01 INTRODUCTION research question

03 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES statement of intents

05 AUDIENCE who is this for

07 CONTEXT marketing background with a “mystical” flavour the tools

11 20 SECONDS OF MIND SILENCE take a break

13 METHODOLOGY techincally speaking research through design

17 SCHEDULE being chased by the time

19 OUTPUT what I see

21 BIB/WEBLOGRAPHY

22 IMAGE REFERENCES

1

RESEARCH QUESTION

The shift into the Branding field strenghtened my personal interest into those subjects related and, somehow, complementary to it.Due to that, the question research where my project idea come from is conceived on a strong interest for the irrational and unconscious level in wich we tend to perceive brand’s images.

Being a “branding“ student made me experience more than once the feeling to be not fully appreciated (just speaking in terms of work of course...) by others “pure“ graphic designers, and, again, more than once I found myself challenged within this subject.

People in general (and some graphic designers specifically…) blame graphic branding to be a mere tool to make “the Boss“ selling more, to feed up consumerism and create appealing visuals just in order to attract attention on unuseful products; in other words, to lie.

But guess what?At the end of every discussion, people had to give up admitting their irational love for a certain brand.

Most of these arguments I had anyway, were quite constructive to me being helpful in building my own point of view and develop my criticism.

Explained its roots so, my question research is:

“HOW BIG BRAND’S PERSONALITIES AND IDENTITIES LEVERAGE ON OUR SUBCONSCIOUS NEEDS AND DESIRES ?“

2

3

STATEMENT OF INTENTS

This project, is the result of a personal journey through studies about how people tend to perceive brands, the subconscious gears they leverage on and why sometimes they can be so important to people.

Branding is going through radical trasformations, new techonolgies and the web are giving more and more possibilities to engage the public in a lasting way, logos are almost dead, advertising is trasforming itself in order to deliver ever more strong and memorabile experiences, marks want to gain more than respect, they want love.This, to a practical level, is translated with an evergrowing involvement of customers into brand experiences aimed to gain emotional feedbacks.

One thing that drove my attention on the relation between brands and people percetion of reality lay on how, some people, tend to built their personal identity through ostentation of brands and sometime, literally hiding their selves behind a pre-made identity borrowed from some other already existing stereotypized images or by emulating leading people.

In this project I will focus my attention on theories realted to brand and perception, going deeper on the aspects of human “Buyology“ and reasons of people’s irrational love and needs for brands such as social validation, sense of belonging, self actualization, recognizement and so on.

What I would like to achieve is to bring to a level of counsciousness how big brands identities and personalities, levering on our subconscious needs and desires, tend to affect our perception of reality and choices through sophisticate emotional, irrational and somehow “mystical systems“.

The intent is not just to make a statement of perception, but also to present people a diffrent prospective to interpret emotional attachement to brands and their succes.

I believe that, even just by making people aware of circumstances can help to start off a process of elaboration, interpretation and developing a critical point of view about facts that concerns our everyday and emotional life.

4

5

WHO IS THIS FOR

The project is aimed to people of every age, gender and fields; the contents of my research, and so the final output, will focus on the condition of human beings related to brands.

Potential target is everybody who has a “favourite brand”, that is somehow concerned about the brand’s world or use to be a “loyal customer” (and in this globalization era, that means almost every human being in the civilizated world…).

The nature of my research is not to be read in a marketing or statistic key of lecture:the approach and motivations behind this project move from the desire to understand the ”customer” antropologically and in his human condition first.Hate it or love it, all of us, we are subject to brands influence in our perception of personal needs and desires.

Presented and designed in the right visual code, this project could be enjoyed by people at different levels.Is my intent to create a visual piece of work that presents information in an enjoyable way to drive the attention on the understanding of visuals first, and to a deeper analysis of contents second.

Creating 2 levels of lecture, will make this project enjoyable from a broader target of people, giving a chance to a further interpretation to whoever would be particularly interested into the subject.

6

7

That could also explain why, for istance, some people would feel much more confident dressing a well recognizable brand clothes (even if fake, the important is to show off the brand visuals) or why cars are more a status symbol than a means of transporting. Madness?

In the last 60 years, marketing developed a way to advertise branded products based on a sort of chain reaction, to explain it better:Colgate in an adv runned in US claimed that “emerging scientific research is associating serious gum desease with other deseases such as heart deseases, diabetes and stroke”.In short, brush with Colgate or else you will die!

Now, this adv is based on fear, creating a necessity - more people would feel bad if not actually brushing with colgate (NOCEBO EFFECT) - so, what they are selling, more than a tooth paste, is a solution to the problem they created to you;but don’t warry, using Colgate will make you feel better about it (PLACEBO EFFECT).

According with “The horizontal view of irrational needs” (196_Robert B.Settle and Pamela L. Alrek), we tend to consume in order to satisfy needs often without being aware of that at a conscious level. The individuated needs are:

•Achievement•Indipendence•Exhibition•Recognition•Dominance

This is the power of brands, make you perceive them as the answer to emotional and unconscious needs; sometimes they seems to own an alchemic formula to satisfy needs that goes beyond the material.

MARKETING BACKGROUND WITH A “MYSTICAL” FLAVOUR

My reseach moved from an analysis of visual brand’s expressions like logtypes, pictograms and advertising campaigns to move further into markenting and the so called “neuromarketing”.

Really intersesting are the theory and data regarding the so called “the placebo effect“ of brands, a feature also shared with the power of religious beliefs.When people have strong expectations about something that is going to experience, tend to have their experiences alterated by these expectations.So, like the sugar pill that heal pain and deseas, branded products (and for products I mean also services, rituals and so on…) can trigger a shift in your perception and so in your actual perception of reality. Magic?

•Diversion•Novelty•Understanding•Consistency•Security

•Affiliation•Nurturance•Succorance•Sexuality•Stimulation

8

9

CORALE BRAND

HEINZ BRAND

SAME PRODUCT BUT DIFFERENTLY PACKAGED

POSITIVE FEEDBACKS:

EXPECTATION’S EFFECTS ON PERCEPTION

+30%

THE TOOLS

To transalte all my research into a visual piece of work, I will employ the great tool of “Visual Metaphor“.First from an subconscious to a conscious level, second from a theoretical to a visual level, I would like to create a metaphorical system to embrace and traslate the irrational and emotional frame into wich brand identities and our brain interact.

What I found in my previous research so far, speaking in terms of visual expressions, is the strong parallelism that connects Branding to Religion and Totalitarians regimes.The trend to manipulate pepole perceptions through emotional messages based on irrational imagery is something they have in common when it comes to a visual level.That pointed my attenction to the potential of mystical and irrational visual lenguages:to use the words of the Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi “menkind tend to be attracted by what they can’t fully understand because that trigger their imagination “.

On this basis, the starting point for the elaboration of this visual metaphor has been looking into religion, superstition and mystical’s visual grammars as iconicism and divinatory arts.What I came up with is a deep relation between “Tarots cards“ and brand’s identites:both - share a “mystical“, emotional and irrational background. - are defined by inner qualities/values, strong visual identities code. - tend to influence perception of reality and choices - use “storytelling“ to get through consumer emotions.

That is why my further visual research would move in this direction.

Although being more a marketing concept than a visual feature , also the concept of “brand personification“ will be quite suitable to be used into the idividuation of a metaphor capable to express strong links between the world of brands and the mystical imagery of irrational desires and divinations.

10

20 SECONDS OF MIND SILENCE

11

NOW, AFTER THIS FIRST PART OF THE PROPOSAL, TAKE A BREAK, MAYBE A CUP OF TEA IF YOU FEEL IT; RELAX YOUR EYES AND BRAIN BEFORE TO DIVE INTO THE TECHNICAL PART.

12

13

TECHNICALLY SPEAKING

To make this project happen I will collect feedbacks and data from people, experts, theory books, blogs and articles.

I would like to involve personalities like brand journalist, marketers and agencies concerned about the role of brand in society such as Ad Buster (one of my biggest source of inspiration…) into the developing process of my metaphoric system.Furthermore, whoI would also like to involve in my data collection process is brand consumers, so, people.

I will elaborate a questionnaire/interview to submit to people aware of the relative facts, and a survey to help me in the data collection to submit to people through social media, blogs and personal channels.

The info collection will be designd in order to get acces to connections between relevant brands and irrational needs and desires.Being what I am willing to achieve a feedback about processes that occur mostly in a subconcious level, I am aware I will need particular attention in the formulation of each sentence , working through an indirect method to gain the targeted data.That’s why I will take as a model already existing material about surveys used in the past to undecover connections between irrational fears and religions.

This will help me to go achieve something that will go beyond simple connections between brands and products hopefully drawing a valuable frame of data regarding this clouded matter.

14

To give a more tangible example about what I am talking about, an example of unconscious desire filler brand would be Volvo. It is sold as a secure and solid space to sit in and the designs are purposely boxy to accentuate the feelings of complete impenetrable safety of the cars. People who choose Volvo would generally choose brands which they perceive to offer what they are missing internally – a safe place. Their backgrounds may be from divorced or bereaved families, or those who had parents who were financially insecure or unable to provide a safe and stable enough environment for them

Ad: Volvo logo, car and image depicting happy family in or around carBase Unconscious Trigger: Insecure family backgroundQuick feeling of yearned for internal security and stability / Volvo will protect me and keep me safeChain of Thought: Happy family – stability – personal happiness – safety for my family most important part of buying decision – best car for me is safest car – buy Volvo

Generally the only part of the Chain of Thought that the consumer would remember when asked would the last three: safety for my family most important part of buying decision – best car for me is safest car – buy Volvo..

15

RESEARCH THROUGH DESIGN

A complementary part of my research will be to find an appropriate visual lenguage and expression for the presentation of results.I will investigate relevant works related to brands perception, the world of divinations and irrationality, deconstructing visual narrative’s lenguages in order to gain a better understanding of those visual grammars that could be more appropriate to employ in my work.

Important part to accomplish my goal would be the continuous testing of my visual experiment. Through the web platform I will keep an open dialogue with others designers and peers, asking for feedback and documenting the whole process of my work.

16

17

DATA COLLECTING AND FURTHER RESEARCH

FURTHER VISUAL RESEARCH AND EXPERIMENTS

INFORAMTIONS NOT AVAILABLE

MAKING CONCLUSIONS

DESIGNING THE OUTPUT

PRODUCING THE OUTPUT

J U L YA U G U S TS E P T E M B E RO C T O B E RN O V E M B E R

18

BEING CHASED BY THE TIME

For the realization of this project, time will not be the first enemy to fight out, but surely it will be an important one.

I scheduled my work in function of:

19

WHAT I SEE

Thinking about possible outputs for my research, a viable and appropriate way would be a printed, well crafted piece of work like a book or a series of articles.The choice of a printed media come firstly because paper would probably the more adequate support due to the visual style I would like to adopt, secondly to keep an human dimension in the work that is a foundamental feature for the messages I would like to deliver.Also finding it relevant to the visual style, I do not exlude possible productions of screen printing pieces: that would add a further human dimension to the output.

Although being conducted with scientific and rational methods, these contents of unconscious desires, irrational needs and alteration of preception will be the defining the visual style of my output.

Findings and data from the research, will be probably presented in a “visual mystical flavour“ in order to support the metaphoric lenguage of the work.So, even being a quite modren subject to work on, including also informations that wuold probably results in infographic pieces, I want to develop a narrative visual lenguage that express the archetypal nature of my research contents.

An example of possible visual style output:

20

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lindstrom, M. (2009) Buyology, Random House Business Book

Settle, R. and Alreck, P. (1986) Why they buy, New York: John Wiley&sons

Lasn, K (2009) Culture Jam, Mondadori

Ariely, D. (2008) Predictably irrational, New York: HarperCollins

Hamerman, E. (2009) Illusory Control and Superstition: Impact on Consumer Behavior, New York

Noble, I. (2005) Visual research: an introduction to research methodologies in graphic design. Lausanne: AVA

R. Klanten, S. Ehmann, T. Tissot, N. Bourquin (2010) Data Flow 2, Gestalten

Roberts, K, (2005) Lovemarks, PowerHouse Books

Berns, S. (2005) Price, Placebo, and the Brain, Journal of Marketing Research,Vol. XLII (November 2005), 399–400

Carmon, Z. and Ariely, D (2006) Placebo Effects of Marketing Actions:Consumers May Get What They Pay For, Unpublished

Waber. L (2006)The Role of Branding and Pricing on Health Outcomes via the Placebo Response, Master of science in media arts and sciences, Massachusetts institute of technology

http://www.design-thinkers.co.uk/the-psychology-of-brand-choices/

http://coolmarketingstuff.com/the-placebo-effect-and-marketing/

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/02/the-placebo-aff.html

http://www.designerblog.it/categoria/graphic-design

http://www.millwardbrown.com/BrandZ/Default.aspx

WEBLIOGRAPHY

21

pag 7, Brett Ryder’s illustration for the Wall Street Journalpag 15, Volvo Advertising 2006, unknown photographerpag 20, Millennium Tarots collection, unknown artist

22

IMAGE REFERENCES