Who controls the Brands?
This essay will discuss weather it is we as consumers who control the
brands or the corporate identities themselves.
In today’s western society we see a civilization overwhelmed with
branding, corporate giants cover every aspect of life. Before these giants began
to dominate the world, brands once represented a standard for a product, i.e.
quality, quantity and price, giving a constant for the consumer. Today to brand
a product is different; it isn’t just supplying standards it’s creating an over
all image for the brand.
So how does a brand image come into life, what considerations do
corporate companies take into account when creating their appearance;
fundamentally it is whatever the market wants weather its fast food companies
using organic products to Ethical fashion brands, and we as customers control
the market therefore we control the brand, or a successful brand anyway.
“All successful businesses are made up of three
strands: technical or craft skills, financial know how, and the ability to sell
(call it seduction, although its more usually called marketing)”1
The first of the three, technical brands are usually dedicated to what
they do, their image is based primarily around their products, focusing mainly
on improving what’s already there, exploring every possibility to create the
next best thing, unlike financial based businesses who’s products are generally
second best to maximising profitability, this strand usually falls into banks
and management consultants.
Although most businesses apply all these strands, Marketing or seduction
as Olins refers to it, is seen to be the most successful strand, we see this
every day walking down the street, watching TV and using the Internet,
advertisements are all around us persuading and manipulating us into believing
that a brand will add a little more definition to the idea of ourselves, and it
works, the majority of western society is covered from head to toe in brands,
from excessively priced iPhones helping the consumer feel superior to all other
mobile users to a healthy selection from the McDonalds menu, nothing of which
Is remotely healthy at all but still connotes the idea of an incredibly tasty
meal.
Olins underlines that one of the main principles of creating and
sustaining a ‘successful brand’ is trust, a brand that can take every thing its
stands for and support the business on those principles gives it consistency
and something for the consumer believe in. He states a brand usually consists
of the ‘four senses’ in which he believes cover the basics of what a brand has
to offer, product, environment, communication and behaviour.
1 – Olins, w., 2003, On Brand
2 – Olins, w., 2003, On Brand
“The product is what the organization makes or
sells. The Environment is where it makes or sells it. Communication is how it
tells people, every audience, about itself and what its doing. And behaviour’s
how it behaves and of course that means how every single person works inside
the brand comports himself or herself in any interaction of any kind with any
other individual or organization.”2
So if the seducers are rising to the top of the brand world with All
these senses incorporated into their projected image, the product, Environment,
communication and behaviour, where is this projected image emerging from, it
seems in more recent time some of the world largest brands have undergone huge
changes to all of these senses in order to gain consumer respect, if as
consumers we believe a brand is unethical we have the power to destroy it, “we
like brands. If we didn’t like them we wouldn’t buy them, its us as consumers
who decide which brand will succeed and which will fail”. (Olins, 2003, on
brand)
One might argue that in today’s world, we have in fact already been
dominated into a sense of need for these brands in our lives due to marketing
and advertising.
Where Olins argues in some cases it is us, the consumers in control,
Naomi Klein takes a different perspective, Klein feels as though we are in a
downhill spiral with brands taking over globally, that we are being bombarded
left and right and eventually will be so overwhelmed with advertising and
branding, we will no longer make our own decisions.
‘That we live sponsored life is now a truism
and it’s a pretty safe bet that as spending on advertising continues to rise,
we roaches will be treated to even more of these ingenious gimmicks, making it
ever more difficult and more seemingly pointless to muster even and ounce of
outrage.”3
Essentially we as a society seem to already be in that position,
branding is progressively breaking down our ability to make decisions about our
projected image, whilst at the same time supplying us with brands to better
associate ourselves with. The fact that large corporate identities establish
emotional ties with consumers show they are taking over, rather than annoyingly
flashing advertisements as often as possible they push these emotional triggers
upon us which sometimes cancel out the advertisement leaving but a subtle but
constant feeling of need for their product behind.
Take western societies largest corporate fast food restaurant, McDonalds,
a few years ago we saw them as the golden arches a brand for everybody no
matter your age, size or ethnicity, a loyal global brand who stand by their
customers and respect their opinions.
“Instead of a binary
"true or false" equation, these emotional slices of life were hard to
argue against and easy to embrace.”4
McDonald’s can be seen as one of the most manipulative brands around
today, back at the beginning they were one of the few brands that understood
what Branding was all about, they knew their product wasn’t a huge selling
point they didn’t supply a beautifully presented 3 course meal in a room
surrounded with a wonderful ambience, nor did they promote this, they focused
mainly on the seduction side and began to promote an experience thus creating
an image for their brand, McDonalds did this much more than most brands, they set
out to reach out to every target audience in the market using deep emotional
connections the every consumer could and would relate to.
3 – Klein, N. 2010, No Logo.
4 – Olins, w., 2003, On Brand.
Throughout history McDonalds have never backed down with this approach,
going as far as using simple psychological techniques such as colour theory,
where vibrant colours of red can arouse the feeling of hunger and a bold use of
yellow known to arouse feelings of cheerfulness, also widely associated with
food, it’s this seductive approach that have kept McDonalds alive. From year to
year we find advertisements of theirs reaching out to more and more consumers,
increasingly generating a wider consumer market, this advertisement below is a
perfect example of how far McDonalds have expanded their target audience, they
address each individual subtly throughout the video, using very personal
comments a lot of consumers will relate too, then finish with ‘were just
passing by’, connoting McDonalds is an easy snack to grab no matter where or
who you are thus making you feel the need to grab, these are the emotional connections both Olins
and Klein mention throughout their writing.
With McDonalds sustaining this global consumer market making billions
every year does this show they are in fact in control of their consumers, more
recent changes argue other wise.
“If
Customers believe that antisocial behaviour merits a boycott then they will
find that companies soon get the message and behave themselves” (Olins,
2003, On Brand)
As Olin’s reiterates throughout, this brand identity McDonalds are try
to sustain and maintain may only be done by complying to the needs of the
consumer, meaning if brand’s such as McDonald’s wants to keep their global market
they must Adhere to the consumer needs.
“Many great brands are like amoebae or plasticine. They can be shaped,
twisted and turned into all sorts of ways yet still be recognizable.” (Olins,
2003, On Brand)
Due to constant attack for unhealthy food and a bad ‘fast food’
reputation Declining sales during the start of the new millennium saw McDonald
franchises closing for the first time in history, which triggered a huge
rethink of the image McDonald’s portrayed, they needed to consider ethical and
eco friendly practices. Over the last year or so, we have seen one of the
biggest changes to a global brand in history from a fast / junk food king to a
healthy food option, an alleged 1 billion dollars was spent in order to refine
their image and boost sales, they did this by revisiting the ‘environment’ as
Olin’s refers to it as a ‘brand experience’ (Olins, 2003, On Brand)
Due to constant attack for unhealthy food and a bad ‘fast food’
reputation McDonalds decided to try to refresh their image, keeping the well recognizable
golden arches they simply made the yellow more golden for a warmer welcoming
effect and swapped the hard red for a terra cotta colour, again a warmer
smoother look. As well as changing the colours they decided to incorporate a
new colour, ‘olive and sage green’ a completely new colour for them and very
out of the ordinary. It is clear from this the food chain are trying to build a
more hopeful healthier brand in order to rid themselves of any bad reputation.
They also redesigned one of the more important aspects of a brand, the
environment, every restaurant in the UK is being re-vamped in order to contain
a healthier and more eco friendly environment, replacing the plastic chairs and
surfaces the company used, with brick walls and wooden seating.
The use of wood inside and outside gives the restaurant a overall
natural feel, connotes that they are using more natural resources for their
environment but also along with the use of olive green and sage denotes that as
a brand they have undergone an overall change in which every thing they do has
become more organic, natural and therefore appealing to the consumer. So it
seem they want to appeal to the customers needs, although they do it slowly
what the majority consumer wants, the majority consumer gets.
Over all as a society we have developed an almost unchangeable
relationship between us as the consumer and brands, as stated by Olin’s they
cover every thing we love in life, they are there first thing in the morning
and last thing at night, but just who controls them, essentially it is us,
although brands may manipulate us into thinking we need this way of life, we
still have the choice of free will, we can still walk away and choose not to
purchase these products, the brands change in order to please the people. “We
like brands, if we didn’t like them we wouldn’t buy the. It is we as consumers
who decide which brand will succeed and which will fail.” (Olins, 2003, On
Brand)
5 – Wally Olins – On Brand
Bibliography
Book
Olins, W (2003). On Brand. London: Thames & Hudson.
Olins, W (2008). The Brand Handbook: Thames & Hudson.
Klein, N (2010). No Logo, London: Fourth Estate.
Favre, J-P (?). Colour and communication: Zurich:ABC editions
Foot, P (2002). Theories of Ethics: Oxford University Press.
Davies, M (2009). The Fundamentals of Branding: AVA Publishing.
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