How brands affect the meaning

Today I am going to talk about how branding have affect the meaning of the word. Last weeks while I was eating my lunch at KFC, there is a meal called the “” Fillet Burger “. My first impression is that this burger is actually the fish burger. When I ate the burger, I feel odd about this burger. No matter what, I just feel the taste is not right, it is not even a fish, and then I started to realize it is a chicken meat instead of fish. I do have the intention to ask the counter about the problems. Then I realized the wrapper have stated this in a small text “100% chicken meat”. Then after thoughts I realize that fillet is actually defined as a square piece of meat. As attracted from the dictionary, fillet is known as a piece of veal or other meat boned, rolled, and tied for roasting.

From that moment, I realize that MacDonald has change the word of the fillet to fish. This is a popular burger that they have Fillet O Fish, in which people call it short tern such as fillet. Over the time, people including me start to treat it as fillet means fish meat.

Well, that how powerful brands can affect the people’s thinking.

Branding is essential

As we all knows, branding of a company can determine the success of the business in major factor. People spends large amount of money for the branding they want to pursue. You can ask your relatives who work in the multimedia industry to create a brands for your companies that cost, maybe a few hundreds dollars. Or you can ask an international company that help companies to create brand on themselves, which might cost several thousands of dollars. One thing for sure, the quality of the work would be different. It all depends on whether the companies willing to fork out an extra thousands of dollar for that particular brand design they want.

True Case 1 :

One great example would be the Kopitiam, which is Singapore number one food court(from my opinion of course)They have recently open a food court at Hougang Mall. The setting of the mall is beautiful. But the Kopitiam change the food court name to Mei Shi Mei Ke in Chinese which is, 美食每客. If you were to think deeply on this words, it has a true meaning in it. Every stall of the food court name are all in four letter chinese word, and each of it has a meaning to it. Isn’t that consider a good branding. From what i have heard of this, the boss of Kopitiam have spend SG$60,000 for the brand name of the food court, 美(Mei) 食 (Shi ) 每 (Mei )客 (Ke). (This information is secret though)Isn’t that quite a huge sum of money, consider it is just a food court. Well that does long matter to them as long as the name would make the person remember the name deeply in their heart.

Self Branding

After so many post of topics regarding branding, i feel it is time to have a lighter side of what i am going to say, which is some of the branding works that i have done for my school projects. Though it does not look quite appealing enough, well the purpose is to let you guys know what are the some of the basic item needs to brand you or even your company

First is the logo that i have created. To create a logo of your own, you have to think the personality that you are and your name must be included. Thus there is the word K C in it. I am a guy that focus on everything so i have created a aim on the logo.

This is one of the three postcard that i have done. It does look similar to the poster that i have done just that i have change the color of the mystic effects. Behind is the description of me and what are the softwares that i know of.

This is the poster. I created a mystic effect so as to describe myself as a digital designer. The reason why i choose that is because photoshop skills is essential to this field. Creating a mystery around me.

This is the letterhead. As you can see the letterhead does look simple as simplicity means alot in letterhead. You would not want the people to admire the complexity of your design and forgo the content of the letter.

This is the name card that i have done. I choose an all black card as i feel it bring out the feel more. Black to me seem a cool color to represent what i feels.

Review on Nike

Nike is the world’s leading supplier of sports apparel and equipments. It is also one of the well known brand in the world. As for the previous post on Anything / Whatever, they use campaign strategy on their marketing to boost awareness to the public. As for Nike, their marketing strategy has what make them become today.
Nike is well known as a premium brand, selling nice design and expensive products. They lure customer is largely due to their marketing and their brand image, which is the logo and the slogan(tagline), ‘Just Do It’. They publicize their brand by sponsorship, where they sponsor with celebrity athletics, professional team and sports competition.
Another would be advertisement on campaign. Every year they would have a campaign going on. The most memorable and successful campaign would be the “OLE”. Before this campaign started out. When a oppenent dribble and the ball is run through in between your leg, that is called “Nutmeg”. Nike then launch a campaign to replace the word “Nutmeg” into “Ole”. They have done perfectly well with that because it seem most of the soccer frantic has use the term rather than Nutmeg.

Here are some of the sponsors that Nike has contracted with them

Famous Sports Athletics :

Cristiano Ronaldo(Soccer), LeBron James(Basketball), Tiger Woods(Golf), Roger Federer, Maria Sharapova (Tennis)

Famous Sports team :
Manchester United, South Korea, Barcelona FC(Soccer)

You can check out their website as they do change their website layout quite regulary that suits what campaign they are doing.

Here are some of the video advertisement that they have done :

Lebron James : Chamber Of  Fear

Good VS Evil

Just Do It

Tagline

The last post i mention about one of the element of branding is the logo. As for this post, it would be on the tagline.Tagline, as extracted from Wikipedia, means it is a branding slogan that is typically used in marketing materials and advertising. The main idea of having a tagline on branding is to create a memorable phrase that attract the audience attention.
There are many different types of tagline. These type are the Functional tagline, the Character-Driven tagline and the Aspiration Tagline and many more. I would be talking more on these type of tagline that are well used over the world.

Functional Tagline

It focus on important aims and concerns on company’s mission or competitive advantage. These tagline are descriptive, in logic form and understandable in their tone and treatment

The world’s favourite airline -------------------  British Airways
Finger-lickin’ good! ------------------------------ KFC
At the heart of the image ----------------------   Nikon

Character Driven Tagline

It focus on unique attributes that reveal a company core’s value of character, and qualities expected from its brand. Suitable for company that are mature, customer facing companies with a clear vision.

It’s the real thing -------------------------------- Coca Cola
Your potential. Our passion ------------------   Microsoft
Better by Adobe --------------------------------- Adobe

Aspiration Tagline

Focus on audience’s deeply need and wishes. Promise goal or outcome to the audience.Suitable for company that want the audience to make the brand they trust.

Think different --------------------------------  Apple Inc
Sheer driving pleasure ---------------------   BMW
The pause that refreshes -----------------      Coca-Cola

Here is the link to find out more on how to create a good tagline

Logos

Logos, as extracted from the Wikipedia, means it is a graphical element that, together with its logotype form a trademark or commercial brand. Logos are one of the elements that help the company to brand. Having a good logo allow people to recognize the company just by looking at the logo in split seconds.
Here are some of the guidelines to consider while designing a logo :

• Use three or less colors
  
• Use vector graphics, logo can be resized without losing any wrong scale size
  
• Conscious on trademark infringement
  
• Avoid on overusing of attempt to make it unique
  
• Avoid using the face of a living person
  
• Avoid using photo or complex images
  
• Avoid culturally sensitive imagery, such as religious icon or flag
  

Apple Inc and IBM are the two of the well known company that change their logo over time without any loss of recognition.

Initially Apple Inc logo was a apple with a bite out of it and the colors of the apple was in rainbow. They have change the color of their apple logo from the rainbow to a single color. Thus they minaimalist their change of logo without any loss of recognition from the public.

IBM, known as the International Business Machine, has simplified their logo over the years. Initially their logo of IBM text colors are in solid blue. Now the text color of the logo are in stripes of blue and white. As mentioned in the above, their change of logo are still recognizable by the public.

Logo that are well known world wide would be the two most popular sports brand : The Nike “Swoosh” and the Adidas “ Three Stripes”. One of the main factor that makes these two globally recognize easily is because of the way they market. It is almost impossible not to find any of these two company advertisement on the roads or on the television. That is why they are the one of the most top branding in the world.

Here is the link to find out more about logo

Where the extra goes to?

Today topic would be on: Why is branded company's product has higher cost price than others?

Let take a product to explain this topic, clothes. A tee shirt can be ranged from as cheap as $9.90 to few hundreds dollars. This leads to one problem, why does the price differ so much? Lets look closely to their differences. For a $19.90 shirt, it has a normal clothing material with a normal design of the shirt, which means cheaper cost price of making the shirt. While a hundreds over dollars shirt has more expensive cost price as the process of making the shirt is more complicated and expensive.

Scenario: A well established branded shirt company that sells it products over hundreds dollars. Demand from the market is still high despite high selling price. Below are some points why it has a high cost price in making the products.

• Material - The quality of the clothes has to be different and special to persuade people to fork out the extra money to buy. Clothes technologies such as the well-known sports attire "Dry-Fit", which prevent the attire from being sock of sweats and cause discomfort to the wearer. Research and Development (R&D) is required to find out these technologies, the cost of research is expensive.

• Designs - Great design of the shirt means the company have employed groups of well known designers to design. these designer salary does not come cheap, thus revenue increase for the company. This is also one of the factor that increase the cost price of the product
  

• Complexity - Not every product are manufactured from one place from the start to scratch. Most of these products have to "fly" over places after places. Let say that the company have many factory in many different countries that specialize working on different jobs. Japan's factory helps to develop shirts that has "Dry Fit" features in it, then the shirt will "fly" to Italy for the factory to design and imprint on it, after that it will "fly" to China for packaging of the shirt. The list goes on and on.... The longer the list, the more the cost price of the product. Thus, selling price would be larger.

• Commercialize - A branded company has to be successful in this area. Commercialize, such as media commercials, campaign and having well known spokesperson to represent their company. These revenue is expensive and it helps to boost the company's popularity and thus, branding.
  

Brands are important for a company to succeed. Referring to the Article that I found recently, the writer has stated that if Apple, a company that is well known for the iPod, has not been branding exceptionally well, this company would not be even exist 10 years ago.