How redesign exposes brand intelligence
With signals that the tide may be turning on the switch to corporate branding, Thinkerbell's Adam Ferrier looks at what brand refreshes or redesigns can tell us about a company's brand intelligence, and why the six-foot baby is good for business.
Last week, many in marketing were discussing the proposed redesign of Toblerone. Apparently, a move to manufacture outside of Switzerland means they will lose the right to show the Matterhorn on their packaging, and the little bear (emblematic of the city of Bern (bear) hidden in the detailed flourish of the logo will disappear too. Both of the marketing science heavyweights Mark Ritson and Professor Byron Sharp have weighed in. Both have said ‘Nar mate, all’s cool. They won’t lose a chocolate bar in sales with the brand refresh’, and handled sensibly, they probably won’t.
However, maybe a brand redesign shouldn’t just be measured on the aesthetics of the design. Maybe, it’s more than that. Potentially, it’s a window into how that brand is valued by the company? Perhaps a brand redesign, or refresh is actually a window into whether an organisation has strong brand intelligence or not.
Some time ago someone came up with the absurd idea of human centered design and convinced half a generation of marketers that ease and efficiency were the way to build a brand. Focus on the consumer, and what they want, and watch your sales fly was the promise. The outward design aesthetic that married this human centered approach was hard core utility resulting in lots of tech brands doing this:
And high end fashion brands doing this (yes you’ve all seen the memes on LinkedIn)
Burberry was the last to join the homogenised utilitarian rabble in 2017 with the designer (Peter Saville) and creative director of the time Riccardo Tisci settling for a treatment that would “work just as well on a gabardine raincoat as on a chiffon blouse”. Or as they described it “modern utility”. Or put another way ‘What the fuck does that jousting knight on a horse have to do with anything, we have to get that logo to fit on a label.”
And the share price under Riccardo Tisci’s reign? Flat (albeit obviously in extremely tumultuous times).
A month or so ago we saw a lead indicator of a design revolution happening, one that puts the brand first, enter Burberry’s complete reinvention by going back to its past with this wonderful effort.
The rebrand engineered by 36-year-old British creative director, Daniel Lee brings back the past and restores order to the Burberry identity again. And how has the market responded to Daniel Lee joining the company? It seems the market knew someone who got brand was back at the helm. You can see where he joined on the line below.
Which brings me onto the wonderful Australian brand Baby Bunting. It’s an interesting brand that means nothing to most people, then many enter an intense five-year relationship with Baby Bunting, browsing the isles for bub. However, for those that don’t know, the brand has been having a rough trot of it lately, and it too has undergone a rebrand in recent years. Below is the redesign…
…and underneath the share price, along with when the redesign happened.
When Mumbrella reported on the new logo at the time the response was ‘mixed’. It’s a brave redesign as it left behind all of the distinctiveness of the messy old logo. However, it will be quite literally harder for people to find the Baby Bunting brand (both in their mind, and on the street), as the brands visual identity has completely gone, replaced with a completely new modern look.
Brand intelligence is the ability to prioritise the brands meaning (and look and feel) despite opposing forces. For some time those opposing voices are the (human centered) designers who want to ‘clean things up’ and leave distinctiveness behind in the chase for modernity, clarity and cleanliness.
If I was in charge and had a spare million or so, I’d strongly consider bringing the old signs out of storage and putting them back up. I’m also a fan of a tagline helping people understand what it is and with the name Baby Bunting, a tagline that says ‘The one stop baby shop’, and a 6 foot baby crawling on the logo. Back then there was no doubt they were the biggest baby specialists in town. However, I don’t know the strategy of Baby Bunting and may well be completely wrong.
So please when considering the application of your brand on packaging, logo design, visual identity, or even the entire customer experience, please think brand first. It’s harder to do that than one might imagine. Further, the omni-present voice of customer research telling us to chop the edges off everything and make things easier and simpler and more efficient erodes the value of brands too. However, maybe Burberry is telling us things are changing. Brands are back baby.
And speaking of baby, any chance Baby Bunting would consider bringing back their weird 6 foot baby?
Adam Ferrier is chief thinker at Thinkerbell
An insightful and well written article.
But it’s a bit of a stretch to make a connection between brand design and the share price of a company. The share price is usually a reflection of business earnings and fundamentals.
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