While I can see many places where this is true (power hungry designers/webmasters circa 2000 seem to have disappeared), inwardly I find the importance placed on social media for this result laughable. Anyone who stumbled on fan fiction for Lord of the Rings in 2002 knows the writers were likely writing similar fiction about Dungeons and Dragons ten years before anyone heard of MySpace. Anyone who ever traded mixtapes knows that social media didn’t cause music sharing to happen—Napster and Spotify just made it easier. Anyone who went to a party at any point in the last 30 years where a favorite toy, hobby, or sports team was turned into the party’s theme—in a completely homemade manner, without the use of store bought party supplies—knows that social media was nowhere near this brand investment.

Actually, parties are an excellent place to see devotion to a brand. Take this third birthday party I recently did for my daughter based on her Ugly Doll, Ox (a blue Ox has been her woobie since she was 6 months old, and I have replaced his chewed off arms more times than I can count; we have two back up Oxen as well as a full size green Ox). Anyone who has thrown a themed party knows the planning can balloon out of control, and that there is a lot of experimenting to figure out how to make it look like the real X without actually being the real X. Sometimes a little bit of homemade-ness adds to the charm, sometimes it detracts; finding the right balance is key.

Obviously we wanted all of our guests to have a good time, but we focused our creative efforts on the three year olds by putting all decorations on their sight level, starting with Ox who welcomed them at the front door:

We continued the fun with wayfinding made of other Ugly Dolls, which started just inside the door and lead through the house to the two bathrooms and the party spaces.

We had hundreds of balloons and a stencil of Ox which everyone was encouraged to trace on their balloons of choice. Even the adults were giddy over them—it looked like a jellyfish hideout with all the strings hanging down.

And of course we had a ridiculous number of from-scratch home made cupcakes, slaved over by yours truly. Thanks to my husband’s sure hand for cutting out the Ox and Mr. Kasoogie cake toppers I’d “designed”.

We also made the birthday girl her own crown to wear while she blew out the candles:

One of my most inspired moments was the Pin-the-arm-on-the-Ox game. I wasn’t sure how it was going to go over with the three year olds, but everyone took a turn or two and laughed at where the arms ended up.

As the party wound down, we handed out favors. We started with 15 bags but we were so busy with the party that we forgot to stage and shoot them all beforehand. Inside each of these bags was an Ugly Doll, a bag of buddy food (that’s what my daughter calls jelly belly jelly beans) and a small set of watercolors to paint their new buddy, just like my daughter paints Ox.

The kids were giddy, many of the adults said it was the best kid’s party they’d ever been to, and my daughter was thrilled.

Before you go off thinking that I posted this to prove that I’m some kind of super mom, I assure you that I did not and am not. I posted it to make the following point: I would never in a million years go to extremes like this for something like Polly Pockets or Barbie. It’s because this is a brand that resonates with me, my husband, and my daughter that I (and my husband) put this much time and effort into the planning and execution. We love the Ugly Doll brand!

And we didn’t need social-media-influenced-”new”-branding-rules to encourage us to monkey with the UD brand to make it our own!

It finally occurred to me that sitting on a beach watching people walk by in all manner of get-ups offers some spectacular metaphors for branding.

If you really have ‘got it’, flaunt it.
I saw an attractive woman at the beach with a lovely God-given body (ie, no visible plastic surgeries or implants, which makes her 20x more attractive in my book) in a suit that was meant to show it off in a tasteful manner. The cut of it was perfect for her, no bulges or unsightly wardrobe malfunction potential anywhere to be seen. While she was the envy of every woman and the desire of every man, everything about her body language said that she was awkward in her own skin. After about a half hour on the beach, despite it being warm and her having no sign of a sunburn (and having shellacked her skin with sunscreen) she wrapped herself in a caftan and put on a large brimmed hat to sit under an umbrella. I watched other people to see what their reactions were, and from what I could tell, besides wondering what her story was, most people moved away from her.

Branding moral: You can be the best looking brand out there, but if you behave in a self-conscious manner, you’ll convince others that you’re not worth squat and will therefore be overlooked.

Transparency is good—unless it’s not.
Going to the beach and being comfortable in one’s skin is awesome, but going to the beach and making everyone around you uncomfortable because you are is definitely not. This may be a little sexist, but if a woman decides to go to a public beach in America and remove her top, it’s nothing more than a momentary shock. If a man decides to go to a public beach in America and remove his shorts, that’s TMI for most people. I’m all for letting it hang out at the beach, but I certainly don’t want to see that hanging out anywhere near my three-year-old daughter.

Branding moral: If there is something about your product/service that might make potential customers uncomfortable, find a way to present it that won’t leave them feeling like they need to shower afterwards.

Be consistent in how you package your brand.
The house we rented was in a fairly dense neighborhood, so I saw a lot of people on and off the beach through the course of a week. Some take the opportunity to let their hair down very, very seriously, and while I respect that this might be the only 7 days of the year in which this can happen, it can still be shocking. While Mr. Transparency (see above) definitely won the prize for lack of clothing, I still saw a lot of people, who off the beach (and I assume in regular life) dressed extremely conservatively, wearing suits that were wildly revealing. It wasn’t often that this was a good thing, either.

I’m not coming at this from a prototypical American beach wear Puritan perspective; I appreciate feeling the sun warming my lily white skin as much as the next person, and in no way set myself up as a paragon of beach babedom. However, I do try to find suits that at least somewhat match my offshore sensibilities. After all, what if I meet a Fortune 500 client on the beach and I’m wearing a Borat suit? Would they take me seriously as a brand professional? Only if they’re looking for a Borat on the Beach sequel, I suppose.

Branding moral: If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. If it doesn’t do at least two of these, it could very well be a rhino.  

But what do you do if your audience doesn’t follow their own psycho/demographics when it comes to social media?

I have a client who specializes in candy for active women who range in age from nine to it’s-not-polite-to-ask, with special focus on the Millennial/Gen Y group (client’s specialty changed to protect the innocent). When I first began working with her, she warned me that her customer was not active in social media. Knowing that Gen Y is supposed to be the most social media savvy and connected audience, I thought she was being naive. In general, if Gen Y sees something they don’t like, they go online to begin to affect change for the better. Further, because her audience is also female, if they have a product complaint, they think nothing of sharing that with everyone within their circle of influence—often being recompensed for their trouble by the brands themselves.

That’s the general consensus of how they’re supposed to act; that is not how my client’s audience behaves.

Over the past year of working with her, I have learned that her audience is indeed extremely involved in social media, tweeting constantly, seemingly not caring where it lands, or even if it does. I have also learned that they are extraordinarily wary of being approached by brands, to the point of mocking me when I do so on her behalf.

For instance, I overheard a twitversation wherein two girls discussed the poor performance of a product one had purchased from my client. When the buyer (let’s call her Sam) balked at having to get her mother to drive her to the store to return the product, I engaged her in a twitversation, resulting in a rather unorthodox solution (you’ll have to trust me on this one). All went silent for a few days, but as I was curious to see if Sam’s problem was gone, I went back to her stream. Imagine my shock when I discovered that Sam and the same friend were discussing how they’d been ‘stalked’ by my client’s brand, and that they were going to block it.

Fearing for my client’s brand reputation, I contacted her and shared what I’d discovered. She stoically pointed out that she’d forewarned me that her audience was quirky. A few days later she contacted me to let me know that she’d arranged with a different manufacturer to have a competing product sent to Sam for free. I sent Sam a direct message letting her know the news and waited for her to reply with her shipping address. Curious, again I checked her stream to find that she was indeed tweeting up a storm, she just wasn’t responding to me. Eventually she did, and I shared the address with my client, who told me that the manufacturer was actually going to send two of the product, one in a color of Sam’s choice and one for her friends to try out. I, in turn, sent this info back to Sam.

And received no reply.

Two weeks later, when I checked back in with Sam to find out if she’d received the product, she tells me she’d not. Trying to prevent another badmouthing session, I advised my client. Within seconds, the new manufacturer’s social media rep contacts me and says that she contacted Sam two weeks prior (the same day I gave my client all of Sam’s information!) but that Sam had never responded. As it is It is the manufacturer’s policy not to send anything until they’ve made ‘contact’ with someone, the social media rep’s hands were tied.

Because Sam refuses to respond to the manufacturer, she is not going to receive two FREE products. So much for Gen Y being social media savvy!

If you have any similar anecdotes you’d like to share, or have any information on what might be happening with this group of young women, my client and I are eager to hear it!

I first wondered this when I was at a networking event a few weeks ago. The people in my little group were intelligent business owners who seemed to have a firmer grasp than usual of what branding means in today’s market. A retailer, whose store I had been to before, complained that she was losing traction with her customers because a competitor—another small business—had opened up nearby. When she asked me why I thought this might be, I explained that without doing marketing analysis I couldn’t provide a definitive answer. I did offer, completely off the cuff, that her competitor’s environmental branding was certainly compelling.

“Well, I have my logo in my store space, too.”

I provided a cursory explanation of how environmental branding was a bit more than that. To make the explanation less personal, I used ubiquitous examples such as McDonald’s and Target. I could tell she still wasn’t understanding how these companies had relied on their environments so heavily to drive business, primarily because she wasn’t able to see how each franchise and each store had the same universal look and messaging.

Changing tacks, I offered the example of a recently opened Mountain Dew skate park. Its visitors got more than just environmental branding; they got an experience. I then asked her if she’d visited the competitor’s store and, if so, what did it make her feel. She said (begrudgingly) that going in the store felt like being on vacation. I pointed out that her competitor’s logo doesn’t appear anywhere inside the store except on business cards placed at the point-of-purchase, and that the sense of ‘vacation’ was created by the store’s environment. Bringing it home, I asked, “The environment is an extremely compelling call to action for its visitors: 1) Who doesn’t like to go on vacation? This sensation will keep customers returning to the store and 2) Who doesn’t spend money more freely when they’re on vacation?” BAM; environmental branding therapy session, concluded.

The second time I thought I’d gotten too tipsy on the design drink was last week. I was having a conversation about the potential benefits of extending a company’s current branding through their corporate space. Benefits such as increased employee productivity and pride, as well as a more intimate brand experience for office visitors and potential vendors and partners.

“We don’t have the money and we’re not interested in that. We just want some art.”

I explained that what I was suggesting was not a complete overhaul of the office space, merely that they should consider how their messaging could potentially be perceived by visitors if they slapped something up that didn’t jibe with the rest of their brand message. It is possible to create environmental branding on a shoestring budget; just like with print, sometimes the best solutions are those created within tight budget parameters—you just need to be open to the opportunity.

These conversations point out that while we live in an increasingly design/branding savvy culture, many small to medium sized businesses still aren’t seeing the value in environmental branding. Sometimes this is because they don’t understand what environmental branding (or experiential branding as it’s increasingly known) means. I have found that sharing visual examples helps them free their minds. The following are just a few of my current favorites.

Images of studio reactiv’s office from Contract, environmental branding by LUX Designs

Images of Change to Win’s office via the firm who did the spectacular branding, Design Citizens

Images and text for the above images of BBC Worldwide’s Australian offices from Design Home. Experience design by thoughtspace.

“Towards the eastern façade, BBC Worldwide’s own Doctor Who Daleks lurk. Adjacent to original 1960 Dalek is a ‘not so typical’ six person meeting room [1]. Together with unique acoustic wall tiles, the distinctive aluminum ceiling and studded rubber flooring the room oozes style reminiscent of the admired TV hit series of Doctor Who. BBC Top Gear [2] is also a feature in the viewing studio where screening of promos takes place. A sweeping full height acoustic fabric wall printed with the striking ‘Stig’ creates the impressive backdrop to the surround sound studio.

Towards the middle of the floor the UKTV meeting booth nestles [3]. The Banksy inspired graphics create an urban experience together with the studded ‘booth’ seats commonly used for informal meetings or alternative work environments. The BBC Knowledge meeting room [4] offers an insight into this unique BBC concept. Interactivity and learning through life’s experiences is the focus of this themed zone.

Dancing with the Stars [5] is also captured by the elegance of the small meeting room adjacent to the reception foyer. The graceful translucent chairs accompany the heavily turned black lacquered table which sits superbly on the eye catching plush silk/wool rug. Ball bearing curtains sway in front of the full length mirrored walls to create the illusion of ‘sparkle.’ Finally, the lift enclosure is wrapped by the intensely colored master brand graphic that leads you through to reception celebrating the prominent brands. BBC Worldwide focused on the indigenous motif to link the brands and create a uniquely Australian experience.”

So, to get back to showcasing my creativity endeavors, I’m going to list them here. Sadly, no photos, so that’s something I will amend for the next 66% of the month.

June 1: Posted to the blog

June 2: Lavender & Lemon souffle; sometimes two powerful exotic foodstuffs go together well. Not true with daikons and durian (forget not trying it at home, don’t try this anywhere).

June 3: Sat on a friend’s porch, drank red wine, discussed theology, and learned that British men, when cyclists they have just struck wind up on the hoods of their cars, will throw punches which look like cats abusing a scratching post.

June 4: Took a nap. Seriously, the next time you get stumped on a project, a good nap just might shake something loose for you. It did me.

June 5: Built the bones of a rock garden.

June 6: Created some kick ass labels for a boutique bakery.

June 7: Participated in some much needed retail therapy.

June 8: Made kool-aid playdough. The recipe needs some work but the journey was the thing.

June 9: Drove to the city from a completely foreign direction with no map or directions. Exhilarating!

June 10: Answered Gwen Bell’s request for a follow-up to potentially use in her new Fucking Fierce offering.

Narrowing down what she did for me during our 101 last year into a few sentences was almost impossible. In looking at it afterwards, it made me realize that I didn’t make a big enough hoo-ha of what brought me into the world of design blogging, and ultimately what spurred on the entire Aria rebrand. I aim to change that right now by sharing with you what I sent her mere moments ago:

“When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” While a pro pos for working with you, it still doesn’t address the Gwen Bell slow-release time bomb!

The immediate returns of our collaboration were great, but the real value came with the after effects: I realized that my business and my personality were walled off from one another such that I wasn’t being as authentic as I wanted to be. As hard as it was to do it, pushing through that was invaluable. I’m happier, my clients seem to get (and appreciate) me, and my creativity is blossoming. Now I just get to be me—and that’s such a relief.

What I didn’t include, and probably should’ve, is that relief means I can concentrate more clearly on my clients’ work.

The irony that I help businesses find their voice and yet wasn’t fully connected to my own is not lost on me. Where Aria acts a conduit for change with others, I wasn’t allowing myself that same opportunity or flexibility. Working with Gwen made me realize that I need to trust who I am, and if that’s a hillbilly hootenanny that’s ok.

Making the jump to the new web design, getting new head shots, putting myself “out there” in front of my business—and my life—was more terrifying than sky diving ever was. But I can’t recommend it enough to those willing to do the work.

Do it.

If you found the original and replacement pyramids equally confusing, so did everyone else.

So what did the USDA do? Reload!

At least now we’re headed in the correct direction, since the portions are shown somewhat to scale vs hierarchical. While I understand the decision against using a true pie graph—this is promoting healthier eating after all—I doubt everyone is going to purchase plates with these arbitrary divisions (although there are some preprinted ones already out there). So is this really going to make a difference in the average American’s diet?

So far, everything I have seen boils down to what this commenter on WSJ had to say:

Joe D wrote: The problem is not that the pyramid is too confusing (is our society really that unintelligent that we need to dumb down a picture of a pyramid?), it is that most people don’t care. A picture of a plate versus a pyramid is not going to get people to stop eating the crap from fast food restaurants. People today, for the same reason most don’t get enough exercise, look for the options with minimal effort. Eating healthy requires more work than swinging through the drive through on your way home or ordering delivery. If people don’t care about their body, then changing a diagram isn’t going to do anything about that.

Which brings me to a key point as it relates to branding: Too often people look to icons to motivate, when really they aren’t there to sell a product, service, or even a lifestyle—they’re just there to convey information. The only people who will be affected by this icon change are those who were already interested—nutritionists, therapists, trainers, and those who want to achieve/maintain a healthy diet—because it begins to address the previously confusing elements of the USDA’s campaign.

It started out because business repeatedly said to creatives, “Here is all the information you need; now go work your magic”. The creatives inwardly rolled their eyes, because where it may have implied a sense of awe, what it actually meant was that business expected creatives to go back to the work space and poof! problem solved in mere moments (just like magic!). Creatives knew that in fact—after they put on their sorcerer’s hats—they needed to compile mountains of research on products/services, competitors, and audiences to find the best way to solve the given problem. But, like The Wizard, they never let business pay attention to that man behind the curtain.

Some creatives perceived that the path to increased value in the eyes of business involved outlining the process by which innovative solutions were developed, drawing specific comparisons to a scientific research and discovery process. This gained some traction, and all beheld it and said, “Lo, verily, this is good. Now we all understand one another.” Only, the gods of business smote them for thinking that creative solutions could be stamped out like wallets, in a repetitive, predictable fashion. Creativity, she is a fierce goddess who will not be chained!

Now everyone is running around talking about the end of branding as if what we’ve all been talking about for the last ten+ years is a house of cards waiting for one stiff breeze to take it down. How is the slight movement from promoting a brand to actually telling its story that different from where we were before advertising’s golden era? How is it different from how small businesses have been marketing locally since civilizations began? Even in cities people have relationships with their area businesses—barbers, stylists, restaurateurs, bakers, dry cleaners—and by interacting on the smallest personal level, they create a bond. This small bond is what made people in my suburban town support a local businessman who lost everything when his business of 50 years burned down. I doubt they’d have done that for Target had it burned down!

Creatives, you are not blameless in this either! Now more than ever your clients need your creative problem solving skills to help address the continuing sea changes. If your craft is rusty, collaborate, research, brainstorm, and just plain old DO IT. Get that magic crackalackin’!

Before there’s even a whiff of Puritanism here, let me just state for the record that it’s not the promotion of drunken debauchery that makes me feel uneasy, nor is it because it goes against the true traditions of Preakness pre-Infield party (which it does), it’s just that it points out the sorry state of horse racing.

I’m not crazy about football, but I will watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. Is this commercial of that caliber? Let’s see: Irreverant? Yes. Rude? Yes. Misogynistic? Yes. Would it bother me as much if I were watching football? No, because I expect this kind of rude jockeying (pardon the pun) for attention behavior then.

All I can think of now is the neighborhood around Pimlico, full of gorgeously huge, yet decrepit houses, how the track is empty 364 days a year, how the racing way of life is holding on by a thread, and how most of the people who will come to ‘see’ Kegasus won’t notice any of these things—and if they did they wouldn’t care.

On the no-realistic-hope-of-authentic-follow-through front, the actor appeared yesterday at Pimlico in a costume. Yes, I realize that you can’t CGI real life. It just looks…desperate.

Then again, maybe this is the best campaign for the Preakness after all.

I have sheltered my daughter from things overly commercial, despite my involvement in the design industry. I want her childhood to be as free from pressure to be a good little capitalist as long as it can; if that’s only another 6 months, I’ll take it. To this end, she didn’t see her first Disney film until she was 2 (we were on a group vacation and it was our turn to make dinner; she watched The Little Mermaid). She doesn’t even know what Disney World is. She is learning though, because her new babysitter showers her own 1-yr-old with Disney princess memorabilia on a daily basis. We kept her away from most of television until the last year when she fell in love with Elmo and then Dinosaur Train. I told myself the latter was ok because at least she can argue the difference between stegosaurus and ankylosaurus.

Then we began potty training and oh, jeebus, was I not ready for the onslaught of awful waiting for girls! Pampers favors the ever perky Strawberry Shortcake and Dora, both capitalist zeitgeists in their own rights, although not on par with the princesses, firmly marketed by Huggies. The only recourse Pampers had was to release a Shrek’s princesses UnderJams (which don’t look a thing like the outer packaging!). Herein I stop myself from devolving into the rant: why is it that everything girl-related must at some point around two years of age boil down to princesses?

Anyway, Target came to my rescue: cute girls’ training pants that weren’t over-the-top-so-sweet-you-want-to-puke girly. I was happy to find them, and as a seasoned Target devotee, I was surprised that I felt even more appreciative of the Target brand for avoiding the princess trap. I was more willing to return to the store to buy girls’ clothing, knowing that I wasn’t going to be forced to buy all things princess.

In fact, in the 8 months that this line was available, I drove out of my way just to buy them, spending more money on my daughter’s clothes at my Target than I did anywhere else.

Three weeks ago we had to make a hasty, unscheduled trip out of town (that’s what happens when you’re in Witness Protection). In our haste, we didn’t pack enough training pants—but no worries, we were passing a Target on the way and could just pick up more of Rockin’ Bunny and her good friends Sly Cat and Dotte Dog.

Not only did I not find the training pants I wanted, my belief in the Target brand was tarnished by this, their ‘new and improved design’:

You might not be able to tell immediately what those images at the top are of, but you can sure tell that the characters that fade when wet are…wait for it…mirrors.

What’s more, there are only two options for the front princess images: a blonde and a redhead. The brunette is relegated to the backside.

Maybe Target could’ve outbid Huggies for the Disney princesses, so maybe I should congratulate them for not doing so and keeping it to simple line drawings. But I just can’t. My heart is broken that they would let me, and other like-minded parents who actually pay attention to messages aimed at their young daughters, down in such an obvious way.