How strong is your brand? Would consumers recognise your product or it’s advertising if the logo and name were removed? Can consumers recognise your brand from visual language alone?
These are three important questions that would need to be answered (and honestly) for company’s considering the re-energised trend of unbranding. Also referred to as debranding, unbranding is a marketing strategy wherein brands remove their name or other identifiable elements from their marketing.
What is Unbranding?
The concept of unbranding has been around for decades, with it starting to take more prominence in the 1990’s and continuing since then. As the world has become saturated with advertising, consumers are becoming increasingly conscious of marketing and skeptical of their intentions. Branding is a significant part of any company’s marketing strategy, making a choice to utilise unbranding a tough call.
“Focus on the stories behind the logo—create current positive experiences and long-lasting “wow”s to delight and move your market into comfort and loyalty.” ― Scott Stratten, author of UnBranding: 100 Branding Lessons for the Age of Disruption
Why are Brands Trying Unbranding?
A research study conducted by Cohn & Wolfe Research discovered only 23% of consumers in the US believe that “brands are open and honest.” A statistic that drops to 7% when looking at Western Europe. Consumers finding brands to be inauthentic, isn’t new. This is why there have been fallouts over certain brands sponsorship of events and brand’s involvement in marketing towards children. Some marketers may see unbranding as a way to counteract the negative associations that consumers may have on brands. For established brands, unbranding is a positive sign of brand strength. Only a strong brand could successfully pull off an unbranding strategy without losing their place in the market.
Here are several notable examples of unbranding over the years.
Why Unbranding Isn’t the Future?
The previous examples have two things in common. All of these unbranding moves were successful for the brand. All of these examples are from the most recognisable brands in the world. It is the second point that reveals why unbranding isn’t in the future for a majority of brands.
While there has been an emergence of brands like the Canadian discounter, “no name,” where unbranding is their brand. Brands need to be able to distinguish themselves from the competition. Consumers may be annoyed at constant marketing but it is this strategy that helps enable them to make the best purchase.
Coca-Cola is able to remove their name and logo because everything else from colours, to typeface and bottle design, is so distinctly Coca-Cola. New or less-known brands do not have this luxury.
In the future, more of the giant, international brands that are well-known will continue to use unbranding as a marketing strategy. But smaller and new brands will have to continue to create a distinct brand image for themselves.
Unbranding is only a few of numerous branding strategies that companies have utilised to enhance their image and increase sales. If you are interested to know more about how to increase your brand profile please reach out and contact izest Marketing Group here.