More than a Logo:Building Brand Identity - By Kathleen Cassedy (HSMAI Marketing Review)

Within seconds, a recent online search of "logo design" netted more than one million entries. A perusal of about two dozen revealed assorted graphic design shops, some with quite impressive displays and range. These online logo factories can churn out designs for a few hundred dollars within 24 hours.

Online graphic designers have often worked at advertising agencies and hold commercial art degrees. They know what a logo is, they understand corporate identity, but they are usually not experts in market research or branding. In fact, there are only a few design companies that are specialists in building brand identity, which includes a brand mark, as they prefer to call a logo.

But whether these corporate symbols are called brand marks, logos, word marks, corporate identities or typographical solutions, they are not all created equally, nor will they be equally effective. The cost of commissioning a brand identity can be more than $1 million for a billion-dollar global corporation. If it is a logo for a small independent company, the need is much less and so is the cost.

The cost of a brand mark and its value, however, are sometimes very far apart. It is possible to spend little money to get a very good return on investment.

For example, during the mid-1970s, NBC introduced to its television audience a stylized block letter "N"—its new corporate identity—with great fanfare. To NBC's surprise, it turned out that the mark was already in use by NETV, the television station of Nebraska Educational Telecommunications. The "N" in Nebraska had been designed by an in-house art director, whereas, NBC had hired the consulting firm, Lippincott & Margulies, to create its new corporate identity.

Jack McBride, who was general manager of N-ETV at the time, recalls the amiable solution when NBC purchased the rights to the Nebraska station's mark for a cool $1 million and a remote TV camera unit. N-ETV then created another stylized N for itself.

Yet the high cost of a brand's mark is much more than the actual design. Creating a brand identity and its mark is a complicated process. "You are not paying for someone to do a doodle; you are paying for research, and you are paying for a company that has consistency in doing quality work," explains Cabell Harris, president of Work Inc., a medium-size advertising agency in Richmond, Virginia. When a brand identity is the foundation of a worldwide branding strategy, it should last a decade or more and increase in value because of the recognition and emotional link that the mark will build with consumers.

All organizations need to determine their budgets and investments for a corporate or brand identity. While many small companies cannot afford a full flown brand strategy, certain rules for a successful mark apply, and knowing the process of how a brand identity is developed can help any organization when it seeks a new mark, or plan to refresh an old one.

"I hate the word 'logo' because it implies that a brand is just a little icon. A brand is much more that that," explains Hayes Roth, Landor Associates vice president of marketing for the Americas. "A brand must encompass a very strong idea that has to be carefully vetted with constituents to whom a brand must appeal. This can be huge, especially in the travel industry. Because it isn't just the target customer, it is also this very large internal audience—the people in the state, or the town, or the organization. They have to understand what the brand is about and believe in it."

Landor Associates, based in San Francisco, is among a handful of global design companies that specializes in creating a strategic brand identity, which includes the mark and its application to market communication materials and packaging. Landor does not provide advertising or public relations services, but will coordinate work with its clients' agencies.

Since designer Walter Landor founded the company in 1941, Landor has grown to 25 offices around the world. Early on, he pioneered customer research in packaging and global thinking in design. Landor quickly developed a specialty in branding airlines, starting with Alitalia. Since then it has added Northwest, Delta, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines, JAL, and Canadian Airlines to its impressive client list of 50 airlines. Landor advised Federal Express to shorten its name to FedEx and rebranded its trucks, packages, and planes.

Landor's travel and leisure clients have included Hyatt, Sheraton Four Points, Guest Quarters Suites, Royal Caribbean International, three host cities of the Olympic Games, and Traverse City Convention & Visitors Bureau (see sidebars).

Landor bases its work on the belief that a brand must have an emotional connection to the customer. This is especially true regarding the travel industry, which often is selling an experience. Landor's aim is to brand all points of experience, or "touch points."

"We believe that there must be a central idea that is expressed consistently—visually and verbally across all points of touch," Roth explains. "How do the different [airline] ticket jackets express what the brand is about, how do you distinguish different classes of travel, what did you feel like when you went to the ticket counter?"

Creating A Brand Identity: The Process

In choosing an advertising agency, design company or brand identity consultancy, an organization needs to review its work. Brand marks should not look like they came from the same designer; each one should uniquely represent its respective company or product.

The process to create a brand identity and its mark is collaborative. Often, the consultant needs to educate the client about how a brand identity is created, and how it can set the client apart from the competition.

Typically, Landor's first presentation with the client is a work session that lasts several hours. Landor likes to hold it at one of its offices, where the client can view and discuss its previous work. Landor's initial goal is to enthuse the client. "Branding is all about creating this feeling of promise and energy about which the client can become excited." Roth says.

Usually an ad hoc committee, about five people, is formed within an organization to work with the consultant to develop the brand identity and tagline. If the owner or president is not part of the committee, then he or she must be advised of the process, and should participate in the selection of the mark and tagline. Daily contact is kept between the consultant or agency's account manager and the client's marketing director or president.

To understand the organization and its environment, the consultant will review the client's business plan, annual reports, any market research, and other materials, including articles about the client, and will talk to executives and staff members. During this internal audit, the consultant learns where the brand is in its life stage, and how it is expressed on brochures, signage, the Web site, and in other places.

The next step is conducting primary market research in the form of focus groups and surveys. This will determine the constituent audience, the client's challenges, competitive positioning, and strategic niche. If the client has recently conducted market research then that can be used.

After learning about its client, Work Inc. will develop six to eight alternative positioning possibilities for the client, which are then tested in focus groups and personal interviews. Depending on the client, there can be as few as five focus groups or as many as 25. "You want to see if they [positioning concepts] match up with what the company considers its core values. Often they don't," says John Boatright, senior partner with Work Inc.

Both positive and negative feedback from the focus groups and interviews is honed into one to three positioning concepts that crystallize the core values of the company. Work Inc. then tests those conclusions through quantitative research, in which the survey is large enough to be statistically projected to the universe. "If both sets of research — qualitative and quantitative — match, then it rings the bell," says Boatright.

From this, Work Inc. presents the client with a communications document that succinctly describes what it knows about the client's business, where it stands today, where it wants to go, its problems and opportunities. From this a crystallized statement, in ten words or fewer, is written that positions the brand. A creative brief is given to the graphic designer who will develop ideas for the brand mark.

Landor calls the conclusion of its research, brand drivers, which are the essence of a place or product—its unique and ownable qualities that make it different from other organizations.

A brand driver is not the mark, nor tag-line, it is "an idea that powerfully captures the very essence of the brand and unites it across every application," Roth says. The brand driver, however, is not always easy to discern until the research is done.

After Landor completes its research and determines the brand driver, this information is given to a team of designers who each create dozens of marks. As many as 50 to 100 ideas will be discarded before arriving at the best three to eight ideas that are presented to the client. The best ideas are also illustrated in prototype to show how they would appear in different applications, such as on the side of a truck or on a banner.

Taglines

Taglines are typically developed concurrently with the brand mark and follow the same process. Instead of designers, wordsmiths develop many phrases until the best ideas are whittled down. The proposed taglines are presented in context with the mark to give the client a sense of how they would work together.

Once a mark and tagline are selected, they are turned over to a staff whose purpose is to translate the symbol and phrase into many communications or applications—business cards, letterheads, notepaper, signage, the Web site, and promotional materials.

Because the brand mark reflects the core values of the company, an organization needs to carefully decide on what and where it will appear. Branding identity agencies can create a standards manual, which specifies how to use the mark, in what color ink and formats.

A promotional campaign to launch the mark will explain and reinforce its significance.

Ensuring Brand Success

To ensure a brand identity is successful, companies must do the following.

• The company, from top management down, must support the brand objective and realize that the process is important. Because, ultimately, the CEO and the executive staff must be the evangelists for the brand.
• All constituencies must understand and believe in the brand identity and its tagline.
• The brand identity must be expressed consistently or it will be diluted.
• The brand identity and phrase must deliver its promise.

"There's no faster way to expose a bad product than to do a great brand mark and tagline for it," Roth notes. "If the business cannot deliver its promise, then it needs to change or it will ultimately fail." For example, if a company promises customer service, but it does not answer its phones correctly, it will lose its brand equity and power.

The First Building Block

The name, mark, and tagline are the first building blocks of the brand. Because many new companies have small budgets, they often do not put enough importance on the logo or mark that represents their business or product. "It's very hard to change a logo later on, or take it to the next evolution, especially if the business has been spending money branding a weak mark. In fact, you often have to change it because it's bloody awful," Harris says.

"The logo and the tagline are the positioning of what that product stands for," he says. "Then you build on top of that—every communication that comes out should be supportive of that look, tone, and personality."

To Keep Or Not To Keep

Companies will change their corporate identities after a merger, an acquisition, a divestiture, or because new competitive pressure or new dynamics have entered the marketplace. Just because a logo is old is not a reason to change it. Over time, symbols often accumulate enormous equity, such as trust and dependability. Ongoing market research can show when it is time to refresh the mark.

Amtrak Updates Brand Mark

In anticipation of Amtrak's new high-speed train, the Acela Express, and other initiatives aimed at fulfilling the quasi-government agency's goal to achieve commercial independence by 2003, Amtrak undertook a brand identity research project a few years ago to determine how it should reinvent itself. The New York design company, Oh & Co., was awarded the rebranding contract. Results of customer research showed that a great deal of equity existed in Amtrak's name. But the "inverted arrow" mark, which had been designed by Lippincott & Margulies in 1971 for the new passenger rail service, was found to be too governmental, especially with its red, white and blue colors. An interim word mark was used while the new brand identity was created. In July 2000, Amtrak's new mark was announced along with a new customer satisfaction guarantee program.

The new mark is a combination of the Amtrak name and stylized tracks, suggesting movement. Its teal blue color purposefully differs from the royal blue used in the old logo. The mark also complements a similarly fluid symbol used for Acela, which was inaugurated in December 2000. Amtrak's new mark signifies the corporation as a revitalized entity, highly focused on customer service.

The mark was immediately put on letterhead, business cards, and most promotional material, and will gradually replace the old Amtrak mark on trains and signage as they are refurbished or replaced. A national print advertising campaign introduced the new corporate identity, new Amtrak services and programs, which were also reported in the media.

Visual Components Of The Mark

Because a brand or corporate mark should capture the essence of the product or organization, its design should be obvious. So that when a person sees it, he or she thinks of the product or corporation automatically. "We try to make it look easy, which is hard to do," Roth remarks.

Many logo designs are too complicated. "It will look almost like an illustration, and that's not a logo," says Harris, of Work Inc. "It takes a lot of talent and hard work to make something that's simple. The mark's design must be flexible, that's the key."

A good logo can be reduced to almost legal copy, and can also be blown up to the side of a building. A mark cannot have too many details if it will be seen from a distance, such as an airplane's tail or the side of a truck. The best marks work in black and white, in color, in reverse, and on a Web site.

Harris warns about logos that look like a designer's first thought, which would be a similar subject and typeface that people have seen before. "That [logo] doesn't have its own personality. The mark must take on the personality of what it is representing, not the personality of the designer," he says. "A mark should not look trendy, like it is this year's product, because by next year it will be dated."

Marquis Design

Art director Brian Marquis of Marquis Design Associates has a file of marks that he will never show anyone. They are the marks that the clients messed up because they kept requesting alterations. "Some clients think that the mark can tell the company's entire history," he says. He has been asked to create seals that are divided into small pictures. He tells the client he cannot do that.

Marquis Design is a small agency in Alexandria, Virginia, that has created a niche for itself in designing and refreshing marks for associations, and for their conventions and conferences. He also designs marks that will have a short life span for educational programs, anniversary celebrations, and city festivals. Marquis does not have the expertise or the staff to conduct market research, but when he accepts a client he tries to learn as much as he can about the company by reading its literature. He also asks the client to write down the goals for the mark.

Among the main problems he has encountered is a client who has too many people involved in the decision-making process, rather than a core committee, or the top executive is not involved during the process. Sometimes a president will not see the mark until it has been selected, and then will say it is not what he or she wanted.

Marquis is often commissioned to refresh an association's mark. Sometimes it involves making a design bolder, more readable, and easier to print. Other logos need to be updated. For a research client, Marquis was asked to modernize a mark that showed stylized computer wheels. Marquis kept the idea, but used little blocks that represent today's digital world.

He is also asked to coordinate marks of an organization's affiliates that will appear on the same letterhead. His objective is to create a family unity, which he does with color and fonts. To update a travel association's word mark, Marquis designed the letters with horizontal lines to create a sense of motion.

AH&MA Renews Itself

An older company may have several evolutions of its logo as it changes in response to the marketplace. At the American Hotel & Motel Association's annual convention this past April, it introduced its new name, the American Hotel & Lodging Association, and an updated logo.

The association was founded as the American Hotel Association in 1910. The last time it changed its name was in 1973 when it added the word "motel" to reflect the prevalence of motor lodging along the highways. Since then the association's membership has expanded to include time shares and condominiums, and the term "motel" had gained some negative connotations.

Before the name change, research was conducted to determine how a new name would be accepted and to explore what it should be. Focus groups and personal interviews were conducted with hotel industry executives and congressional members and their staffs. Executives of state associations were surveyed online.

Some association leaders wanted to change the name back to American Lodging Association, because the word "lodging" is inclusive of all overnight accommodations. Others believed it was important to keep the word "hotel" and make a more gradual transition with the name change. Research showed that the majority of industry leaders and congressional staff preferred the name, American Hotel and Lodging Association. They felt that American Lodging Association was too general, since the term "lodging" encompasses any temporary accommodation.

The previous mark showed stylized blocks in the shape of a symmetrical building, with a star in white space between the blocks as a possible doorway. The association's name was kept to the right of the symbol.

In the new mark, the old mark's red, white and blue colors remain, but the blocks creating a building shape are more stylized, to also suggest a banner or flag. The white space has been closed, and the star moved into a triangle block, which might be a rooftop. The 2001 design also more cohesively incorporates the AHLA name. The association's two affiliates' names were also changed to include "American Hotel & Lodging," and the affiliates are now required to use the AH&LA mark with their names, creating a unity of design and philosophy throughout the organization.

Taglines As Logos

Taglines should have an economy of words, but more importantly, they must communicate effectively. "It's like taking a ton of information and simplifying it to one sentence that describes what this company is about, and on which you can build everything....every communication that comes out, every ad, every brochure should probably in some way be reinforcing that positioning tagline," Harris explains.

In creating an advertising campaign for the Henry Ford Museum, the Just Partners ad agency (now Work Inc.) developed "The great American museum is also great fun" as a tagline. This was the first time that the words "museum" and "fun" were used together. Subsequent advertising promoted the museum's "edutainment" qualities.

For Virginia Beach, a medium-size city, Just Partners developed the tagline, "We're more than a beach," as an umbrella to cover the destination's range of activities off the beach. "It doesn't sound very dramatic when you say it, except it's so crystal clear," says Boatright, who worked on the account.

Palm Beach County wanted to focus on its great shopping, but market research showed that it was not a great enough attraction for upscale leisure travelers, who could shop at home. The tagline became "The Best of Everything," which described this high-end destination and the types of activities, including shopping, that it offers.

Virginia Is For Lovers

Often a tagline becomes the logo. Both "Virginia Is for Lovers" and "I Love New York" were designed as the brand identity for their state tourism marketing programs. Not all logos are scientifically or methodically developed. Sometimes they start as an ad campaign and become so popular that they last decades. Take the "Virginia Is for Lovers" logo and its original advertising campaign. What became a brand identity for state tourism developed during a lengthy lunch by some very creative and knowledgeable people from a small advertising agency in Richmond, Virginia. George Woltz and other staff of Martin & Woltz, (predecessor of The Martin Agency) were discussing Virginia's diversity of leisure activities and geography. They knew that Virginia needed to attract more young visitors and families without turning off its older tourists. "Because we knew that Virginia has something for everybody, our goal was to cover that," recalls Libby Meggs, who was the agency's 26-year-old art director at the time. "We would say 'Virginia is for history lovers' or 'Virginia is for beach lovers.' [Creative director] Woltz suggested dropping the modifier. I pushed for the red heart [to replace the "o" in love]," she adds. "It was 1969. People were kind of hippy. They wanted to 'make love, not war.' Eric Segal's novel Love Story was popular. Love was in the air. It was just the right time for this to click," Meggs adds. She remembers putting that slogan on buttons and T-shirts at a time when marketing through merchandising was a novel idea. (The Virginia Tourism Commission recently asked its advertising agency, Work Inc., to conduct market research to determine the current equity in Virginia Is for Lovers as brand identity and its future role.)

By 1977, the love theme had permeated to New York State when the $4 million "I Love New York" ad campaign was unveiled to boost the state's failing economy through tourism. The logo had been designed by New York graphic designer Milton Glaser and a musical jingle composed by Steve Karman. In 1978, the budget for its ad campaign was increased to $10 million and supported until the 1990s when it was sharply cut. Recently state funding for the campaign was restored, which is matched by local and regional funds. Last year, a group of international judges rated The "I Love New York" logo number 24 among 50 of the world's top logos ever. The rating was commissioned by the London Financial Times and the R.O.B. (Report on Business) magazine. The real test for any brand mark, however, is how well it works in the real world by building brand awareness, and increasing the bottomline.