Branded Advertising: Ducks, Stripes, and Working Class Geckos

Most people would agree advertising is branding, but over the past decade there has been a shift to more relevant "branded advertising." Traditional advertising over the past 50 years often leveraged some key differentiator between their client's product and that of their competitors. Agencies would develop it into a creative concept, and the campaign would (if successful) garner attention, sales, and sometimes industry awards. Today, the sheer volume of daily advertising has resulted in shorter attention spans and lower retention among audiences. Consumers recall the most clever campaigns, but fail to associate it with the correct product or company (quick, which office supply company has the Easy button? See the end of this post).

This is where branded advertising fills in the gap. In addition to a compelling concept and execution, branded ad campaigns integrate visual and/or verbal messages that are unique (at least within the industry) to the client or product. A visual branding approach may appropriate the company's graphic standards as part of their campaign. All Apple campaigns, for example, use light neutral or white backgrounds and incorporate their font, Apple Garamond. IBM began using blue horizontal stripes in their television spots a decade ago, which today evolved into horizontal bands above and below the commercial itself.

In other examples, UPS uses a branded tagline, "What Can Brown Do For You?", sometimes reinforcing it with the signature color. Recognition of the insurance company AFLAC was established primarily through its mascot, a duck. The fact that "Aflac" sounds like "quack", is a type of phonetically branded advertising. The campaign's success led to incorporating the duck into AFLAC's brand identity.

One of the most entertaining ad campaigns of the past few years is for another insurance company, Geico. Created by the Martin Agency, they employed a three different ad campaigns, each skewing toward a distinct set of audiences: the Gecko, the Celebrity/Non-celebrity, and the Cavemen. The Celebrity/Non-celebrity campaign targets older audiences, and The Cavemen campaign toward young adults. Both concepts brand the company solely through its messaging and attitude. The Gecko campaign, however, also uses phonetics to mnemonically tie together "Gecko" with "Geico", and for this reason it qualifies as branded advertising. Interestingly, the Gecko's British accent was originally upper class, but later changed to a working class accent (think Eliza Doolittle's little brother).

In the near future, branded advertising may be the norm, rather than the exception. As brands continue to expand their reach into global marketplaces, companies will need to find ways not only to become distinctive, but recognizable and memorable.

(The Easy button tagline and symbol belong to Staples. Kudos if you guessed correctly. Research has shown most people get it wrong. It also doesn't help that the Easy button is toward the bottom of the Staples website.)

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