Wednesday 2 March 2016

Iconic Brand Creation: An art or Science?

While deliberating on Brand creation strategy & process, a group of people innocuously asked the question, is Brand creation an art or science and more importantly, Iconic Brand creation?

Still a student of Brand Creation and Marketing, it was not easy for me to deal with it by crass talking & giving an upbeat answer but a moment to think and ponder upon. My interest in other subjects however, could give me some insight. Systematic adoption of changes is what science teaches us, art on the other hand recognises that change need to be soothing. Brand Creation is a science, deeply immersed in artistic expression of facts about society.

Let’s look at what goes in brand creation.  Brands are primarily created based on certain features of a product with rhetoric communication so that there is an influence on the purchasing decision of the customers. These are very sequential in nature. However, success coming out of these sequential activities do lose their intended relevance, the moment customer does recognise the intent of advertising and thereupon compunction. On the other hand, these sequential activities are not the cause of iconic brand.  In iconic brand, tacitly cultural strategies are woven through well placed communication about customer value. Cultural strategies are facts through stories, a society through its well-placed brands, is projecting out at a given point in time. These stories become the reason of buying a product for customers. An Iconic Brand becomes a manifestation conduit for customers to either express their feelings unintentionally to society or brand societal feelings & convey back to masses. Stories are experiences revealed ‘artistically’, product features display themselves ‘scientifically’. Thereby, there has to be continuous change in the expression of stories and myth-making. Brands need to shift as per changes in the society & keep creating newer myths, continuously. Just opposite to conventional brand modelling.


I say in the end, branding is more an Art than Science. Brand managers need not to look for features to influence customers through rhetoric communication but give them brand which they weave in their dreams having same product features to buy. Quality, benefits and values keep changing for customer, what does not change is their love for societal myths. ‘Society at large is the expression of individual thinking.’

2 comments:

  1. Awesome article Sir. A brand making activity should be simultaneous to the societal feelings and up to people's expectation.

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  2. Thanks Reader for your comments.

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