Brand Rezonance

A little birdie told me that The Egg Factory has come up with a new menu. Which little birdie? Care to guess?
 
Twitter is a privately funded startup with offices in the SoMA neighbourhood of San Francisco, CA. Started as a side project in March of 2006, and Twitter has grown into a real-time short messaging service that works over multiple networks and devices. Users are given a page where they can keep updating their status via the website or via mobile. They can follow updates or ‘tweets’ on other users’ pages, and people can subscribe to them. This way, any new development can be put up at one location and everyone will know. Organisations, restaurants, groups, NGOs…everyone can have their own page.  So you think Obama was hooked to his Blackberry? If you want to check out what else the most powerful man in the world is up to, find out at http://twitter.com/BarackObama
 
So much for the popular side of twitter – but the story doesn’t end here. The twitter search gives a through update on anything people might tweet about. If you want to find out what’s happening in Gurgaon, key it in twitter search, and you’ll see the latest tweets that contain the word ‘Gurgaon’. A TV series by Julian Smith tweets me regularly about its new episodes. The attack on the Hotel Taj in Mumbai received a record number of tweets while it was happening.
 
Some believe that Twitter is so popular because of the small size of the tweets (restricted at 140 characters), so even in this world of short attention spans, people don’t mind reading these. Plus of course, twitter is closely intertwined with your mobile phone, and gives us something to do. So why won’t we do that, since we are on our phones the entire day anyway. Saw a dog hump another, cool – twitter it! To view how twitter will change the way we communicate, check out the 25 Best Twitter Cartoons: http://www.slideshare.net/chadrichards/top-25-twitter-cartoons?src=embed
 
Of course, the reason Twitter is even mentioned in this blog is simple, just like most lives, twitter has immense potential in marketing. The latest buzzword in marketing these days is ‘Engagement’ and with twitter, not only can companies engage people, they can update them and keep popping with interesting tweets. In the end, brand-recall sky-rockets. That’s not all, a number of independent developers are offering free twitter applications that take the twitting experience to a whole new level – from opinion polls to tweet invites to gift wish lists. Check out a few at http://twtapps.com
 
In other cases, tweets can help keep traffic returning to websites. ‘Tweet! MTV Bakra starts 14th December - Tweet! - Wicked game on Hungama, dude – Tweet! - New Julian Smith video on youtube – Tweet! - CycleAroundTheGlobe adds pictures of its latest expedition to Sikkim on Facebook – Tweet! - Check out the new version of the Fiat Linea’. Coupled with other online tools, the whirlwind of engagement begins.

And that’s how short the story on twitter could be. Tweet!

Saurabh Kejriwal

Google. Sony. Toyota. Pepsi. Adidas. How were the biggest brand names coined? Different anecdotes about different brands are famous. While Google is said to be one followed by a hundred zeros, Adidas is supposedly an acronym that stands for All Day I Dream About Sports. While we do not know for certain how believable these brand-anecdotes are, we do recognise on almost a daily basis the icons these brands have become in world markets.

So how do we create names that might become icons of the future? Here are a few simple tricks:

New word, renewed interest – A new word or a lesser used one will always grab more attention than a word from the dictionary; simply because people will make double-sure they pronounce and spell it right. When a Japanese electronics major was looking for a name that sounded the same no matter which language it was spelled in, the term Sony was coined.

Size does matter – There was a time when longer names seemed more impressive, but with the decline in people’s attention span, smaller names have become the norm. So, KISS it. No, didn’t mean the romantic gesture, I meant Keep It Short, Stupid! 

Old wine, unusual use – An old over-the-hill word used in a contrasting context will leave people searching for context, just like when a wacky technology start-up named itself Apple and almost instantly earned invaluable aspirational value from every tech-geek.

Has to have a ring to it – A name will have greater recall if people enjoy saying the name. Poppins. Beetle. Laughing Cow. Rings-a-bell means will-be-remembered. 

Speak, if not spell – If it’s spoken not like its spelled, it might make a mark.  Garment brand Enyce, pronounced ‘E-nai-chee’ rose to popularity soon after its launch, simply because youngsters wanted to join the correct-pronunciation bandwagon. The sales followed. The snob-factor might work with certain demographics.

Perfect or Almost Perfect – iPod. A two syllable word where the first syllable is formed of just one vowel and the second is a 3-letter word containing two consonants. The fun part is, both the syllables get equal emphasis while speaking. It is this minor imbalance that perhaps makes the name so interesting. Similarly, FCUK’s suggestive mischief makes it famous bordering on infamous.

Keep forgetting old rules – In a market where fads die out every few years, how do you make sure you keep coming up with more contemporary names? Keep forgetting the old rules and evolve with the task. Once in the flow, coining icons is not rocket science.

Saurabh Kejriwal

Saurabh is Creative Thinker at ReZonant.

As a kid, I would visit my dad’s office sometimes. It was an elegant teak panelled office with wood and glass walls neatly compartmentalized into a big hall and a few cabins, one of which was my father’s. I would tip-toe into his office, making sure even my footsteps were muffled, since the average decibel levels were quite low. A big picture of about a dozen white men in the reception, without any caption, was the only meaningful piece of an Environmental Graphic. They were, I was once told, the board of directors of the company in the UK.

This one time, I was hanging out near the pantry, and this guy familiar to me walked up and asked me if I was having fun. I didn’t know what to say, so I said, no. He nodded, “Yeah, it is a boring office, isn’t it?”

That’s what companies wanted those days, an elegant, non-distracting workspace which suggested seriousness regarding work. Casual interaction was limited to washrooms and the cafeteria, or in smoking zones.

Years later, in my first EG project for the India centre of a big financial corporate, I learnt that to attract and retain the best talent in the market, the company not only wanted to pay their employees well, but keep them engaged. What engagement meant though, the picture was much clearer later.  

Take the average 8-9 hours people are expected to spend in office every day. Back in the day, in most offices, they would come in at 9, work with a certain pace, take about 2-3 breaks in a day, and leave soon after 6. That would fulfill the expectations of the company nicely enough.

Over time, the simple, non-distracting ‘follow the book!’ workplaces have given way to vibrant, well-branded, ‘Let’s try something different today’ workplaces. Wacky graphics, witty lines and ‘food for thought’ inputs are scattered on walls and bays, while cafeteria graphics suggest finesse and hunger-aid. Receptions are adorned with bits from the corporate image, and meetings rooms with thought-challenging messaging.

The need for engagement within a workspace comes from the need to provide a vibrant, fun, open environment which stimulates imagination, constantly delivers subconscious messaging regarding the company values and culture, and helps employees move faster, refresh quicker. The whole aim is to shape the path employees walk every day, in their natural course of work.

And while it may have all started with new-age companies’ need to stand out, a real part of the job is also to make sure no two workspaces seem alike, for no two work-cultures are alike. From themes as diverse as ‘think lateral to solve problems’ to ‘we side with the customers in business’ to ‘we are work-execution specialists’, workspaces have evolved to speak about the company through great design.

When it comes to Environmental graphics, great work has been done around the world, and the way most of it has evolved stems from same need why it became so popular in the first place, to be different. While some may call these thinkers, ‘experts in environmental branding’, I personally feel there is no such thing. How good you are is a direct result of how well you understand the company and the audience. There are no fixed rules, all it needs is the need to understand the soul of a company, and paint the town with sharp graphics that speak the soul.

The final result, if simple, witty and well-crafted, will define a project well done. If people come to work every morning, and for the next 2-3 years, not say, ‘Man, office ambience is so boring!’ - I would consider it a project well done.

Saurabh Kejriwal

Saurabh is Creative Thinker at ReZonant.