It’s times like this when we naturally hear the comment ..”.no one will notice”. Trim the budget here and there and leave this and that out. “No one will miss it”. A smart associate told me not so long ago that if you hear this, watch it carefully. This is something that he learned in several instances to be dangerious.  One thing for sure , particularily if they are a loyal customer, they will ‘feel’ something different. Feeling something different where a certain consistantcy existed easily leads to closer inspections where change can become a slippery slope to brand revaluation. So be alert when you hear ‘no one will notice’. It’s the signal to understand where noticing leads.

Did you happen to catch a bit of Jeff Immelt  this morning on the Washington post and BBC sites with a 75min. live video ad presenting  GE ’s focus on healthcare ? Attached directly beside the screen were the real time blogs and smogs chugging away. Recessions like this quiets the competitive field. Showing vision and brand confidence never can be demonstrated better. Let’s see more imagination at work for brands that see this opportunity. Now’s the time.

OK, I just read the latest, 4/6/09 , Newsweek article on Peter Arnell by Daniel Lyons and found it confirming a long term echo in my brain about our business . It’s not what you do, it’s what you say you do. His BS factor rocks. More power to him, but he might self destruct with it. Two main currents of BS in branding…pontificating egos and consumer research interpretations. Remove the two and do you have anything that resembles an authentic effective discipline?  Of course.  It’s the stuff that makes everything  kind of look and feel the same…but slightly different. Like the new Pepsi logo. Give us break.

See where John Updike died yesterday. He said he wrote most often about three great secret things in human experience, sex,religion and art. He missed the fourth….branding. Although, it barely beats outs politics.

Reading ‘ Accidental Branding’ by David Vinjamuri …. sub titled, How Ordinary People Build Extraordinary Brands.  It’s an interesting read. David has really drilled down on these entrepreneurs and gives depth to the back stories. But the  title is all wrong. These are not accidental brands and the entrepreneurs are not ordinary people. These are all talented passionate people engaged in business building which inherently involves brand equity building . We find accidental  branding occurring when people miss position or over dress a sub brand or even a product option in a product line that ends up competing with, even usurping the intended brand being built. Brand signals need to be carefully granted and given correct voice volume levels.

The new year will challenge all brands no matter how strong brand loyalty is. People just won’t be able to support their normal purchasing  decisions for awhile. That means for necessary items, different brands will be considered. Brands that go along in their normal approaches to attracting and  welcoming new customers will need to pay extra attentions to the mind set of people engaged in a  brand shift situation. There will be good opportunities for productive brand building insights here.

We’ve been working on a useful way to classify brand signatures to more easily review standard practice and facilitate our development procedures. We have the usual logo tomes and review the countless sites out there. There’s the indexing by business categories, product types, countries, mark content, time periods , practitioner portfolios and calligraphy styles. And there’s the graphic art focus which shows marks alone without showing what or how the brand name is involved. We haven’t found anything that brings it together in a way that shows shared physical features. Anyone out there see anything like that?

There are key brand definition components that need to be identified , understood and mantained by upper management that has the vested interest in long term brand strenght . This is the only protection for the brand against the personal interests of short term meddlers.

Good to know some people are still wondering about our Rainier Beer tv work as indicated in a recent PI article.

We always found it interesting when people in our business told us we were lucky to have a client that allowed us to do tv like that. Like permission is all you need.

Sometimes I feel brands are living entities. One day there’s an idea , it gets a name and it takes on a life of its own. It’s nurtured and grows , often out lasting its creator and generations of others servicing it. People easily identify their personalities and give them human attributes and characteristics. Brands become significant others that act as guides through the jungle of commerce.