Rebranding videos are an often overlooked part of the rebranding process. Which is unfortunate, because they often do a great job of providing some much-needed context and reasoning to a brand’s employees and its customers. Furthermore, they’re usually a lot of fun and can reenergize an otherwise tired audience.
This video launching the newly updated Bitdefender identity is a good example of this type of work. Brand New has a writeup of the rebranding that is, as always, quite good.
Watch this video. It’s simple, not overproduced, and it will sell the heck out of the company, Resource Furniture. The video could be made in an afternoon using any consumer grade video camera and a copy of iMovie (though it was produced by the fine folks at Core77).
The video works because the features and benefits are made so clear. They don’t bury the lead, they get right into the good stuff: demoing their products.
Their website could use an update, but I’m still jealous of the lucky people who get to market stuff like this.
I often have a hard time explaining to clients how modern identity work can be multi-dimensional and dynamic, but I don’t think I’ve ever done a great job of it. But this little video announcing a new logo for the Science Channel is about as good of an example as I can think of.
It’s pretty interesting to see how some of the most famous brand identity work has evolved. It’s pretty rare for any of these companies to completely rebrand, usually there are just some some adjustments made in each iteration.
Post-publishing note: I had grabbed this image from somewhere and stuck into my folder of things to blog about. Unfortunately, I didn’t keep very good notes as to where I found this collection. Tineye didn’t turn up any results, but it appears as though this was originally from Inc.com which has some nice notes for each brand and is worth looking at.
I saw this over on the 37signals blog, where it was pointed out that running such shady ads next to your serious financial content doesn’t do you any favours in the credibility department.
A compelling advertising case study featuring national branding, social media, and challenging youth. Not much else I can say, you just need to watch.
Imprint recently posted a nice retrospective of the Nike logo, which just turned 40. I’m fascinated by this brand identity, which is perhaps the most famous mark in history, yet the work was originally underpaid and unappreciated. As someone who has designed some identities that I really believed in – only to have the client say that they didn’t love it – this story resonates strongly with me.
This article on Brand Channel is worth a read. The short of the story is that after a right-wing group petitioned General Mills to pull their advertising from a show with a lesbian character (Pretty Little Liars), General Mills replied:
“We have informed ABC Family Channel and our agencies that Pretty Little Liars is not a program that we will sponsor.”
But then General Mills started to get some more attention for pulling their ad they responded with:
“General Mills does not make advertising placement decisions based on the sexual orientation of characters.”
Which is funny, because that’s exactly what they led us to believe (rightly or wrongly). Sitting on the fence is an awfully uncomfortable position for a PR department to take these days.
In two short tweets, Trent Reznor shows how savvy he is to key brand strategies. Consistency in your brand, regardless of the cost, is essential.
http://twitter.com/#!/trent_reznor/status/91521769332154368
http://twitter.com/#!/trent_reznor/status/91522745376059392
More lessons for corporations engaging in social media. This time from The Economist:
Consistency. Retailers need policies in place to ensure that their brand promise remains consistent across all media channels, including social media – even if the interactions on Twitter, Facebook and the like are less formal than traditional media.
Community. Key to success is an understanding that social media is not purely a communications channel – in which the retailer controls the message – but more as a community of individuals who share an interest in a brand, or a product, or a category of products.
Collaboration. Social media channels deliver the most value when they move beyond the customer service objective and when insights are effectively shared between different departments.
Commitment. For many retailers, the biggest challenge with social media is getting people throughout the organisation to buy into the benefits. 27% of survey respondents have budgets dedicated to social media marketing and 12% have added one or more full-time positions to support social media.