THE MARKETING STRATEGY BEHIND GREAT LOGOS AND HOW TO GET YOURS
A little while ago, I came across a great article on marketing strategy in AdWeek. I love this article! Written by Tim Nudd, “40 Brand Logos With Hidden Messages, Starting With the Most Famous One How many of them can you spot?” is fun, easy to understand and full of information on how marketing strategy drives logo design. Contrary to the claim that marketing isn’t complicated, I think this piece proves that the development of marketing strategy IS a form of “brain surgery”! (After all, the point of marketing a product is to implant a positive message in people’s minds about that brand. And a logo is nothing less than a visual representation of that brand.)
Although this essay deals specifically with logos, the point it makes about creative thinking applies to all other communications about brands as well. They don’t just happen. They are the manifestation of a particular marketing strategy that fulfills a business-oriented (and profit-generating) objective. This objective is arrived at by asking some very important questions including (but not limited to): Whom are we talking to? How do they get their information? What should we tell this audience about the product? Why will this interest them? How can we prove that this claim is true?
Of course, to develop an effective brand strategy the creative team not only needs information from the client, but input from competitive research and analysis of the marketplace. Once this data is digested and absorbed, the team uses their experience-supported intuition and creativity to develop a marketing plan and appropriate tactics to implement this plan.
At Crux, we want to serve as your strategic marketing partner, helping you make important decisions about who your company is and how it wants to present itself to the world. In truth, developing a well researched, carefully thought out strategy is the most valuable thing our agency or any other can offer you. Yet all too often clients fail to realize the true purpose and full value of this collaboration. Perhaps Tim Nudd’s article will provide some insight into just how much marketing savvy goes into good design, the role strategy plays in the creation of a great logo and how essential both of these elements are to a business’s bottom-line.