Brand Reasoning.

What is "Brand Reasoning"?

This term, coined by Schollnick Advertising is the basis and creative mindset of our newly created blog. Here we will discuss creative concepts in advertising today. We hope to accomplish a complete and informative repository of advertising knowledge which can not only be used by other advertising agencies, but also your small business.

So let's get down to it.

If you've ever thought about advertising for more than two seconds, you must be familiar with the term "branding". One definition of "Branding" is from the branding of cattle in order to assure ownership of that cattle. Similarly, we brand our products, advertising, uniforms and anything we can relate to our business. For more information on "Branding", check out Wikipedia's page on branding.

So, what is "Brand Reasoning"? One of the main purposes of advertising is to give consumers a reason to buy one product instead of another. The clearer you can state that reason without distortion the more likely a consumer is to comprehend the benefits. One of my favorite movies is Point Break:

                         HARP
          Eating solid breakfasts, Utah?

                         UTAH
          Sir?

                         HARP
          All the food groups?  Avoiding
          sugar?  Caffeine?  I see to it that
          my people maintain cardiovascular
          fitness.  We stay off hard liquor,
          cigarettes...

                         UTAH
                  (poker face)
          I take the skin off chicken.

                         HARP
          This is us.  Bank Robbery.  And
          you're in the bank-robbery capital
          of the world--

                         UTAH
          1322 last year in LA county.  Up 26
          percent from the year before.

                         HARP
          That's right.  And we nailed over a
          thousand of them.  We did it by
          crunching data.  Good crime-scene
          work, good lab work, good data-base
          analysis.  Nobody had to tackle a
          car once.  You getting the signal,
          special agent?

                         UTAH
          Zero distortion, sir.

  He picks up a donut from someone's desk, a succulent
  glazed jelly.

                         UTAH
          I love these things.

  He looks right at Harp.  Takes a big antagonistic bite.

Harp is explaining to Utah that his police work, the work he expects from Utah, should be done in a certain manner. His response of "zero distortion" is interesting because he could have said anything else that would have signified he was listening. Instead, Utah wanted Harp to know his message wasn't distorted as earlier they had a conversation about eating healthy. After this Utah sinks his teeth into a doughnut, clearly displaying how messages can be distorted or ignored completely.

Similarly, in advertising we must make sure we don't "bite the doughnut" and ruin our message. I've been seeing a lot of advertising that is at first hard to understand. Some of it appears to generate a good buzz about the product. An example of this is Old Spice's campaign. The message here may seem distorted and goes off the rails at the end, but the underlying message is the shower and the product. The whole time the focus of the ad is on the product and what you could "be" if you smelled like the product.

Other advertisements have tried to follow suit with this "creativity first" craze. Some have had terrible results that have lead to distortion of the brand. The key here is to not lose sight of the basics. Ask yourself when making ads "Is the central premise of my ad the basis for purchasing my product?"

Negativity is something an agency or business should to avoid in their advertisements. Every day we are surrounded by negative influences. Your advertisement shouldn't be one of them. Any time you have a negative ad or a negative concept, it distorts the brand and interferes with the "osmotic" process of transferring your brand to the consumer. You never want to alienate a group of potential customers with a negative ad. You're defeating the purpose of your advertisement by doing this. You always want to make it as easy as possible for a consumer to identify with your brand.

Another important concept of brand reasoning is to advertise as if the consumer is seeing it for the first time. I see ads all the time where the advertiser assume you don't have to list contact info. For instance, I saw an ad for a lawfirm that had no context, no contact info and no description of services. The only thing on the ad was a list of names. So I called them. "Why didn't you say what you do? I have no idea who you are, or why I should have you represent me." Their response was, "Oh sometimes we do, sometimes we don't." That's a very bad attitude to have concerning advertising. Maybe I was a potential client of theirs, but I had no idea they could perform the type of legal advice I needed. When people buy a drill, they aren't buying the drill. They are buying the hole the drill makes. You're always buying what the end product can do for you; Not the product itself.