Find Me
Anal Organization
Oldies But Goodies
More Stuff
Nonsense Notes
Whiskey Notes and Parachuting Fish
the ups-and-downs and sides-to-sides of the little things that make up life
A few months ago, Dear Jane Sample designed a Brand Timeline. Marketing folks loved the idea and several bloggers, including myself, created their own Brand Profile. It’s been really interesting to see not only the brands people choose to include (especially the International ones), but the way in which each person designed the actual timeline. Some copied the template, others were unique and still others got insanely creative and made mosaics. In fact, I think the design itself said just as much about the person behind the timeline as the brands included.
If you haven’t seen some of these, they’re worth checking out. Many are listed here. If you have, they’re still worth revisiting. Are you able to discover people’s idiosyncrasies and personality characteristics from simply viewing their brand portraits? Are you able to pinpoint your own?
So I was thinking about the defined by brands concept. I’d love to figure out how to look at segmenting the brands by their importance to us. For example are people really passionate about toothpaste? Probably not…though some are. But, what about shoes? Does our passion go up as the price tag goes up? Does it go up based on how often we interact with that brand throughout the day?
I’ve been kicking your comment around for the past week because I love the idea behind it, but can’t figure out how to do it with Brand Timelines. I hate saying “can’t”. It’s the dirtiest four letter word out there
Anyway, here’s my thoughts on why not:
1. You have to assume that the person is passionate about any brand included in their profile. For example, mine has 90 brands, but that doesn’t even come close to the number of brands I actually encountered. I didn’t include my telephone, furniture, modem, appliances, shoes, etc.
2. To expand, sometimes the things people are most passionate about are the ones they overlook. On mine, I came thisclose to forgetting to include Trident Gum. I’m insanely passionate about Trident. In fact, I refuse to chew any other type. In writing this, I realize that I DID forget to include my Gatorade Water Bottle. I don’t think you’ll ever find me without that thing. The joke is that it’s my third arm. Yet, it’s become such a integrated part of my life, I overlooked it when creating my Brand Profile.
3. The point about price tag is interesting. In theory, you’d *think* that the greater the price tag, the more passionate you would be. But, how many people are passionate about Pandora, a FREE music program? How many people wax on that their favorite pair of jeans was ten bucks and the Lucky pair that was $250 was worn once and now sits in the back of their closet?
4. High rates of interaction most likely happen while at work. Those brands aren’t necessarily a person’s choice and while they may appear several times in a profile, it doesn’t mean the person is passionate about the brand. For example, my work computer is a Dell. I hate Dell. I wouldn’t buy a Dell computer if my life depended on it. But, I constantly interact with that brand as that’s the brand my company chose.
5. I’m gonna say it… people lie and choose the way they want to be seen. This once again makes it difficult to accurately assess true importance. Personally, I didn’t view a single Brand Profile that uses generic products. Maybe this was because generic brand logos are difficult to find. But, maybe it was because people didn’t want to admit that they use “cheap” products. Or maybe, they wanted to choose a logo that people would recognize to represent a product they were passionate about.
6. The design of the profile represents passion and a person’s personality just as much as the brands they chose to include. With no design standard, there’s no easy way to segment brands by importance.
With all that said, I still like the idea of segmenting brands by importance. I also like your idea of tying it into Noah Brier’s Brand Tag Project. However, people are passionate about the brands they love AND the brands they hate. BMW’s passion score might be through the roof, but is it because people are passionate about loving BMW or hating it? Since one of BMW’s biggest terms is “asshole” do you then assume their passion score is one of hatred? Do love/hate sentiments need to be factored into a the score? If this was tied into the Brand Tag Project, a simple 1-5 scale would need VERY clear definitions. Love, hate, importance and passion all mean very different things. If terms weren’t defined for standardization, the score would be inaccurate.