Designer's Corner

By Rob Wallace

What's the common thread that unifies the best brand identities? Quick — think of Target. What first comes to mind? If you're like many, you thought of Target's red, iconic symbol. Remember anything else about their ads? How quickly can you distinguish a Target message from any other?

How about Cingular? What color and shape comes to mind? What does that brand stand for? Now, consider the Apple iPod. How has this brand cut through to become an icon of contemporary culture?

How is it that all of these powerful brands connect so instantly, so deeply with their core consumers? They all use a singular visual focus with a distinctive palette of colors and icons and lots of white space. They strongly stand for one thing, and by simplifying their message they allow it to cut through the clutter. This also encourages consumers to bring their own personal interpretations to the brand.

Over-extension = clutter = confusion

In today's information-overloaded culture, where brands have proliferated like rabbits, the mass retail environment has become visual junk food, leaving us overfed and undernourished. To differentiate between these over-extended brands, marketers are challenged to discover a yet unmet consumer need or a truly distinctive product benefit. This all too often results in more information being added to brand packaging, which only amplifies the visual cacophony on shelves.

Complex and overly detailed brand messages get lost. These often also dictate a "prescriptive" meaning, which leaves little for the consumer to personalize. An emerging trend to combat the visual chatter has now hit the mainstream. The most successful brands are able to connect with their core enthusiasts using an effective "visual shorthand."

Using color, symbols, icons and a singularity of focus, these brands cut through the visual noise. The key strategy shared by these new successful brands is that their messages, their identities and their entire communication architectures are — quite simply — simple.

Proven by science

New consumer behavior science supports this trend toward simplification. Malcolm Gladwell's latest book, Blink, sets out to prove how we, as 21st-century human beings, respond to stimuli. His research suggests that we "thin slice" through the myriad of messages that bombard us at every given moment. We filter out everything except the one most meaningful visual message, the one that strikes us at an emotional level.

Gladwell's research contends that this instantaneous reaction drives all of our decisions; not just those concerning which brand we buy, but quite literally every other choice we make.

Prove this to yourself. Monitor your own personal decisions, specifically those that surround your brand choices. If you are like me, you walk into a well-constructed retail experience with the intent to purchase five things, but walk out with 15. Gladwell would have you believe that 10 of those purchase decisions were made in a single instant, at an instinctive level, inspired by simple visual cues.

Let's illustrate this process through a real-world case history. Last year, Nestlé was seeking to optimize Lean Cuisine's brand presence. The charter was to make the brand more relevant to contemporary wellness cues, to determine the optimal hierarchy of product forms and flavors and to launch a new product form, Spa Cuisine.

Analysis showed that the old brand identity was trying too hard. In an effort to communicate a series of benefits, the brand perception was cluttered, complicated, and somewhat messy. The old packaging certainly did not communicate the strong emotional cues relevant for the leader in the wellness category. The prior design system used a number of fonts, a profusion of messages, and over-stylized product photography. As a result, the brand presence was cluttered, messy, and hard to shop.

Nestlé's team of design managers and marketers began by accepting the value of a simple visual brand focus. Driven by current consumer perceptions of healthy eating, they were able to eliminate non-essential messages and move secondary claims to the back and side panels.

A new, cleaner photo aesthetic, a singular, simpler type strategy, a revitalized logo, and a more open architecture proved to best evoke desired perceptions and allow consumers to more easily identify the product at the store.

Initial sales results indicate that this strategy is successfully driving one of Nestlé's most successful product restages. Amanda Bach, Nestlé Prepared Foods Company's packaging communication design manager states, "Simplifying the Lean Cuisine identity allowed us to recapture the brand's equities, drive shelf impact, and by color coding, helped enhance shopability. I truly believe that this new simpler, cleaner brand aesthetic will help consumers reconnect with the brand on an emotional level."

Simplifying the design architecture revitalized the Lean Cuisine brand, enhancing the brand's impact at retail and improving shopability. Increased sales prove that this new, simple design connects immediately and emotionally with consumers.

Is simplicity so simple?

If simplifying brand messaging and identity is so successful, why aren't more brands doing it? Quite simply, being simple is hard. It's difficult for traditional marketers to abandon their verbal vocabulary and embrace a new visual language.

However, smarter marketers understand that the best brands "thin slice" their messaging and communicate one thing very well rather than two or three things poorly. These brands communicate through imagery rather than words and better connect with consumers as a result. So how do you go simple? That's easy.

Step One: Hone your positioning down to its one most critical element. If you can't express your brand's unique reason for being in fewer than five words, you are not yet done with your positioning. Once you've defined it, stick to it. Move all secondary brand messages off the front panel.

Step Two: Visualize your positioning. Before beginning brand identity/packaging or any brand communications effort, convert your positioning statement into the colors, shapes, type styles and graphics that best evoke the brand experience. Research this "visual shorthand" with your positioning statement to confirm those few, select visual elements that best communicate your brand experience.

Step Three: Resist the urge to fill the "white space." Select a small, proprietary palette of colors, type styles and graphic elements from which to build your brand identity architecture. Consider your back, top, and side panels as the staging areas for important yet ancillary claims. If the face panel is clean, uncluttered and engaging, consumers will pick up your package, turn it around and read all those additional messages.

Prove this to yourself. Simplify your brand and monitor how it affects brand sales and perceptions. Then prove this to your organization. Become your organization's simplification champion. Prove to them the value that direct, simple communication has in 21st-century culture. When in doubt: "Think big, go small. Be smart, be simple."

Rob Wallace is managing partner of Wallace Church, Inc. in New York City. He can be reached at 212-755-2903 or rob@wallacechurch.com.