The designer’s role must extend to brand guardianship when it comes to visual identity, says Steve Gibbons
The shifting sands of the marketing communications industry haven’t yet settled into anything like a clearly defined shape. And perhaps they never will. Since I entered this business 30 years ago there’s been talk of a complete shakedown, but such is the speed of change that somehow it never quite crystalises into anything we can all recognise.
In particular the position of ‘brand guardian’ is still a territory argued over by each of the disciplines. Aside from a Guardian article about Russell Brand, a quick Google search using the term ‘brand guardian’ gives results from all manner of types of company claiming this role.
I want to argue that brand design consultants can rightly claim this position, at least from the position of the brand’s visual identity. Just as architects’ photographs of their buildings are usually devoid of any sign of human habitation, packaging designers have had a tendency to photograph their creations as if they were a pristine work of art; each piece beautifully preened, polished and presented in its glorious singularity, as if on a velvet-draped pedestal.
This is of course far from the reality that faces shoppers as they see our designs sitting huggermugger on a supermarket or drugstore shelf with a hundred other competing examples. As specialists, we have in the past run the risk of myopically missing the bigger picture. And likewise our clients who have drawn too strong a distinction between their packaging and their POS designers might have missed the opportunity to draw these strands together in any kind of holistic way.
So much of the way our industry has developed has encouraged a silo mentality. This must be quite frustrating for the enlightened client who wants it all to work together seamlessly. What is sometimes called ‘the first moment of truth’ (a rather grand title that you might imagine the book of Genesis has a prior claim to) – originally defined as that critical five to seven second period of time a shopper deliberates over a purchase – is influenced not just by our packaging design but also by all the many other things in the store environment that can potentially nudge them into making the choice we want them to make.
This is not only about the elaborate display units that a cosmetics line requires or an analgesic’s simple shelf tray, it’s also about all the other ways a shopper can become engaged – right through from the shop’s window, the poster-clad columns, the ceiling-hung posters, the gondola end, the messages on the basket to the more traditional shelf-edge wobblers.
But this still is only part of the story. Having acknowledged the paramount importance of the first moment of truth it takes us potentially in two directions.
Firstly, instead of building a conventional marketing programme that starts with an advertising idea, start with that fleeting in-store moment and plan everything else back from it. The idea being that if it doesn’t work in store, it won’t work at all. The work done outside the store (whether TV, press, digital etc) is for nought if it doesn’t then trigger recognition and ultimately action in store. Procter & Gamble calls this ‘store back’ and has been working hard to get its agencies to acknowledge this change of mind-set, and the not inconsiderable changes in working processes that accompany it.
Speaking just for my company, being focused on the health and beauty market has allowed us to broaden our offer to include other disciplines in the marketing mix. So projects we’re involved with now are as likely as not to give us an equal say in the design of the POS and the look and feel of the advertising and the digital media.
This of course cuts both ways and more than ever what this requires is a collaborative approach amongst a client’s agencies; advertising, PR, POS, digital or packaging, all need to work together.
A distinction here also needs to be drawn between the brand and a campaigning idea. There is a distinction, and the former needs to provide a degree of continuity that underpins the latter. Brand design consultants have always understood this and are often better able to take the long view of brand development.
Secondly, from a first moment of truth then follow the second and third moments; the second being the consumer’s experience of the product and the third the (hoped for) repurchase.
Packaging designers also play a critical role in this second moment of truth when our shopper uses the product. How enjoyable is the process of opening the product? How is it resealed? Does it deliver the right amount of product? And, increasingly important, how can it be recycled?
We believe this pivotal point sitting between and embracing those two moments of truth puts brand and packaging designers firmly at the heart of brand guardianship.
I’ve now got somewhat sidetracked by Russell Brand’s Twitter page so must be going...