It’s been a little over a year since Mastercard launched its twelve-second sonic logo. Sensory branding isn’t new – from Mercedes‘ door closing to Britannia’s jingle to the Rolls Royce’s new car smell, there are many examples. But this wasn’t an isolated move, a month before that, Mastercard had done a revamp of its logo, ditching the brand name. After I wrote the language post, it struck me that both these elements of brand identity – two coloured circles without a name, and a jingle – are language agnostic. In a world of connected speakers and voice-enabled interactions, this does seem like, well, a sound strategy!
It made me reflect on the larger idea of brand. Specifically, if brand is a perception in the mind of a consumer, what are the factors that are influencing the perception? Three broad areas immediately came to mind (more…)
#UnfollowSachin – that was the trending reaction on Twitter to Tendulkar’s Rajya Sabha nomination. (and acceptance) It reminded me of a couple of excellent related posts I had read recently.
First, Seth Godin’s post post. Could also be titled “Why I have comments disabled”. Ok, that was just jest. I’d rather he focus on writing these than fighting trolls too. 🙂 He uses two simple parameters to disqualify a person from being listened to – lack of standing, and no credibility.
The other post, which in many ways could be seen as quite complementary to Godin’s post is from what’s quickly becoming one of my favourite sites for some daily makes-you-think posts. I’ve not completely watched the video here, but the quote that connects is “Stuart Firestein’s insight on the importance of ignorance in exploration and growth”
In our culture, not to know is to be at fault socially… People pretend to know lots of things they don’t know. Because the worst thing to do is appear to be uninformed about something, to not have an opinion… We should know the limits of our knowledge and understand what we don’t know, and be willing to explore things we don’t know without feeling embarrassed of not knowing about them.
A fallout of not adhering to this is opinions on everything. Self publishing has made this almost a norm. (Is that an opinion right there?) Godin’s framework works well for brand management. But social platforms and brands’ nervousness towards it make the implementation difficult. Theoretically it should work well in organisational decision making as well. But it doesn’t, probably because organisational decision making is rarely objective. It leads me to my earlier post on empowerment. Between the noisy crowd and organisational hierarchy, what’s a brand custodian to do?
