Written by Lucas Conley, OBD: Obsessive Branding Disorder argues that there is too much of it (branding) resulting in valuable resources being diverted from R&D. The end result is products or services that don’t improve or more of which that we don’t need.

OBD details somewhat disturbing findings - such as a woman who named her daughter GoldenPalace.com or that seven out of every 100 mothers in the U.S. work for a company called Vocalpoint, a clandestine word-of-mouth marketers who casually “praise” various products to friends and neighbours. Branding gone too far or being taken to a new level?

via VSL.

Pause for a moment to think about why the stuff from Apple is so desirable. From the iPod to the MacBook Air, it’s not just the product per se, but the experience. That’s all there is to it and the iPod demonstrates this perfectly.

The iPod which allows you to save up to a staggering 40,000 songs (depending on the model) serves as a good paper weight after 18 months as that’s about as long as the batteries that cannot be swapped out, lasts. (Thanks to the Neistat Brothers for sharing the Ipod’s Dirty Secret. Watch their movie on it here.) And even after the PR fallout of that - and that we need to fork out more cash for a warranty extension, we just can’t get enough of it.

Is this the truly superior MP3 player in the market? Clearly not. But it is peerless when you factor in the experience of owning one. From its finish (which as all owners know takes zero effort to get scratched and spawned an entire industry dedicated to coming up with products to protect it) to the fiendishly intuitive clickwheel, it is the MP3 player to have. Apple clearly understood that it’s not a product it needs to deliver but the experience.

This post Sony Had It. Apple Took It. on BusinessWeek’s NEXT blog covers the topic of experience versus artefacts with reference to a talk given by former Blackberry/Motorola designer, Fred Tyneski. Fred Tyneski said Sony who invented the Walkman and own Sony BMG should have cornered the music playing and listening market. But according to Tyneski, Sony delivered artefacts instead of positioning itself as a provider of experience.

So while Sony and perhaps every other contender vying for the MP3-player throne focussed on the product, Apple instead focussed on and put its trust in design, knowing that ultimately, it will set its products apart from the rest of the pack and deliver an experience that is hard to beat. Until today, that is truly the (unassailable) position of the iPod and proof that brand experience is everything.

Read related post, Experience, Not Identity.

Simple. He designed a better campaign. In retrospect, it’s also interesting to revisit this post on why the Obama Brand worked.

Here are some tenets for good business and good design leadership from founder and CEO of the Brand Experience Consultancy, Ralph Ardill as posted on Business Week’s Innovation page.

Empathy & The Extra Mile
Falling at the last hurdle is such a common business failure. You just feel like you can’t give any more so you give up, just at the moment you should be sticking to your guns and ensuring that things don’t fall through the gaps. Managing to galvanize yourself and your colleagues to make it to the end of a project with head held high is critical. Inspirational leaders make that easier.

Excite & Evangelize
Keep the why alive. Because it can be easy to forget 6 months in, why you’re doing a project.

Success & Sharing
Because there’s no ‘i’ in “team”. And there’s no ‘i’ in “leader”, either.

Happy & Hungry
Projects have a happiness quotient. Positivity breeds productivity.

Inspiration & Ingenuity
Go and look for inspiration. And know when to say ‘no’, or you don’t know.

Nadia Plesner is a 26 year old Danish artist who was trying to spread the word on Darfur through her t-shirts which carried the artwork above titled Simple Living. For her trouble, she got a “cease and desist” from LV and subsequently a lawsuit.

Did LV get brand-jacked? If you look closely, it isn’t the LV logo that you see on the bag. Was she trying to pass it off as an LV bag? Hardly, I would say, after all it isn’t bags that she’s selling. In her reply to LV, Nadia said: “the bag in my drawing is inspired by - and refers to - designer bags in general and not a Louis Vuitton bag”.

And this is how Nadia explains the rationale for her Darfur campaign.
“My illustration Simple Living is an idea inspired by the medias constant cover of completely meaningless things.

My thought was: Since doing nothing but wearing designerbags and small ugly dogs appearantly is enough to get you on a magasine cover, maybe it is worth a try for people who actually deserves and needs attention.

When we’re presented with the same images in the media over and over again, we might start to believe that they’re important.

As I was reading the book ”Not on our watch” by Don Cheadle and John Prendergast this summer, I felt horrified by the fact that even with the genocide and other ongoing atrocities in Darfur, Paris Hilton was the one getting all the attention. Is it possible that show business have outruled common sense?

If you can’t beat them, join them. This is why I have chosen to mix the cruel reality with showbiz elements in my drawing.”

My own take is that LV overreacted and may be setting itself up for a lot of bad publicity. It should have let the matter die a natural death or found a way of working with Nadia. Fake LV totes do more (and real) damage to a brand, though I wouldn’t be caught dead with one, real or fake.

via the web strategist.

via swissmiss and neutron.

In the past five years or so, few other words have been bandied about more than ‘branding’. It didn’t matter what a company did or which market segment it was in, branding was seen as the key to commercial success.

Unfortunately, branding exercises often place too much emphasis on visual identity. I daresay that a new visual identity doesn’t even feature very high up the branding shopping list. In fact, we ought not to confuse a brand with its graphic identity, as we often do.

Most of the time, what a company needs to work on is its brand experience and how that needs to be positive one for the customer. Often this is where it all comes apart, that very point of contact between the company and the world at large. And when you get down to it, it’s really all about how the people in an organisation relate to the customer.

A positive experience creates a positive domino effect of word-of-mouth referrals, customer loyalty, increased sales, higher profitability and so on. As for a negative experience, well, that can do disproportionately greater damage with the Internet today.

For another take on this, read this interesting post at ideasonideas.