IsSeemlessBrandingRelevant?

A brand is a representation of a personality, an experience and quite frankly, profit. If we take some brands for instance, Apple, Heinz, BBC, Loriel, and Virgin. All of these brands do not just focus on one product, they have a range. This range has to have similarities in packaging, logos, names, quality and pricing in order to become ‘seamless’ and spread the brand experience and personality across all its products. In the same way, if we take a sort of ‘product free’ brand such as Google, which provides us with services rather than products, we can still safely say this brand is seamless and probably more so than the others because of the adaptability and creativity the internet can give.

Let’s look at a singular brand. Heinz is something different! I literally just saw an advert on TV which has a series of people blowing on soup and then the end wording read “It has to be Heinz”. It’s true. It has to be Heinz. Not just in the hypothetical sense that it has to be Heinz to get the taste and quality from Heinz, but in the sense of the style of the down to earth simplistic advertising which tells the brands personality so well with no need for silly catchphrases, celebrities and partners in order to support the brand. Another advert like this is the tomato ketchup one, where a man is shaking ketchup out of a bottle but the bottle is invisible (I would link you to these but they aren’t on YouTube! However you can find them on CreativeClub if you have access to it). It is obviously Heinz ketchup, but again the advertising and sense of the brand that the advertisement portrays tells the viewer this probably before it is even shown at the end of the advert. This ‘seamless’ connecting between the two adverts are essential in order to create a strong desire and reminder of the brand.

Now, taking Google like we mentioned before which is a service, the seamlessness can be even more ‘appliable’. How often do we see the logo? How often is it mentioned and is part of people’s lives? If you want to find something out…I’m pretty sure I would “Google it”. Right now I am using the server Google chrome and the logo is this:

and google looks like this:

See the similarity? Now, imagine if the Google chrome logo looked like this:

Or even this?

Would you know it was Google if seeing it? Further still would it change what you think about Google or change your behaviour with the brand? It would me, I definitely know that. It would make me angry that it is so easy and vital to be seamless in order to keep your products alive and keep your customers interested that why would they be so ridiculously stupid not to keep it similar?! Luckily I do not have this anger because they beautifully created a logo recognizable to Google.

This is a rather beautiful quote from Nicholas Ind – “Living the brand is to inspire individuals to identify and internalise the brand; to become committed to delivering value so that customers and consumers can enjoy a seemingly seamless experience that lives up to (and exceeds) their expectations.” Yep, that’s pretty much what I wanted to say.

Enjoy this video once again, to end. It is slightly relevant, but I would like to emphasise the 481,000 views and is the Google brand damaged? Not at all.