Brand Efficiency Creates Value and Wins
When I’m talking about brand here, I’m not talking about Brand with a capital “B.” I’m talking about your visual brand. The existential brand conversation is beyond the scope of this paper. But I will not be dismissive of visual brand. Companies fail in the HCM tech space because of bad visual brands.
What is a bad brand? We’re actually very pragmatic about brand work at The Starr Conspiracy. Despite the fact that we have designed some of the most beautiful (and well-known) brand systems in the HCM tech market, we realize that “beauty” is a subjective notion. Rather, we tend to focus on brand efficiency.
Brand efficiency is a simple concept.
The easier your brand is to remember and the more it stands out from your competitors, the less money you have to spend to build brand recognition.
Put another way, the more memorable your brand, the more value you get out of every marketing dollar.
I was meeting with a client several weeks ago, and one of the new marketing executives at the company said, “The problem I have with our logo is that I can’t draw it. I look at it and then I turn around and try to draw it, and I can’t do it. I mean even when I’m looking at it, I can’t draw it.” At first I thought it was an odd comment. But then I realized he had totally nailed the concept of brand efficiency. A logo should be so simple and so unique that someone can draw it hours or days or weeks after seeing it. If you can achieve that with a logo, color, or fonts, then you have truly created an efficient visual brand.