
When we started working on Maker's Mark, our handcrafted bourbon whiskey, we knew it was different from other brands. However, the image of the design was smooth, black, and shiny, indicating that it was machine-made. No matter how much we told people that our brand was handmade, everything they saw screamed the opposite. And guess what? They listened to the design, not the words we were saying (as they always do).
But if you do your design right, people will understand what you're saying. They can't always put it into words, but it's there. It takes a lot of effort to be loud and clear and never be expressed in a thousand words.
Third, design lasts, and it should. Thankfully, we don't change the design all the time because it usually requires a lot of investment (people and money). But there are other reasons besides cost and effort. People learn to know and love the brand for what it is, but changing it is risky. This means that the elements of the mix receive the most senior attention, have the most long-standing agency relationships, and are the ones to have the most control over. People are pretty tolerant of brands that create terrible social media and mainstream media content. After all, this content is still ephemeral in today's world. But when it comes to design, they won't forget or forgive you for being wrong.
The biggest declines in brands are usually caused by quality issues or design changes. Very few brands fall off a cliff because of bad content. But if you change your design the wrong way, too much, too soon, or not in a way that feels authentic, you'll lose people quickly. If you take good care of it, it will become a great asset. Carlsberg had (arguably) the most recognized and beloved brand logo in the beer world. And when I realized this, it became incredibly powerful. We once ran a sponsorship campaign where we just displayed the word “probably” in a unique font. In a set that included Coca-Cola and McDonald's, he had the second highest brand awareness of all sponsors. The power that comes from absolute consistency in your visual assets is immense. So treat your core assets with the utmost respect, manage them at the highest level, know them, love them, and protect them with the same vigilance you protect the quality of your products.
These are three big reasons why design is always a top priority for me. As I continued on my journey to “make brands work,” my view of how this happens became more solidified. I hold these ideas and principles firmly as my North Star and as a reminder of where to put my time and energy. There are all good reasons to do this, but it's just because it's fun. Nothing beats the experience of creating a beautiful world for your brand to live in. Something that protects and honors its heritage, tells its stories and brings joy to those who experience it. I love it.
Excerpt from I love it.What is it?: The power of instinct in design and branding © 2024 by Turner Duckworth and Giles Ringwood. Reproduced with permission from Phaidon. All rights reserved.
