When you talk to startups, CEOs, and others, it seems like everyone wants to be the “next Apple,” “just like Nike,” or to do things “the way Starbucks does.” Admittedly, these companies are icons and have surpassed the competition to become larger-than-life brands, symbols that stand for things both larger and more sweeping than the commerce they generate. But it’s not like any of them pushed a magic icon button to make it all happen. There’s no road map to guaranteed iconic status, or our world would be vastly different, to say the least. But if we dissect these kinds of rockstar brands, and remove the lucky breaks, the passion, sweat equity, and visionary leaders, what is left? We believe there are some fundamental activities remaining that help illuminate the roads a brand must take to becoming an icon.

Here are a few of them:

Ubiquity
You need to be everywhere your audience is. That doesn’t necessarily mean event-driven Super Bowl commercials or plastering your brand messages on every free inch of real estate. But it does require an intimate knowledge and understanding of the people you’re trying to reach, and then unobtrusively inserting your brand into their lives in useful and meaningful ways. This is less the persistent stalker syndrome and more the reliable, friendly presence. And it requires more than holding a sign that says “Remember, we’re here!” Today’s audiences want more from your brand than just a pathetic “Call me…?” Give them the means and a reason to follow you and follow up when their need arrives.

Repetition
To remain in that elusive “top-of-mind” position, it requires some sort of regular and consistent presence in the lives of your target audience. It’s up to you to determine the how and who, and which messages and means are crucial elements in your brand strategy. Repeat these in a way that doesn’t feel monotonous or self-absorbed (no one likes the people who only talk about themselves!), but slowly unfolds what you’re doing, what you’re about, and why it matters. This means that your brand’s messaging, look, feel, style, voice — all need to be consistent, working in concert to provide synergy that makes it sound like your organization speaks with one voice.

Emotional Connection
This might seem silly to a company that sells toilet brushes or distributes freight containers, but the honest truth is that nearly every purchase or product decision carries some sort of emotional weight to it, however slight. The hard part is finding out what that bit of caring is, and when it’s liable to happen to your audience. Someone might care very much about getting their morning coffee quickly, so the brand touchpoint of a fast line is crucial to evoking satisfaction. Simple, bold nutritional graphics might make a harried parent’s shopping a bit easier at the point of purchase. Audience empathy will lead to the discovery of these moments of emotional connection, allowing you to use your service, product, or offering to make a positive difference to them.

Spark
This is one of the least quantifiable aspects, but no less important in stepping up the ladder to brand stardom. What is a spark? It’s that “new and different” aspect that sets your brand apart from others. It could mean providing something that’s never been seen before (a Segway?), revamping an existing category (the iPad), or just offering a completely fresh point of view on familiar products (like Method did with cleaning supplies). The commonality in all of these is some type of “unique selling proposition” in marketing parlance, but we prefer to think of it as a brand’s soul, it’s spark, or reason for being. (And making money doesn’t count as a “reason for being.”)

Something Worth Sharing
Finally, you know you’ll have an iconic brand in-the-making when you have something people want to share with others. Sharing is a highly-overused term in our sphere of retweets, Likes, and thumbs up , but this principle has been around a lot longer than social media. In fact, it’s centuries old and very simple. Your brand needs to contain something that people want to tell others about. Other than the occasional brand train wreck, what brands are truly worth discussing? You need fans and people who want to selflessly evangelize about what you do, because they love it and want to tell others. The motivation might come from wanting to be the first kid on the block with the new toy, a desire to be the resident expert on something, or just an overflow of genuine delight.

These five aspects are no magic recipe, but instead, we hope that they’re a handful of crucial steps on the painstaking road towards brand greatness. Now get going.

It’s not just the hipsters who are doing it. Analog seems to be making a comeback. LP sales are climbing, people are resurrecting Polaroid-style film, preserving wooden type, buying vintage furniture and old-style printing with a vengeance. These are all natural reactions to seismic changes in technology and the ways in which we interact with objects. We can understand these sometimes-oddball interests and activities if they’re viewed through the lens of history. For hundreds — nay, thousands of years, human beings have interacted with physical objects and spaces in a particular way, whether it was hoeing in a dusty Nebraskan field, or signing a paper contract. But then digital devices arrived on the scene, and voila! Things have changed.

The Internet, cloud computing, capacative touchscreen devices, virtual models, avatars, message boards, electronic mail, Short Message Service texting on phones, and many other innovations have served to sever our centuries-old, hard-wired relationship with the good, old-fashioned physical object. But it seems like there’s a cultural memory or vestige of longing for some touch still hanging around, because the desire for analog experiences seems to be on the rise. So, what in the name of Thomas Alva Edison is going on? There are some things that physical objects do very well, where their digital cousins leave us a little cold. Here are a few reasons why yesterday’s gadgets, technologies, and ways of working just won’t die.

Holding something is like a relationship
It’s not just collectors who like to hold something in their hands. Whether it’s a baby, a baseball bat, or a diamond ring, the nature of the tactile experience brings us closer to a thing. Physical touch is a singular experience, creating a specific haptic bond, even with inanimate objects. Textures and touch hot-stamp our memories with emotion, and all of that is stored together in the recesses of our brains. That’s why running a hand over the polished fender of a ‘58 Impala brings some Boomers back to their teenage years. It’s very difficult to create a physical bond with an iTunes thumbnail.

This is one reason why many are experimenting with cassette-only music labels, collecting vinyl, and connecting with methods of creating and playing that date back to earlier eras. Previously it was assumed that to complete a task, to work or play with an object, that a person would have a specific interaction and get particular feedback or influence from a physical object. But with technological sea changes, many of the experiences we’ve had in the past — reading a newspaper, sketching a model, penning a poem, playing an arcade game — now come to us by way of glowing screens and digital devices. (The irony that I’ve written this entire article on my iPad and computer is not lost on me.) That’s not to say that these new ways of working and interacting are bad, but where they excel in efficiency and transferability, they can fall short in connection and permanence.

Old things connect us with history
For many in Generations X and Y , anything that isn’t the newest and shiniest falls out of fashion. To them, old stuff seems lame, antiquated, and worthless. Why watch a “boring” silent film when you can be rocked back in your chair by the sweet strains of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol in Dolby 7.1 IMAX? And who wouldn’t prefer a Taylor Swift ringtone to some Stevie Nicks album? But for a growing group on the margins, there is value in connecting with a time period before your own. Sure, some of it is probably a fascination with “otherness” — something we didn’t grow up with has a alien nature to it, a patina of authenticity because it came from a “simpler time.”

But some of the appeal is also true curiosity about how things were done before. And not just for novelty’s sake, but because those experiences offer a time-rooted and unique interaction that modern creation doesn’t always afford us.  There is also an archaeological aspect to the search, a seeking for truth in what other generations did — what was it like? How do their creative impulses and executions compare to the way I do things? These are valid questions that need to be worked out, and sometimes the “analog way” might be the best path to explore.

Making something tangible is a richer experience
There is something satisfying about pulling a screen, developing film in a darkroom, or making Super 8 films. The act of connecting to an activity in a physical manner builds a sort of physical memory and satisfaction that mediated experiences can’t match. The output is something that can be held, turned over, cherished, filed, and admired. While we’ve tried to recreate these interactions (like the website page flips or iPhone apps), they come off as pale imitations of analog experiences.

In the end, our parents were right. There is such a thing as sweat equity — and building, assembling, or initiating creation with some physical expression leaves a lasting imprint on the world and the creator herself. I doubt we’ll be auctioning off the digital signatures or iPad sketches of famous people fifty years from now. The connection is not the same when something has never been touched.

They lead us to belonging
Finally, in discovering these analog means of creation or consumption, we seek to connect with other like-minded folks. Not everyone will appreciate these analog experiences, but in finding fellow students of physicality, we are also searching for identification and belonging to a group, tribe, or class of others who fundamentally understand us. Musicians jam together. Knitting circles knit. Audiophiles swap albums. This connection, this very human sense of belonging, seems to be even more fragile and scarce in a disconnected world that offers hollow, one-dimensional versions of “community” at the hands of Facebook, message boards, and LinkedIn groups. It’s a fundamental hunger for human relationship, and shared physical experiences are often more meaty than their appetizer-size digital counterparts.

All of this has to be postscripted with a disclaimer. It’s an ignorant and short-sighted man who scoffs at the future, and we certainly aren’t shaking our fists at the amazing innovations and technologies that tomorrow is ushering in. The future has afforded us amazing abundance, new experiences, and in many cases, deeply satisfying careers. But we’ll miss out on a treasure trove of beauty, creativity, and connectedness if we don’t truly consider all that the analog experiences have to offer.

Some people think strategy in design isn’t sexy, but that’s just wrong. You have to know how to see the beauty in purposeful design choices and methods. Great aesthetics without strategic underpinnings are like frosting on a meatloaf. Strategy isn’t sexy like the tipsy girl who flirts with you at the bar. Strategy is the sexy you bring home to meet your Mom.

Probably one of the most underrated assets in co-workers, employees, and people in general is assertiveness. Not to be confused with aggressiveness, assertive workers strike first, asking “How will I do that?” or “Why shouldn’t I?” They are the people who expect to get that prospect meeting, those who introduce themselves to the famous speaker, and those who live by the adage, “It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.”

They take action, make things happen, and don’t wait to be told to go for it. Within an organization, this personal makeup is golden, and often makes up for other areas where someone is less talented. Is assertiveness on your radar?

We collaborated on a touchscreen presentation for Humana, alongside Edelman, Re:Think Post, Grow Interactive, and Humana’s internal team. More details in our portfolio.

Halloween is a hoot — let’s just get that out of the way. But for a seemingly-superficial holiday (dress up and get candy/get drunk), there’s quite a bit going on behind the scenes culturally. And for those of us in the branding world, that’s even more intriguing than the sweets (though less delicious).

This Halloween, we’ve noted the increasing trend for Trick-or-Treaters and Halloween partygoers to forego the traditional fun and/or scary character costumes, and don brand-specific consumer product attire for their once-a-year holiday getups. More and more Xbox consoles, Hershey Bars, Facebook pages, iPhones, and Schlitz beer bottles are sprouting arms and legs each year.

Picking a costume is a fun and personal decision, and with no lack of choices, what does it say about our society when someone shimmies into a specific representation of a branded product? What’s behind this shift away from mummy and princesses towards McDonald’s fries and walking iPads?

Here are a few reasons we think are worth highlighting:

Consumer Products Are A Shared Cultural Currency
As entertainment markets have fragmented into dozens of sub-genres, film and TV references are naturally more obscure than they used to be. So, if a Halloween party-goer is looking for recognition, attending a party in a DIY Aquafresh tube outfit will probably be received better than a meticulously-created-yet-little-known Star Trek character costume.

Better and More Thoughtful Branding
Over the past decade, consumer products have been branded in more distinctive and clever ways, and we’ve wholeheartedly accepted these items into our daily lives with gusto, building ever more robust emotional (and subconscious) attachments to such products as electronics, cleaning supplies, sports clothing, food and beverages, and countless others.

People Are Seeking Comfort and Familiarity
Culturally speaking, it’s often been suggested that uncertain economic times draw the public away from film dramas, and towards escapist comedies and fantasies. With the global markets still tenuous, to an anxious public, horror costumes like witches and Wolf Men may seem less desirable than a walking Coca-Cola can.

Halloween Now Aims At Adults
Marketers have succeeded in pushing Halloween as an adult holiday, and the results have been predictable. After all, it’s adults who buy all the candy and decorations, and it’s adults who purchase the costumes, and it’s adults who use most consumer products. The more grown-ups involved in Halloween, the more their fingerprints will appear on its various aspects.

So that’s the landscape, but how does a brand get in on this action?

Producing a licensed costume seems like an obvious choice. Though branded Halloween digs are becoming increasingly common, an organization rushing to market with a branded getup may be missing the point. It’s not the availability of a costume that’s going to entice people to wear it — it’s their feelings towards the brand in the first place. The stronger and more personal connection we foster towards individual products, the more likely we are to see those products as extensions of ourselves. And with a strong enough bond, we’ll create the costume ourselves, as the thousands of homemade iPod costumes from a few years ago demonstrate.

Branded Halloween costumes aren’t a tool in which to build your brand, they’re an end result of strong brand fundamentals in the first place. The connections people make with their brands and those products happen in the dark recesses of the brain, but they’re not random — they’re based on a few, essential practices that any great brand manager holds in the back of her mind:

Make a Great Product
Whatever opinions you hold about Apple as an organization, the design of their products is second-to-none. Consumers often pay a premium for the design, but the resulting bond that ensues is a powerful force that even today many other manufacturers have failed to realize. It’s not just the devices, though — Apple customer service routinely ranks high in surveys, which further imprints the company’s value and and friendliness amongst their customers.

Have a Consistent Visual Identity
Facebook page costumes have flourished over the past few years, in a way that we never quite saw with MySpace, even at the height of its popularity. Facebook’s consistent color scheme and standard visual look allow it to be recognizable from a distance, with the quickest of glances (A blue and white page with a sidebar, and bam — you’re a Facebook page). A MySpace costume, on the other hand, would not be nearly as identifiable, as they all looked so different. You want your costume to be recognizable.

Be Strong in Your Brand Message
Twenty years ago, bottled water barely existed. Today, it’s a multi-billion dollar industry and people are dressing their kids up in as Fuji water bottles for Halloween. This is a direct result of two decades of singular messaging: Bottled water is the freshest, cleanest, safest water you can buy. Despite this being demonstrably false, the powerful and consistent message has cemented itself in the public psyche, and the results speak for themselves.

Halloween only comes around once a year (as of this writing, anyway), and there’s no lack of costume choices. Those consumer brands that have made the leap from shelf to costume have accomplished something incredible. But it’s not so much the result of fickle consumer choices, as it is the byproduct of strong and consistent brand platforms, visuals, and messaging. With those in place, there’s no telling what people will be wearing come Halloween.

And that’s half the fun.

Like a plot twist gone astray, the streaming film company, Netflix, has once again befuddled customers by reversing course with a recent brand announcement. Weeks ago, Netflix announced its intention to divide its streaming and physical mail business units into two separate entities, while simultaneously apologizing for recent price hikes. This effort was intended to kick off the renamed DVD mail service, christening it Qwikster. Apparently, public outcry and common sense won the day, as Netflix backtracked and rejiggered its plans.

This on-again, off-again game of brand Twister has damaged the Netflix name and its brand cache. While we can only guess at the business reasons that motivated these decisions, it’s plain to see how Netflix shot itself in the foot from a brand perspective.

In some ways, the rationale behind Netflix’s merry-go-round of christening, defending, and retreating from its plans doesn’t matter. Brand identities are tightly bound up in what people think and feel about a particular brand, and most everyday customers won’t ever get to know a company’s reasoning for an initiative. They shouldn’t have to — brand decisions are made in the present, where they affect, challenge, and reflect on an organization — for better or for worse.

We think it’s a useful and instructive exercise to rewind the film, so to speak, and walk through some of the reasons why Netflix’s actions are the equivalent of a disaster movie, or maybe just brand mistakes, seen in high definition.

Brand Equity Squandered
Netflix painstakingly built and earned its reputation as a forward-thinking, powerful content provider, employing a Long Tail strategy to re-envision the movie rental industry. The future-forward vision of delivering films and television to users initially focused on using direct mail as the vehicle for providing films quickly. Fast delivery, responsive customer service, and a super-optimized supply system were all strong brand attributes, and crucial to its growth. Coupled with the company’s commitment to developing better and better recommendation algorithms, all of these factors drove Netflix’s popularity and to a place as the leader in its sector. Cute little red envelopes became synonymous with fast service and the delight and surprise of receiving your next film in the mail. The website experience of Netflix was helpful, friendly, and user focused.

But changes have taken hold in the industry, with corporations moving towards streaming models of delivery, and while Netflix did it first (and arguably, best), it mis-managed the evolution of its brand. This Qwikster debacle grew out of this shift away from Netflix’s original model, and that, coupled with an earlier price hike, started pushing away many of the company’s loyal customers and fans. In surprisingly short order, Netflix began squandering many of the good feelings and past positive experiences previously associated with its brand, as users began to feel excluded and alienated from the formerly warm embrace of Netflix.

Business-friendly, User Hostile
The move to focus more on streaming users makes sense, and that change is a wise one for the company. But the initial concept of the Qwikster rollout was primarily built around the needs of the business, and not users. From a user experience perspective, it seems foolish and nonsensical for a single company to force current users to navigate two distinct websites, handle user accounts separately, and degrade the user experience by providing no integration between the related sites. These are not the actions of a company focused on its customer base, and it made many of the Netflix DVD/Blu-Ray subscribers feel like second-class citizens.

Better to Retreat Than Stand Your Ground
But we have to cut Netflix a little slack. Every brand has missteps. Remember the Apple Newton? No one is immune from screw ups, and the best and most popular brands get to make their mistakes right in the spotlight. So, a brand has to make a decision — to retrench, and fix the problems, or stand their ground and defend the decision. But we know what happened to other brands who’ve gone down this path. New Coke? Tropicana rebranding? The Gap logo? You can circle the wagons, but eventually consumer-facing brands need to kneel before their customers and offer the mea culpa. The above brands survived after all the hoopla, and the name of the game is moving forward after a mistake.

But Who Drives This Train?
Of course, this seems to suggest a dangerous precedent. How willing are companies and organizations to hold the line when a seemingly unpopular decision promises to lead to better places tomorrow? Good PR can’t always serve as the indicator for whether a decision is correct or not. Often, the issue is not the actual decision itself, but how it is communicated to the target audiences and public at large. But even if communication is pitch-perfect and completely on-brand, bad things still happen to good brands. Sometimes a temporary black eye is the cost of visionary leadership.

Still Wondering
All that being said, Netflix’s handling of the scenario was odd — with strange communications, then an out-of-the-blue reversal. The company’s delivery was odd, which caused many to speculate that this rebranding was setting up its mail delivery component to be spun off completely, in anticipating of selling it off to another entity. Perhaps Netflix wanted to distance itself from soon-to-be-obsolete technology, maintaining its technology-forward brand image. Or possibly, the company wanted to jettison the extra baggage of hard costs and labor of mail service, as it seeks to become the premier content partner for streaming devices and online.

In the end, we don’t know. But we do know that Netflix could have done a few things to avoid these pitfalls. Here are a few brief thoughts that might serve as a good reminder:

Keep users first. There is always a fine line between decisions that make good business sense, and those that are good for users. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made. But when in doubt, the more profitable decisions (in the long term) will always be for the good of customers.

It’s all about tone. How an organization communicates hard truths (like a price hike) is almost as important as the content of the actual message. Honesty, sincerity, and a clear message about why a decision will eventually benefit an audience will go much further than a strange, pseudo-apology. Directness, transparency, and consistency are the keys.

Don’t underestimate the value of a good name. Netflix almost threw away millions of dollars of brand equity by renaming part of their service. Forget the fact that the name was poorly-conceived (I still can’t spell it correctly!). Any change was a poor one, if it wasn’t going to utilize the goodwill, recognition, and singular awareness of a little red DVD envelope. When your organization spends years, millions of dollars in advertising, and the hard work of building a brand people can trust, renaming must be done with the most sober of mind, if it needs to be done at all.

So, as part of Tim’s Brand Standards and Identity class at Chicago Portfolio School, here are identity redesign projects from two students, Diane Johns and Megan King.

Megan has redesigned the logo for the DVD/Blu-Ray publishers, Criterion. She’s done a great job customizing and streamlining an existing typeface for wordmark use, and subtly works in the traditional “widescreen” proportions as part of her mark.

And Diane has reimagined Barnes & Noble with her own redesign. This clever mark is cobbled together from typographic punctuation, with an approachable, offbeat style for 21st century reading.

Great work all the way around, ladies!

Brand books are awesome. As proof, we submit the Skittles brand book created by TBWA.

This strange and inspirational manifesto crystalizes the personality of a brand whose average consumer is “12–17 years old,” “wears large hats and other popular clothing,” and “fears long-limbed animals, such as giraffes.”

Sadly, TBWA recently lost the Skittles account, but not before producing some of the most memorable oddvertising the world has ever known.

More images after the jump.

So are they trolling us? Or is this genius at work.

What do you think?

Logos and brand identity are an oft-misunderstood part of design. A logo is not a brand. A logo is not a brand identity. A logo is a crucial part of an overall brand identity, but it’s just one part of a larger toolbox that contains things like color palettes, brand platforms, photo styles, graphic patterns, positioning statements, and much, much more. This is well-traveled territory. But one thing that’s rarely discussed in logo and identity circles is timing. For clients, when is it a good time to rebrand your organization?

It depends on who you ask, but there are a lot of avenues where it makes sense to initiate a logo redesign. Many prospects and clients see identity design only as a first-stage project — to be initiated early in an organization’s life cycle — for startups and newly-minted organizations. But truly, a new identity is valuable for all seasons. If executed thoughtfully and properly, a redesign is a powerful weapon that can have maximum impact across a variety of moments during the life of your brand.

Sidestepping the issue of how to rebrand your company (conversation for another time), we’ve laid out some of the critical moments when an identity redesign can make a major difference:

In The Beginning

It’s crucial to inaugurate your company correctly at launch, and have a cohesive and strategically-designed logo in place from the beginning, so you have a consistent and appropriate story to tell. Some startups believe that well-reasoned brand strategy and design are for “later,” after rounds of funding or IPOs. But the reality is that audiences don’t care about those things — they need a consistent look and message that ties into their experience with your brand. It’s far simpler (and less expensive) to get your brand personality in order at the outset than have to retool or make course corrections soon after launch.

When Things Go South

The economy continues provide a challenging environment for many organizations, so slowing sales might be your chief concern. When faced with a loss of revenue, smart organizations see the opportunity embedded within the situation. Rather than seeing marketing and design budgets as a place to cut costs in tough times, it might be better to hit pause and reconsider — by reworking your brand’s visibility with updated design and positioning.

While your competitors are hunkering down, it’s even easier (and often cheaper) to gain the mindshare of your markets, with a lot less competitive noise. While that’s happening, it’s important to ask some honest questions: Are you still communicating to the right audiences? Have your audience’s perceptions and needs evolved? Has their awareness of your organization changed? A research-based redesign of your logo and identity can help slow the decline and reposition you for a quick rebound.

All In The Family

Sometimes brands and organizations grow in an organic way, and you find yourself introducing products or services in response to market demands and internal changes. An identity redesign can help reorganize product lines, whether it’s for an overarching organization, or for specific product suites and services. In an age where many companies have diverse interests and audiences, sometimes radically different approaches are needed under one roof. Redesigning a brand’s identity and its presence in the world can often help clarify the goals for departments or groups within your company, or on the opposite end, provide much-needed consistency that prunes back wild applications of your previous identity.

The Times They Are A-Changing

The products, services, and initiatives of your organization don’t exist in a vacuum, so it’s crucial to ensure that your messages, overall look, and an identity application can flex over time when necessary. It’s important for your brand to adapt to new competitive forces, shifting markets, or other parts of a changing landscape. With the speed of business and commerce increasing, it’s crucial that an identity is able to bend, flex, and sometimes morph. If you’re saddled with an intractable, immovable brand identity, then it’s even more important to consider a redesign or “refresh,” to gain the ability of adaptation — whether it’s to new market realities or changing trends. What is fresh today might be stale tomorrow, and yesterday’s relevancy is tomorrow’s history. The best designed identities take this into account, and provide room to grow and change.

Back to the Fusion

Companies get absorbed. Buyouts yield new products and challenges. Mergers and acquisitions are ripe with opportunities for logo and brand redesigns, but it’s important to redevelop new properties in a way that’s appropriate and authentic — true to the story your organization is already telling. Sometimes these absorbed entities are so large that their presence shifts the brand gravity of a whole company, and a redesign is vital to rethink and redistribute the visual universe you now live in.

A Shift in Focus

Whether it’s caused by a new CEO or any of the above changes, sometimes organizations just need to change. A shift in organizational thinking can have a domino effect on all the ways a company sees itself, communicates, and relates to the world. This includes a visual identity, and this very public shift can be an important, outward sign of the positive and tectonic changes within.