Weekend Ponderable: Towards Multiply- Articulated Brands
DLB has something for you to ponder this weekend: How can your brand address multiple registers of user experience — with multiple degrees of controllability?
Jonathan Baskin wrote an interesting post over at his Dim Bulb blog last Wednesday, about the relationship between brands in a search-driven world. His contention is that "search is the anti-brand," by which he means that while "corporate marketing is still focused on optimizing search terms to promote the stuff of branding, consumers are already past that step."
I would argue that even if there’s a real trend to support this particular piece of hyperbole, it’s not exactly time to throw in the towel on old-style declarative brands, at least in most industries (e.g. Nick’s cheez-flavored crackers: ain’t nobody increasing the profit margins on these with an internet search. Now, a catchy jingle…).
Nevertheless, Baskin is making an important point: The climate is changing, and there are contexts in which potential customers interact with a brand, which aren’t subject to a traditionally branded experience. The challenge for designers inside of this climate is to evaluate potential responses to sort of brand DMZs. Which is exactly his point.
From where I’m standing, though, we can’t just throw the baby out with the bathwater. Traditional branding techniques are still relevant, and I believe will continue to be for the near future. They are going to provide the substratum for user experience in a variety of contexts, even if they don’t work exactly the same way they used to.
Hence, your weekend ponderable: Meditate on the possibilities of a brand and design strategy that takes into account the multiple degrees of control possible in the various registers of user experience.
Comments on this post
1.
Hyperbole?
I think if you simply replace the word “branding” with “communicating,” you redefine the process…I agree that providing information is important, and that the act of stating it is ‘declarative’…but announcing isn’t mandating, and branding presumes that by presenting information we can dictate how, where, and when it is used. We can’t, of course. So the communicating we do needs to be relevant to ongoing consumer experience (and need, and interests, etc.) vs. our static aspirations for designing our brands.
2.
Hi Jonathan,
First, viz. “hyperbole,” my (hyperbolic) point was just that there are still zones where old-style branding control is relevant (cf. television commercials, billboards).
Second, I appreciate the distinction you’re making, and I certainly agree that corporate communication is not coextensive with branding. My argument is that neither is branding coextensive with total control. My point above is that (a) you are 100% right that search engine style contexts significantly change the ability of a corporation to control the use of its information, but that (b) perhaps this total control can actually be relaxed while still operating in the domain of branding.
What would that look like? I don’t pretend to know. One incredibly naïve example from the top of my head is a tagline in a meta description. Or, as some other guy noted on your blog, SEO. Or how about a targeted AdWords campaign? If I choose to buy ads for when someone searches "design restraint wookie" on Google, aren’t I making a branding-type decision, rather than a simple corporate-communicative one?
Anyway, that’s my general drift here. What I want to think about is whether this deeply embedded brand-control relationship is necessary to branding as such. As I read what you’re saying, you think it is. I’m just not so sure. That’s what I’m posing here; it’s the ponderable: Is there a kind of branding strategy that can be relevant to search-engine results and other procedurally-created contexts?
Meanwhile, and all speculation and semantics to one side, I can happily agree that the communicating we do needs to be relevant to a changing landscape of consumer experience. Thanks for stopping by and talking, and thanks for your blog, which I regularly enjoy.
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