The following is an excerpt from an article by Thomas Eales on Gluemarketing.co.uk For the full article please follow this link, http://www.blog.gluemarketing.co.uk/2010/05/logos-front-cover-to-your-brand.html
When speaking with clients about the importance of their logo I like to give the following metaphor to illustrate just how key they are to their overall brand image;
“Imagine your company as tall office building; within the office building there are conference rooms, hospitality suites, spa’s, etc, these are the services you offer to your clients. Delve deeper and you find the vents, boilers and copper guts supplying the building, these service channels are your company architecture, they supply power to the buildings occupants each day, keeping everything running.
However before a client can engage with the services you offer within your conference rooms and hospitality suites and well before they can learn about what makes your company tick they have to pass through the lobby; Imagine your logo as the lobby to your brand, gleaming, sleek, leather bound and inviting; your logo is the first touch between your brand and any potential clients.
Of course while potential clients initially enter through the lobby, they will hopefully also leave through here too and not the emergency exit, in many cases your logo is not only the first touch point with potential clients but also the last.”
As designers, we should include similar metaphors when discussing the project with a potential client. Instead of trying to ‘educate’ a client about what logo design / branding is, metaphors work better in explaining the actual working of a logo – how it truly helps, in an almost-tangible fashion.
Another metaphor that I can think of currently is to equate it with a job interview. Where the client’s brand is the person going to apply for a new job and will be interviewed. Apart from the brand’s qualifications [ which if they are no good, no logo could rescue ], what also makes a difference is how the interviewee / brand presents himself / herself – what they are wearing, how they walk, how they sit and how they talk. Equate that to what a logo looks like, what the colors represent and how typography lends to that representation. How bad / good presentation can make / break an interview. The brand is the interviewee and the customer, the interviewer. [ It’s probably simplistic to use such a metaphor – but it could be a start. ]
I need to think of a better metaphor I could actually use with clients during the briefing process.
