Whether you are a curious consumer and want to see what people are saying about the brands you use in your daily life, or you work for a brand and want to see what people first think of when they see your logo, Brandtags.net is where you want to go.
This site is great. Simple premise. You go to the site, see a logo randomly, enter into a box one word (the first word that comes to mind) and then move on. You can either choose to keep entering words about new brands the site throws at you, or you can go see what other users tagged a given brand with.
Using it is fun, but reading what are the most popular tags about a brand is even more fun and pretty darn insightful. You can also play a game where you guess what a brand is based on the tags (and NO, you don’t get a choice of logos, just the tags!). You can even add other brands if you want to submit them to see how people think of them and tag them.
The site refers to itself as “A collective experiment in brand perception.” Great stuff and very insightful stuff for those interested in seeing consumer perceptions.
I’m sure this will end up being a bigger deal than it should be because of what transpired last year with Tropicana’s epic redesign fail, but I thought I’d share a little behind the scenes look at Minute Maid’s new holistic global packaging redesign. It’s a cleaner refresh, but it’s honestly not that big of a stretch from where they currently are (aesthetically), at least to the U.S. consumer. What is smart is their approach to bring their synonymous global brands into the same redesign, making their whole lineup very cohesive.
As far as the design goes, it’s an improvement, with subtle typeface updates, but it’s not a spectacular “new” design. What it is, is smart. A great billboarding effect at shelf is created as one package ends and another one starts with the same fruit, creating a seamless effect of fruit on all sides of the package. Pretty cool. Here’s a look behind the scenes. Let the “bigger deal than it should be” begin. Well played, Coca-Cola.
HyperQuake strategists are participating in a 13-week webinar entitled “Sustainability Boot Camp” hosted by Sustainable Life Media. This first session was bonus preview that featured Jennifer Rice, founder and chief strategist of Fruitful Strategy discussing “Key Factors in Building Your Sustainable Brand Strategy.”
10 Strategies for Building a Credible Sustainable Brand:
1. Be proactive
2. Be transparent
3. Know your limits
4. Be relevant
5. Borrow credibility
6. Leverage brand strengths
7. Create a brand
8. Be consistent
9. Educate
10. Engage
Many of the ideas boil down to basic common sense and authenticity, but there were a lot of great brand examples attributed to each of the above factors and quick stats that caught my attention. Namely, only one out of 1,018 brands lived up to its green claims, and 25% of companies have said that they make the efforts purely for the public perception of being sustainable. Only 7% claim that their sustainable efforts are because they care about the environment. No wonder there is such a backlash toward Greenwashing.
Kudos to brands like Patagonia, Timberland, Home Depot and even some surprises like SC Johnson, Walmart and BP who are making efforts toward more credible sustainability. Thankfully, you don’t have to be perfect to make an effort.
So I was shopping for vacuums yesterday with my dad when I spotted the newer, friendlier Eureka logo:
What is this business, I thought? You’ve gone from sturdy and reliable to I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. (Though I guess Gen-X moms probably buy ICBINB?) Anyway, while I’m sure vacuums are difficult to market, as folks don’t buy them very often, this friendlification of every brand is starting to get on my Gen-Y non-mom nerves, and I began to gripe about this trend to my dad right there in the vacuum aisle. I managed to stop myself after he gave me one of those pained-but-humoring-me looks.
My web design side would also like to point out that the Eureka site is really nice except for that logo, which seems to have been swapped out post-launch. I’m sure their products are good, but personally I’d like to see branding that says “machine that’s not going to break in 6 months” (as tends to be my vacuum luck) more than “hooray, cleaning!”
So I ended up buying Bissell instead (because Dyson, wtf are those prices?!), abandoning Eureka for the aforementioned very shallow graphic reasons.
