Digital business continues to grow as clients seek expertise in creating an ideal shopper journey online as well as offline

Brand billboard designed to take company into the future

The other day I was on one of my favorite “guy style” sites and came across something called Un-branded jeans. These jeans were an attempt by a company to create a product that had no brand associated with it. It’s a noble idea and I can appreciate it. But the problem here (and I’m sure you are thinking the same thing by now) is that in their attempt to specifically create something un-branded, they have in fact created a brand. DOH!

Unbranded in this case is not the same as generic. These are hipster jeans.

Straight raw selvedge denim jeans from Unbranded, featuring a stiff feel meant to be worn without washing for several months. Has a five pocket silhouette, belt loops, brown contrast stitching, and four button front closure with brass hardware.

This got me thinking about what constitutes a “brand.” Typically brands have a set of attributes like an logo, colors, fonts, materials, tone of voice, etc. In the case of un-branded jeans though, their brand was purely their product–well, part of a brand is knowing who your target audience is so you can appeal to them, and these are obviously intended for stylish young males who can afford $80 jeans.

However, even though they left out most of the traditional branding elements they HAVE created a brand by trying NOT to create a brand. (I know, kind of blows your mind doesn’t it?)

On a recent trip through LAX, feeling like a co-star in the George Clooney flick Up in the Air, I began the habitual routine: head to self check-in, find a seat near the front of the plane, drudge to security, get my identity squared away, enter the waiting game, strategize about which line is shortest at the security check and prepare my belongings for scrutiny.

I’m pulling out my computer and liquids; taking off my shoes and jewelry; and—what’s this?! The security bins aren’t the normal smudged grey. Rather, each display a shiny, newly installed advertisement—for none other than the Skechers Shape Ups.

Putting aside the misconceived brand marriage of health and wellness with Skechers, let’s consider the advertising locale: the airport security bins. At no other point during my airport visit do I feel more vulnerable, valueless and at edge than when standing barefooted with my personal belongings projected for the viewing pleasure of four complete strangers. While I grow increasingly more concerned about how the TSA agents stare at the x-ray of my purse like it’s this summer’s blockbuster while I’m waiting there shoeless, Skechers wants me to consider wearing Shape Ups. I almost feel mocked.

They say that having no presence on mobile devices in 2010 is like not having a website circa 1999. So true! The digital age is in hyper-drive. 3G access continues to increase, and 4G is already here! Some stats say that up to 99 percent of the population will have some sort of data capability on their mobile phones by 2011.

So what does this mean for retailers? It means the need for a whole new view to their digital strategies. When a shopper can enter a store, scan a barcode, see that the same product is cheaper at a nearby competitor and click a link for directions to take them straight there, the game has suddenly been changed, so to speak. There is an ever-expanding catalog of apps out there to enable this type of shopping behavior (in the store, in the car or on the run), and manufacturers like Apple are training customers via commercials and advertisements about how to use all these apps to simplify their lives.

It might be easy to dismiss this trend given the relatively small percentage of people with iPhones or Droids today, but now is the time to start investigating and investing in individual strategies.

When people ask me what I do, somewhere in the description I inevitably use the “S” word: signs. However, in today’s experience-based socially driven marketplace, brands, retail brands especially, need to move beyond signs and think about wayfinding in terms of the whole experience of the built environment, and how every element in a space can play a role in defining what we like to think of as intuitive wayfinding.

Intuitive wayfinding, means a customer or staff member is able to navigate a space without stopping to think about it, and does not need to consciously keep track of where they are in the space. If a customer needs to look at a directional sign to figure out where to go, you’ve already lost the battle for an intuitive wayfinding experience. The intuitive wayfinding experience relies on a system of well organized, strategically placed visual cues to guide the consumer to their destination.

Space planning plays a key role in maintaining an intuitive navigational experience. In the planning stages, if your plan looks like a lab rat’s maze then there is a pretty good chance it will feel like that when it’s built. However, a layout with the proper adjacencies, strategic departmental hierarchy, and ample common navigational walkways is well on its way to achieving intuitive wayfinding right from the start.

A: When I’m shopping at my local Kroger.

No, not the “Post” as in Raisin Bran; I’m referring to the physical post, or column, that is in the cereal aisle at my store.

The scene is this: my wife asks me to go get the Multi-Grain Cheerios so she can shop in peace for 10 minutes. She says, “Get the big box, unless the smaller box is on sale,” adding, “The Cheerios are close to the post about half-way down the aisle.”

If she wouldn’t have given me that navigational pointer, she probably would have bought herself 15 minutes of peace. The merchandise presentation in the cereal aisle is such a mess, so lacking in organization, I could easily have squandered more time, forced to scan every package, not finding what I was looking for. But since she gave me the post as my pole star, I managed to navigate past the lions and tigers and bears to the Cheerios. After a moment of anxiety while I scan the shelf for validation—Ta-dah!—I find the Mutli-Grain big box not on sale!

Contrast this with my second mission, during which my wife gets only a few minutes of peace.

On June 18, Pixar Animation Studios released the third installment in their flagship franchise, simply titled “Toy Story 3.” Now that the reviews are in, Pixar just missed the mark in producing the first movie trilogy to receive 100% fresh ratings on the popular movie rating site Rotten Tomatoes. A 100% rating is near impossible for any individual movie, considering the ratings on Rotten Tomatoes are not a single opinion but an aggregate of hundreds of movie critics’ ratings. Doing so for all three movies in a trilogy, or even coming this close, would seem to be an impossible task. And yet, they came within inches.

Also, this eleventh feature-length offering from Pixar has all the indications of another smashing financial success. While any individual moviegoer may have some negative opinions about some of Pixar’s movies, it’s hard to argue against the overall universal acclaim and the respective worldwide box office returns.

So how does Pixar do it? Three simple words: Story is king.

The world knows I love Apple. I fiend over the stickers they give me when I buy a new Apple gadget. I’ll talk about why I love Apple with total strangers. And I’m quite sure my family and friends think I might be emotionally unstable with my constant pro-Apple rhetoric. But one of the reasons I like Apple, is I get Apple. And I believe that “getting” a brand is the all-important step that must be in place before we can love a brand.

We interact with thousands of brands every day, some by our choosing, some not. At any given moment you can step back and identify several brands you’re engaged with—the one you’re wearing, what you’re using, what you’re watching, eating…it goes on. What are these brands about? What do they stand for? Do you love them, hate them? Do you care? And ultimately, “Do you get it?”

I would like to offer up a 3-step formula that leads to success and the coveted “getting it-ness.”

1 Be Passionate. No, be wildly passionate about something, not 10 things. One great, brand defining something. What is the basic thing your brand does? It’s great when that idea is differentiating, but even if it,s not, what is it? And once that idea/attribute/principle is identified, talk about it, make sure it’s not a secret. Internally and externally, it should be the signature thing that your employee or customer would say the brand is.

2 Simplify. Get rid of everything that doesn’t deliver on that one great passionate idea! Stop trying to do everything for everyone. I know, you want every 15-year-old and 55-year-old to enjoy your brand, right? Wrong, what you really want is a core set of customers that connect with your brand in a powerful way and so they can mutually feed off of the engery and passion both of them create. When that magic happens, an amazing thing happens. Those customers demand that their friends, family and anyone who will listen to them use your brand. But if the brand’s message isn’t simple, then no one will ever understand or care enough to be excited.