The marketing logic behind Yuanqi Forest’s “brand identity”

Genki Forest changed its logo, changing the Japanese character "気" into the Chinese character "气".

At present, the official website of Yuanqi Forest has launched a new logo, and the Chinese character "气" has been replaced from the main logo of the official website to the product promotional posters. On product packaging, soda sparkling water still uses the word "気", while milk tea product packaging currently coexists with Yuanqi Forest and Yuanqi Forest. The promotional posters of various products were updated simultaneously, including sparkling water, milk tea, burning tea, juice sparkling water, fitness light tea, alien energy drinks, etc.

This became a hot topic in the industry, with practitioners, observers, researchers, complainers, slanderers, and teasers all detailing the uses of the new logo.

Today, let’s talk about the marketing logic behind brand logos.

1. A good “brand identity” is the beginning of successful marketing

The importance of logo in brand system and development can be seen from the attention attracted by Genki Forest’s logo change.

A brand logo is also called a "brand identity". Almost every brand has its own exclusive logo, such as McDonald's, iPhone, etc.

Building brand identity symbols is an important way to gain consumer loyalty.

Especially in the Internet age of information overload and highly homogenized products, even the best brands are as good as non-existent if they do not have their own unique symbols and image characteristics.

A brand without a logo is like 2020 when everyone is wearing masks. No one can recognize it when it walks on the street.

As the most intuitive way of brand visual marketing, brand logo can become a brand asset from the very beginning. The moment consumers see it, they will become familiar, recognized, and loved by them. This can build brand trust, motivate consumers to purchase, and be spread by consumers.

Why are brand logos so powerful? Because symbols are understandable to everyone and are deeply buried in the collective subconscious of humanity, they are a huge body of information that contains cultural meanings and condenses huge amounts of information. People can understand them at a glance and be guided and influenced in their behavior.

For example, the iPhone’s “apple symbol,” Nike’s “check mark symbol,” and Zhen Gongfu’s “Bruce Lee symbol” are all brand symbols that anyone can understand, become familiar with, and build trust with just a glance.

A brand logo, like a person’s signature, helps people remember it quickly. Similarly, a differentiated brand logo can also enable the brand's target consumer group to quickly remember the brand, making it stand out from many competing products and greatly increasing consumers' purchase rate and repeat purchase frequency.

Therefore, a good "brand identity" is the beginning of successful marketing.

2. A good “brand identity” makes marketing more effective

Once upon a time, Tmall changed its name to Tmall and launched a global logo solicitation campaign, which became a hotly discussed event in the industry. People involved seemed to be trying their best to predict all the changes that would occur in the next five or even ten years at once.

Regardless of whether changing the logo is effective or not, this kind of discussion is what countless brands dream of! It has become a topic, a focus, widely disseminated and shared, and analyzed in depth. It has been written down in the news, on Weibo, in blogs, in diaries, and turned into cases, tutorials, and textbooks!

How many such brand stories have been discussed so gloriously and become the focus again and again.

The cooperation between Guangzhou Pharmaceutical and Jiaduobao on the herbal tea brand Wanglaoji has become a classic case in university marketing textbooks and has been analyzed in depth for many years. Today, the two companies have long since split up, and marketing has become much more complex in methodology than it used to be. Of the two companies, Jiaduobao is undoubtedly the one that is well versed in the art of creating topics in marketing. It has spared no effort in promoting its new brand, Jiaduobao, and has indeed created quite a few topics.

In fact, a good logo can indeed save a lot of marketing costs for the brand.

Take this year’s epidemic as an example. On March 19, 2020, McDonald's released a new logo image on Facebook. The original "M" was split into two separate "n"s, maintaining a certain sense of distance, calling on everyone to pay attention to isolation during the epidemic; Starbucks' double-tailed mermaid also put on a mask, calling on everyone to protect themselves and others.

Many netizens directly called McDonald's and Starbucks humane. These small changes have triggered a significant marketing communication effect and added a lot of favorability to the brand.

Whether it is Tmall, McDonald's or Starbucks, they have all triggered widespread and concentrated discussions in their respective times and created topics of public opinion.

In this web3.0 era, the growing maturity of self-media allows the public to spontaneously create and share content on specific topics. When the public opens a browser, opens a player, opens an instant messaging tool, sends text messages... they can see you being discussed everywhere. Even if you are not successful, you are not far from success.

Of course, not everyone can spark a discussion simply by changing a logo. A good brand logo must be approachable to people, have some symbolic meaning that is easy to understand and spread, and be easy for the public to recognize and remember. Only in this way can it achieve twice the result with half the effort.

The most well-known is the Apple logo.

In today’s world where there are more and more homogeneous products and market competition is becoming more intense, the most important role of a logo is to reduce the cost of communication – allowing others to recognize and remember you at once among many brand logos, and also forming auditory words that are passed on by word of mouth.

3. How to create an eye-catching “brand logo”?

Why are some logos so memorable while others are hard to remember? When building a brand, how can a brand make users fall in love with it at first sight in a complex market environment and help its own brand marketing ? These 6 qualities need to be met:

1. Can reflect brand positioning

The logo should first solve the problem of "rightness" and then solve the problem of "beauty and ugliness".

A good logo is not only about design, but also needs to reflect brand strategic thinking, reflect the core concept of the brand, convey the message of "who I am" directly and concisely, and be fully captured by users.

For example, the logo of Xibei Youmiancun reflects the brand’s product positioning – oat noodles – through the patterns of “Youmiancun” and “I Love You”.

2. Highly recognizable

Every time a user spreads information, it provides an exposure opportunity for your brand. Therefore, the brand should provide a recognizable super symbol so that users can recognize your brand at a glance.

The Apple symbol is highly recognizable.

The main image of "apple" comes from life and often appears in myths and fairy tales. It is one of the fruits that is familiar and loved by people all over the world. But it is not an ordinary apple - it has a hole missing. Although Jobs' original intention was to add the hole so that people would not mistake apples for peaches, this hole gives the brand more room for imagination and increases its personality.

In today’s era of information explosion and fragmentation, if a brand image does not have clear identification and differentiation, it will be difficult for consumers to recognize and remember it, and the logo will lose its due brand value.

3. Meet user needs

The logo is for consumers to see, not for the brand itself. Therefore, the logo, like the product, must meet the needs of consumers.

We simply divide needs into two categories: spiritual needs and material needs. In other words, when designing a logo, a brand needs to consider whether it wants to satisfy the spiritual needs or the material needs of consumers.

For example, Starbucks uses the image of the mermaid to give consumers a sense of mystery and create a desire to explore, which satisfies the spiritual needs of consumers.

Another example is Pinduoduo. The patterns of many different products are centered around the word "Pin", reflecting the characteristics of Pinduoduo's rich product categories, good quality and low prices, which satisfies the material needs of consumers.

4. It has its own topicality

As we all know, because people have social needs, they will spontaneously spread some things for reasons such as being sociable, joining in the fun, and curiosity. Therefore, if a logo can bring people topics to talk about, arouse people's curiosity and discussion, it can allow users to spontaneously spread the brand logo.

For example, the previous App logo change caused a wave of heated discussion. The new logo is an orange owl, and many people complained that it is too ugly. That’s true, but after a brief moment of amazement, people suddenly realized that the new logo was just the Chinese character “Luo”! As a result, people were deeply impressed by Luo Pang's "big chess" game and once again plunged into the discussion, triggering a wave of spread.

5. Arouse user resonance

The brand logo is deeply rooted in people's hearts because of its unique image design, unique marketing concept and distinctive cultural connotation. This is the "soft means" of visual marketing.

Every brand has its own story. The design of the logo must always be consistent with the story behind it and resonate with consumers. This is the essence of a brand logo.

6. Follow the principle of minimalism

If you want onlookers to be interested in your brand logo and remember it firmly, minimalism is necessary in this impetuous era where time is always insufficient.

All world-renowned brands use minimalist logo design.

For example, Zhengda, a circle inside a square; Mercedes-Benz, a trident inside a windmill-like circle; Sanling, three diagonal prisms... Such simple logos can clearly and accurately interpret the characteristics of their own brands or products.

As long as the above points are done well, it is possible to create a super recognizable symbol.

Of course, if we want to make this identification symbol more contagious, the most important thing is to increase the intensity of its dissemination.

Because, if it is coupled with good word-of-mouth from users after using the brand, then it will occupy the highest point in creating a super symbol and grasp the initiative to stand out among many similar brands.

Author: Brand Front Page

Source: Brand front page (ceozhiku)