Many brands have made significant changes in their marketing strategies as part of their adaptation to the mobile-first world, and even to the DTC economy.
You may have heard about “debranding” as a successful strategy implemented by big companies, with a big impact on their corporate image or even their figures. But as interesting as it may sound, it isn’t just a matter of sacrificing detail or making radical changes to the visual elements that actually define a brand.
Debranding appears as the latest stage in the evolution of brands, but it’s not that easy, and it’s not a good option for all businesses. However, the underlying factors help to understand how the rapid changes in technology and user behavior have direct implications in branding and product content.
The Omnichannel context
Customer experience has broadened beyond the online world and somewhat regained some territory in physical environments and advertising. Consumers now expect brands to be ONE and behave as such, regardless of the channel they use to contact them.
Brands in turn have been somewhat forced to adapt to that hybridization and to develop omnichannel strategies to keep offering a seamless experience and growing both in sales and popularity.
But the countless brands and logos we see in clothes, products, billboards, paper, and online, make it hard to remember them all and dull the ideal stage in which every customer is a free potential advertiser – not an active promoter, though.
Along came personalization
Competition drives creativity and differentiation. However, despite the fact that the pandemic lockdowns were a massive opportunity for brands to engage new customers with loads of free time and a few extra bucks, consumers felt overwhelmed with messages, posts, and campaigns.
Suddenly, there were too many brands trying to reach users who were sitting at home, trying to stand among the crowd in their finery. Competition became fiercer and accentuated the need for new ways to approach potential buyers who had the money to spend and the time to compare but still missed something.
Personalization wasn’t new, and the brands that got it right managed to create engaging experiences, and that desired long-term bond with them.
From personalization to debranding
It is often said that debranding aims solely at the complete elimination of logotypes in the long term, which is sort of bold to say. On the one hand, because being recognizable needs a fair share of popularity, and few worldwide renowned companies can do without them. On the other one, any business needs to build a cohesive brand identity with a clear tone of voice and a well-defined set of graphic elements – yes, among them, logos.
What is actually true is that debranding strategies seek to focus on the product and the experience it delivers rather than on the brand itself. This way, consumers become the main star in a story where brands take a secondary role.
Debranding is user-centric. By removing or simplifying logos and reducing shades, reflections and detail, other visual elements like colors and fonts gain subtle importance to make a brand recognizable through the experience instead of branded content.
Some famous examples
Coca-Cola moved its logo from the center of cans and labels to a more discrete position and replaced it with common names for the “Share a Coke with” campaign.
Thus, the focus shifted from the product to the shared experience of using it.
Nike completely removed its name and only kept the isotype from the logo (brand name removal, and a simpler focus on the logo).
Starbucks. In the same vein as Coca-Cola, Starbucks focused on the unicity of every coffee made for a specific person. A logo simplification and the removal of its name ceded all the limelight to the consumer.
Pringles. Mr. P went badass. From carefully disheveled hair to a shaved head. His mustache went from brown to black, his eyes became two bigger dots with sprung eyebrows, and the packaging design went simpler too.
What are the advantages of debranding strategies?
- More personal and relatable than the classic corporate, navel-gazing communication
- Builds a stronger bond whether it is with communities or individual consumers
- Simplified imagery is easier to use across channels, formats, devices, and merchandising.
- Increases the personalization possibilities
- Triggers user interaction, allowing for example to benefit from user-generated content and hashtag challenges, like TikTok’s.
Wrap up
While debranding has gained popularity over the past years, it is not for all brands. Mostly because to debrand your brand, you must have a brand to debrand and a loyal community to recognize it. Of course, the goals are the same: selling more, providing a good and seamless customer experience, and growing in popularity.
The means, however, change. The emotional connection needs relatable stories, and relatable stories need quality content to effectively describe a product and the situations when it is most needed.
At Content2Sell, that’s exactly what we do.
