Create Empathy Not Apathy
A wise man once said: “Creativity is the last unfair advantage we’re legally allowed to take over our competitors.” As usual, Bill Bernbach was spot on. However, creativity that is deemed worthy of greatness and creativity that delivers seismic commercial results are not necessarily the same thing.
With an incalculable number of brands in existence today – across more than 2,000 product categories – producing creative work that’s memorable and impactful is more challenging now than ever before. This raises an important question: are creative practitioners or even the top graphic designers truly set up to create unforgettable, commercially impactful work?
Create Empathy Not Apathy
Havas (the huge global comms group) reports that if 75% of all the world’s brands disappeared today, people wouldn’t care. If that’s not concerning enough for brand owners, Harvard Business School’s Professor Emeritus, Gerald Zaltman, claims that roughly 95% of our purchase decisions are controlled by our subconscious mind.
As a result, we creative practitioners have an ethical responsibility to our clients that goes beyond simply creating work that stands out from their competitors. Given that only five percent of purchase decisions are made consciously, we must skilfully and deliberately create reasons to care, along with meaningful and unforgettable brand design. This is why we’ve always focused on placing human beings at the centre of brand design at Taxi Studio.
Create Unforgettable Not Unacceptable
The typical starting point for developing new ideas is often to ‘stand out’ by ‘being different’. Blue-sky-thinking-in white-spaces-that-break-conventions-outside-the-box, sort of stuff. For Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay – the first people to reach the top of the world – this made sense because there was a clear point to navigate toward. And it was new. A breakthrough, in fact. But blindly adopting a disruption-based strategy for brands is a waste of time and money, because when everyone disrupts, nothing is truly disruptive.
Instead, our metaphorical mountain to climb is this: harnessing the power of design to forge lasting memories that are easily recalled by the subconscious (AKA, create unforgettable).
The Brain Drain
IBM’s original mainframe stored 2.5 million gigabytes of data – the same as our brains – but unlike the mainframe, according to Ebbinghaus’s Forgetting Curve, roughly 70% of the information we absorb is lost within 24 hours, rising to approximately 90% over the course of just one week.
For brands, this means three things:
* Human brain capacity isn’t an issue
* Mediocrity is very quickly forgotten
* Distinctiveness and emotive appeal increase memory recall
People are always searching for better things – and brands have a role to play in that – but to be new and persuasive, they must also be distinctive and create lasting, emotional impressions.
Our Driving Belief
Brands that fail to make a mark on the memory are headed for obscurity. We know this to be true because:
* If 75% of all brands disappeared today, no one would care
* We forget 90% of the information we receive within a week
* 95% of all our purchase decisions are made subconsciously
Consequently:
* Brands must be more concerned with RTCs (Reasons to Care) than RTBs (Reasons to Buy)
* Recall is the key. Our brains store 2.5m GB: storage isn’t the issue
* Our past experiences influence our purchasing behaviour
The Brief Paradox
It’s funny, if not confounding, that so little time and thought are invested in creating briefs, especially considering that 90% of marketers believe the most valuable – yet most neglected – tool is the creative brief. To make matters worse, roughly 33% of marketing spend is wasted due to misdirected briefs.
We receive many briefs (thankfully), but oftentimes what we get are what I’ve come to term ‘not-briefs’. These are mountainous documents that, while detailed, miss the mark of a true brief. A brief should be concise, compelling and charged with creative possibility.
Lasting Words of Wisdom
Creative work must be developed for real-world consumption, where simply being different is no longer enough. To be truly unforgettable, we need to build salient solutions that make the remaining 5% of our conscious purchasing decisions work much harder, with the goal of getting our subconscious 95% to pay closer attention.
Building on William’s wise words: Creativity is the last unfair advantage we’re legally allowed to take over our competitors – provided that creativity is designed to elicit powerful, positive memories that ultimately drive significant commercial success.
Conclusion
Capturing hearts and minds has never been harder. For brands to stand a chance of being considered – let alone remembered – they must reject unremarkable thinking and create unforgettable work. It’s as easy (and as difficult) as that.
FAQs
Q: What is the key to creating unforgettable brand design?
A: Focus on creating reasons to care, along with meaningful and unforgettable brand design.
Q: Why is it important to create a memorable brand design?
A: To make a mark on the memory and stand out from competitors.
Q: What is the driving belief behind Taxi Studio’s approach to brand design?
A: Brands must be more concerned with Reasons to Care than Reasons to Buy, and recall is the key to making a lasting impression.
Q: Why is the creative brief so important?
A: It sets the foundation for commercial success and helps to ensure that the project stays on track.
Q: What is the most common mistake made when creating a brief?
A: Creating a lengthy, detailed document that misses the mark of a true brief.
