billboard brands

Designing an effective billboard is always a challenge. This probably explains why so many are terribly executed. Billboards require concise copy — sometimes only a few words — that people are supposed to read, digest, and process in just a few seconds. If the copy is too long, or the billboard is too busy, consumers will take a quick glance and move on.
 
Branding should be approached in the same way.
 
You don’t want a billboard so junked up with extraneous items that consumers are unable to understand it. Brands, like billboards, should be simple and direct. The battle for a position in the mind of a consumer is much like battling for their attention in the few seconds they drive by an out-of-home advertisement. If it isn’t something they are already familiar with, you have but just a few precious seconds to grab their attention. The sharper, more narrowly focused your brand is, the likelier it is you’ll land a strike.
 
Brands that are complex, or vague, have a hard time fighting through the noise to reach the consumers. However, brands that are simple, narrowly focused, and clear as to their purpose, or value, resonate better.
 
If you have just a few seconds to reach consumers about your brand, what would you say? Think of what you would put on a billboard to describe your brand. Ideally, it would be just one key word. It would be the one word that your brand has come to dominate, and one that defines it. For example, here is what some of the top brand billboards might look like: “Apple: Innovation in Technology;” “Google: Online Search;” “Burberry: Fashion’s Luxury;” “Marlboro: #1 in Cigarettes;” “Toyota: Automotive Reliability.”
 
Just two or three words, paired with a logo, would be all these brands needed to not only advertise the brand visually, but also tell consumers everything they need to know about it. Apple is where to go for the latest technology. Google is where to go for online search. Burberry is what you buy to look posh. Marlboro is what you smoke (because if they are number one, they must be the best). Toyota is what you buy if you want a reliable car.
 
Taking a look at your brand, could you explain it to consumers in just a few seconds, with just a few words? Could you turn your brand into a billboard? If not, maybe it is time to revaluate the brand, and trim off some of the excess. The best brands are ones that are narrow in focus, simple, and consistent. If you have a busy brand — trying to be everything to everybody — it will never hold a spot in the minds of consumers, just as a busy billboard will never register with consumers.

yes, consistency in your brand is still important

If you're not already following Kaitlin Gallucci at BeneathTheBrand.com, you really should. She has a post everyday, and they're all branding gems that you shouldn't miss. Hers today on "consistency" in branding is especially relevant because, as she explains in the article, people seem to think the days of consistency are over.

Wrong.

According to Hunt, “research shows that businesses with well-managed, consistent brands are worth up to 20% [more] than those who aren’t.”

Gallucci continues:

Branding consistency is a primary means of brand recognition. Imagine if a company didn’t maintain a consistent brand name; not only would it probably go virtually unknown, it would appear unreliable, not to be trusted.

Bingo. If there are two things you should remember about branding, it's that consistency and singularity are the building blocks to brands with staying power. Change your brand, or junk it up with line extensions or silly bells and whistles, and you lose value -- or, kill your brand altogether.

singularity and consistency

If there are two words that you need to know in branding, it’s singularity and consistency. These two branding concepts are the building blocks of establishing a strong, dominant brand. Singularity means that you keep your brand narrowly focused and constructed around one central idea or theme. Consistency means that you keep this focus unchanged.

Brands are ideas. They’re not a physical product, or a logo on a building. In order to get your idea inside the mind of a consumer, you must break through all the noise and clutter of competing brands in the market. Because the mind of a consumer has a finite amount of space it is willing to commit to brands, complex, ever-changing brands have a hard time winning the war for the mind.

In order to grab a spot in the mind of a consumer, a brand should be simple. Allen Adamson, managing director of Landon Associates and author of BrandSimple, calls this the “elevator idea.” If you can’t explain your brand’s idea in the time it takes to ride an elevator, it’s too complex. “People are busy, they’re inundated by message, and there are too many brands for them to choose from,” says Adamson. “Make it easy for them to get the idea.”

Keeping the brand narrowly focused ensures simplicity. And, simplicity means you can begin to “own” a term in the mind of consumers. It’s this term that consumers use to define your brand. When you think of some of the most powerful brands in the world, a “thought” or “idea” immediately comes to mind. Google elicits the idea of the simplest search engine, which they created by building a search engine page free of the clutter on pages like Yahoo and Lycos, their rivals at the time. Apple brings about the idea of “sleek technology” because of a product line with a very modern, streamlined look (they even replaced their rainbow logo with a simple, monochrome Apple to reinforce this look). And, Marlboro is the ultimate “cowboy” cigarette.

These brands are successful because they stick to the basics, and don’t undermine their core brand by making it more complicated. Consumers don’t like complicated. The more complex or complicated your brand is, the less likely they’ll commit your product to the limited amount of storage space they have available in their mind.

They also stay consistent with their image. Apple knows that if they started producing computers that were bulky or boxy, they would lose their image of innovative design. And, if Marlboro released a line of cigarettes for women, it would destroy its rugged, masculine perception.

Xerox saw firsthand the dangerous repercussions when they deviated from simple and consistent. In the 1970s, Xerox was relishing in the success of their copier. They began exploring the idea of expanding their services to include computers. However, the idea never took off with consumers and cost Xerox millions of dollars. To consumers, Xerox was copiers. Xerox was not computers. As a result of changing the brand and making it more complicated, Xerox allowed other competitors to gain ground against them.

A narrow, unchanging focus is more important to a brand’s strength than the mass appeal of a product. Without a narrow focus, your brand lacks relevance and a core idea. Without consistency, your brand will never have a firm root in the mind of a consumer.