The comprehensive idea of Visual Branding

I received a lot of feedback on Visual Branding, online as well as offline. Several people asked me to recap the thought of Visual Branding. Therefore, I decided to change the program of outlines and add this one: a comprehensive definition on Visual Branding.

I have summarized Visual Branding in 7 points.

1. ‘Global warming’ by information

We live in an age of information overkill. The symptoms: intensely trained consumers, a battle for attention in commercial communication, a battle to conquer the hearts & minds of the consumer. This problem is not new. But answers are few. It is one of the reasons why Visual Branding is crucial for businesses.

Foolish consumers don’t exist anymore; they only exist in the mind of foolish marketers.

2. Segmentation

The media-landscape is showing a continuous increase of segmentation over time. Nowadays, there are business models for magazines based on only a few thousand copies per edition. And the all-ip era will take segmentation to new dimensions, enabling real individualization of media-consumption by the consumer (or better put: media interaction).

Traditionally, mass media communication meant that a specific selection of media could reach a mass audience. Right now it means that a massive amount of media only reach a specific selection of people.

3. Visually based society

Since the beginning of history, people have communicated by telling each other stories. Then we invented the alphabet, later followed by the printing press. Just in the last century, radio, television, and internet were introduced. And here we are: in a visually based society.

The society in which we live ‘mentally’, is growing bigger and bigger. Communication techniques and infrastructure bring information everywhere fast and in large quantities. People easily travel around the world. At the same time, mortgage problems in the USA might cause people in England to lose their job.

The world is getting smaller, but therefore it is getting bigger.

In this interconnected information era, we have moved from a text-based society into a visually based society. And when the language of society is visual, companies should speak a visual language.

Visual language is a crucial aspect of Visual Branding. The visual part is the most decisive ‘composing factor;’ of a brand, the most dominant. It is in everything, from advertising to retail, internet, product, packaging, interior design, clothing etc. Just sit down for a moment and try to make a list of brand manifestations in which the visual aspect is not important. You will not get far.

Companies that are able to really manage the visual expression of all these manifestations, able to organize their Visual Branding, will outperform their competitors.

4. Fragmentation

It is hard for companies (or other organizations) to maintain sufficient span-of-control over their brand and brand architecture. They are faced with a vast amount of internal and external people involved with the brand, who have their own professional (and personal) interest, opinion and ambition. Companies are also faced with a complex media landscape (see 1 and 2) that they need to navigate in order to reach the consumer.  Together this creates fragmentation. The basic cause of fragmentation is that the level of complexity in marketing a brand exceeds the span-of-control in a company.

Governing a brand therefore is a difficult and complex affair. Besides, in many organizations, much of the mentality is based on traditional thinking. When it comes to branding, there still is much one-sided emphasis on advertising and marcom. Review boards or Decision Making Units, for instance, are often completely focused on marcom. If you take a close look at brand tracking research, you see that many research models actually do not offer brand tracking, only advertising tracking. The crucial, dominant visual side of all branding efforts is simply overlooked, or at least not sufficiently top-of-mind.

This is partly due to the fact that marketers and p&l responsible professionals have difficulty with terms like design or design managment. Because it creates the feeling that design as such is the main focus. It sounds more like design is a force on its own, than a contribution to the common cause: the success of the brand. That is also why I attach great importance to the wording Visual Branding. (and respectively visual brandmanagement). Because it expresses exactly what design can do: build strong, successful, effectively communicating brands.

5. Brand personality

I am convinced we should think much more in terms of personality instead of identity. This raises eyebrows, I know. And I want to stay away from any ‘religious’ or hairsplitting debate about words. I just give you my thoughts why I think ‘personality’ fits the current timeframe much better. Decide for yourself.

In marketing, communication and design, we have grown used to ‘identity’ as the accepted word. And it sounds like the right term. But is it? Did we ever give it a clear thought? In language and in society, ‘identity’ has a quite different meaning than most of us intend to say when we professionally use the word. Identity is about personal facts: where you live, what your name is etc. Identity is also about characteristics you share with others. You are, for instance, female, catholic, and a republican.

So it is important to conclude that identity does not refer to your individual personality or uniqueness. On the contrary: it points to facts that make you part of a group.

There is another way to illustrate that we use the word identity incorrectly.  Populist right wing politicians deliberately confuse ‘identity’ with ‘personality’.  The vision that these politicians express (like Wilders in Holland, Le Pen in France, De Winter in Belgium) can be summarized as: ‘if your identity is Muslim; your individual personality is criminal and dangerous’. So they deliberately confuse identity with personality.

With very good intentions, we do exactly the same. I think we should be precise. To my conviction, personality is a much better word. Just like people, brands have a personality. And it is this personality that counts. Was Tony Blair so successful because of his identity or because of his personality? Did you fall in love with your partner because of her (his) identity or because of her personality? Identity refers more to background, to roots. Personality is the decisive factor, the factor that makes the difference.

I rest my case. To sum it up:

Identity and personality are connected. Identity is a part of personality, not the other way around. Personality is what counts.

6. Visual Branding

Visual Branding potentially is the overall link; it can create visual unity and strength in processes that could fragment a brand; it speaks the language of our current society and thus consumers (visual language); it enables companies to translate much of their positioning and branding effort into something people see (and therefore feel, experience). Visual branding helps to create a mindshift in companies from advertising/marcom to the full brand, including design. It helps to communicate through an overkill of segmented information. 

The key to Visual Branding is the visual expression of a brand. Visual Branding is not about ‘executing design rules’, it is about visually expressing a brand personality, anytime, anyplace, anywhere.This means using the specific demands and opportunities of each medium, channel, moment, and event: from the product itself to packaging, internet, retail, advertising etc.
It means an organization has to give high priority to managing the visual expression of the brand in every element, because the visual aspect is the most dominant composing factor of the brand.

Look at Apple, the most perfect example of Visual Branding around. Products look different all the time, but they are totally and instantly recognizable as Apple, because they are a clear expression of Apple’s brand personality. But it is not only the product: all manifestations of the brand are a strong, intelligent, evolving a visual expression of the brand personality.

Apple is a high-class demonstration of how Visual Branding creates extremely strong and effective marketing; it is a worldwide super brand, while comparatively it hardly spends a dollar on advertising.

7 Company type

Internal branding is quite important in Visual Branding, as it is in branding in general. Every organization has its own way to organize decision-making processes around the brand, the way to organize the link between branding, p&l etc. While deciding in which way it is desirable to integrate Visual Branding in the general brand management, it is good to picture the personality of the company. 
During my career of 25 years I have seen many companies (and other organizations) from the inside. From a viewpoint of branding, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are 4 types of organizations:
- Originals
- Professionals
- Wanters
- Dreamers

The ambitions with Visual Branding, the internal governance (Visual Brandmanagement); it all is strongly influenced by the nature of the company. But it would take too much space to elaborate on this within the framework of this outline. Therefore, I refer you to outline 3 and outline 4 on visual-branding.com.

Conclusion

There is a lot I want to say about Visual Branding. It is not a singular, one-dimensional subject. Through writing on this website and discussing the subject with audiences, I’m finding that I can still improve the way in which I explain my thoughts. I hope this outline has been helpful in explaining the overall view of Visual Branding.

If you have any thoughts, suggestions, ideas or comments, please feel free to give your feedback online.