How to build an iconic brand—quickly
Why depth, quality and overthinking matter in early-stage branding.
The world’s best brands have a long heritage and history. Not only does this give them the advantage of lots of proof and examples that demonstrate what they’re about - it also means they’ve had lots and lots of really great strategists and creatives working on them and making them sharper, deeper and more meaningful.
I’ve seen this, most clearly, working on brands like Apple and Nike. Brands that started with an enduring and great core idea, and which have been tuned and sharpened to their essence by generations of creatives who have built deeper and truer meaning into them. They aren’t just refined, they are made more dimensional through layers of coherent meaning and execution - which is why they feel so substantial, and why they are worth so much.
There are numerous studies to illustrate this fact, but one of the most recent and rigiorous studies comes from a comprehensive report on brand value in the UK which found:
”The top 50 strongest brands delivered 30% higher returns than the FTSE 100 in 2021”
Other key takeaways from the report:
Strongly branded companies recover quickly after a crisis and retain their performance.
Investors consider companies with strong brands to be less of a risk, meaning the cost of capital is less and they pay less on debt.
Brand Finance estimates that intangibles represent over half of total organisational value. Of this, marketing-related intangibles represent at least 20% of organisations’ intangible assets.
McKinsey has found that top-growing companies invest 2.6 times more in intangibles than low growers across sectors.
Brand Finance’s BrandBeta metric, which measures the popularity and mental availability of brands, demonstrates that 80% of the variance in market share is explained by these two metrics of familiarity and consideration; a 1% increase in a BrandBeta score equates to a 12% increase in claimed usage.
In their favor, new brands bring a youthful energy, but after that newness fades, there’s often very little substance left - which is why these businesses often underperform once the initial hype period is over.
Most early-stage brands simply haven’t had the time to invest in building depth and substance which is why it’s so important to over-invest in building meaning and depth into early-stage brands, even when the results aren’t immediately visible.
We took this approach while working on the brand for Perfect Day. Every single decision was debated thoroughly against the core logic of the brand idea. The linked case study describes a lot of it, but we also delved into subjects as diverse as Art Nouveau and Sixties rock posters for inspiration because these movements were also designed to bring more humanity and emotion into areas that were in danger of becoming too mechanistic and engineered. The color palette of the brand was drawn from Golden Hour, the most perfect time of day, the language echoes the hope we feel at the start of a perfect day, etc.
Because we were executing quickly for a new company, we consciously packed rich meaning into the brand to make it feel more substantial. We purposefully worked to “overthink everything” because we wanted to quickly create the depth that time usually provides.
A new marketing leader came onboard as we were finishing up our work. As I helped onboard them, and explained the backstory behind the work, they said, “but no one will anyone ever see all of this thinking.”
I replied, “That’s exactly the point. But they will feel it.”
If you’re interested in building depth, meaning and richness into your early-stage company’s brand, reach out to us at hello@demosfunds.io