Marketing is constantly changing, and brand communication also undergoes rapid development. Not so many years ago, it was exclusively via radio, television, or out-of-home measures such as posters. The change that’s taken place around digital communication is certainly the biggest branding change for many companies.
Not only has communication been digitized, but market dynamics have also changed. Faster, more customized, and more interactive is the motto. Companies can and must react quickly to their environment and the competition to remain relevant. Also, generations that have grown up with the Internet desire interactivity and personalization.
- Static vs. dynamic branding
- Dynamic branding in theory
- Advantages of dynamic branding
- Examples of successful dynamic branding
- How to stay in control of dynamic branding
What is dynamic branding?
Dynamic branding offers companies the opportunity to make agile customizations that respond to competition and the market. It’s a valuable branding method - especially when it comes to visual branding.
It enables continuously standing out from the competition and establishing valuable relationships with target groups at the same time.
In general, brands already work towards personifying their brand. Forbes, however, compares the construct of dynamic marketing to a tree.
The roots are permanent and firmly anchored, just as the fundamental values and vision of a company should be. The trunk represents the combination of tools and software used to communicate these values to the public.
The branches and leaves represent the flexible part of the branding. Branches can grow in all directions, while leaves adapt quickly to external circumstances.
Even though dynamic branding has been around for more than 10 years, its relevance continues to increase. More and more companies will embrace the principle in response to positive feedback.
Static vs. dynamic branding
If dynamic branding is like a tree, static branding is more of a concrete structure. It leaves no room for flexibility or customized branding. If a company wants to react to the competition or the market, rebranding is usually the only option. This costs time and money.
With static branding, the logo is a so-called “sender mark.” It’s more about representing the company in a timeless way than responding to the recipients of the branding message.
Yet everyone encounters several thousand logos every day, whether on electrical appliances, cars, food, clothing … everything we touch and use and see. So there’s much more to how we experience branding than just the logo. With static branding, you miss the opportunity to customize and thus stand out from the competition.
Dynamic branding in theory
First and foremost, dynamic branding is about the visual identity of a brand. Many companies that rely on static branding have only two different logos: one for light backgrounds and one for dark backgrounds.
Customized dynamic branding, on the other hand, involves:
- a choice of logos
- various colors
- different typography
- graphic elements
- images and
- language and tone
To visualize branding dynamics, it’s useful to define levels 0-3 for all these elements and to display the flexibility scale in a radar graph. Read our article on creating charts to learn how to create such a chart.
Source: Emanuel Jochum
To visualize your own branding in this flexibility scale, assign a value of 0-3 to each point. If the resulting pattern is tight around the center of the graphic, your branding is not very dynamic.
With dynamic branding, the graphic might look like this:
Source: Emanuel Jochum
Not all elements of a brand are completely dynamic. That preserves recognition value. The trick is to create branding that’s both flexible and unique enough for customers to associate with your company.
Advantages of dynamic branding
Balancing the dynamics of your branding may be a challenge, especially at the beginning. But the following advantages result for your company:
- Brand consistency which still leaves room for creativity.
- Unlocking new target groups as your branding allows for more precise targeting and addressing your marketing campaigns through customization.
- More and improved opportunities to communicate your company’s values to your target groups.
- You don’t have to reinvent the wheel if your static logo doesn’t fit an advertising campaign or the medium on which it appears.
- Flexibility in global branding expansion to adapt your branding to different countries and cultures.
3 examples of successful dynamic branding
Here are three examples of successful dynamic branding where the brand is presented to customers in a customized way. You probably already know at least some of them.
Google
A few years ago, Google implemented a “Doodle Concept”. When you open the search engine, the classic logo changes on certain days or for certain events.
Note that Google always uses the same wording and usually either its corporate colors or the standard font in these doodles to ensure recognition value. These are examples of the doodles for Halloween.
Source: Google
Warner Brothers
Everyone who’s seen the Harry Potter movies will remember how the Warner Brothers logo changes with each film. It’s adapted from film to film to reflect each film with its appearance.
The logo always remained the same, but the colors and graphics around the logo were dynamized, so the recognition value remained the same.
Source: Buzzfeed
AOL
Back in 2005, AOL commissioned the design firm Wolff Olins to develop a new logo concept. The result can be seen in the following graphic. Here, too, wording and typography remain the same, but the choice of colors and graphic representation offer plenty of room for creativity.
Quelle: thestreet.com
How to stay in control of your dynamic branding
Change is inevitable, so you should add dynamism to your branding that gives you flexibility.
With our empower® Brand Control solution as a Microsoft Office add-in, you can easily keep track of your brand assets like templates, logos, and graphics. We anchor your brand style guide directly into Office applications so your employees can access them quickly and easily. This ensures brand compliance throughout your company and gives your people the freedom to implement branding appropriately in their documents - without any additional effort. On the contrary, our solution even helps your employees save time working in Microsoft Office! For example, different PowerPoint designs can be applied with a single click.
At the same time, our empower® Content Enablement solution allows you to access images, logos, and templates directly from your Office documents and distribute them throughout the company. The result is new documents in the blink of an eye and always brand-compliant!
Did we spark your curiosity? Contact us and learn how empower® can support you in implementing your dynamic branding!
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