BRANDING: The Business of Sexy
There are obvious reasons why Dan Carter, Maria Sharapova and Elle Macpherson secured lucrative product endorsements and why we dress up at job interviews: there’s value in looking good. But is this emphasis on aesthetics essential for running a business?
THE GOOD
We’ve all witnessed the success of beautiful brands like Nike and Apple. Their branding is intimately entwined with their product offering, so much so that people go out of their way to have the swoosh or partly-eaten-apple brand marks on display. These brands are style statements in themselves and if this leads to people paying more for that brand, then that is great for business. But there are also many examples of poorly designed brands that have succeeded.
THE UGLY
Consider Craigslist.org. It was launched in 1996 by a programmer and still looks every ounce designed by a 90s computer geek. Yet, in 2017, the company was valued by Forbes at USD$3 billion. Pretty good for one of the ugliest sites online.
Closer to home, Kiwi kitchens have been stocked with many poorly presented discount grocery ranges, from No Frills in the 80s and 90s and Budget and Homebrand more recently. Pak’n’Save itself is another great example of less-than-stunning design that more than matches it with her prettier counterparts. These plain brands have kept us fed, given people jobs and provided profit to their owners. Win.
So, if businesses can succeed when their aesthetics are sub-standard, what function does branding actually play?
THE BRAND
“The best way to describe a brand is as a communications tool,” explains Craig Jones, head of Brand and Marketing at New Plymouth’s Strategy Collective, the team behind many of Taranaki’s most-loved brands like Social Kitchen, Ozone Coffee, Juno Gin and more. “Your brand communicates to your customer the problem you are solving.
“That’s why Pak’n’Save works so well. The plain fonts, stark black on yellow, and stickman adverts all communicate to the New Zealand grocery shopper that they’re the home for New Zealand’s lowest food prices. They’re the ones solving the problem of tight household budgets.”
Craig stresses that it’s the consistency between your brand messaging and your product offering that is most important when it comes to that branding being successful. If Pak’n’Save suddenly turned up with a logo and advertising material more suited to a high-end European car company or fancy clothing designer, their customer base would start assuming that prices had gone up along with the brand upgrade.
The bare bones branding of the Pak’n’Saves and Homebrands and even Craigslists of our world serves to confirm the low-priced positioning of those brands in the minds of customers. So, it’s not all about good looks or being sexy, but rather about your brand being true to who you are.
BE TRUE TO YOURSELF
Craig raises another interesting case of branding: the one-person-band. Take your neighbourhood plumber or home-office lawyer. The extent of their designed brand might be a Times New Roman logo with some clipart slapped on a business card. However, Craig points out that in these cases, the sole trader actually embodies their brand themselves.
Every conversation they have with a client, every email, every phone call and every piece of work carries their brand—it all communicates their value proposition. “This works great when it’s just you and your marketing is word-of-mouth,” says Craig, “but when it comes to entering new territories or adding staff members, suddenly you don’t have the same control over the messaging your company is putting out to the market.
“Our branding process at Strategy Collective isn’t just about defining a logo, we want to understand a business from the inside out in order to consider the whole brand experience. Take a restaurant, for example, they’re not just a good dish and a logo. They’ll need to consider the audio experience, lighting, service, language used, interior and even the cutlery. The whole thing needs to work together.”
Understanding who you are is the first step in the branding process and this enables you to permeate this message not only to your potential customers but also to your employees and suppliers. “Branding affects the people you hire, your business systems, and the culture in your company,” explains Craig. “Apple’s programmers need to carry the same brand values of sleek design and second-to-none user experience that their marketing team promotes. In this way, branding is an internal exercise as much it is an external one.”
BE TRUE TO YOUR AUDIENCE
So, a good brand aligns with the essence of who you are as a business and serves to communicate that essence throughout your team, but, in order to make sales, it must also communicate a value proposition to the world around you. In this, it’s vital that you’re speaking the same language as your target audience, says Craig.
“If nothing else, marketing is all about listening to your target market, understanding their needs and values, and providing a product and message that speaks their language,” expands Hayden Shearman, Strategy Collective marketing specialist. “The very Kiwi marketing of Pak’n’Save and The Warehouse are classic examples of companies understanding the language of their audience and not being afraid to speak it.”
Who would have thought a Japanese car company would have an advertising campaign built on the most-Kiwi of all curse words “bugger”? But Toyota did it with their 1999 Hilux commercial and spoke perfectly to their rural New Zealand target audience (we won’t mention the 120 official complaints!).
So, a successful brand needn’t be sexy, but it must be true to your company and build meaningful connections with your customers. It’s why Dan Carter is great for selling undies and Barry Crump great for selling utes.