All about branding - and then some!  

Okay, I’d better get a quick plug out the way first for those folks out there who’d rather not wade through another thousand word essay!
The word is out:  I do indeed sell logo packages (and rather spiffy ones at that it must be said) starting from only $550 for three designs, which includes my hour-long, fully comprehensive and all-things-considered personal consultation service!

The design process usually goes something like this –

Step one is a mug of tea or a freshly brewed blend of fair-trade coffee. In fact, I’d like to take you and your business partner out for the best cup of coffee in town so we can sit down together with a thick slice of chocolate cheesecake and discuss all your business and personal requirements one-on-one and face to face – that’s the way it used to be done, that’s the way it should be done, and that’s the way I do business!

The meeting itself should always be an enjoyable process. This is an exciting, momentous and memorable time in your life. It's a big, big deal in my book - so, it’s really important not to stress too much – let me take care of everything!

You’ll be talking directly with the person who will be designing your logo – no third parties, no dodgy middle men – just a humble, respectful and slightly batty graphic artist, armed with pad, pencils and an untamed imagination.

You can use this consultation time to have a brain storming or mind-mapping session, chat about colours, influences and possible designs, or even work through a series of questionaries that can help to better define your tastes, objectives and the projected direction of your business.

I always feel deeply honoured to be a part of such an extraordinarily important event in the life of any business. It really is a profound privilege, and as such, I’d just like you to know that I am 100% committed to finding a logo design that you can be proud and enthralled about – in factm, I'll work through the night if needed to create the positive outcome you are looking for.

Finally, after you have selected your logo, I will present you with a beautiful, hand- packaged DVD set featuring your chosen design in a wide variety of popular electronic formats.  

So, if you’d like to ask me any further questions about this process - or perhaps even book an appointment, please feel free to contact me at your earliest convenience.

Right - now that the plug is safely out the way, I bet you’re expecting me to write something vaguely encouraging about how desperately you need a new logo - feathering my own twiggy bird’s nest along the way.

Well guess what? I’m not going to do that. I’d rather maintain some scant semblance of intellectual honesty over an ice-cream-truck full of cash any day. When I say something, I want you to believe me - and that’s that.   

And the truth is, I think this whole ‘branding’ thing is a bit like – oh, I don’t know – the dark side of the force or something. Once upon a time you had logos. Little innocent looking icons with flowery fonts that made your shop look pretty… and hopefully somewhat discernable from everyone else’s.

But now - now you have branding.

All pervasive, everywhere you look , get that-thing-out-of-my-face, American style, branding.

Everything and everyone is supposedly a ‘brand’ now. How sad is that?

 In fact, some companies have very little else besides.

Take Nike for example.

Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away, Nike actually owned a whole bunch of shoe factories and probably paid their workforce a fair old wack of entitlements. But today, all Nike really own is a brand – the infamous swoosh symbol - along with oh…half-a dozen office buildings specialising in R&D, and perhaps a few well-staffed broom closets here and there. But pretty much everything else has been sold off – the factories are now based within specifically designed free-trade and tax-free zones built inside third world countries - fenced off with barbed chicken wire and privately owned and operated by a gaggle of faceless third-party companies. All that labour and manufacturing is contracted out, and then sub-contracted, and then sub-contracted yet again. The shoes are sold for $200 on the high street, and the person who actually made them in the first place gets around two cents for all their trouble. Magic.

Canadian Activist Naomi Klein wrote a well-researched and wonderfully written tome  a few years ago called ‘no-logo’, which describes the history of the logo and how mega-corporations like Nike have steadily divested themselves of tangible, physical assets while at the same time reinvesting that money into relatively intangible things - like logos, brand names, football team sponsorship and various rock star commercials.

But why would anyone in their right mind trade a physical asset like a house– something you can actually touch - for a purely intellectual one – like an idea?

There are two parts to this answer –

The first reason is because an intellectual asset typically has a diminished financial liability.

Factories and workers grow old, break down, and generally need replacing at one stage or another. This process costs a relatively large amount of money, at least in a country like the US or Australia. And like it or not, most people in western democracies appreciate things like holiday pay, health insurance and y’know – basic human rights and stuff like that. Unfortunately, at least for those who value them, human rights cost corporations – yes, you guessed it - money. And that's a price they'd rather not pay.

Now truth be told, I don’t know anything about you, your various ethical leanings or your chosen flavour of politics   - but I’d get pretty pissed off and dispirited if a company I worked for ever tried to audit my level of efficiency to thousandths of a second. I'd be rather upset too, if I was only thirteen years old and forced to work sixteen hour shifts for thirty cents a day. But hey, it happens – it happens all the time, and in the name of the all-mighty dollar.

Ultimately, our luxuries are build upon the suffering of others.

Has the world gone crazy or is it just me? How can this still happen - in 2009?

Well, here’s the kicker -, such indiscretions and abysmal working conditions never actually occur on ‘the company’s watch’ so to speak, because, obviously, they sub-contract the liability. They don’t have to bother will all that stuff anymore -like paying employees and maintaining factories – they just buy the shoes from someone else. And by subcontracting such liabilities, they can effectively stage-manage and maintain what really matters most to them - their image - the brand.

Quite an insubstantial investment surely? Is there anything on earth that can be taken down, ridiculed, twisted bashed and destroyed faster than one's image?

I guess that's what the lawyers are for.

The second part of the answer -and perhaps the most interesting, directly relates to the apparent predictability and plasticity of the human mind and its biological predisposition to certain types of influence – the science of psychological manipulation. Deep in the bowels of even the most esteemed college, there are bookshelves stacked and packed full of encyclopaedic-sized texts on everything from ‘what background music makes thirty five year old men eat more banana ice-cream’ to ‘marketing Fanta orange most effectively to girls under four'.

And where does all this information come from? Every time you hear about a survey being run online, a little old lady collecting information about your dish-washing habits in a shopping mall, or even how many ciggies you smoke on a Sunday, you can be sure all that information will be collected and corralled into the waiting clutches of a corporation somewhere - and twisted to serve an unexpected end. To make more money.

Somewhere, right now, I'm pretty certain somebody (or some-thing) is surfing your facebook and my-space profiles and recording your every taste and whim. Your google searches are logged - and they know exactly what kinds of things interest you. Bring up a book on Amazon and the computer will magically spit out three dozen suggestions for further purchases. The techniques are becoming increasingly sophisticated. But alas, I digress.

A brand is valued in my estimation because it has been proven – time and time again – that by following a particular marketing formulae and investing insane amounts of cash,  a brand can produce consistent, predictable and enormously profitable results – even during a major economic downturn. In fact, while thousands of companies collapsed during the last global recession, the ones who did well were the ones who invested the most in branding and marketing activities. Branding is way of transcending market forces. So expect to find a record amount of junk mail in your letterbox this year

But why is this so?

Because these companies aren't even selling a product as such – the product is almost completely irrelevant next to the spin and associations that are attached to that product. Shoes, surely, can only reach a finite degree of efficiency and comfort.

Companies like Coke-a-cola don’t sell cola – there are hundreds of brands of cola out there. No, they don't sell cola - they sell emotions.

How does a brand work exactly? Here’s a rough formula to take home with you:

Step one: define an idea. Step two: define an idea. Step three, four, five and almost every other step after that: define an idea.

What concept, credo, message or 'feeling' best represents and communicates to your target audience? What lofty ideal will your product or service ultimately stand for? Does your brand of hot-dogs represent freedom and the Australian way? Does Bundy Rum symbolize fun times and a Friday night piss-up with the boys? Is the secret of eternal love and happiness found at the bottom of a can of baked-beans in chunky chilli sauce?

It’s amazing what people believe when they want to believe. Like a teenage girl reading through a mills and boon novella – without having experienced love for herself, she is instead in love with the idea of being in love.

Take a look at the average Pepsi-Max commercial. Pepsi max isn’t about the logo - and pepsi aren’t exactly trying to sell you on the benefits of artificially sweetened tap water. No way! They’re selling ‘Adventure to the max’! It’s all sex and action. Cool guys with board shorts and surfboards jumping out of planes and shit like that. Girls in unbelievably tight bikinis wearing roller-skates and jumping head-first over payphones and post boxes. All filmed from impossibly low angles by high definition cameras.

It’s all bullshit of course – but the sad thing is, the depressing and ultimate truth of it all – it bloody well works!

That’s what people buy – at least subconsciously. Not the drink itself – It’s the feeling. The feeling of being associated with something that actually er...stands for something. Something imbibed with deep, exclusive or universally held meaning. Like I dunno - michael Jackson! Pepsi once paid Michael Jackson - the coolest star in the world at the time - something like fifteen million to appear on a sixty second tv commercial. And Jackson didn't even like pepsi! They just wanted the product to be associated with the ultimate expression of awesomeness (boy how things change!)

In fact, far out - does anyone remember what the coolest movie of the eighties was? Well, I can't say either, there were a lot of great films back then - but one of the best was Back to the Future. Remember the sequel where they travel into the future to the year 2015 - and Marty visits the Cafe 80's (where it's always morning in America - even in the after-noon-noon-noon...ha ha ha ha!). Well, look closely - the tv that tries to sell marty hot salsa with beans, chicken, beef or pork - it's none other than Michael Jackson! And what does marty end up ordering? 'All I want is a pepsi!"

You've got to love the ingenuity of brand placement. You could even play a game with the kids while watching the new transformers or James bond movie (okay, maybe not the new bond movie) while trying to list all the brands they've seemlessly worked in just to pay for the production costs. But boy oh boy, do those companies make some money out of it. When I first saw the orginal Matrix film, all I wanted was a full-length leather trenchcoat and a couple of those Samsung Flippy phones. And I mean, come on - who wouldn't want a purple lightsabre just like Samuel L Jackson in the new Star Wars films? Whatever Sam's got, I want me some of that.

Too bad you can't buy real courage and integrity from a supermarket shelf. But you can certainly buy something close - A six pack of Hann Premium Light! Gre-at Taste!

In days gone by, moral and ethical reinforcement was found in entirely different places than it is today – religion for example, the family unit, or within a strong, tightly knit community. Your 'tribe' in other words - the 'in group'. Now however, in the age of choices and individuality, justification, permission, morality and a sense of self usually come from a host of inanimate objects. People invest and define their entire personalities around what they have rather than who they are - and that's downright dangerous. When those 'things' are taken away through economic crisis or whatever personal disaster can befall you – the self constructed and defined around your Aston Martian DB9, solar-heated spa bath or well-paying job inevitably falls over flat like a cardboard cut-out of George Michael.

Oh sorrow indeed - this is the way the world is going these days. And it's the wrong way in my opinion. But hell, if we're all going down, I may as well have a bit of fun along the way and try to make as much moolah as possible in the process..er..right?

Unfortunately, few seem to see the ‘connect’ between actions and consequence. There is always a price to be paid somewhere along the line that could eventually bite you on the arse. The current economic downturn was caused by greed – I think we can all agree on that. People over-extending themselves, and multi-billion dollar businesses run by complete nutcases who were periodically rewarded for 'betting the farm' and chasing after incomprehensibly massive profit margins at any discernable cost. All that matters is the short term to these people. Worry not for tomorrow, for tomorrow never comes.

However, are brands just a natural extension of that greed, a symptom -or perhaps even among its chief contributors when you step back and examine the whole picture scratched in the sand? I don't know. Is it the thing itself or 'the attitude and intent? 

This article is supposed to be ‘all about branding’ - so I've cheated you a wee bit . I could talk about how to 'design' a brand, sure. I could talk about human psychology, colour theory and how red makes you hungry and that's why almost every fast food chain around– McDonalds, Hungry Jacks, KFC, Pizza Hut, Pizza Haven – all have red in their logos. Somehow, that splash of red makes you want to eat more – god knows why, but there you go.

And yeah - that singular example of psychological manipulation could be spun out into a host of other interesting subjects itself - like animal rights, over consumption, obesity - and where the heck personal choice and responsibility fits into all this craziness.

Yes, I suppose there are 'good' examples in the world as well – GreenPeace and Amnesty International for example- yep, these are brands too - but brands are still essentially manipulative, so there's a bunch of muddy ethical arguments buried in there somewhere. Still, it is possible to use branding to achieve universally positive things - just as it's possible to use the tools and framework of capitalism to undermine capitalism, if you think there's some benefit in that.

So perhaps - just perhaps - there’s nothing inherently 'wrong' in buying or designing a nice, attractive logo. It's just a picture after all.

However, I strongly believe that an over investment in ‘image’-  at the expense of bankable things like education, infrastructure and progressive, constructive ideas - will ultimately play a large part in the concurrent downfall of civilised society and the natural environment

Invest instead in your capacity to conduct business and conduct it well – the best investment is one that supports the notion of indefinite sustainability (actually, that would contradict the laws of physics and entropy somewhat, but you know what I mean).

Advertising should always be the servant of these goals rather than the master of them.

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