Pushing boundaries in brand identities

05 November 2009

When marketers talk about design, this usually means product packaging or print adverts. But as the world economy exits a recession, businesses are beginning to invest in a new future for brand design, which is as strategic as it is creative.

Brand design is now about creating a mix of initiatives that work together. The most successful examples consider how a brand could be realised in all sorts of inventive ways, using product design, architecture, technology, live events or social media, as much as the obligatory graphic identity.

The most inventive brand design is physical, electronic and graphic all at once. An increasingly sophisticated school of thought is emerging that understands the benefit of incorporating brands into physical objects, screen interfaces, web content, retail and work environments.

Motion identity
Technologies such as the internet and mobile phones mean that brands are now being streamed live to consumers. Even if this is just a logo, it is being broadcast to a wider world. As a result, a handful of brands have begun experimenting with “living” and “multisensory” brand identities that evolve and change on screen.

The basic idea is to animate the visual identity. Using motion graphics, not only can companies create a moving or changing logo optimised for online, mobile or the big screen, but they can make it respond to user activity or fill it with user-generated content such as text messages, tweets or email messages. Not only does this create the visual impression of an animated brand, but the process of involving users builds direct relationships with consumers.

For its latest show at the British Film Institute last month, interactive movie festival Onedotzero did exactly this. It commissioned Wieden & Kennedy’s executive creative director Tony Davidson to create an “augmented reality logo”, which could be filled with streams of text messages and emails. Not only did the brand work on small-scale screens such as mobile phones and computer screens, it was also projected onto a 50-metre screen at London’s South Bank Centre.

With some help from Nokia, visitors could take control of the identity in front of them and move it around, using the new N900 handset as a controller. It formed an interactive, living, motion identity, which has now become the basis for a raft of brand materials in print and online media.

Onedotzero founder Shane Walter says he commissions a new identity for the festival each year to try and push the boundaries of brand design and technology. He’s surprised, he adds, that more marketers haven’t picked up on the opportunities of using motion graphics, particularly as the festival always makes its application software freely available for anyone to borrow and adapt.

Commercially, it’s fair to say that brands have been slow to pick up on these developments. A clutch of brands such as Nokia, Sony and Swisscom have experimented with motion graphics using interactive design agencies such as Tomato and Moving Brands, but the examples are still rather limited. It will take a few more adventurous brand owners to put all this innovation into practice on a grand scale.

Jeff Conrad, creative director of screen branding agency Red Bee Media, says that smart brands from any sector should observe the way that media brands behave. Red Bee, which was set up by former members of the BBC design team, has just finished putting together the final touches to a new animated logo for TV show Doctor Who, designed to work on screen and in print.

“The critical thing is not just making a brand identity that moves but creating a televisual experience around your brand. Think about how the screens work when you go up and down the tube escalator; they work together in series to give you a really rich interaction with the brand,” says Conrad.

For him, it’s actually consumers who are leading the way. He warns/ “Consumers don’t only get it, they expect it. Clients really vary though.”
Conrad says it matters what sector you’re in as a client to adopt this way of thinking. He cites snack brand Doritos, which recently launched a “horror” online gaming experience called Asylum 626. It gets consumers to interact via microphones and webcams and is entirely integrated with both Facebook and Twitter. He says that this “brave” campaign is behaving more like a TV channel than a traditional FMCG firm.

Designing brand experiences
While motion identities may be new, creating brand experiences is an idea most marketers are very familiar with. Over the past few years, brand experience design has flourished as an innovative way to have a new type of conversation with consumers.
Agency Imagination has worked in this field with clients such as Samsung, Ford and HSBC. While not everyone can afford a Thunderbirds-themed show, like the one Imagination created for Ford a few years ago at the Detroit Motor Show, the firm’s creative strategy director Paul Simonet says this discipline has been innovating too.

“Designing brand experiences used to be about the ‘fireworks’ or the ‘fizzle around the client’s sale’ but it’s become much more sophisticated,” says Simonet. “Now when we talk about brand experience, we talk about ‘brand context’, or ‘creating magnetic content around a brand’ rather than brand messaging.”

It is “context” that Nike has created with the Nike+ Human Race, he claims: “It’s not an ad message, it’s an engagement context.” This annual event grew out of the brand’s Runlondon and the North Versus South competitions held over the past few years. People with Nike+ shoes (fitted with GPS chips) can register to run from anywhere on the planet. (In the 2009 event, which took place on 24 October, there were 24 organised events around the world).

“We try to make a brand the thing that everyone is talking about, whether it’s online, over the blogs or through social media,” says Simonet. “We then try and become the creators and curators of the brand.”

While Imagination isn’t prepared to reveal yet what it is developing for its client Samsung, the agency promises that its brand presence at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver will be a suitably magnetic affair.

Experiential branding is also thriving in the form of live branded entertainment. Drinks brand owner Diageo has been experimenting with experiential content around its Smirnoff brand. The company is putting on a string of music festivals around the world that run until the end of the year.

The Warehouse Project in the UK ties up to social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Events are designed to be eye-catching. At the Glasgow gig last month, the theme was a 3D Disco requiring festival-goers to wear special glasses.

As part of its branding activity for the London 2012 Olympics, it is undertaking a “look programme”, which promises to roll out a complete 2012 “brand narrative” for the athletes and visitors along the route they’ll travel from the airport to the Olympic village and the Olympic sites.

Designing physical brands
Brand innovation also extends to designing the physical side of the brand experience, like product extensions, or retail, leisure and workplace environments.

Virgin Atlantic has been using product designers Pearson Lloyd and architectural practice Softroom to build the Virgin brand into concrete and steel. The airline has recently completed two new business class lounges at Tokyo’s Narita airport and Boston airport in the US, as well as its Upper Class Wing at Heathrow. Each lounge is a one-off space with designs sympathetic to the location.

“The passenger experience is designed to cover every touchpoint, from the architecture and interior design of the buildings, to the cabins, ticketing and on-screen entertainment,” says Joe Ferry, head of design at Virgin Atlantic.

The passenger journey is topped-and-tailed with a limo service that uses number-plate recognition to start check-in, scales in the pavements to silently weigh luggage, and the clubby surroundings of lounges which house an array of complementary beauty and toiletries brands such as Cowshed and Bumble & Bumble.

In the future, Ferry believes there will important changes to the design of physical brand environments to reflect increasing concern with sustainability. “These changes might be very subtle, like increased natural light in buildings or more use of sustainable materials,” he says.
Airports are great for brands keen to experiment without entirely changing their whole retail proposition on every high street. For example, Swarovski designed a £4.5m chandelier at JFK Airport in 2005, designed by Yves Behar with Bombay Sapphire. Bombay Sapphire has now set up the Bombay Sapphire Foundation to harness the talents of top product designers including Ron Arad, Karim Rashid and Tom Dixon.

Dixon has worked with the drinks brand on a steady stream of pop-up installations during recent design festivals, such as the electric blue Dusk Bar at Somerset House (complete with Tomtini cocktail), and the Bombay Sapphire Stretch in Trafalgar Square, a sculpture made of giant blue elastic bands.

Clearly, brand design has come a long way in the past few years. Despite a recession, it is following consumers into new spaces, conjuring up live productions of branded theatrics to keep them intrigued and learning to have real-time conversations with people using technology. The smart brands will be those that aim to change even more quickly than some of the fluid identities now being seen on screen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Topline trends

• Innovative brands are combining graphic design, product design, architecture, interior design, installations and brand communications.
• Brand design is using new technology and social media to develop brands digitally.
• Some brands are creating moving brand identities, which can be personalised for individual users online.
• Brands are forming relationships with big-name designers, creating branded pop-up installations, lighting design, furniture and fashion products.
• Innovation is being inspired by changing customer behaviour rather than client demand.
• Smart brands are learning to entertain and become the content. Brand owners are acting more like “editors” of information rather than sponsors.