Brand Sense By Martin Lindstrom

1. Branding is what goes on in one’s mind.

2. Brand is not a logo. The test is that if one removes the logo, will one still be able to recognize the brand !

3. Traditional communication no longer works because we are being over-communicated to.

4. What appeals to as many senses will be remembered.

5. The story goes that the challenge given to Coco-Cola was to create a bottle that if smashed could still be recognized from its glass pieces. Therefore the meaning of ‘Smash your Brand’ is that one needs to look at all the small pieces which the brand can be broken into and see what the brand can make its own.

6. The Brand wheel is a tool which indicates portions of real estate which a brand can optimize and own viz. Picture, Colours, Shapes, Name, Language, Icons, Sound, Behaviour, Service, Tradition, Rituals and Navigation.

7. Orange has appropriated a colour. Absolut branded ‘spelling error’. So it’s variants are Rasberri, Vanilia, Kurant and so on. The brand needs to own something else besides the logo. Absolut has also branded the shape of its bottle.

8. The icon of the ‘Idea’ brand is the ‘Sumo Wrestler’. So if one removes the logo and keeps only the Sumo Wrestler the brand ‘Idea’ will be recognized.

9. Brand creates community and belonging.

10. Louis Vuitton was renovating its store in Paris. To do that it created a façade in the shape of its luggage bags and accessories. The people remembered the façade. In fact they identified with it. To the extent that when it was going to be pulled down after 2 years when the renovation was complete there was a demonstration outside the store.

11. The Tiffany Box is trademarked. The shade of Pantone colour used for the Tiffany box is owned by Tiffany. Therefore one needs to get permission from Tiffany if one wants to use the same shade of colour.

12. Branding is about consistency.

13. Today Pepsi owns the colour ‘blue’. Pepsi took it away from IBM. If one wants to secure ownership then one needs to stick with it.

14. The Peuguot car has branded the ‘0’ in the middle of its car plate numbers. The story goes that the creator of the Peugot car used to experience breaking the number in the middle into 2 pieces for using the crankshaft to get the car started. Because the crankshaft had to pierce that number. So he thought that if the crankshaft had to be inserted into a ‘0’ then there would not be any breakage of a number into 2 pieces. And so all Peugot cars have ‘0’ in the middle of their car plate numbers.

15. Ipod now has extended its branding to even its earplugs. By seeing a person with the Ipod earplugs one can recognize an Ipod user.