The big brands.

Whenever you wanted to listen to your music on the go, you wouldn’t just go online, search for a  portable music player. Would you? Of course not! I bet you’d google ‘IPod’ and see the search results. That is magic of having a world-class brand name. Google is no longer one of the search engines we have, but it is only ultimate search engine. All other search engines like Yahoo, Bing or Altavista are considered inferior and only used by a small number of people who are ‘anti-google’ for one reason or another.

Well, Google is not superior due to the fact that it gives the best search results. It is the people’s perception that Google gives the best search results that completely keeps other search engines out of business. For instance, if you couldn’t find something on Google, you would think it is not available online.

However, suppose you had searched it on Bing and you were not successful. You would just say that Bing is not a very reliable search engine? However If you had tried a search on Bing which didn’t bring you the results you had hoped for – you may consider trying the same search on Google, such is the strength of the ‘Google’ brand within the marketplace
One main reason why Google is the best in its field is that it specialized on one thing (search) and ensured it has won this battle first before venturing into other new fields. Well, its success is also due to its branding strength. The Google logo is known by all internet users all over the world, which is good to begin with, but their branding is excellent. Almost daily now google alters its own logo to fit in with an important calendar day – such as the birthday of Charles Darwin, or as I am writing this its Fathers Day so its themed towards this.
Google has launched its own ‘Chrome’ browser to aid its search. Looking at that Chrome ad you would have known right away that it was an ad for the world-famous search engine. Even if the logo is rather small, and almost hidden in the bottom left, is not important. The logo’s unique colours ensure its tied in with the Google brand that you may be forgiven for thinking that it was another company trying to rip off Google’s own logo branding. Unless your company’s brand is at the same level with Google and is synonymous with its field the same way Google is, then you need to improve. Remember, Google had never done venture in real world advertising before, this was achieved by bringing what they did best on the internet into the real world.
However as you can see from the image which accompanies this article, being good a search engines, building a massive brand such as Google doesn’t always go smoothly. The image is of a Google billboard advert. This advert has been designed by someone who is probably used to designing adverts for computer screens – where they have a captive audience sitting only 6 inches from the screen. The designer has no idea of how to proportion fonts and layout for impact on a larger scale, imagine trying to read this advert as you are driving past on the bus or within the car, almost impossible!.

Proving that even the big brands get it wrong some time.

Dean Williams

Dean Williams is a design and marketing blogger working for Print-Print Limited, promoting business and building brands through quality print marketing. If you’re interested in small business promotion then please get in touch hello@print-print.co.uk