Blogless

Rule Number One of branding is: consistency, consistency, consistency. A brand has to have the same appearance whenever someone sees it — that’s how it gets programmed into people’s heads. Violate the brand and conventional wisdom says you’ll lose your audience recognition. For example, you wouldn’t see a Coke logo that’s blue, nor its Coca-Coca wordmark in anything but script. Nobody breaks the rule; it just isn’t done.

Well, somebody did. A recent Valleywag post faulted Yahoo for high crimes against its own brand (emphasis mine):

Racing to reach markets before its rivals established themselves, Yahoo started dozens of country-specific websites with a frenzy of joint ventures in the 1990s. Its haste still haunts it; Yahoo’s international websites may cater to local preferences, but at the cost of consistent branding.

Look at this collection of Yahoo logos. Is the Yahoo logo red, or purple? Reversed out, or solid? Mirrored shadow underneath? Take your pick of stylized designs; somewhere in the world, Yahoo has it.

In the classical marketing view, then, consistent branding trumps “local preferences”. (Doesn’t that phrase sound derogatory? Like “community organizer”) That’s fine for American soft drinks, perhaps, but is it also true when it comes to more flexible, truly global products, like Yahoo?

One would think that greater technology and faster communication would be a unifying force—that everyone could see and want the same thing. But we know that isn’t the way things are. Technology gives people more choices, so they want their thing.

Case in point: A few months ago, an AP article discussed how US internet companies have had to adapt to conditions overseas. To succeed, businesses can’t just translate their pages or repeat the same business models wherever they go. Nor, it seems, can they carry on with the same aesthetic:

Google Inc. discovered [its usual tactics didn't work] in South Korea and China, where it initially held its minimalist approach, only to see local rivals thrive by acknowledging their users’ preference for sites rich with entertainment and visual complexity.

Given an example like this, and others in the article, Yahoo’s inconsistent branding doesn’t seem quite so shocking. Indeed, Valleywag’s scolding comes off as ignorant of the global reality.

Consistency seems so old-school; so hegemonic. To truly penetrate worldwide, does a top-down, homogeneous branding strategy make sense anymore?

As the US economy weakens, tapping into other markets is more important than ever. We may have to rethink how the game is played. To survive, the next brands might have to be mercurial: many different things to many different people.