What Was Shitty Yesterday is Shitty Today
In a previous Fast Company post, I wrote about what it takes to create a shitty brand.
In case you missed it, here it is again:
In light of something like this resulting from 18 months (or 18 weeks, 18 days or even 18 minutes), it’s a
boring shame and violates one of David Ogilvy’s most succinct quotes. “You can’t bore people into buying your
product.”
The Love/Hate Angle of Branding
The strongest brands stand for something as well being opposed to something else:
• Apple is opposed to technology that sets the rules and asks people to adapt; it champions technology that
adapts to the needs of the people.
• Nike stands for athletic achievement and is opposed to sitting on your ass.
• Dyson stands for no loss of suction and is opposed to stagnant complacency, first making obsolete the old
guards of vacuum cleaners and then doing the same with their own technological solutions.
With all that said... Best Buy, what do you stand for? Also, what are you opposed to?
Until you answer those questions, the likelihood of rising from the ashes is grim at best.
Saab and its “Born from jets” campaign is a brand that is no longer with us.
JC Penney’s recent “rebrand,” while attractive design-wise, has done nothing to revert their declining sales. It dealt
on a very superficial level, sugar-coating JCP’s presentation without driving home any meaning any consumer
cares about. (Other brands try to make themselves meaningful with trite “corporate statements” and “mission
statements.” Candidly, I’ve yet to run across that did anything more than remind everyone they were working for
a corporation. Zero inspiration. No passion. Total lack of authentic energy to inspire.)
Why?
Because they failed to address the two sides every brand has:
• What is stands for and
• What it is passionately opposed to.
Only after answering those questions can you honestly determine what to sound like, what to look like, what your
design aesthetic is, and why anyone should care.
And if the best you’ve got is “Making technology work for you,” then the likelihood anyone will care is very slim.