When Less is More –

Brand Identity and Marketing Work Best When They Are Visual And Simple.

What do you remember? It’s always those brand identities connected with a highly visual campaign that conveys a simple, emotional, and evocative connection. Whether B2C or B2B customers. The visual image associated with the brand creates a powerful connection. It’s how humans work.

Symbolic relationships go back eons and we humans constantly connect meaning to symbols. In marketing, it’s the same thing. Keep visuals and the brand clearly associated with meaning that connects to your customers.

Symbolic Interactionism.

Sociologists have carefully looked at how symbols and meaning create connections between groups and how we make choices. Several sociologists developed a new term that described this connection between the visual brand identity and the brand image or experience. They call it Conceptual Interactionism. This is when the conceptual frameworks of symbolic meaning are applied to the perceived image or brand experience. Out of this new insights into the important aspects of consumer behavior emerge. The research basically shows that “situational self-image” is the connection of you being in the ad, you as a consumer, self identify with the product which shapes your experience and connects you to the brand. It’s in many ways why movies and theater can be so captivating.

Who Are You Connecting With?

Who are your people, your audience? What do they care about? What are the unifying motivations that give you the ability to connect with them? This emotional connection to your brand and the trust you bring is not cultivated overnight. Think of the campaigns of Nike and Apple and how you need to reinforce relationship building. Part of connecting with people is about nonverbal, visual meanings that we as humans invent. We create meaning from previous experiences and when brands can tap into this you build strong connections.

What Are You Saying?

For many companies, marketing campaigns are the main method for both communicating with their market to reinforce their positioning and for customer acquisition. The key is staying in your customer’s mind share and knowing what you mean to them and why.

Good campaigns follow a theme and include a series of touch points that connect with your audience. In a noisy marketplace, a message delivered once through a single medium rarely makes a difference. While there’s no magic number regarding the best frequency for a message to make an impact, opinions range from three to twenty times, with seven being an old marketing adage. But the key is being consistent and focused on your message and meaning.

Why Does A Message Have Value?

This is probably one of the most important questions you can ask. You need to know why you have value and build on that value with customers over time. Social media campaigns can bring a clear focus to what you’re about with the right audiences. Meaning is specific and relevant to the needs of the audience. This is why it’s critical you look at the value you offer.

Bombarded By Brands – Are You Clearly Different Than Others?

The focus is all about a simple message, a simple association that clearly says to your audience this is for you. This is about you. Keeping the emotional meaning between the consumer’s values, experiences and beliefs is the key. And, in this process clearly analyze your competitors. How are you distinctly different than them? How do you keep your brand unique and separate? What taglines, visuals, and messaging bring the meaning of your brand to your core audience?

Does Your Story Connect?

The heart of the marketing message is building a clear association between the brand, the identity, and what meaning creates for the consumer. This is the key. This is when understanding the value of the brand, the meaning it conveys to the consumer, the images you create all come together. Keeping it simple and visual can say it all.

Whether it’s Nike or Visa or Intel, these brands have all focused on connecting with their consumer – the key people that identify who they are with that brand and the meaning it conveys.