With Brand Architectures, a lot less is always a lot more.
Like many an architectural sin, many Brand Architectures strike an immediate chord for being quite obviously Anything But Grand in design.
The Brand Wheel, Brand Doughnut, Brand Diamond, Brand Molecule, Brand Pyramid, Brand Temple; the forms taken can be numerous. I tried out a Brand Pagoda one time; no better, no worse, just taller and thinner.
Brand Architectures: Starter Kit
Of course it doesn’t really matter on the form or shape.
A circle, a triangle, an upside down triangle, what matters are the words, and what really matters is the precision and economy of words involved to define and explain.
Because by the time everyone has thrown words at the Brand Essence, the Brand DNA, the Physical Attributes, the Emotional Attributes, the Reason for Being, and maybe flipped either or both sets of attributes into Consumer Benefits, the Major Danger is you’re looking at a one page War & Peace. And that’s not good, because it’s borderline meaningless.
Too many words make the brand broth inedible. Truly foul. More words may just reassure the brand team that they have something of weight and substance, but there on the page lies only irony.
So if you’re inheriting an architectural mess, where you can hardly make out the shape for the blinding word storm, your best bet is to try and lock on to some small detail that you can use and ultimately make meaningful. Lock on and get through.
But if you’re starting from scratch, which is a rare but fine and bright day indeed, then minimalism is the thing. Think Bauhaus. Think Form & Function. Show restraint and single-mindedness.
Think... few words... where they all count – because that’s a lean piece of architecture worth looking at.
And it becomes a piece of thinking you can really do something with.
SP.
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