Yves Béhar Redesigns NIVEA Brand

From OLPC, Puma Shoebox, NYC Condoms and so on... Yves Béhar, you are the most accomplished designer of the 21 century.

Marketing Colour (DSLR Cameras)

I've always been intrigued by new brands that emerge into the market, especially those that try to compete against a really saturated market. For example, what if there's a new giant fast good chain or a soda brand that is going to compete against Mcdonalds and Coca-cola? How is it possible from a business perspective? One example which caught my attention is the Sony Alpha DSLR.














By entering the market late (and also not being a camera specialist), I found that it was really a bold and courageous effort to compete against the market leaders of Nikon and Canon. I can't think of any other brand than Sony who would have the resources to rock the boat.  

DSLR Camera (Digital Single Lens Reflex) Timeline
Nikon launched 1999
Canon launched 2000
Sony launched 2006

Personally I am a Canon user (although I'm using an Olympus at the moment), but I am impressed with what Sony has done so far after half a decade and I believe the numbers speak for themselves. What I appreciate most is what they have done with the choice of their colour.












By just referring to the colour positioning, to me it implies that Sony has taken the best features out of Nikon and Canon and created the perfect camera. Beyond the actual functionality of the camera, I reckon that colour plays an enormous role as colour speaks its own language.

Thumbs up for Sony, all the best Kazuo Hirai for his new stewardship.

Ethical Marketing

In our modern society today, again I am about to mention that the landscape for businesses have become so much competitive. People are creating new ways everyday to differentiate their products from the others. Above the functions and benefits of a product, the experiential aspect has only began to emerge since the turn of the new century and we have seen some great examples.

One example of a business that lives and breathes by its ethical marketing principles is TOMS, the American based One for One shoe company. Its ethos is simple; with every pair of shoes purchased, they give a new pair of shoes to a child in need.

Lately I have been struggling to connect the dots as to how ethical marketing could be connected to the consumers by explaining how ethical marketing could involve the consumer to make an impact. My initial thoughts were as blank as to only claiming that my brand is ethical and is friendly to the environment, but how could I go beyond that?

We all know that there are children around the world that are suffer, especially children. In the case of TOMS, by communicating the health benefits that children and adults alike will gain from having the soles of their feet covered by using UNICEF's data—Every year, nearly 10 million children under the age of 5 die from largely preventable causes. This statement in turn goes a long way to imply that users can literally save a life of someone by preventing a deadly infection due to the cause of having nothing to protect their feet.

To summarize, it is important to understand user's values (most importantly the one that touches the heart), then using numbers (through research) would only mean something to them!

Meaning of Volvo and it's logo

Having seen a few Volvo's on the street lately, besides knowing that they are the inventors of the seat belt. I have always been curious about the asymmetrical logo and did a search to find out about the meaning and concept behind the logo.

With it's symbolic meaning of the property of iron, it does echo the qualities of being tough. Surely reflecting their image as the safest vehicle.

Production of the Volvo automobile began in 1927 in Sweden. The brand name was based on the Latin verb "volvere" or "roll," to indicate all the transportation-related products made by the company. Chemical Symbol The logotype adopted by the new company was based on the chemical symbol for iron, which is a circle with an arrow pointing diagonally toward the right. This is also the symbol for the planet Mars, the Roman god of war and the male gender.

Symbol of Strength
By adopting the iron symbol, which has long been associated with the iron and steel industry, the car's makers intended to connote the durability, strength and quality of their vehicles.

Typeface
The name "Volvo" on the logo is written in a distinctive font, which the Volvo Owners Club website identifies as Egyptian.

Diagonal Band
Originally, a diagonal band served to clamp the car badge onto the radiator. This band has since become an integral part of the design and is found on the front grille of all Volvo vehicles.

Business Logo
The iron symbol with the company name can be found on Volvo steering wheels and wheel hubs, as well as in all the company's advertising. For many consumers, the Volvo symbol has come to represent a brand known for its exciting, high-quality automobiles.

Lovemarks

This is again a reminder for the purpose of building strong brands. Brands sustains businesses. In Lovemarks (Roberts, K 2005), it is identified that human beings (consumers) are powered by emotion and not by reason. The most powerful emotion, Love is believed to be the foundation for creating new kinds of emotional passionate relationships that brands need. To gain love, brands needs to earn Respect—Performance, commitment, honesty, service etc. are the most basic values that businesses must endure.

"The idealism of Love is the new realism of business. By building Respect and inspiring Love, business can move the world."
— Kevin Roberts

Reference
Lovemarks, The Future Beyond Brands, Roberts, K 2005

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What Branding is All About

“It’s (branding) not about consistency, it’s about creating stories that make sense.” Stories are the way we connect with people and create relationships. If we think of brands as people or personalities, they need to be magical storytellers. As humans, we thrive on all of the emotional connections we have. We get passionate about them. It’s the stories we tell and hear that trigger those connections."

Marina Willer of Wolff Olins London @ 2011 Brand New Conference in San Fransisco 

Creating a New Category

So far, my thoughts on what I wish to work on is to develop a new traveling experience for tourist visiting Seoul. The Seoul Metro subway was identified as an area which opened several opportunities since the subway is the most convenient and common mode of transportation in Seoul.

The immediate thought coming to mind was to apply a Service or Universal design approach. Investigating existing point-of-sales and implementing new way finding systems are the default applications; but since my passion geared more towards Branding, I have been toying with the idea on apply a different approach to see if this may be a plausible solution.

Branding consists of many parts with marketing being one of them. For many reasons, the core reason for branding for coporations is simply to make money. Why? Because older methods are no longer applicable today. Traditional market research may have proved to be show positive results but how much resources would that require? Are there different methods to make money? Yes.

A principle in Branding is to be #1 in your category (Ries, A 2005). In other words, you cannot be the #1 brand without championing your category. i.e. you cannot create a Red Bull and be #1 without being the best energy drink. To cut the long story short. My thoughts are to consider tourism (the industry) as the market and apply a new concept using Branding to solve the brief.

The target audience has been identified and that's the tourist. So what if I identify a new category, creating the 'new tourist' and become the champion of this category? Applying diverging principles a tourist, what could I discover now?

Reference
The Origin of Brands: How Product Evolution Creates Endless Possibilities for New Brands, Al Ries 2005)

Rebranding?

Samsung is one of the largest electronics device manufacturers in the world today. In 1993, they adopted a new corporate identity which we are all accustomed to. In some way we are able to identify the brand somewhere amongst our daily lives, for me it's the Chelsea Football Club in UK.


The beginning of Samsung  
Samsung was founded in 1938 as a small trading company that made noodles and sold dried seafood. The name Samsung (삼성/三星), which means “three stars”, was chosen by the founder Lee Byung-chull who wanted his company to become big, powerful and everlasting like stars in the sky. 
 
<source: http://www.samsungvillage.com/blog/2011/03/did-you-know-three-stars-on-noodles.html>
 
For the sake of this post, my intentions are to look at the reasoning behind rebranding (or better known as changing your corporate identity (CI) before the term commercial term 'branding' was coined).

From a visual perspective, the reason is clear – the CI is outdated, and it needs a new look. But who actually determines whether a logo is outdated? It's not the design studios or leading brand agencies like FutureBrand or Landor...the answer is the people.

Ultimately, every logo today has become a commercial commodity. Unlike medieval times where the logo would be in the form of an emblem or crest to symbolize ones alliance (in other words ones identity). Should these people still be around, I would have good reason to believe that their emblems would be given some form of facelift.

The reason is simply the shift of of consumer attitudes that has evolved and shaped how we perceive brands. In the past (say 2000 years ago), we would hardly be given a choice between purchasing a table for our home. Our options were limited to simply what the carpenter would build in the neighborhood we live in. Now fast-forward 2 millenniums later, industrialization and globalization has presented us with options to choose a table from thousands of over designs from anywhere in the world.

Leading from the reason above, businesses simply had to adopt to this evolution to remain relevant to invoke some form of competitive edge. And this is the present society that we live in today.

Bearing those thoughts in mind, this would better rationalize a fair reason as to why Samsung had opted to change their corporate identity (apart from the reason that they were celebrating their 55th anniversary).


Fun fact: The first Samsung product sold under the company logo was Noodles.