4 studies on branding
BRANDING: 4 examples
Etsy, Disneyland, BMW, Bud Light:
How is their branding superlative, important, believable, memorable, and tangible? Can I take out the company’s name, plug in anybody else’s, and have the exact same ad or claim? Or is it a claim that only this company can make? In communications like advertising, is the product the star of the ad or incidental? In other words, if the communication is Memorable, is it for the right reasons?
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ETSY
My first example of branding is the website ETSY. (www.etsy.com)
Etsy is a website to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers. In this way, they want to build a new economy and present a better choice. The tagline and moto of Etsy is “Buy, Sell, and Live Handmade.”
Certainly this DSI incorporates the main attraction of this brand. It’s Superlative in that Etsy is the largest and first fully-functional and popular website of this type. You cannot place anything else it its place, that’s for sure. Its importance is built around the importance of a ‘better’ life – or of the 8 human appeals – and Etsy’s claims are believable because you can clearly see that people who have hand-made stuff are selling to other people. There is a strong nostalgia factor in hand-made goods and this adds to Etsy’s memorability. The fact that sellers create and maintain their own ‘stores’ inside Etsy, with pictures and descriptions, make shopping on this site a very tangible experience. This site has no ads, but all the advertising around it features the product itself.
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DISNEYLAND
My second example is the Disneyland theme park. The DSI for Disneyland isthe happiest place on earth. Disneyland is a magical, fantastic place and it is certainly the happiest place I know! Everything surrounding this experience speaks to being happy – the wonder, the imagination and the joy. Even the cleanliness and the parades speak to happiness.
Disneyland is superlative in that it was the first theme park – no one else can be inserted into this place. It asserts its importance by appealing to one of the 8 human appeals: happy! The claim is believable because many people have experienced this and it’s memorable (in the sense that it’s linking to emotion) by linking this place to the emotion ‘being happy’. It’s tangible because the experience is aligned with it’s claims (… though one could argue that waiting in lines is not ‘happy’). In commercials for Disneyland, the main point is usually the story (emotion) about going to Disneyland.
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BMW CARS
My third example is BMW cars, whose motto is “WE DON’T JUST MAKE CARS. WE MAKE JOY.” The DSI is about the emotion behind driving a BWM. It’s not a very good example of branding in that it’s not superlative – not ‘the most’ of anything. It’s important – one of the 8 human appeals is happiness – but not believable unless you, yourself, are the kind of driver who finds joy in driving a high-performance car. It is linked to happiness and therefore memorable but only tangible if you like to drive. There are many things that can be put in place of “____makes joy”. The cars themselves are the focus of the marketing and this is a positive.
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BUD LIGHT BEER
My fourth example is Bud Light, a very good example of branding which isn’t technically good. The motto is “The sure sign of a good time” and the marketing is based around pratfalls and spectacle – the Budweiser frogs, for example. This falls into the 12 Mistakes: ‘Entertaining as a DSI’. Anything can be put in the place of Bud as being ‘the sure sign of a good time’. They don’t claim #1 at anything, just that they’re fun. They do appeal to the emotional need for happiness and attractiveness – two of the 8 human appeals – and this makes them highly memorable. The brand is tangible in the sense that in the minds of the consumer, this beer is linked with silly fun.
I have no idea why Bud Light is so popular. Is it cheap? Is it readily available ie is the market flooded? Does it have a reputation as being the ‘fun beer for parties’? I don’t know.