People are bombarded by branding. How can you cut through the noise?
There are lots of different ways to make your branding lead the way
Besides creating a personality for customers to interact with, whether that's via innovative piece of packaging design or a trademark piece of content writing, one of the key aims for any piece of branding is to get a product seen. It's not as simple as it sounds, but luckily a panel of experts are on hand to share their seasoned advice.
01. Meet people halfway
"It's important to be singled-minded. You need to have a point of view. You need to be brave and take a chance," says Kevin Brady, executive creative director of Droga5.
"But you also need to remember that consumers are lazy and they probably don't care about your product or your message, so it's important to make it easy for them and meet them halfway. Ask yourself what they are interested in. What will they want to share? Then try to keep it short."
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02. Be channel-agnostic
"You should be able to talk about your brand in almost any channel," says Richard Beer of Don't Panic London. "For example, for a campaign for Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on Channel 4, we put yellow boards around London and Manchester, which at first looked like police information banners. People took pictures and tweeted them, talked about it online – even though it wasn't a digital execution."
03. Focus on the experience
"I can respect craft and say, 'That's beautiful typography and a beautiful layout," says Interbrand's Andy Payne. "But design is about solving problems. Fundamentally I'm looking for something that's improved an experience or a product interface, or some type of reaction or connection to a consumer."
04. A quieter approach
"There's so much shouting in the digital world, so maybe you could try being a bit quieter, and it might help you cut through the visual clutter," suggests Studio Sutherl&'s Jim Sutherland. in other words, rather than obsess over making a huge splash, focus on generating one good, simple idea that will get you cut-through.
05. Bad can be good
"Protein World's 'Are You Beach Body Ready?' campaign attracted so much social media protest," says The Future Laboratory's Kirsty Minns. "But it got 5,000 new customers in four days. So is that a good or bad brand campaign? It depends on what their aims were, but it shows that a brand isn't a single dimension any more."
This article was originally published in Computer Arts magazine issue 252.
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Tom May is an award-winning journalist and author specialising in design, photography and technology. His latest book, The 50th Greatest Designers, was released in June 2025. He's also author of the Amazon #1 bestseller Great TED Talks: Creativity, published by Pavilion Books, Tom was previously editor of Professional Photography magazine, associate editor at Creative Bloq, and deputy editor at net magazine.
