Secret thought of a CEO

The significance of your logo is often overemphasised. Whether it's simplistic or elaborate, vibrant or subdued, a logo remains deeply intertwined with a company's identity. It's commonly perceived as one of the pivotal elements of a brand, isn't it?

However, I respectfully disagree. Rather than fixating on the logo during brand development, I believe in directing attention towards crafting and building distinctive brand assets. Because branding and the power of distinctive brand assets is that it can act as proxy for the brand, and so if sufficiently strong, can provide a wide range of options to determine how someone experiences the brand.

How, you ask? In this article post, I will explain.

Brand identities are often conceived with longevity in mind

However, the truth is that the majority of identity initiatives, regardless of meticulous planning, execution, and scrutiny, ultimately rely on speculation. It is almost impossible to predict the myriad cultural, political, economic, and technological transformations that lie ahead.

A glance into the past

To grasp why logos carry such weight in the minds of many, we must journey back in time. While emblems and hieroglyphs have adorned civilizations for centuries, modern logo design emerged in the late 1800s. With the expansion of businesses, the rise of mass production, and the surge of the Industrial Revolution, branding practices evolved. This evolution reached its pinnacle with the creation of the Coca-Cola logo, often regarded as the archetype of modern logos.

Today, logos adorn almost everything—from dentist offices to construction firms. They offer a simple means to infuse a brand with a distinctive personality, distinguishing it amidst the flood of brands encountered daily. Logos are crafted to facilitate brand recall effortlessly.

Yet, times have evolved. While the fundamental principle remains valid— a well-crafted logo effectively represents a company— in today's realm, our focus should shift elsewhere.

Remember Daniel Kahneman's teachings in Thinking, Fast and Slow:The bulk of our decisions are emotionally driven and occur on a subconscious level.

The Importance of Creating Distinctive Brand Assets

Each piece of knowledge you possess is stored in your memory as a node within a vast network of ideas. Creating distinctive brand assets is akin to constructing a network of memories for your brand. Over time, your memory forms new associations, building a reservoir of knowledge for the brand as you experience it through various communication channels.

Let me give you an example. When I think of Friday mornings, a flood of thoughts enter my mind. I think of a perfect weekend. I think of coffee because I start every Friday with a coffee at my favourite café. I envisage the atmosphere in my café, the service level, the smell of coffee, and the lovely feeling of anticipation because the weekend is approaching. I love my Friday mornings, my coffee, my café, and the total brand package filled with distinctive brand assets and sensory experiences.

In constructing a brand, it is, therefore, vital to recognise the plethora of touchpoints with the customer. While the logo remains a visible aspect, the brand's essence extends far beyond it— manifesting in various forms and associations through written content necessitating a fitting tone of voice and font selection, videos demanding careful consideration of music choice and animation style, websites requirering thoughtful design of UI/UX elements and engaging copywriting.

When combined, these distinctive brand assets create an identity that is both unique and recognisable, working together seamlessly to form a unified whole—a dynamic and cohesive brand identity in action.

Types of Distinctive Assets

While distinctive assets can be almost anything that hits the senses, most people only focus on the holy trinity of colour, logo and tagline. But as my coffee example so vividly described, distinctive assets can be so much more:

Distinctive Assets are a Sensory Experience

A stimulus is first processed into our sensory memory as we see, hear, smell, taste and touch something (Tulvik & Craik, 2000).

Abercrombie & Fitch experienced a huge success using a specific in-store scent (or rather, the smell was significant several blocks from the nearby store).

Assets activating smell, taste, and touch add neurological diversity to branding options. Unfortunately, these assets lack flexibility and adaptability, and they only work if the buyer is in an environment where they can smell, taste, or touch.

There is a big world of distinctive assets, so it is useful to have a scheme to help navigate them. The model below is taken from the book Building Distinctive Brand Assets by Jenni Romaniuk.

Each asset type has several sub-options. These assets can provide a large pool of options to inspire your brand asset choices.

How Many Assets Should a Brand Have? Creating a Distinctive Asset Palette

Relying on only one asset is risky. There may be challenges to this or situations where it is not an effective choice. Having a wide number of assets is also risky, too many options make for a fragmented look, and most importantly open for competitor attack. As an expert, I would recommend four to five assets, ensuring each provides flexibility, adaptability and diversity.

Once your brand has strong assets, it is crucial to protect them and update them when necessary. Uniqueness is an essential quality and the one over which you have the least control. Therefore, it is useful to monitor competitor activities for changes, copying, or new asset introductions.

In this article post, I've debated how distinctive brand assets provide an alternative way to build a strong brand—a way that allows your brand to stand out and be unique. By representing the brand in non-brand name forms, distinctive assets can be perceived as less intrusive and allow for effective branding execution.

Much of building distinctive brand assets is about consistency. When assets have been embedded for a while, it is tempting to tinker and change. Don't! Brand assets do not have shelf lives, don't ask anyone other than professionals (re.; brand designers) if they are tired of something- customers the least - they are poor judges.

If you want to improve your development or protection of brand assets, call us. We're always happy to talk!

'Marketing has changed the logo again. Don't these people have any serious work to do?'