Firebrand

People think of brands the same way they do people; we are neurologically hard wired to deal with interpersonal relationships. The people you have representing your brand have such a strong impact on your brand because of this. Those people you put in front of a camera or microphone become the face of your brand in a very real way. Their mannerisms, tone of voice and other non verbal communications have direct consequences for your brand.

I personally am dealing with such a perception right now as a customer. I don’t want to be petty, so I won’t name names but you may be able to follow along if you are a fellow Canadian. A national Canadian food supplier have been running ads for their holiday specials. The ads have the company’s executive chairman talk about the value of their products. Nothing wrong with that. The problem lies in the combination of poor writing and his delivery style which makes him come across as condescending. In one of the ad he commands people to drop what they are doing and go and buy their dessert; probably meant to come across comical and cheeky, but the way it is delivered almost makes me want to go in a baby punching tangent! (Dane Cook joke.) That ad changed my perception of this spokes person, who I never had a problem with in ads in previous holiday seasons. But now whatever I here him say, I perceive the message as cold, greedy, elitist, commanding, and ridiculous. These perceptions will probably translate to the brand after the holiday season. While most people probably don’t feel as strongly, I am sure many if not most feel the same way in some form or another.

It doesn’t just have to be jerks that can have a negative effect on your brand; there is also wimps and sleezeballs. I jerk is someone that creates an anger response in people. Obviously you don’t want someone to respond to your brand with anger. A wimp is someone who doesn’t seem to be confident in themselves or their position. This is equally as damaging to a brand because if people don’t think that the brand has confidence in their products then customers wont have the confidence to invest in them. A sleezeball is probably the most common. This is someone who does not come across as trustworthy. We see people on TV who are obviously just being paid to endorse or represent a brand, with no feelings about the brand otherwise. This is why infomercials often don’t come across well. We see people over acting and faking enthusiasm to endorse a product they haven’t heard off before this commercial.

If you are allowing someone to represent your brand, be very careful of how they are percieved by people. Ask a handful of people how they react to an ad, podcast, press release, or whatever. It may be worthwhile consulting a behaviour psychologist about the non verbal cues a spokesperson is giving off.

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By Colin Finkle. Colin Finkle is an industrial designer that works with large brands everyday designing displays for FX Displays in Toronto, Canada. He is the principle designer at Firebrand Creative. He also writes for AMD’s FireUser.com blog.

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Full disclaimer here. I am a longtime customer of Fido; in fact I have always been a customer of Fido for my cell phone service.  What initially attracted me to Fido was their brand. Through the sleek, sexy but friendly graphics and messaging it was clear that it is targeted at urban young adults.

Some background first off. Fido Solutions is a mobile service company in Canada which is a owned of Rogers Wireless since 2004. Canada has the infamous distinction of having the highest cell phone rates in the world. This is because of there is only three major cell phone players (Rogers, Bell and Telus) and they have been accused of oligopolistic tactics. Each player has one or two spin offs, so consumers falsely see 8 different companies fighting for their business.

Fido was a model of consistant branding. Their logo had never changed since they changed their name from Microcell. All of their communication had the same modern, elegant use of san-serif text in either black or their signature gold on white, or white or gold text on a black background. Their signature was their use of dogs to play on our heart strings and reference the name. They originally had big success with their adds depicting dogs and owners that looked alike, and saying our cell phones and packages should match us the same way. It was clear that they were always targetting the young adults entering the cell phone markets. They sold youthful yet practical handsets, and had stores in urban hotspots. Their plans were simple with great customizations options. I found their bills straightforward, easy to read and easy on the eyes. As a graphic designer and a marketer, I would have given the whole brand an A+.

That is why it puzzled me to see that they had completely changed the look and feel of their entire brand as of November 4th, 2008. Surely their logo was one of the most widely recognized in Canada, and it was imbued with the love and support of thousands of loyal and happy customers. With most companies overvalueing the equity in their brand, it surprises me that Rogers would throw out the equity built in their youthful sister brand’s graphics. If someone knows or has a theory please leave a comment or email me. My only theory is to completely differentiate from parent company Roger’s service, and move move towards the brands of new players like Koodo and Virgin Mobile.

I am not impressed with their new graphics. There are mixed styles everywhere. There is both serif and sans-serif text. There is clean lines mixed with rough sketch inspired lines. The sketch lines are playing off of the logo of a cartoon dog house. The rough sketch look does not contrast well against the sleek and sexy handsets like the iPhone, but neither does the colour. Gone is the classy gold of the old logo, and in it’s place is a 100% saturation yellow (seriously bright: R-255 G-235 B-0) that conjures memories of post-it notes, the yellow pages and Snoopy’s bird friend Woodstock. Thier website looks unfinnished with lines that don’t match up.

I don’t want to be too hard on them because I can’t even imagine the scale of workload that it would take to rebrand a company like this. It will get better as it filters out over time. I just don’t understand bones of the brand graphically. The graphics are youthful, too youthful; more 11 year old kid than 21 year old young adult. The catroonish look of some of the elements and the logo says old fashioned, childish, undesisive, unfinished, sketchy. None of which of what I think of as qualities dependable wireless carrier. A mobile company should be future forward, fashionable, cool, sexy, solid and fun. Their brand should complelent and stand beside the brands of the handset manufacturers that they sell. The new brand doesn’t look right against an Apple, Motorola, Sony Ericcson, or Nokia. The new look doesnt compare to those solid, futuristic, classy brands.

I guess we will see how it play out.

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By Colin Finkle. Colin Finkle is an industrial designer that works with large brands everyday designing displays for FX Displays in Toronto, Canada. He is the principle designer at Firebrand Creative. He also writes for AMD’s FireUser.com blog.

The marketing world has been lit on fire yet again by thought leader Seth Godins new book called Tribes. I will have a review of the book in a few days, but for now here is some interviews with Godin about the book. Between these links you should have more than a taste of the book to see if it is worth picking up for you, or downloading the free audio version:

Video:
Mixergy’s video of Seth Godin’s Tribes presentation
Slideshare of Seth Godin’s Tribes presentation slide deck

Audio:
Marketing Over Coffee’s audio Seth Godins “Tribes” presentation
Accidental Creative’s audio interview with Seth Godin
Australia’s Marketing Magazine’s audio interview with Seth Godin

Text
Hugh Macleod’s (Gapingvoid) 10 Qs for Seth Godin
Hypebot’s Seth Godin interview with a musician slant

There isn’t a larger example of personal branding than that of presidential candidates. Not only does your brand have near 100% penetration, you have staff all around the country figuring out how to show people who you are (or who they want you to be).

Lesson 1 – Do not act against your brand perception
The biggest lesson to be learnt for all brands (business and personal alike) is not to act against your brands perception. Where the candidates had the hardest time is when they had something hit the news that was out of character for the character they had set themselves up to be.

The biggest challenge for president elect Barack Obama was when the Jeremiah Wright scandal. Obama was a patron of the Chicago mega church Trinity United Church of Christ, where pastor Jeremiah Wright often gave controversial sermons about societies continued intolerance for African American people. Why this was so damaging to Obama was because he had built himself up to be the ultimate believer in the goodness of man to look beyond race, yet he had listened to sermons about segregation and hate Sunday after Sunday. But he resolved the difference gap between his brand and his past actions through a great speech called “A More Perfect Union.”

The biggest challenge for John McCain was his nomination of Sarah Palin as vice persident. Sarah Palin created a bubble of support for McCain, which sudenly and quickly poped in September. McCain quickly gained support because the pick ratified his brand of being a free thinker or a maverick. But when it was clear that she was being safe guarded from press appearances, it made people restless and primed for a snap judgement as soon as something slipped. But it was Palin’s brand as a tough, right wing mom with plans to drill in Alaska clashed with McCain’s brand as a cooprative, center-right maverick passionate about the environment. That dissonance and static between their brands made people unsure of what the combination was. The idea was that Palin would appeal to the right wing base, and Mcain to the center undicided voters; unfortunately you can’t be all things to all people.

Lesson 2: A small set of passionate followers is more powerful than a large set of normal followers.
What made the Republican party as unbeatable as they have been for the last decade was the large and normally boistrous base of the party. For whatever reason, McCain did not excite the base as much as pervious presidential candidates. Obama on the other hand used his skills as a community organizer to incite passion from the grass roots up. Creating a passionate advocate of your brand is like infecting them with a cold (uhmmm… a good type of cold!); they can help going things that make other people want to be as passionate. Obama raised an inordinate ammount of money not in small part due to the passionate people inspiring others to donate. A small ammount of passionate people giving their time and energy inspired people to think “Well I can’t volunteer as Joe does, but I will put in $20 online.”

Lesson 3: Use technology when it supports your brand ideals.
Another reason that Obama raised so much money because he leveraged the internet to recieve donations 10, 15, 20 dollars at a time. I caution people on using technology: do not use technology for technology’s sake. Use technology for your brand or customers sake… period. Fortunately the technology of taking many small donations on the web was right in line with Obama’s brand ideal that the average person can affect change and own their government.

I am sure their are many lessons that can be found throughout this campaign. Elections are interesting because of the passion, pace and importance of them means that it is a pressure cooker of branding and marketing. It is also very clear what strategies work, and what does not. Maybe your brand won’t ever be as big as John McCain or Barrack Obama’s. Few will. But I bet that the people who care about your personal brand care as much more than they do about either of those people.

Congratulations to President elect Barack Obama!