Welcome
'Blog Your Brand' we hope will be your very own 'floodgate' to the world on your personal experiences of brands you love, brands you hate to love and brands you love to hate, or brands you...well...just couldn't live with... or couldn't live without!
That's the thing about real brands...one way or another they demand attention and are hard to ignore - so Blog Your Brand is the opportunity (we hope you've been waiting for) to get your brand experiences off-your-chest by sharing them with like-minded 'brandeurs' around the country, around the world.
So that's what it's about...whether it's brand facts, fiction or fantasy, we want to hear your experiences of the brands you live with and to learn more about what makes brands tick - what makes them so central to people's lives, and what that says about the way we live today.
To blog your own brand, simply click on 'comments' immediately below and give us your brand experience or observations. If they grab our attention, we promise to post your comment and maybe even prettify it with some nice images as we've done on the following brand posts.
So, keep checking in and chipping in on Blog Your Brand!
posted by Bradley McGurk @ 17:46
8 Comments:
After reading through some of the posts below and indeed the note above I got to thinking about branding. It has always surprised me how subconsciously brands can make their way into our lives and gain our loyalty without us actually even noticing! It was only when I reached for washing-up liquid and found that my husband had bought an own-brand label that I realised my loyalty to the Fairy-liquid brand. So loyal to the Fairy brand I had become that I referred to all washing-up liquid as Fairy-up (and I know i'm not the only one).
The own brand label got my dishes clean, my hands weren't noticeably dryer and I can't say I used anymore of the product, yet still I found myself scrawling Fairy liquid onto my shopping list for the next day. Just what is it about Fairy that has me hooked? Could it be the cutesy Fairy baby with the quiff, is it nostalgia or is simply a belief that it is easier to wash-up with Fairy? I'm clueless about when or where my Fairy loyalty came from but one thing I am certain of and that's that I won't be changing my brand anytime soon!
I have the exact same loyalty towards Sellotape... no other sticky tape will do. I've thrown many a strop when I've come across the wrong brand in our office stationary cupboard. Sellotape is a brand that has definitely taken on board some of the gripes that people have with other sticky tapes. For example how many of us rage at the sight of a dirty sticky tape mark on a photocopied sheet of paper? Sellotape have eliminated this problem with their Diamond invisible tape! Sellotape's new product has also addressed the problem of yellowing aging tape. In a brandscape where the key product is pretty generic and easily copied Sellotape are obviously trying to differentiate themselves through new innovations like this...and for this Sellotape fan it's definitely working!
Looking at the flipside of brand loyalty I have a brand with which I disassociate myself completely! Whilst I can't even remember the Nestle powder milk controversy at the time I still find myself banishing their products from my shopping basket... and for a KitKat addict believe me it was a sacrifice! One wrong turn for Nestle many moons ago has meant that I am not alone in this behaviour. With great brands comes a great deal of responsibility in my opinion, Nestle did not rise to this responsibility.
From a design point of view the brand which I admire the most is Channel Four. The brand uses a refreshing approach in comparison to other TV channels. The promotional sequences feature moving images shot from across the world, from a series of roadside pylons, to a gas station and a concrete housing complex, that fleetingly reveal a figure four as the camera pans around. The strength behind this promotional sequence is how channel 4 is visualized in a fresh dynamic light.
My favourite brand... APPLEGREEN, for having the foresight to be the first Irish brand to take on the big oil companies and beat them at their own game!
We all use petrol stations as places to fuel ourselves as well as our cars. But for too long we had to put up with canteen coffee and stale 'hang sandwiches'. Now Applegreen recognises that petrol stations are no longer about fuel they are about good food: fresh coffee with a creamy head, hand-baked treats and wraps made just as I like them. When will we start to call them 'food stations' I wonder?... well Applegreen is trying hard. Bring on more locations... How we need them!
Only a brand building peddler could come up with the word 'brandeur'.
I'll be the first to admit it, brands do play a role in business; they are signposts for consumers and will continue to remain as such, despite intermittent death knells that have rang in for brands since the eighties.
But let's not get over ourselves here. The real mechanics of branding - the cogs that create that much heralded brand equity - are not always susceptible to the tweaking of outside consultants. Tinkering with brands is sometimes done best when it's done by the people who know what it means most to consumers. What goes into building a brand and sustaining it, is mostly the diligent and insightful labor of those intricately involved in in it's conception, growth, or ongoing success.
Reading blogs like this (and it's commercial affiliate) are the equivalent of browsing tabloids for strategic minded business people. The Fairy liquid or Cellotape anecdote before our commute, the 'what's-great-about-Apple' tuppence worth during an office lunch.
Let's not forget that the worst legacy of brand 'feedeurs' since management consultancies spurned out of the American Midwest in the twenties has been to instill in Joe Six-Pack, the notion that there's something sacrosanct about brands. Oftentimes, the true mysteries of Cellotape are not as intricate as brand consultants would have us believe.
Glad you like the wordsmithing! Yeah, couldn't resist the 'brandeur' invention - hopefully conveying the idea of brand plus entrepreneur. Actually, it was my daughter Kathryn who initially came up with the word 'brander' to replace 'brand consultant' - a much better feel about it, and one which I think reflects your own perspective (concern) about the role of consultants.
Glad your faith in brands matches my own experience, acting as we do as 'inside partners', with the real value of brands being about doing justice to the inherent ability, nay talent, of a business - yes, you're right: so very much of this is about people-talent as much as....more so than.... about the product or service 'widget'.
But how many businesses fail to see the brand wood for the business trees? Too many I suggest - and that's a crying shame when all of us - internal and external talent partners alike - have our combined sleeves well-and-truly rolled-up to build the proposition and value-add for the customer that is the brand relationship. My concern is that everyone misses out if the brand opportunity itself is missed. Entrepreneurs get this I think.
Cuddly or just plain UGG-ly?
When I was thinking of what brand I would write a blog on for this website I thought about the brands of my generation like Abercrombie & Fitch, Juicy Couture etc. I then peered down at my clothes to get some muse. I was wearing work clothes as I was on work experience at the time – Plain white Pennys top, Black Pennys cardi, white A&F vest top, white and silver dessert scarf and black UGGs. So, Why did I decide to wear uggs to work on this particular morning?
For the past week I had been getting the bus to work. I’d walk to the bus stop, wait for the bus, ride the bus for 20 minutes, walk around sandyford industrial estate, go up the lift and walk to the office where I’d sit on my comfy rotating desk chair. And then repeat this in reverse to go home each day. In pumps!
I love pumps, wear them everywhere. They keep me small (I’ve always been very tall for my age!), look pretty and are very suitable for work.. but for walking around an industrial estate? Ouch. For the third day of my work experience I was late for the bus, so I speed-walked to get there. When I got off the bus, I had to speed-walk miles in twenty minutes with my toes gripping onto my shoes so they wouldn’t fall off at every step I took. That night, I had ballet class and to my surprise I couldn’t even point my toe or ‘relevé’ without my whole calf cramping up. So, I spent the class stretching out my legs. I knew it was time to change my shoe-type.
So, today I chose a pair that I knew would look good and comfy at the same time..my UGGs! UGGs were a huge craze last year in Dublin, so now I’m ‘soo last year’ when I wear them, But walking to work today was a dream. Like those days of getting home from work or school feeling sickly, cold and tired.. all you have to do is snuggle up in a pair of UGGs and sit in front of the gas fire.. okay a bit of a cliqué but you get the point, don’t you? – they’re comfy!
Lots of people disagree completely with me and believe that UGG stands for ugly – i.e., are the ugliest shoes they have ever seen, and while I’m open to critisizm, I have to disagree. I believe that most of the people who complain about this brand have never felt their cushiony softness..
In Ireland, they are only seen on girls of ages from 12yrs – 20yrs (although you do get some older people wearing this brand although them look like they are having a middle age crisis!). In Australia, they are worn by boys as well and If our Irish white-skinned boys can’t accept the fact that AUSTRALIAN TANNED MEN can wear them, this shows how manly they are!
In Dublin, UGGs are known to be ‘D4-ish’ (Dublin stereotype of rich people), but I wear them and I have a complete mix of genres of friends from nerds to rockers to poshys to knackers – some love them and some hate them. The point is I love them and the feeling of the pure sheep wool on my feet in the Irish winter! Ooh wow.. =]
Kathryn, Dublin, Ireland
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