#6 We all care deeply about logos/ How KitKat went global/ Becoming part of culture
Read to the end for media news and ideas of the week
Must Reads.
The secret reason we all care deeply about logos (even if we pretend we don’t) - Stuart Watson (5 mins)
Logos are flags for brands - a symbol for people to connect with. Most redesigned logos have an immediate negative reaction as the associations are wiped away and replaced by some new - often uncannily similar - version of the logo we’ve always known. Over time new associations are made and everyone is left wondering why we cared so much about some minor tweaks to a dumb logo.
“It’s not really about the design of the logo. It never was. It’s always been about what a logo represents. Logos are a shortcut to memories. Take away the logo, and you remove the connection to all of those moments you associate with that brand.”
How the KitKat went global - Gillian Tett (9 mins)
You probably know that KitKats are huge in Japan. Named originally in 1930s Britain, it happens to sound like Kitto Katsu - “you will overcome” in Japanese. Students in the southern Japanese island of Kyushu were the first to notice the similarity, buying the snack as good-luck tokens before exams. The Japanese marketing team embraced the connection, pivoting away from the global ‘take a break’ strategy towards gift-giving and success. The packaging was redesigned for students to write good-luck messaging on, then the team convinced the Japanese postal service to accept these as pre-paid envelopes!
In 2003 the Japanese team mixed strawberry powder into the chocolate recipe creating a pink KitKat - matcha followed not long after. They’ve now created over 300 flavours including, most recently, a “whisky barrel aged” variety. The success of KitKat is Japan now stands as one of the greatest marketing case studies of taking a global brand and embedding it into a local market.
"In January 2003, 34 per cent of Japanese teenagers told pollsters that a KitKat was their favourite good-luck charm, second only to an omamori blessed by a genuine Shinto priest.”
Becoming part of culture - George Tannenbaum (4 mins)
What is culture? And how do you become part of it? You, like me, probably won’t agree with a lot of this article but I really like 2 things about Tannenbaum’s diatribe: the dissection of culture (into sub-cultures) and the distraction that aiming for culture may bring. I still think being part of culture is the end-goal but for most brands this will take a huge amount of time and sustained effort. Culture = mass advertising + time.
“If culture is atomized--meaning that every group and sub-group, every person even, can claim their own cultural signposts, then what is the definition of a culture? If it's a shared set of likes, dislikes, preferences, tastes, styles, beliefs and behaviors, fine. But how many people have to be sharing it for it to become a culture?”
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Media.
‘T-commerce’ (purchasing goods through TV screens) is coming, warn Amazon, as early tests prove promising.
Netflix may limit password sharing to IP addresses meaning either a lot more people are going to start paying for Netflix or a lot of people will go somewhere else.
Twitter will add e-commerce formats soon.
11 media companies (including ITV and Sky) have signed up to DIMPACT, an online tool that reveals the carbon footprint of delivering and consuming content. Streaming 1 hour of Netflix is the equivalent of driving a quarter mile!
Where brands are reaching Gen Z: Fortnite (play games), Roblox (build games), Discord (message about games), Twitch (watch games) and TikTok (social media TV).
Ideas.
For World Down Syndrome Day, an ad that shows the benefits of inclusive hiring. I love everything about this ad.
Head & Shoulders is difficult for Indonesians to pronounce - they have 700+ languages of which English is not one - so P&G created a range of bottles with the many mispronunciations to give Indonesians the confidence to ask for H&S.
Having a baby can limit a woman’s potential earnings by 12.5% for their entire career. Global Women New Zealand reframed the problem and asked ‘what’s the most ridiculous thing an employee could do that’s not as career-limiting as having a baby?’