In the design and creativity sphere, it seems like the name Kickstarter is on everyone’s lips these days. Sure, the popular crowdfunding platform has grabbed headlines while giving us a varied cornucopia of things like cardboard furniture, iPod watches, and movies based on cancelled TV shows, but there’s more to it than that. Whether you’ve backed a project, launched one, or just observed the furious sprint-to-funding that can ensue, there’s no denying that this Kickstarter style of funding has irrevocably changed product creation, financial models, and maybe even “e-commerce” itself.

And even beyond those achievements, the platform has also affected brands. Kickstarter has altered the exchange between people and the companies or products they support — which has important implications for brands looking to connect with their audiences. The unique type of relationship created by crowdfunding is powerful, and it’s important to know that effective, emotional audience engagement has grown beyond our old transactional models.

All of that to say that we can learn a lot about what it means to capture audience attention, support, and passion from the ways that Kickstarter projects draw people in. Brands would do well to incorporate some of these subtle lessons into their communications, design, branding, and marketing. Better yet, baking these fresh thoughts into your brand’s very DNA is an even better idea. To that end, we’ve mined 10 lessons your brand can learn from the sticky engagement of Kickstarter:

1. Make your audience part of your process.
When people see early stage sketches, grand plans, or the possibility of “what might be,” and have an opportunity to give feedback, they’re more invested in the process. And this doesn’t have to be crowdsourcing, per se — it’s more about having a bias towards sharing and including, especially for your most loyal and valuable audiences. “Behind the scenes” is exciting for people! Whether you’re designing, crafting, strategizing, or shakin’ what your Momma gave you, your audiences will view you as more approachable and relatable when they feel involved in your day-to-day dealings in some fundamental way.

2. Personality goes a long way.
Jules from Pulp Fiction had it right. What you’re offering to an audience is only one piece of the puzzle, whether it’s on Kickstarter, or in your marketplace. How you do so is also important. The best projects aren’t just the ones with slick videos and high production values –they have real personality.

In our quest to project that flawless image of perfection — seeming like we know exactly what we’re doing — it can be easy to sacrifice a brand’s humanity, its unique voice, warts and all. Great Kickstarter projects allow those bits of personality to seep out — untucked shirts, quirky turns of phrase, wild passions — giving people the chance to embrace these bits and the real people underneath. Regardless of how oddball it is, passion and transparency together can be contagious. There is something appealing about the unvarnished and honest, no matter how unusual it is. Sara O’Mara summed all of this up well: “Always be human. Be professional when necessary.”

3. Your mission can be as important as your products.
Kickstarter has done something interesting in that people don’t have to “make a purchase” to support a project. They can just give a dollar or two in the name of showing support of a person, a cause, or an idea. At its root, does your brand have an ideal that people love, in addition to what you will do for them? If your brand revolves around a powerful, imagination-capturing mission, it gives your audiences an intriguing way to get on the same page as your organization, to your benefit. Your products or services will seem that much more impressive and powerful with that missional backdrop in place.

4. Everyone likes an underdog.
There’s something satisfying about backing the longshot, and seeing it pay off. The old “I knew them before they were famous” line isn’t just a cliché, it’s a way of deeply connecting with people and brands who we believe are more like us — those who might not be the VC-backed favorites or the deep-pocketed prom queens and kings. Almost by definition, Kickstarter projects are stories of underdogs (why else would they be there?), and that is something that resonates with the audiences of many brands.

5. Success breeds more success.
This seems to fly in the face of the previous lesson, but it’s still true. Research has shown that a majority of projects that reach 70% support eventually succeed in their funding, because prospective backers believe that they are going to succeed, so the pile-on begins. The perception of “destined to make it” can sometimes lead to actually making it. When your brand wears the clothes of success (awards, testimonials, experts endorsing), it brings a credibility to what you’re doing. Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd. This might also be another vote in the “fake it til you make it” camp, so brands should wear success like it came right from their closet.

6. Responsive communication is golden.
The most successful Kickstarter projects have dozens of updates from project creators, letting backers have consistent, moment-by-moment status updates on their effort. These take the form of encouragements, new ideas, and answers to questions. What would it do to your brand if your team devoted themselves to meaningful communication with your audiences at that level? Could you build time and energy into making every brand touchpoint a place for real communication with your audiences? The fruits would undoubtedly be audience surprise, delight, and a much deeper investment in whatever you’re doing.

7. Engaging stories win the day.
Kickstarter projects tend to live or die by the quality of their pitch videos — not the production values, sound, or lighting — but by how well creators are able to get out of their own way and tell a compelling story. This is almost a cliché at this point, but it’s worth taking a good look in the mirror of your brand to honestly see if what you’re saying to intended audiences has the power to excite, arouse, and lead to the changes you want to see.

8. Create brand insiders.
Do your best customers, clients, or supporters know they are VIPs? Do they feel special? Kickstarter projects often give preferences to early adopters or first responders, who then have a chance to bypass the velvet rope. Do your top targets get special privileges, insider info, or just better access to the things that matter to them? This probably isn’t a fake, systemic “rewards program.” It could be as simple as making sure your top 10 customers always get their calls answered the first time, by a real person. Everyone likes to feel like an insider.

9. Bake in some urgency.
If you launch a Kickstarter project, it has a discrete end date. The whole thing is timed, and builds to what is hopefully an exciting climax. This keeps the pace up, but is different than the car salesman’s “What would it take for you to drive out of here today?” This isn’t artificial urgency, it’s telling your brand story in a way that moves people to act now. Is it a timely connection to world events? A right-place-right time sort of scenario? Sounding the urgent horn isn’t something to do all the time, but for brands looking to make a splash, ringing the alarm bells judiciously can have great results.

10. Wacky ideas are worth breeding and supporting.
Finally, Kickstarter is generally a denizen for products, ideas, and dreams that are a little bit outside the norm. They’re unusual, and not as mainstream. If they were for “everyone,” they’d be on Wal-Mart shelves instead. But crowdfunding shows that there’s money, passion, and interest in the unusual and bizarre. Maybe there are “riches in the niches,” but even if they’re not, your brand will do better by promoting and championing the goofballs and weirdos, because deep down, we all understand and love them.

Great work is the lifeblood of what we do, so it’s always fun to showcase work, even if it has been hiding behind the curtains for a while. Here are a couple such projects: Website design and branding work for Ashley Furniture, and an identity redesign for ILC. More details of these projects follow at their respective portfolio pages, so check ‘em out.

The world is changing. We are rapidly evolving away from a marketplace ruled by mass culture, to one filled with a riotous patchwork of specific niches. Not long ago, one-size-fits-all communications, branding, and products stood at the top of the heap. Whether it was the Big Three TV networks, Top 40 Radio, or products designed for the Average Jane, traditional marketing and branding sought the widest spread and the largest customer base. But in 2014, these bastions of lowest common denominator thinking are slowly crumbling, thanks to the increasing fragmentation of media, culture, and interests. And these fragments — whether you call them tribes, micro-communities, or niches — have powerful potential for organizations, brands, and marketers.

The Internet has driven much of this change, providing a forum and technology for people to discuss, exchange, and rally around their favorite products, services, or interests. DVRs, shrinking electronics, and personalization search algorithms have also kneecapped the effectiveness of broad-based marketing and advertising. But while this scenario is challenging for those who still pursue the target audience of “anyone with a heartbeat,” there are opportunities out in the margins of the marketplace for savvy, passionate people and their organizations.

Niches have grown in and among the weeds of our culture, often centered around demographics, causes, shared interests, or the love of a product or service. Many of them present amazing opportunities for brands and marketers to tap into existing passion, or to create goods and services that people will respond to with zeal.

Good business is where you find it, and niches have potential value for marketers or organizations who find a fit, and are able to engage a micro-community — by opening new markets, co-creating ideas together, tapping “experts” for ideas or consultation, or engaging tribes as part of larger brand strategies. The number of opportunities is staggering, with the potential to birth small companies that reach even smaller audiences, to disrupting existing markets, creating new industries, or just reaching those with particular hairstyles.

After combing through the underbrush of culture and online forums, your team might see marketing potential in already-gathered tribes, but it’s not quite a point and shoot process. Niches are like bad science projects — they have the potential for great energy output and passion, but they also are very combustible. It doesn’t take much for a tribe to implode, disband, or destroy itself from within. It takes an astute traveler to navigate these ecosystems, all of which have their own rules, customs, and languages. Every micro-community is different, and require different approaches, methods, and tactics. You wouldn’t speak Klingon to a sabermathematician, but there are some general principles to consider when venturing into niches. Here are our necessary signposts to read along the way:

1. The passion of the few is better than the “meh” of the many.
If the success of the overall Kickstarter model tells us anything, it’s that you don’t need many enthusiastic “backers” to turn a product or service into a success. But in many cases, these supporters are not mere customers — they’re invested in the process of creation and development. They aren’t just consumers, but devotees — serious and excited enough about a publication, product, or film to take action before the actual work is completed. This turns the traditional consumer-supplier relationship on its head, and it works, because people care about the end result. That caring is potentially powerful, and when gathered into a small tribe or group, this zeal can easily outweigh a much larger audience of people who could take it or leave it.

2. For best results, fully immerse.
Once you determine what niche you want to explore, supply, (or exploit), you’ll need to embed yourself in the fabric of that chosen tribe. Become a real part of the culture — observe, listen, and finally, contribute. It takes time to build trust, understanding, and personal connections. Opportunistic carpetbaggers and phonies will be ferreted out, as authenticity is often the main coin of the realm where niches are concerned. Whether it’s among Wizard of Oz fans or Intellivision geeks, establishing yourself as credible is key to becoming part of a community. Also, truly understanding a niche leads to deeper insights, rather than knee-jerk solutions.

3. Real passion is required.
There’s nothing wrong with making money, but viewing niche communities purely as cash cows or “exploitable markets” misses the point. Often, these communities spring up and exist because of true brand love — maybe it’s for classic video games or unusual documentary work, and it’s that same passion that sustains them.

Surely there are opportunities for investors, organizations, and brands seeking to embed themselves within these niches for their own good, but genuine love for the subject matter or community has to be woven into any effort. Whether you’re building a product to reach fans of 3D photography or designing an app for creatives, truly authentic efforts will win the day. This requires your team to actually join the fray, or partner with those on the inside. This is both good business and ethical action — so it’s in your organization’s best interests to either go native and become one of your customers, or hire them.

4. Ask not what your niche can do for you.
With apologies to JFK, it’s important to enter a sector or tribe with a servant’s mindset. What needs do you see? How can you (or your organization) become inherently valuable to the residents of this subculture? Where do your offerings and their needs intersect? Engaging fans (and people) at this level removes some of the opportunistic stench from your efforts and disarms those who are skeptical of your intentions. It’s important to be transparent and honest about your desires, but it’s also just good form to pitch in and help before you ask for something in return.

5. Can you shrink?
Once you’ve chosen a community to focus on, and a way to engage with them, practical considerations crop up. Can your team streamline itself enough to handle a smaller, leaner business model that serves less people, but does so more intensely? Is it possible to narrow your offerings and still be profitable? These scaled-down strategies are not for everyone, but they are often crucial in effective efforts to reach overlooked niches. Mattel became an intriguing example of this when it morphed some of its less-profitable mass retail toy lines into collector-focused, subscription based offerings. Prices might be higher for collectors, and margins might be slimmer, but the brand is carving profit out of a long tail of desire by tapping into an intense fan community. It might require more personal touch and effort, but strategies like this make sense for many organizations.

6. Take the long view.
Truly embedding into niche cultures for business reasons isn’t an overnight endeavor. Just like constructing a building’s solid foundation, it’s important to build, grow, and contribute in a way that is measured, authentic, and stable. Like any good relationship, your organization’s connection to a micro-community will take time to germinate, but if the audience is responsive and positive, great things can happen. Some amazing organizations have grown out of brands’ efforts to satisfy and delight a niche audience. And often times, today’s niches become tomorrow’s mainstream.

Occasionally we’re asked to partner with organizations who are looking to revive an old brand, resuscitate a product, or reclaim dormant intellectual property. Sometimes it’s for a brand new venture, or it’s a company rummaging through its archives for untapped assets. These behaviors can make a lot of sense, because typically, someone else has already put money, time, and effort into making that brand a recognizable one. The math seems deceptively easy: on paper it looks simpler to breathe life into an older brand than starting with a blank canvas. Some firms have even built their business models around reviving these castoffs. But it’s not always that easy.

The discard pile can be treasure or trash, and picking from this mixed bag comes with a set of concerns that shiny, newly-minted organizations don’t have to contend with. There are potential pitfalls a-plenty, but with a combination of well-deployed legacy and fresh direction, reviving an old brand can become a worthwhile endeavor.

Here are 10 thoughts for anyone who aims to reclaim an aging brand and reconfigure it for today’s world. These nuggets might be the difference between dumpster diving and panning for gold.

1: What drives you to drive the brand? There are many motives for reviving a dormant brand, and most of them revolve around the possibility of good ROI. This is business after all, but like Billy Joel said, you gotta have soul. If your organization merely sees that brand as intellectual property to be exploited, or are looking to squeeze the last drops of blood out of it, you might think twice. Better to bring it back to life because there is something within worth saving — passion or ideas worth mining. Is there an untapped promise or potential in that comatose brand? How does it relate to what you want to do? If you can successfully coax out that unique spark and marshal it on your behalf, the profit will eventually follow.

2: Assess your assets. Where are the valuables stored, and what exactly is your team getting when inheriting this brand? What bits of value does this brand still have? A recognizable logo? Memorable colors? Taglines or famous catchphrases? Or maybe it’s a loose association or connection to a cultural ethos? In this stage of the process, it’s important to dig deep and do the necessary research to understand what’s still valuable. Are the strengths transferable? Sometimes it’s the subtleties and nuances — echos of a brand’s mark in the world — that can hold the most lasting value.

3: Standing for something. Whether it’s today or tomorrow, you need to ascertain the foundation — what does the brand stand for? At its apex, what intangibles and meaning did it contain? Can it represent those same things today, or does it need to embrace a new spectrum of symbolism to survive (and thrive) in the current marketplace?

4: What do all the people know? Where public-facing brands are concerned, it’s all about the audience. You might see something redeeming in that sleepy brand of coffee or stereo manufacturer’s name, but what do people out in the world think about your new treasure? How do they relate to the brand today? Good research will be able to help uncover the current feelings and associations the brand has among the people who matter.

5: Find your fan base. Do niches and segments of brand lovers still exist? One of the biggest benefits of claiming an old brand is finding the dedicated pockets of true-believers who still carry a torch for your reawakened brand. In it’s absence, they wrote, created, argued, and reminisced about the products, services, or benefits your brand once offered. Can you tap into those fans? Will those sparks turn into a towering inferno as you help mobilize these self-made evangelists?

These die-hards can be your best friends or your worst enemies, depending on how you play your hand. While they might be devoted to the name or cause, they will be a major headache to your team if you can’t live up to the legacy of the original name (at least as they might see it). Sometimes re-engaging with a brand’s devotees can be more arduous than building a brand new audience. Zealots come in all flavors — choruses of angels or a busloads of devils.

6: Has time healed all wounds? Sometimes history is kind, and the rough edges or missteps of organizations get lost to time. But in other situations, one single act can turn a company name into a hated buzzword. Have the years been kind to your brand? What timely facets and associations have evaporated? History can be a helpful benchmark for what is still valuable — because sometimes cream rises to the top. What has stood the test of time? Those might be the brand assets worth preserving.

7: Evolution or death! Like sharks, stagnant brands die, regardless of how old they are. Remember that all brands need to grow and evolve, and if your brand isn’t moving forward, adapting, and morphing to fit the needs of the culture and marketplace, it’s heading backwards. And that’s how the brand got swept into the dustbin in the first place.

8: Show me the skeletons. While it might be cheaper to build on an existing foundation, you have to do your due diligence as well. Brands are no different. Sometimes you’re also inheriting the dirty laundry and rotten floorboards in forgotten corners of the house. Will those landmines hamstring your new efforts? It’s probably best to consider if you’re equipped to deal with the imagined worst-case scenario.

9: Grey isn’t always gold. Not all old things are worth reviving. LPs might be cool, but is anyone itching to fire up their old 8-track player? There’s a difference between momentary fashion and a brand hook that can evolve back into a sustainable business model. Sometimes that layer of dust is just irrelevancy, and the savvy marketers should be able to spot the difference through the cobwebs.

10: Have a plan. Crafting and building brands is not like investing. Stock values move on just one axis — they can go up or down. But brands are more mercurial, and require more than just capital to refresh them. These rebuilt brands need passion, vision, and strategic planning for the future in order to grow well. Forgo the passion, and brand resurrection just becomes the mechanical act of squeezing more blood from the same stone. Think brand love will win breed success alone? Unfortunately, passion isn’t a business plan.

Without a strategy for growth, development, and communication, your brand will never evolve into what it could be. Still, when it comes to reviving a brand, true love and care for the brand will shine more brightly than a holding company’s financial stake. And brand audiences can sense true passion, because it shows itself in all touchpoints for a particular service or product.

When brands are reborn, often the intangibles are the only things left. Emotions, associations, and half-remembered connections are the clay that can be molded and shaped for new purposes — those of your new endeavor. The teams who can harness those spirits and weave them into provocative brand stories are the ones who will win the day.

Some examples. The good, great, and meh:

Shinola, watches, leather goods, and bicycles all made in Detroit. Previously makers of shoe-polish.

“It would be a company steeped in the values of an older era, and the founding team wanted a name to match. ‘We didn’t want to try to invent a name that had heritage and pretend there was history behind it,’ COO Heath Carr says, so they looked for inactive brands that were on the market. They eventually came across Shinola, along with the ‘ever-so-famous saying that comes with the name,’ Carr says.”

Shinola is experiencing strong sales, great buzz, and success because they’ve zealously stuck to their brand’s plan and ethos. Their leadership team also seem to have a deep understanding of how much to accentuate or downplay certain aspects of the brand’s name and heritage for the best results. Full story by Fast Company.

Polaroid, digital and imaging products. Previously innovators and originators of instant film.

“It’s one of the famous brands, like Rolex, Nike, Coca-Cola,” Polaroid CEO Scott Hardy said. “Polaroid went through its troubles, but its asset was its brand, and now we are going through a tremendous resurgence of that brand,” he said.

While Polaroid has jettisoned much of the innovative tag that surrounded the original company, the current caretakers are being judicious about their licensing model. Their choices seem well-selected to avoid hitting any sour notes that would contradict what the brand has come to stand for. Also, they get high marks for clever transference of the brand’s personality into their physical locations. More details at TwinCities.com.

Atari, pioneers of home video games and coin-operated arcade games with a meteoric rise in the 1980s. Today, current rights owners are struggling to escape bankruptcy and reform.

“To many of us, the name Atari represents the birth of the video game industry, both in the arcades and at home—which, coincidentally, were also two separate Atari businesses. Either way, the name is synonymous with video games.”

Sadly, the Atari brand is a mere shadow of what it once was under its original banner. The most recent incarnation’s leadership realized too late that merely recycling its popular properties wouldn’t be enough to sustain it as an organization. But their pre-bankruptcy move into smartphone games and apps was a promising step. The jury is still out. More at PCMag.

Indian Motorcyles, one-time competitors to Harley-Davidson, original company closed in the 1950s.

“It’s a phenomenal American story with an entrepreneurial spirit,” said Steve Menneto, Vice President of Motorcycles at Polaris. “We wanted to bring that forward and blend it into what we’re doing with the brand. We want to show riders what we learned from Indian’s history.”

An interesting brand that has a small-but-passionate audience, Indian is still young. But its focus on engineering takes a page from what the original company was known for, and fundamental focus on innovation rarely goes out of style. Whether this will be enough to make a sizable dent in the market versus Harley-Davidson remains to be seen. More at Fox Business.

“Products are created in the factory. Brands are created in the mind.”  - Walter Landon, founder, Landor Associates

Every organization worth its salt has a logo or visual identity that helps distinguish, identify, or describe its brand to audiences. And if you’ve visited the Internet at any point lately, you can see that everyone has opinions on logos. But when people say “I don’t like it!” or “That’s terrible,” what do they actually mean? There is a deeper question beneath such reflexive comments, though. Honestly, how do you evaluate a logo? How do you know if your company has the next Nike swoosh on its hands, or something much less awesome?

Being identity designers, we’ve seen thousands of logos, and have designed many of them ourselves. It can be tricky evaluating a logo’s strength, because there is more involved than just judging good looks. Below are some considerations, based on the criteria we use to judge our own work at Hexanine. Taken together, all of these put combine to form a useful benchmark for determining if the “front door” of your organization is doing what it should. How does your logo rate in each of the following categories?

1: Differentiation. How well does it stand apart from other logos? Is it unique and memorable — especially when compared to your competition? Or does it get lost among other organizations who share adjacent mindshare or audiences? In an age of constant brand bombardment, the Zag is a crucial ingredient in standing out. For some industries, differentiation might be the difference between market dominance and permanent second-class status.

2: Aesthetics. This is traditionally considered the chief responsibility of designers — and rightly so. Having a visually-strong mark is now the cost of doing business, and organizations who don’t pay attention to the power of beauty do so at their peril. Is your logo well-crafted? Does it employ great symbology and excellent/appropriate typography? Are the visual details of layout, color harmony, and illustration executed at the highest levels? Does your logo scale well and reproduce effectively on a variety of platforms? Clients who come to us for identity design or redesigns typically have beauty atop their wish lists, but it’s only part of the overall brand picture. Visuals are the glue that hold an identity together, but they also work in service of all the other following areas.

3: Conceptual Strength. Differentiation and beauty are not enough. Strong, sophisticated conceptual thinking is what separates logo makers from true brand identity designers. A logo that doesn’t tap into the brand’s ethos and business goals is like a cheap Hollywood set  – beautiful to look at, but not strong enough to withstand close scrutiny. How well does your logo echo the brand story? Does it communicate an appropriate metaphor? Does it include necessary chunks of the brand’s essence and heritage? Does it function like a page torn from the larger brand’s tale? Is it correctly aimed at the people and audiences who will draw the most meaning from it?

4: Surprise / Unusual / Aha! Factor. This is that difficult-to-quantify aspect of identity design that causes someone to take a second look, or to dwell on your logo for another moment. That Something Special could be almost anything, as long as it makes sense within the context of your brand. It might be a surprising and unusual combination of symbols, a visual pun, or some hidden element that reveals itself over time. None of this is absolutely required, but it’s certainly icing on the cake of the best identities. This isn’t flash and sizzle, but it’s something that helps an identity remain in the mind, tying itself forever to a set of products, services, or a larger brand.

5: Usage. How well is your logo being used? This seems like it’s outside the purview of logo design, but in truth, some of the most important work is done after a logo is designed. Building a context and visual language around the mark is essential to making sure your overall brand identity is successful. Some visually unimpressive logos benefit from exceptional visual positioning and a proper context that allows them to shine all-the-more brightly. What other visual parts of an overall identity are paired with your logo? Do photography, illustration, original patterns, and imagery add up to help the logo be more than the sum of its parts? Context can become the perfect stage to spotlight the best aspects of a less-than-perfect logo, while also minimizing its weaknesses.

To show how this might work in practice, we’ve rated some well-known logos. Very few corporate identities are going to rate perfect in every category, but the ratings below will show you how well-rounded logos can be successful, and how some brands choose to focus on some aspects at the expense of others.

Nike: Usage makes all the difference
Nike does an amazing job with its very simple logo. But the power of the brand is not in the visual execution of the mark, but in the power of its use. The swoosh has been burned into the brains of billions of people via amazing association with athletes, emotions, and sporting events. Wherever the logo appears, it is always used flawlessly, transcending any issues with the construction of the logo itself.

FedEx: The Godfather of hidden images
While the FedEx logo seems austere, its simplicity and strength are memorable in themselves. Its unique and varied usage across parts of the company was quite provocative in 1994, and allowed the brand to grow and define itself visually on the canvases of its moving delivery trucks. And of course, there is the infamous hidden arrow. 

Microsoft: Simply bland
The Microsoft identity is decently-made and generally unremarkable. The mark is very static, and the typography is completely forgettable, which might be an unforgivable sin in the software industry. The brand took a risky move by porting the brand’s most powerful (only?) brand asset — the Windows color palette and iconography — and poured them into a new corporate identity. Simple logos are not always easy to execute, but in this case, simplicity means losing what little personality the original had. This execution is bland, except when used to great success in its motion graphics applications.

Apple: Cleverness that ages well
Apple’s once-bitten piece of fruit has evolved with the company since its initial rainbow-colored rollout. It has been beveled, liquefied, and stamped on the backs of millions of iPhones and iPads. The original brand story of hidden knowledge (Eve, the Garden of Eden, etc.) has been all-but-lost in its modern incarnations, but the company’s backing with gorgeous, functional product design has only increased. The cleverness of using fruit to sell computers and electronics hasn’t aged a bit.

Starbucks: Pouring a tasty cup of omnipresence
This beautiful and transcendent mark is so ubiquitous that it doesn’t need typography. The logo’s application on thousands of street corners and billions of coffee cups doesn’t hurt, but it succeeds not just because of its constant presence in modern living. It endures because of solid coffee and a whimsical mark that stands for a brand experience that has changed modern retail and the way people think about hot beverages forever.

T-Mobile: Not so pretty in pink
Pink (magenta, really) — is the best thing the T-Mobile identity has going for it. The logo is clunky, seems difficult to use, and has far too many moving parts to be considered visually successful. The typography seems inappropriate for the brand, and suggests the fact that T and Mobile are headed towards a visual divorce, slowly drifting apart. But T-Mobile has ended up owning its magenta brand color in such a powerful way, that it barely needs a logo in its communication. Consistent, repetitive, and effective use of the color has allowed the brand to own that bright, cheery magenta in a way not seen since UPS captured Brown. Someone must have been thinking pink.

It’s easy to critique from afar, and every brand his its own idiosyncrasies and issues, but having a solid framework for success in logo and identity design is the first step in making sure it’s not your organization’s logo in the crosshairs.

“Well-designed logos are the work of the designers. Successful logos imply the company’s use of the logo.”

-Per Mollerup, quoted in Steve Heller’s interview at The Atlantic.

We’ve been pretty quiet on the blog of late, but it’s only because we’ve been knee-deep in some great projects.

One of the latest pieces to launch continues the work we’re doing with Golden Apple Foundation. Our most recent direct mail collaboration is hitting mailboxes across Illinois and around the country this week. The vertical accordion fold piece highlights the great work Golden Apple is doing in transforming teachers and teaching. Their mission is fantastic, and we’re proud to have them as clients.

The glowing age of celebrity endorsements is fading. Sure, large corporations still hand out millions to basketball players and pop stars to attach themselves to some level of current “cool,” but no savvy audience truly believes this is anything less than a financial transaction — a paid endorsement, dollars for smiles. Insert cash, and a celebrity will say whatever you like. But is this good or bad for your brand?

Other smart people are correctly predicting that we’re nearing the end of the era where advertising is a driving brand force of large organizations. And that has advertisers concerned — a concern that leads to desperation. In a move designed to repackage the tired old “paid celebrity endorsement” for today’s cynical audiences, the latest spin is to hand out creative titles to celebrities, in order to show how they’re influencing a brand’s offerings.

Alicia Keys is BlackBerry’s Global Creative Director (who also uses an iPhone). Lady Gaga is “fairly involved” as a Creative Director at Polaroid, actually attending meetings, brainstorming, and providing feedback on products! Newly-minted Bud Light Platinum Creative Director Justin Timberlake apparently produces and stars in his own commercial work for the beer giant. Now that’s called “creative direction?” Color me skeptical.

While I have plenty of respect for what each of these musicians does behind the mic, this leads one to wonder how much talent crossover there is between pop stardom and branding and marketing. Should designers, creative directors, and product engineers be worried about our jobs? I doubt it.

The people who should be concerned are the stewards of these brands. What are these celebrities doing to their most valuable asset, the brand image? The potential negative impact is more far-reaching and brand-critical than it might seem on the surface.

Your brand is a constellation of products, thoughts, emotions, and ideas — some generated by the actions, offerings, and communication of your brand, and others created in the minds of your audience. The classic thinking behind celebrity endorsement is this: Brand X wants to raise its stature or reach a new demographic, and so, hitches its wagon to a star. Ideally, Celebrity X has a cultural orbit somewhat closely matching Brand X, and now that the two are aligned, new light from that star shines afresh on the product or brand.

But does that work? Many times the whole thing backfires, and companies find themselves distancing their brand from cheating golfers or cocaine snorting supermodels. Sure, celebrities shine brightly for a time, and when they are allied with your brand, they can bring a new set of orbiting loves, attributes, and audiences into your universe. But I’d make the case that drafting off another “star body” is harmful in the long term, because it muddies the overall brand message, draws attention away from more immutable brand attributes, and dampens the passion and communications that spring forth from a healthy brand. Here are three major reasons why enlisting a celebrity “creative director” is a mistake for many brands and organizations:

1: Creating Is Your Job, Not Theirs

Marketing, product creation and development — these must be done by the people who are intimately familiar with the brand, those who care about it, inside the organization. Those who are part of a brand or tasked with its communication have a stronger vested interest in success than a (famous) hired hand who has no long-term attachment to the parent brand. (And this is not a slight against outside agencies or firms — after all, we are one of them. In typical situations, consultants are hired for their skill and track record in partnering with brands, whereas celebrities are hired chiefly for their fame. It’s hardly the same thing.)

Bringing celebrities in to get their feedback and input also sends counterproductive messages to your brand’s workaday teams — that their contributions are not as valuable, and can be overlooked or overruled in the name of fashion and fame. This isn’t good for your internal and contracted teams, or the long-term health of your creative folks, who are a major engine that fires your brand.

2: Your Message Is Not Their Message

In 2013, celebrities are their own brands, and they stand for their own set of personal values — beliefs, ways of creating, political or cultural leanings, etc. Each tweet or press release is calculated to provide maximum exposure and appropriate alliances, for that person. For a celebrity who trades on their name and likeness, this is the endgame. It makes sense. And while there might be some temporary overlap with your brand, if these famous faces are savvy, their eyes are still fixed on the long term, and their own overall branding. This requires them to remain loyal only to themselves, and guarantees that they will continue transmitting their own brand messages. Whatever paid endorsement you’ve agreed upon (your brand message) is just subtext to the celebrity’s larger, personal brand messaging. Your own communications get muted and muddled, because they will never be the primary message. A transmission containing many voices is invariably less powerful and evocative, and your brand’s ethos is more valuable than that.

3: Great Brands Must Power Themselves

Finally, at the heart of the celebrity endorsement premise is a fundamental flaw, because brands cannot effectively draft off the power of another body. Like a swimmer, a drafting brand requires power from somewhere else, and the “coolness” of a celebrity will only help sustain brand movement for a limited time. Celebrity attachment can’t create movement, just pass it along. It’s this unique, powerful, and singular inertia that brands need to define their personalities and carve a unique place in the universe and in the minds of audiences. Like forces of nature, great brands are powered by the will and imagination of those inside the company, to provide vision, clarity, creativity and something worthwhile to the world. This isn’t a responsibility that you can cede to a momentarily-cool celebrity.

In general, I believe that bringing out the benjamins for a celebrity is an inherently insecure brand position. It makes it seem like the brand itself isn’t special or unique enough to chart its own course, and develop its singular position. The (considerable) money needed for a celebrity endorsement or “creative partnership” is better spent developing new products, messaging, and concepts that build upon the ethos of the brand, rather than seeking a transfusion of energy or coolness from some famous person.

I think he’s right on, but there’s more to the story. Brands aren’t solely formed of audience belief or market opportunities. They are the creation of driven, hard-working, vision-casting individuals who put bits of themselves into their organizations, whether it’s their passions, perspective, or merely sweat equity. To completely cede the soul or mission of a brand to the opinions of others means leaving out an essential slice of the organization’s DNA.

We believe that the sweet spot of powerful, authentic brand identity (and communication) lies at the intersection of an organization’s view of itself (the Authorial element) and the connection the brand makes with those in the world (the Responsive element). When a team or organization can weave a brand story and overall identity that integrates both of these elements, it has achieved the sweet spot, a place of lasting connection and success.

The brand identity of your organization is at the heart of all communications with the outside world. It’s an identifier, a signature, a symbol loaded with meaning that flows from the brand itself, and most importantly, from people’s experiences with that brand. Crafting great brand identities is our main focus at Hexanine, and we believe it’s vastly important in business, culture, and the world around us.

However, in the arms race that is today’s business landscape, it can be tempting for those of us in branding and marketing to take shortcuts by looking to the latest in trends, “secret” strategies, or so-called silver bullets to make our brands stand out. It’s so easy to succumb to the latest brand bandwagons or popular approaches, but for good brands, this isn’t necessary. A simple storytelling approach will work powerfully. But what story to tell? How do you create these elusive brand narratives?

The irony is that great organizations are often sitting on gold mines without even realizing it.  Fabulous, valuable riches are at your fingertips — unique drivers, compelling histories, and singular stories waiting to be told. Often, these critical assets are easy to miss because they’re far too familiar, or they’re the buried treasure locked away in some lost closet of organizational knowledge. To recognize the riches your brand already has sometimes only requires re-adjusting your viewpoint, or taking on an outsider’s perspective. We love to play the outsider role, and combine it with the insider knowledge and expertise of those inside organizations. But the groundwork can be so much fun, and deeply rewarding as well. For all of the strategy and identity work we do with client partners, the first steps involve an archaeological dig of sorts, to mine and uncover what brand stories are waiting to be found.

Once a project sets sail, there’s a lot to be done before we ever arrive at the conceptual or strategy-writing phases. Rather than wastefully starting from scratch, we’ll often begin instead by assessing what stories a company or organization already has that are of value — both in the minds of leadership, and in the audiences a brand touches. Our chief roles as strategic brand designers involve excavation, curation, and storytelling — digging deep to find these nuggets of stories, evaluating them for use, and then weaving them into powerful, relevant brand communications.

Good stories are at the heart of every great brand, whether these are explicit and product-centered, or aspirational and loosely connected. Some are association-based, tying themselves to positive experiences and memories. Coke has essentially been evolving this message for decades: “Drinking Coca-Cola is a refreshing, essential part of whatever fun you’re having!” Other brand stories seek to connect to an audience’s shared values and desires, creating a stronger connection to the brand by tapping into already-active beliefs: “TOMS Shoes improves my wardrobe and style, and also lets me help kids in need.” There are many other stories to tell and billions of ways to tell them, but the tales begin with digging through the existing treasures an organization has.

The best stories and materials that emerge from the excavation become part of the creative process, serving as the raw materials we can polish up, refine, and use strategically as part of the new brand identity, messaging platform, or initiative we’re creating.

Here are some of the high-level steps and questions we ask ourselves (and our clients) as we dive deeper during this process:

Figure out what elements exist.
This is all about mining your history, digging into archives, memories, and previous work. It’s helpful to do categorical and deep dives into campaigns, efforts, internal initiatives, brand books, ads, taglines, and anything else in your archives. This cataloging process is something that many brands avoid, but it’s helpful to take stock of everything that exists before deciding what’s of value. But it’s helpful to use some of these criteria: What do people remember? What campaigns, slogans, or historical images have potential value? What are the pros and cons of those things that people remember? Can they be utilized to stir or germinate something new?

What are the stories that your organization tells itself?
How do you communicate inside the organization about what’s important? What does the organization claim as important externally, and how do those stories and values differ from what the company says in internal communication? How does your organization view itself? What lenses does it use to evaluate history, progression, and the future? Do these lenses change over time, or with shifts in leadership?

What is the organization’s “reason for being” that isn’t about making money?
Being profitable is assumed for any successful organization, but what sets yours apart? Why do people in your organization care? Why did the founders do this instead of something else? What gets your leaders up and out of bed in the morning?

What stories are others telling about your brand?
Is your company known as a great place to work? Do you have a reputation (deserved or not) for something specific? What assets or liabilities are attached to your name? What data do you collect from places like customer service, Twitter mentions, or media overviews? What trends begin to emerge? What are brand interactions like for those not drinking your company’s Kool-Aid? In the name of brutal honesty, it’s easy for these research efforts to become sensitive, because shortcomings often itch for someone to blame. But it’s important to focus on the data-gathering, not problem-solving at this point. Of course, an organization still needs to own any negatives and constructively see each as part of a larger change process for the brand — of correcting issues and moving towards better solutions. Oftentimes, giving first aid to your brand’s reputation can become a brand story in itself. Domino’s is an amazing example.

What is your organization’s culture and personality?
It can be tempting to graft in a new corporate culture or way of working, but the most powerful organizational ethos grows organically. How can you step back and observe what’s happening under your own roof? Is there something unique about your processes, or how you think about those ways of working? What stories are to be found there?

After this process is completed, these stories and many other elements flow into a brand brief, which then becomes the fertile soil for all development, whether it’s strategic, visual, or otherwise. It can seem more sexy, fresh, or interesting to start with a blank sheet of paper, but the greatest brands don’t throw away stories of value. And the best brands and marketers know that unique and authentic stories are gold for the people who see their worth. Stories are the well we all draw from, and ensuring that your company has a strong grasp on its brand stories will help guarantee success long into your future.