The Brand Gap - Marty Neumeier

In order to research the idea of musical acts being brands and how their designed elements effect and create their brand, I read ‘The Brand Gap’ by Marty Neumeier. The book aims to ‘bridge the gap between business strategy and design’ and it gives a lot of insight into the definition of a brand, how brands can be successful and how we as consumers respond to them. Here are some of the points that Neumeier makes and some of the theories he shows that I found relevant to my project:

• In the introduction, Neumeier defines what a brand is, first and foremost by defining what it is not - ‘a logo, or any other kind of trademark, is not a brand itself. It’s merely a symbol for it. Second, a brand is not a corporate identity system.’ - ‘a brand is not a product.’ - ‘ a brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or company.’ - ’the brand is identified by individuals… each person creates his or her own version of it.’ - This definition definitely aligns with what I was thinking about how a music act can be defined as a brand. And it tells me that design plays a part of a brand by influencing consumers ‘gut feeling’ - e.g. with a music act, typography or imagery can be evocative of a certain genre or style, and when a musical act uses design principles appropriately, its telling consumers of that genre that this band fits within the music that they consume.
• Charismatic Brands - ‘a charismatic brand can be defined as any product, service, or company for which people believe there’s no substitute … Because its the language of feeling, and, in a society that’s information rich and time poor, people value feeling more than information’. Neumeier gives examples of charismatic brands such as Apple, Nike and Disney - constant topics in cultural conversation. They have become ‘modern icons’ because they stand for feelings; intelligence, efficiency, strength, power, joy, imagination etc. 
• Tribalism - ‘A brand creates a kind of tribe’ - ‘You’re part of a select clan (or so you feel) when you buy products from these clearly differentiated companies.’ - This idea of identity theory and being part of a tribe or clan is a massive part of the consumption of music; music is a really big part of peoples identities and looking into subcultures, it sometimes consumes their whole identity in regards to style, how they dress, how they act, what they do etc. a good example of how this can applied to design is band merchandising - when you walk down the street wearing a band t-shirt, you are effectively advertising the fact that they are part of your identity, so the design of that t-shirt plays a big part, it needs to effectively communicate that band and genre/style.
• ‘It’s magic, not logic, that ignites passion in customers’
• I mentioned before, The Beatles and pondered how important graphic design was in the consumption of their music, Neumeier actually touches upon them when talking about the ‘MAYA principle’ - the most advanced yet acceptable solution - its the marketing practise of creating fresh ideas that often ‘zig when they should zag’ - ‘An effective use of the MAYA principle was the career of the Beatles. They began in the early 1960’s with songs that were commonly acceptable, then raised the bar of innovation one record at a time. By the end of the decade, they had taken their audience on a wild ride from the commonplace to the sublime, and in the process created the anthems for a cultural revolution. Their formula? As one critic observed: “They never did the same thing once”.’ - Having read this, the importance of graphic design in their musical career becomes clearer; as Neumeier said, they took their audiences on a journey, each record was different, and by doing this they would have had to convince their audience to some degree to get on board with a very different new record, perhaps design was important in this stage to convince the audience, give them something visual to associate with the record. As Aristotle said ‘Perception starts with the eye’.
• Neumeier talked about his experiences in branding and design and how different people respond to design differently - ‘we began to realise that the audience for one product was likely to be different than the audience for another, and that its taste in design was also likely to be different’ - Obviously the case with music and how different design styles are associated with different genres and audiences. Later Neumeier talks about a test called the swap test where you swap the logos/visual identities of two brands to see if they work - ‘a good brand icon is like a tailored suit - it should only look good on you.’ - If you swapped round the the rational narrow sans serif type of an indie folk band’s logo with the sharp, metallic and slightly illegible type of a metal bands logo it just wouldn’t work.
• The living brand - ‘Business is a process, not an entity. Successful businesses are those that continually adapt to changes in their marketplace, the industry, the economy and the culture. They behave more like organisms, than organisations, shifting and growing and dividing and combining as needed. Unlike the old corporate identity paradigm that prized uniformity and consistency, the new brand paradigm sacrifices those qualities in favour of being alive and dynamic.’ - Every time a musical act releases a new album, it can often be like a rebrand or un update to the brand, adapting the design and branding of them to meet the demands and style of the modern audience would be important, so maybe graphic design plays an important role there - keeping the identity of the band current, as Neumeier said earlier in the book - ‘branding is simply a convenient package for a business idea’.