Copyright

by

Jourdan Kenneth Wooden

2021

The Thesis Committee for Jourdan Kenneth Wooden

certifies that this is the approved version of the following Thesis:

The Brand Identity Pyramid: A Theoretical Model to Predict Brand Success and Failure

APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE:

Isabella C Cunningham, Supervisor

Matthew Eastin

The Brand Identity Pyramid: A Theoretical Model to Predict Brand Success and Failure

by Jourdan Kenneth Wooden

Thesis

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of

The University of Texas at Austin

in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements

for the Degree of

Master of Arts

The University of Texas at Austin May 2021 Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Dr. Eastin, who gave me guidance in developing this model, and

Dr. Cunningham, who spent a year keeping me on track as I wrote about it. Thanks to

Professor Rao, who promised he’d read this at some point. And my heartfelt thanks to

Amy, for the support and encouragement to go back to school in the first place; you are my very favorite person, and I couldn’t have done it without you.

iv Abstract

The Brand Identity Pyramid: A Theoretical Model to Predict Brand Success and Failure

Jourdan Kenneth Wooden, MA

The University of Texas at Austin, 2021

Supervisor: Isabella C Cunningham

Te visual aspects of a brand are a powerful communicator. Researchers have spent years investigating the power of suggestion of colors, type-faces, logos, and images in general. Brands depend on visual cues to communicate with consumers in general. Te visual aspect of a brand is an integral part of the brand identity, but still only one part of a whole. Visual branding should reflect the strategic goals of the brand and should reinforce the values, principles, and story on which a brand stands. Tis thesis proposes a theoretical model developed to predict the success of a brand and to provide guidelines for strategists and designers.

Te Brand Identity Pyramid is based on theoretical principles already explored by researchers combined in a predictive model. Practitioners agree that brand is a reflection of a company, product, or service as the customer sees it; however, most existing models approach brand from the orientation of the strategists or graphic designers. Te Brand Identity Pyramid approaches from the perspective of consumer psychology, and was developed afer researching the development and market acceptance of a number of brands through the case study method. Further, the validity of the model was tested through the analysis of three case studies. Tis thesis describes the Brand Identity Pyramid, its theoretical foundations, and proposes the future efectiveness of the model in developing a brand identity congruent with that brand’s strategic goals.

v Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 1

Literature Review ...... 3

Current Understanding of Branding ...... 3

Important Concepts ...... 4

Elements of a Brand Identity ...... 6

Proposed Model ...... 16

Section 1: Preliminary ...... 17

Section 2: Behavioral ...... 19

Section 3: Affective ...... 21

Section 4: Heuristic ...... 24

Methodology ...... 27

Background ...... 27

Approach to the Model ...... 28

Model Development ...... 29

Case Study Development ...... 30

Methodology Conclusion ...... 33

Case Study: Sears ...... 34

Company History ...... 34

Case Analysis ...... 36

Case Conclusion ...... 42

vi Case Study: Target ...... 44

Company History ...... 44

Case Analysis ...... 44

Case Conclusion ...... 49

Case Study: Spotify ...... 51

Company History ...... 51

Case ...... 52

Case Conclusion ...... 59

Conclusion ...... 61

References ...... 63

vii Table of Figures

Figure 1...... 6

Figure 2 ...... 8

Figure 3 ...... 9

Figure 4 ...... 13

Figure 5 ...... 15

Figure 6 ...... 17

Figure 7 ...... 20

Figure 8 ...... 24

Figure 9 ...... 41

Figure 10 ...... 43

Figure 11 ...... 50

Figure 12 ...... 57

Figure 13 ...... 59

Figure 14 ...... 60

viii

Introduction

Everybody knows that branding is important, but a closer examination reveals that many people don’t understand why, or even what branding is. Given that a strong brand can be vital for the success of a business, it is equally vital that said business fully understands the implications of the branding process. Tis is made difcult by the fact that there are many conflicting notions and definitions of brand, branding, and brand identity. By our modern understanding of brand, most practitioners agree that it transcends mere advertising or graphic design, and instead encompasses the consumer’s perceptions of a company, product, or organization. Jef Bezos is widely atributed as saying “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.” 1

Despite this growing consensus in industry, many scholars have only recently begun to approach brand as anything more than a visual mark or name to diferentiate one company from the next, while others still cling to this outdated approach. Tese academics, along with decision makers in business without a deeper understanding, believe that “brand identity” is a collection of colors, fonts, and logos, and that “rebranding” means updating that collection. Even among the group of researchers, authors, and practitioners who subscribe to the school of branding that is explored in the literature review below, many still approach the branding process from the perspective of stakeholders, rather than that of the consumer.

In this thesis, I propose and test the Brand Identity Pyramid: a theoretical model that serves twofold to predict the success of brands, and to instruct designers, strategists, and businesspeople as they are building them. Tis model is not a how-to guide, but rather a way to understand how brand identity is hierarchical, methodical, and rooted in consumer psychology.

1 I’ve seen this well over a dozen times, but never found a reliable source saying when or where Bezos

said it. Regardless of where it originated, it’s a profound and easily understood way to view brand.

1

I demonstrate the model’s validity through the use of case studies, which can serve as a guide for others to apply it to other brands.

Te Brand Identity Pyramid should be useful for graphic designers, advertisers, and businesspeople. Designers are frequently asked to create brands for companies whose executives are upset when the new logo doesn’t solve business problems; by referencing this model, graphic designers can have the conversation upfront about the nature of brand identity, and the responsibilities of all stakeholders. Businesspeople can use this model to evaluate the current brand, and understand how to set up the rebranding process with the greatest chance of a positive outcome. And advertisers can use this model as they bring the brand personality and voice to life, to understand exactly how to present the messaging for maximal impact.

Tis thesis is broken into a review of the current literature, with an explanation of the each of the most important elements of brand identity; an explanation of the proposed model and details as to how each piece of it afects consumers psychologically; an explanation of the methodology used to create the model, and the methodology to create the case studies used to test and iterate it; three case studies of business-to-consumer companies, which demonstrate how brand successes and failures can be explained using the model; and a conclusion where I discuss the implications of the model and suggestions for future study.

2

Literature Review Current Understanding of Branding Despite the central role branding plays in marketing, major academic marketing activity and thought have neglected the branding phenomenon and the way it entered the discourse of marketing theory and research.

Tose are the opening words of the introduction to Bastos & Levy’s 2012 article “A history of the concept of branding: practice and theory.” Over the course of this paper, they explore the “evolution of the brand from a simple entity with limited application and whose creation, interpretation, and control are mostly enacted by one actor…to the brand as a complex entity that is multi-dimensional and multi-functional, and that receives influences from a variety of actors.” As they correctly diagnose, there is a split within both academia and industry as to what “brand,” “branding,” and “brand identity” truly mean.

Te go-to academic definition for “brand” comes from the American Marketing

Association, determined by a group of marketing professors:

A name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers. (Jaworski et al., 2017)

Tis definition is used in marketing classes across the country, but it has three major shortcomings.

First, this casts branding as a wholly creative endeavor, which businesses typically relegate to the realm of graphic design. Te truth is, the people who actually do branding work will be the first to say that it’s about so much more. Ashley Friedlein, founder and president of

Econsultancy, says, “Brand is the sum total of how someone perceives a particular organization.

Branding is about shaping that perception” (Finkle, 2015). David Aaker writes that a brand is

“an organization’s promise…to deliver what the brand stands for… It is a journey, an evolving relationship based on the perceptions and experiences that a customer has” (2014, p. 1).

3

Te second problem with the AMA’s definition is that it casts branding as a mater of diferentiation, when it should be just as much about positioning. Diferentiation is identifying the diferences between one company and the next, whereas positioning is how these diferences are presentation to the customer (Investopedia, 2020). Tis disconnect would not be as important if it was simply between academia and industry, but it isn’t. Many large businesses will hire creative firms to do a “rebrand,” and be shocked when their expensive new logo rollout is met with skepticism or scorn. Examples include Tropicana, Mastercard, and Kraf. Many marketing firms have writen blog posts listing all the mistakes made by these well-known companies, (e.g., Taddei, 2021; Hardy, 2021a). Te mistakes identified typically boil down to approaching the “rebranding” process from a strictly graphic design perspective, without understanding the relationship between the customers and the existing brand.

Te third issue is that this definition sets the scope of research within a limited focus.

Although that scope has been expanding in recent years, it means that the bulk of useful research and resource comes from books and industry practitioners, rather than academia.

Important Concepts As illustrated above, everybody has diferent definitions of many important concepts. In fact, these words can hold diferent meanings in diferent industries (Budelmann & Kim, 2019).

Here are the definitions of several such concepts which will be used throughout the remainder of this thesis:

Te Dictionary of Brand defines Brand as: “A person’s perception of a product, service, experience, or organization; a commercial reputation” (Neumeier, 2013, p. 23).2 In Te Brand

2 Te first edition came out in 2003, published by the American Institute of Graphic Arts. Copies are

exceedingly rare, but I have seen this identical wording atributed to that version as well. I’m including it

as a footnote since I think it helps illustrate how long industry and academia have been divided on the

concept of brand.

4

Gap, also by Neumeier (2006), he applies a less formal definition: “A brand is not a logo…A brand is not an identity system…A brand is not a product…A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product service, or company.” Frequently in advertising, the word “brand” is used to refer to a company or product. I have made a concerted efort not to use this meaning at any point here. I use the words “company,” “organization,” or “product” for those entities, and the word “brand” is specifically used for how customers see said entity. Tis concept is sometimes referred to in other literature as “brand image” (e.g., Malik et al., 2016). Tis thesis does not examine other types of brands, such as celebrities, politicians, commodities (e.g., milk), causes, or ideas; I am primarily studying the brands of organizations.

Te term Brand Identity is “Te way which a company wants to project itself to the customers” (Sagar, 2009, as cited in Malik et al., 2016). Aaker formerly referred to brand identity using a definition similar to this one, but later started calling it “brand vision,” due in part to people associating “brand identity” with graphic design (Aaker, 2014). My diferentiation afer this paragraph is “brand identity” using the above definition, and “visual identity” referring to the visual component of a brand identity, including fonts, colors, and logos. Aaker notes that brand identity should be aspirational, and that businesses can evolve to match a new brand identity (Aaker, 2014).

Branding is when a business takes steps to shape its brand through brand identity. Tis definition is fairly consistent, although some authors also use “branding” to refer to visual identity. Te term rebrand is when a company rolls out a new branding strategy, including a new brand identity and visual identity; replacing a visual identity without updating the underlying strategy is frequently referred to as a “rebrand,” but is more aptly defined as a “visual refresh.”

Here’s a metaphor that may help readers keep these concepts of brand versus brand identity straight. Imagine you have a friend named Michael. In your mind, you know who he is, understand his interests, personality, and flaws; you see him as being a very casual person. Tis is Michael’s brand. Michael isn’t satisfied with that, and wants to be taken more seriously, so he

5

starts wearing a tuxedo everywhere he goes. Tis is Michael’s brand identity. It should be obvious that the brand and brand identity are not the same thing, any more than a friend wearing a suit suddenly makes him a socialite. (In this metaphor, “branding” would be his process of picking out the tuxedo, or puting it on) If, however, Michael started wearing a buton down shirt, and then several years later added a jacket, this might make the progression seem much more natural, as he updates his brand identity once his brand has shifed appropriately.

Elements of a Brand Identity Budelmann & Kim, in their 2019 edition of Brand

Identity Essentials list 100 principles for building brands.

Tey use the metaphor of an iceberg to represent how the visual aspect of the brand only is only the surface level

(illustrated in Figure 1). Tey group these into three categories: essential tools, essential decisions, and essential strategies. Tese are split into 11 subcategories of three

3 principles each. Tese subcategories include Consistency, Figure 1. A representation of the iceberg metaphor, where the logo Standards, and Research, the last of which contains the is the most visible piece, but by no means the whole thing principles “Do your homework,” “Embrace constraints,” (Budelmann & Kim, 2019 p.10) and “Key insights.”

David Aaker describes many of the same principles in Aaker on Branding (2014), but whereas Budelmann & Kim are both designers, Aaker is a strategist and consultant. Teir writing, and their audiences, clearly reflect that diference, with Aaker expounding on the reasons why brand management is vital for a business. Although also clearly a designer,

3 If you noticed that only adds up to 99 principles, the 100th (which applies to all categories) is

“Keep it Simple.”

6

Wheeler (2013) tries to bridge the divide and speak to all members of the branding team; she divides brand into basics, ideals, elements, and dynamics.

Te following subsections correspond to elements of brand identity that are identified as most crucial in the model proposed in the next section.

Preparation Everyone seems to agree that the first step in developing a brand identity is research.

Wheeler writes that “Te first priority is to understand the organization: its mission, vision, values, target markets, corporate culture, competitive advantage, strengths and weaknesses, marketing strategies, and challenges for the future” (Wheeler, 2013, p. 120).

Aaker (2014) says the brand identity “development process start with context and strategy. An in-depth analysis of [many of the factors Wheeler identified above, plus] the business strategies going forward is required background” (p. 29). Furthermore, he says a business strategy is necessary since “brand strategy is both driven by and an enabler of business strategy.”

Lewis, in Brand vs. Wild (2017), compares many brand collapses to similar examples of survival stories; he concludes that just as people respond erratically when confronted with real risk to their lives, people in threatening business situations respond equally erratically. His book lists many common business problems, such as budget shortfalls or increased competition, and

finds that most failed branding stems from poor business decisions made under pressure.

Aaker also stresses the importance of internal branding. As when Wheeler mentions understanding corporate culture, Aaker suggests that employees must be invested in the brand values and strategy in order for it to successfully deliver on the strategy goals. He lists several benefits, notable among them: “A clear, compelling internal brand provides direction and motivation to employees and partners” (2014, p. 123) and “A brand with a vision that includes a higher purpose is likely to provide employees with meaning and even fulfillment in the job. Te

7

higher purpose could be…creating ‘insanely’ good products, improving customer’s lives [sic], or making progress toward sustainability” (p. 124). Te important thing is a set of internal values, which are clearly communicated to employees, and are not incompatible with the preexisting company culture.

Te most important areas of preparation identified in the literature are understanding the company (its values, its history, and its employees’ perceptions of it), understanding the customers, understanding the market, and positioning appropriately.

Customer Experience According to Kerry Smith & Dan Hanover (2016), modern understanding of brand says that there are four core value propositions: price, performance, service, and relationship. I believe these can be divided into two groups, with price and performance relating to a product, and service and relationship relating to a company.

For both these groups, it’s all about the experience the customer actually has. No clever messaging can afect price, performance, or service (more on relationship in a minute.)

Experience can fundamentally alter a customer’s perception of a company or product, which fundamentally alters the brand. Tis can be in a positive or negative4 direction. See Figure 2 for a representation of how experience alters perspective.

Figure 2. Experience Transfer (Smith & Hanover, 2016, p. 21, Figure 2.2)

4 My mother hasn’t shopped at a Target since 2002 due to a single bad experience.

8

Wheeler says “Every customer interaction must be viewed as an opportunity. A memorable experience generates positive buzz and is fun to share; a bad experience becomes a lost opportunity that can sabotage the brand” (2013, p. 18). Budelmann & Kim write “Consider all touchpoints…Te best brands translate well to a variety of customer interactions” (2019, p.

192).

Consumer Brand Enmeshment theory proposes a measure of a consumer’s valence and activity toward a brand (see Figure 3.) A negative valence matched with passivity is preferable to negative activity (which can result in boycots or bad reviews.) Positive passivity is preferable to negative passivity. And positive activity reflects the most thoroughly enmeshed customer (de

Villiers, 2015). Tese top quartile customers are the ones who most reliably purchase and even proselytize the brand, becoming brand advocates. Valence and activity both stem from the customer’s experience with the company and its products.

Figure 3. The valence and intensity of CBE model (de Villiers, 2015), Figure 4)

9

A highly activated customer with positive engagement could easily flip from an advocate to a vocal detractor with a bad experience, so it’s vital that the company invest in ensuring that doesn’t happen

Relationship is Smith & Hanover’s fourth core value proposition, and it transcends customer experience. Tey list four criteria, and show that “relationship” lies at the center of a

Venn diagram of the four: (2016, p. 19)

• Identification (brand is relevant) • Inspiring (brand makes people feel beter about themselves) • Helpful (brand solves a problem) • Meaning (brand stands for something) Tese criteria each must begin in the preparation tier, but “Helpful” is the only one executed at the customer experience tier. Te others have more to do with messaging and brand personality.

Story & Personality At a luncheon for advertising professionals in 1955, David Ogilvy said “Every advertisement is part of the long-term investment in the personality of the brand.” If I reprinted his remarks in their entirety, I would feel quite confident the most important concepts of brand personality were conveyed. He spoke about the failure of short-term planning when applied to brands, the importance of establishing a brand personality, the importance of strategic decision-making, and the importance of tailoring the brand personality to the target audience:

Most manufacturers are reluctant to accept any such limitation on the image and personality of their brands. They want to be all things to all people… And in their greed, they almost always end up with a brand which has not any personality of a kind – a wishy- washy neuter brand. No capon ever rules the roost – and neuter brands get no place in today's market. (Ogilvy, 1955)

Interestingly, Ogilvy’s philosophy predated most academic research into the field, and was based purely on experience and observation.

10

People have a tendency to anthropomorphize brands. Macinnis and Folkes (2016) reviewed a variety of literature on the humanization of brands and found that the “greater perceived cohesiveness of corporate entities (e.g., Burger King, McDonalds) makes them particularly susceptible to being humanized. Pham & Avnet (2009) found afective evaluations were more sensitive to social comparisons than cognitive evaluations. Tis can be amplified by brands which pick human names, mascots, or personas (e.g., Wendy’s, Amazon Alexa,

Marlboro) according to Macinnis & Folkes (2016), who also found that this is subconscious, and upon becoming aware of this humanization, people will consciously try to de-anthropomorphize the brand.

In this context, personality and story are closely related. Lin & Chen (2015) call brand story “a means of communicating the meanings of products and brands to customers” using narrative. Tey found that diferent types of consumers responded to diferent types of stories, and that marketers should take care to cater their brand story to their target customer.

Levinson (2007) says companies must “develop a core story. Rest assured the diference between many a success and failure is market planning and nothing else. It’s having or not having a core story” built on the positioning developed from research (p. 36). Although

Levinson’s book, Guerilla Marketing, is not about brand building (in fact, he reduces brand to repetition of a company or product’s name), he is insistent that in order to be successful in marketing, a company must build a core story, built on positioning and research. He even quotes Ogilvy on the subject.

Voice Neumeier (2013) adds that voice is “the verbal dimension of brand personality” (p. 159).

Budelmann & Kim (2019) list three principles in their section on voice: “Te name game,”

“Editorial style,” and “Brand voice.” Te first principle is about the importance of finding the right brand name. “An organization’s name establishes its most overt identity and provides

11

excellent raw material for a strong brand,” although they also note “An average name won’t completely limit the prospects for a brand” (p. 56).

Te second is about copy in all its forms. Te brand name, taglines, slogans, press releases, copy on packages or the web, and any spoken or writen copy in advertisement all contribute to the brand; the tone and style are part of this. “Word choice, syntax, sentence length, metaphor, and what is lef in or out all contribute to brand perception” (p. 58).

Finally, the third principle:

An organization’s name, tagline, and editorial style add up to an overall reflection of its brand identity—its voice… If your brand was a person, what would they sound like? Are they loud and boisterous or quiet and shy? Are they funny? Educational? What do they say? (Budelmann & Kim, 2019, p. 60)

Wheeler (2013) writes “Te best brands speak with one voice. On the web, in a tweet, in a sales pitch, in a speech given by the president, the company needs to project the same unified message” (p. 30). Tis illustrates the heuristic nature of voice.

Heuristics are essentially shortcuts for our brains; they are rules that allow us to quickly make connections and decisions without needing to think through a complex problem. Logos are the obvious heuristic: seeing the Tide logo immediately connects you to quality laundry detergent, without needing to spend any more mental resources piecing it together from context. Brand voice is also a powerful heuristic: having disparate messages and tones, as

Wheeler cautions against, forces the customer to analyze the topic; with a coordinated voice, the customer sees all messaging as a part of the brand identity.

Importantly, my proposed model categorizes the elements of brand identity into behavioral, afective, and heuristic, rather than cognitive which is more commonly the third category. Although heuristics have traditionally been classified as cognitive functions, “there is a

12

growing body of research from multiple disciplines that suggests that afective processes play an important role [in heuristics] as well” (Pham & Avnet, 2009).

Visual Identity Visual identity lies near the root of the confusion over brand and brand identity. To be technical, visual identity is ofcially referred to as trade dress, meaning “colors, shapes, typefaces, page treatments, and other visual cues that create a brand identity” (Neumeier,

2013, p. 147). People unfamiliar with brand theory ofen think that visual identity is brand, and people less familiar than that will reduce brand to just a logo.

“Even though it’s the most identifiable expression of the brand, a logo is not a brand. A logo is a symbol of the brand” (Budelmann & Kim, 2019, p. 8) Typically, the word logo is used to refer to a company’s symbol (sometimes referred to as an icon or logomark,) wordmark, or the two used in conjunction. At their best, they can reinforce brand story by using visual rhetoric

(Mithat & Merve, 2017). Figure 4 shows examples of the diferent types of logos.

Wordmark Logo Symbol Logo

Combination Logo

Logo Lockup (Wordmark + Symbol) Figure 4. Various logo treatments in New Holland Brewing Company’s visual identity system (New Holland Brewing Co, 2021)

13

Visual identity typically includes color and type, in addition to logos. Typefaces (or fonts) can ofer a company another way to diferentiate themselves visually.5 Typefaces are not typically owned by companies however, unless customized; as a result, type ofen must be supporting element of visual identity, unlike a logo which is the star of the show (Hill, 2012).

Wheeler (2013) says “Most brands have one or two typeface families that are used consistently across platforms…Te typeface family is not necessarily the font used in the [wordmark]. Some companies choose to design their own proprietary font” (p. 149). She also writes that

“Typography is a core building block of an efective identity program,” and reinforces its usefulness as a heuristic cue, while cautioning that it “must support positioning strategy and information hierarchy” (p. 158).

Color is also a powerful tool in the brand arsenal, and all sources agree that it is tied to emotion. Recognizable colors can serve as both a “personality cue” for the brand, and also as

“associative priming” (Baxter et al., 2018). Another way of phrasing those two efects is that color can be an extension of the brand personality, story, and voice; and that color can act as a heuristic. Budelmann & Kim say that “Strong brands use color in a fiercely consistent fashion.

Choosing the right color is important…but the importance of consistency in application can’t be overstated. Anything less adds confusion to the emotional spectrum” (2019, p. 22). Wheeler adds that “while some colors are used to unify an identity, other colors may be used to functionally clarify brand architecture, through diferentiating product or business lines (2013, p. 154). An example of this can be seen in Figure 5.

5 I use the font HK Grotesk for everything I do, such as my website, resumé, or social media collateral.

Te Graduate School doesn’t specify which font to use for a thesis, so I’m using it here as well. I find it

aligns with my brand of trendy professionalism (that’s how I choose to see it, anyway!) and also works

as a heuristic cue for others to quickly identify my work.

14

Figure 5. Different product lines from New Holland Brewing Co. Although the orange from the main brand’s visual identity can only be seen in the backdrop, each product line is differentiated by color and illustration. Still, could anyone mistake these as belonging to different brands? (Cowan, 2021)

Every brand identity is diferent, and many include other pieces of visual collateral, such as iconography, illustrations, shapes, gradients, photography, illustrative styles, or photographic styles. Tese pieces, along with the logo, type, and color, combine to form visual identity. When used together, they make up the powerful visual component of the brand identity.

Ofen when a company announces a “rebrand,” they mean a visual refresh. But the brand is not something a company controls; it exists in the mind of the consumer. Terefore, a visual refresh is only efective if it is done A) to align the visual identity with the existing brand identity, or B) in conjunction with an entirely new brand identity in an efort to reshape the brand. Tese eforts are where understanding how the elements of brand identity come together, and the psychology behind each one.

15

Proposed Model

Most of the literature on branding has been focused on graphic design, business strategy, or marketing theory. Tis model seeks to center the brand experience in the context of media psychology. It is presented as a pyramid; I considered a funnel (marketing folk love funnels), but the pyramid is a fundamentally accessible shape which lends itself adeptly as a metaphor. Looking down from above, the top layer of a pyramid might seem the most prominent, overshadowing the others; from a distance, the gleaming capstone might seem to be the most important piece.

In this model, visual identity is the capstone. Tat is what many people think of when they hear the word “brand.” However, the capstone—regardless of its magnificence—cannot exist without multiple, strong layers beneath it. Just as with a real pyramid, a brand needs to start with a foundation.

Before beginning the branding or rebranding process, the company’s leadership must fully understand what branding is. Branding is not a band-aid, it is a bold announcement of a new direction, and it cannot overcome poor business decisions or inaction. Company leaders who cannot fully commit to this process will undermine the finished product by weakening the foundation. Armed with this understanding, we can start at the botom of the pyramid with preparation.

Te model has four distinct sections, from the botom up. Te first is entirely internal, but sections 2–4 relate to the “brand” as it exists within consumers’ minds, and are supported by psychological theories. Te Brand Identity Pyramid is illustrated in Figure 6.

16

Figure 6. The Brand Identity Pyramid.

Section 1: Preliminary Tis section is preliminary actions taken by the company and is entirely internal.

Although the customer doesn’t experience this section, it forms the foundation for the brand itself.

Preparing to establish a brand is an intensive and involved series of processes. Tere are many existing guides that can help guide a business through these processes (e.g., Aaker, 1996;

Aaker, 2014; Yohn, 2018), but because this step does not relate to consumer psychology, I won’t spend a lot of time on it in this thesis. However, it is too important a topic not to mention these most important elements:

• Leadership must commit • Market Research • Internal Research • Strategic Goals • Positioning

17

Te company’s leadership must fully commit to the process. Unless the leadership of the company is willing to commit to a brand and all it entails, the whole exercise is meaningless.

Branding requires steps be taken at every level of the company. Most obvious, there will be expenses related to marketing and collateral. Less obvious are the changes to company culture and procedure; as will become clear, these foundational aspects are required for a brand to succeed, but will be undermined by a lack of belief in and commitment to the brand.

Research is important, and should be the first step of any brand identity. It should be two-fold, examining how consumers view the brand, and how employees view the brand. In order to maintain authenticity, decisions on the direction of the company need to be built from where the findings overlap. Otherwise, there are only two options: customers are expected to go along on a journey that doesn’t make sense to them, or employees are expected to embody an image they disagree with. When developing a new brand from scratch, this step can be replaced entirely with market research to determine which need the company is trying to fill.

New brands have no baggage.

Finally, the company must set business and strategy goals for the rebrand. Tis can involve determining the positioning the brand, in terms of product ofering or niche. In this context, positioning doesn’t refer to messaging, but is a function of the business strategy of understanding where best in the market to position the product or service.

Although the customer is unlikely to see or interact with anything directly produced by this stage of the branding process, it should be immediately obvious why each of these identified steps is vital for the brand to be successful.

18

Section 2: Behavioral Tis is the first section of the brand identity, and is the base of the customer experience.

Tier 1: Customer Experience – Company Sometimes a company has a very tight focus, and is thus inextricably tied to its product

(e.g., Hammermill Paper Company) or service (e.g., Mailchimp.) Sometimes companies are massive, and use so many subsidiaries to ofer so many products and services that the parent company itself has litle relevance to the consumer (e.g., Proctor & Gamble, Unilever.) For those companies, either Tier 1 or Tier 2 will hold more importance.

Rationale. Most companies exist somewhere between those extremes. For them, the customer’s experience with the company itself is perhaps the most important pillar of brand identity. Customers will respond well to cheerful, knowledgeable employees; courteous, efcient customer service agents; clean and inviting spaces; and evidence that a company lives its values.

Likewise, even a single negative experience with the company can forever mar a customer’s relationship with the brand. A person can forgive a faulty product, but if they have a rude or unhelpful customer service encounter, it’s over.

Psychology. Bandura’s Social Cognitive Teory (SCT) is an involved explanation of cognition. Unlike most other cognitive theories, SCT believes that cognition has external factors.

SCT states that everyone has personal, environmental, and behavioral processes which interact with each other to form atitude. Figure 7 illustrates key processes identified by Schunk &

DiBenedeto (2020).

19

Figure 7. Social Cognitive Theory (Schunk & DiBenedetto, 2020, Fig. 2) On the Brand Identity Pyramid, Tiers 1 & 2 are greatly afected by these processes, but in diferent ways. On the personal level, experience with the company is about social comparison and atribution. On the behavioral level, achievement and environmental regulation mater more. And the customer is seeking to conform to the environmental standards and receive rewards for this compliance. Although surely each brand will engage diferent aspects of

SCT, I believe that, combined, Tier 1 and Tier 2 should engage with all three aspects of SCT.

Individually, each tier should engage with at least two.

Tier 2: Customer Experience – Product Rationale. Nothing else about the brand maters if the product doesn’t deliver. A customer’s experience with the product can shape their entire understanding of a brand. If it doesn’t work properly, breaks easily, or is overpriced, this can sour the customer’s atitude toward the brand. Still, even a negative experience with the product can be mitigated by a good customer service response, which is why the experience with the company still serves as this tier’s support.

Psychology. A customer’s experience with the product can also be explained with SCT, but it manifests diferently; it drives straight into the personal, and deals with questions of self-

20

efcacy and the expected outcomes from the product. It also taps into behavioral processes, namely efort, persistence, and achievement. And finally, the customer will receive feedback from their environment related to the product; think the response buyers of luxury cars—or budget phones—can expect to hear from their peers.

Section 3: Affective As we continue up the pyramid, we move away from the actual concrete experiences and into the feelings customers associate with the brand. Although this section is only one tier, it is fundamental for brand. It is built on the foundation of preparation and behavioral experience, and is the platform which allows the heuristic branding to work.

Tier 3: Personality & Story Rationale. Story is perhaps the most difcult aspect of brand identity to understand. It is not as simple as a voiceover telling stories in commercials, although that may be part of it.

A brand story is, simply put, the story the company wants to tell. All companies have a story, even if they didn’t write it themselves. Here is a basic example:

Imagine a restaurant that serves Italian food. It has friendly servers who chat about trivialities, paper placemats and crayons for children to draw, and a jukebox in the corner. Te owner doesn’t know anything about branding, so each of these elements were added as he thought of them. Despite this lack of a plan, he would be inadvertently telling a story of a casual place to take your family on a weeknight.

However, if he wanted to tell a story, he might decorate the walls with Italian frescos, play sof music, instruct his employees to be reserved and deferential, employ low lighting, and put candles on the tables. Tis would tell a story of a holiday to a quaint Italian village, dining in the countryside with loved ones. And it is done far more efectively than simply puting a blurb on the restaurant’s website explaining the owner’s family ties to Italy.

21

A story for an Italian restaurant is not particularly difcult, but we can use this as a template. It should be easy to see how collateral can be used to tell a story: a wine label with a tableau, mountains, or a pond can tell a story of a location or experience; a wine label with just a logo (or worse, just text) misses this opportunity. A fashion catalog showing models using the clothing in context, such as while hiking or at a bar, tells a story; photos of models against a white background does not.

Whatever the story, it must be genuine. Brand identity is only efective if it fits— consumers can see when something is inauthentic. It is easier for non-profit organizations to find an authentic story, as it is built into their mission, but for-profit companies can certainly accomplish this as well (as in the examples above.)

Psychology. Tere are any number of narrative theories that support the efectiveness of stories in persuasion. Atribution theory—which states that people seek to assign motive to others’ behavior (Trafimow, 2013)—can explain why it’s so important for businesses to have a story. People have a tendency to respond to brands as if they were other people (Macinnis &

Folkes, 2016; Kervyn et al., 2012), and since people seek to assign motive to others, this means they will naturally try to explain why businesses do what they do. If the company can supply a motive as part of their branding, it can prevent customers from drawing their own negative conclusions. People tend not to be able to diferentiate types of communication. For example, a person will interact with their physical television set in much the same way they interact with other people (Reeves & Nass, 1996).

Because people orient themselves to brands as if they were other people, companies can leverage this by crafing a brand personality, essentially designing a persona to which customers can orient.

Te five-factor personality model (FFM) lists five factors that define people’s personalities (Tomas, 2017). It is important to note this is not a “personality type” quiz or framework, but rather five spectrums on which every personality can be mapped. Tis tier is

22

“story” as well as “personality,” and adding Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a sixth factor is useful for crafing this story. Every brand appeals to specific needs of Maslow’s hierarchy. For example, jewelry brands ofen appeal to the Belongingness and Love needs, luxury cars appeal to the Esteem needs, and political advertising ofen appeals to the Safety needs.

So, with the FFM and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs together, brands can build a personality around these criteria:

• Extraversion: outgoing, solitary, energetic, etc. • Agreeableness: amenable, compassionate, critical, etc. • Conscientiousness: organized, careless, responsible, etc. • Neuroticism: nervous, confident, controlled, etc. • Openness (to experience): cautious, adventurous, inventive, etc. • Needs: physiological, safety, belongingness & love, esteem, self-actualization, transcendence

Step one of most marketing endeavors is defining the target audience. Te reason for this is that messages need to be designed to appeal to that audience’s personality. Te FFM

(with Maslow’s hierarchy) is a great way to break down what the audience cares about, so that the message can be designed around this.

When seeking to position a brand, marketing and advertising professionals should:

1. Identify the target audience. 2. Map their psychographics against the Five-Factor Model and Maslow’s hierarchy. 3. Identify how the product can meet the need identified in step 2. 4. Frame the conversation around the product using the right words to evoke the desired response from people who fit the FFM personality profile.

Note that the actual brand personality does not necessarily need to be identical to that of the customers. A fashion brand may adopt the personality that its customers wished they had, similar to how an influencer is someone their audience might aspire to be.

In gauging the efcacy of a brand and predicting its success, evaluators can instead examine its story and messaging, and reverse engineer a brand personality from this data. Tis

23

personality can be compared to that of the target audience to see if it is structured correctly. An unrelated personality is a sign of a weak brand; being totally unable to construct a personality from the data is a sign of a failing brand.

Section 4: Heuristic Te final section consists of what most people think of when they think “Brand Identity.”

For example, read the University of Texas’s “Brand Book.” It talks about word choice, colors, logo protocol, and fonts. Tese are important, but they are heuristic cues. Tey are not the brand.

Psychology. Te Elaboration Likelihood Model

(ELM) explains two ways that people process messages: the “central route” and the “peripheral route” function

(Pety & Cacioppo, 1986). Te central route is for high- engagement messages, things they care about, or decisions that require research; this is essentially a cognitive thought-process. Te peripheral route is for things that don’t really mater; this is essentially a heuristic. Heuristic cues are perfect for influencing the peripheral route. Figure 8 shows a simplified representation of this model.

For a hypothetical example, a person buying toilet paper might see Charmin, hear “Don’t squeeze the Figure 8. A simplified representation of the ELM. Charmin!” in their head, smile, and buy it. However, if

Charmin had been in the news for human rights abuses in their factories, that same shopper would not be influenced by the catchy tagline. A real-world example is BP, which branded itself as a green company. Teir green and yellow logo looks like a sun or a flower, and they used nature in their advertising to great efect. Of course, that all changed with the Deepwater

24

Horizon oil spill in 2010. All the clever visuals in the world couldn’t overcome the damage done further down the pyramid.

Tier 4: Voice “Like people, businesses have also developed a voice in the online community to maintain a presence among their competition throughout newsfeeds, tweets, and images”

(Weiss, 2018, p.1).

Perhaps the most obvious example of brand voice is the literal voiceover on television commercials, but this is far from the only one. Any type of ad copy, taglines, web copy, social media posts, press releases, employee interviews, and customer interaction scripts (such as on a customer service phone line or greeting customers entering a store.) Even applying brand voice to internal documents and training material can be helpful; as discussed, brand identity is aspirational, so internal application can help shape the desired outcome.

Brand voice is built directly on the foundation of the brand’s personality and story. Te diference comes down to its purpose: Personality and story is in the afective section; it is crafed around a desired feeling in the customer. Voice is in the heuristic section because it is a shortcut that reinforces the brand’s personality. Brand voice is not as efective in a vacuum.

However, while it is roundabout, a consistent voice can begin to build the personality. In that case, it functions afectively, rather than heuristically, and uses the psychological explanations of that section instead of this one.

Tier 5: Visual Identity Tis is the lynchpin of brand identity, as it is the most visible. Visual identity is what holds a brand together. Tis consists of the logo, color palete, typography, photo usage guidelines, web design, signage, and every other visible element of the company, down to the paint on the walls.

Unfortunately, as I have mentioned several times, because visual identity is the most visible part of brand, people think it’s the most important. Tat’s why branding is thought to be

25

something handled by graphic designers when, as should be clear, it requires the work of an entire marketing team working with solid research.

However, once everything else has been taken care of, that’s when graphic designers get their chance to shine. If the designer understands the business objectives, the brand strategy, the desired customer experience, the brand personality, brand story, and brand voice, then that designer has a much beter chance of creating a cohesive and authentic visual identity system that can elevate the brand.

26

Methodology Background Visual Identity systems have always fascinated me. My first job in college was working for the Boy Scouts of America, and I would occasionally be asked to make signs. Probably typing something into Microsof Word in a fancy font would have been enough, but I always did my best to make something that matched existing marketing content. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was participating in the branding efort by maintaining a consistent visual identity.

During this job, I found a PDF of the organization’s “Brand Identity Guidelines”6 on the computer system; this guide literally changed my life. I was fascinated, and referenced it regularly. At later jobs, I always looked for the company’s guidelines, even though it had nothing to do with my job responsibilities. My decision in 2017 to pivot into graphic design was driven by my interest in brand systems.

As I studied and practiced graphic design, I examined brands as a hobby. When major companies or products released new visual identities, I tried to understand why. I read articles by designers and design agencies about the logic and process of branding. I became an avid reader of Brand New, a blog about companies rebranding themselves (this blog is actually referenced in the subsequent sections of this thesis, as it provides a detailed analysis of the graphic design decisions made by the companies.)

I also noticed there was a fundamental problem with brand identity, which lead me to build this model.

Te most important problem with brand identity is a fundamental misunderstanding that it encompasses more than graphic design. Tis means various agencies, corporations, and

6 It’s out of date at this point, but is still accessible at

htps://filestore.scouting.org/filestore/marketing/pdf/Brand_Identity.pdf (Boy Scouts of America,

2011)

27

independent graphic designers each come to the table with slightly diferent beliefs and expectations. Businesses try fixing deeper structural problems with graphic design, then are surprised when it doesn’t work.

Many designers and marketers are even aware of this problem and caution businesses to be aware of it (e.g., Gregory, 2021; Hardy, 2021b; Piontek, 2019). Some companies have actually made solving this problem central to their business. For example: Worstofall Design, a wife-and-husband agency, went from being deeply in debt to fantastically successful. Tey had been a traditional graphic design agency focused on visual identity and website design, but revamped their processes, procedures, and focus to provide holistic brand identity services— starting with helping their clients fix their business plans (Tang, 2016).

Approach to the Model I think the key word is “holistic.” Tere are many ways of understanding brand identity, but I noticed they fit into two categories: procedural and incomplete.

Tere’s nothing wrong with procedure—for example, Aaker’s Brand Identity Planning

Model (Aaker, 1996, p. 79) is an excellent way to understand how a business should approach brand identity; I think it’s a great resource for the companies at the “Preparation” stage of the

Brand Identity pyramid. My issue with his model, and those like it, is it approaches brand identity from the orientation of the business, and doesn’t explore how customers interface with the brand identity. Designing Brand Identity (Wheeler, 2013) tries to hit every aspect of brand identity, but approaches it from the perspective of the branding team, rather than the consumer. Again, this is a valuable resource for those involved in branding, but lacks the structure that demonstrates how the pieces of brand identity build on each other

Other ways of understanding brand identity, including many of the books explored in the literature review, are similarly limited in how they approach the subject. Brand Vs. Wild (Lewis,

2017) examines brand from a business preparation perspective, Experiential Marketing (Smith

& Hanover, 2016) looks at the customer experience, and Brand Identity Essentials (Budelmann

28

& Kim, 2019) addresses how graphic designers should approach branding. Te fundamental definition of brand—brand is how a company exists in the minds of its consumers—seems to be overlooked by these perspectives.

In the development of the Brand Identity Pyramid, I avoided being procedural. Tere is an inherent hierarchy and procedure in the pyramid itself, but I am not writing a how-to guide.

Instead, my goals were to be holistic as to the elements of brand identity, and to use media psychology to explore how consumers interfaced with brand and brand identity.

Model Development Te Brand Identity Pyramid actually grew out of a project I was assigned. Students were told to pick a client, identify a business problem, and pitch how the student could couple media psychology with their own specialty or research focus to solve that problem. Afer my analysis and recommendations, I realized that the elements of brand identity I had identified were hierarchical, and developed a draf version of the model proposed in this thesis.

Unlike many theoreticians and researchers, I did not set out to develop a model using a particular theoretical framework. Instead, I used what Kathleen M. Eisenhardt (Eisenhardt,

1989) referred to as the “traditional” method: “Combining observations from previous literature, common sense, and experience.” Cellucci (2018) defends the importance of using heuristic reasoning7 in the development of theory, quoting mathematician Pólya who says, “if you take a heuristic conclusion as certain, you may be fooled and disappointed; but if you neglect heuristic conclusions altogether you will make no progress at all” (Pólya, 1971, as cited in Cellucci, 2018). Of course, as Eisenhardt is quick to point out, reliance on this method ofen

7 Heuristic reasoning is distinct from heuristic cues, which I refer to as “heuristics” in other parts of this

thesis. Heuristic reasoning also refers to the way one’s brain makes cognitive connections, but rather

than describing a shortcut between a cue (such as a logo) and an experience, heuristic reasoning could

be more aptly described as the process of an “educated guess,” or even a “gut feeling.”

29

leads to theory that is only tenuously connected to the data (Perrow, 1986 & Pfefer, 1982, as cited in Eisenhardt, 1989), which explains why she pioneered and methodized the use of case studies to develop theory qualitatively.

Since developing the initial draf, I have examined many case studies—and developed three of my own—which has allowed me to more methodically iterate the model. Tis approach is what Ridder refers to as the “Gaps and Holes” method of using case studies (Ridder, 2017).

Essentially, I started with a theory in its prototype form, and through case study examination I was able to find the errors in it, then use this knowledge to refine and update it. Te version presented in this thesis is the fifh iteration, and it consistently is supported by brands I have observed—demonstrably for the three brands I explore in the case studies I generated, but more broadly in the brands of other companies I have interacted with or read about.

One of the challenges outlined in the literature review is the historical misalignment between the academic and industrial understandings of brand identity. One efect of this is that unlike with other related fields, such as the efects of business strategy on financial success, there is not a large body of peer-reviewed case studies of various companies’ brand identities.

Tere is however a considerable volume of industry and press content. Tis includes journalists covering new identities, documenting customer reaction, and talking to experts; it also includes designers and marketers weighing in on each other’s work. While these are not case studies in the traditional, academic sense, I think this is a reasonable way to classify them for the purposes of explaining the methodology of developing the model.

Case Study Development

Company Selection In order to demonstrate the practical applications of the Brand Identity Pyramid, I many companies, but I examined three in special detail. In particular, I looked at the history, strategic decisions, brand identity, and outcome of these companies.

30

Te companies in question were Sears, Target, and Spotify. When selecting these three companies, out of the many I considered, I looked at these criteria:

• National or international footprint or brand awareness. • Consumer-facing (rather than business facing) • Consumers purchase directly from the company

I selected Sears and Target because they contrast with each other. Both companies faced similar competitive struggles in the 1990s, but used diferent brand strategies with difering results. As will be demonstrated, Sears is a retail company that demonstrated brand failure. Target has a similar audience, ofering, and value proposition, but is an example of brand success. While both Sears and Target are consumer-facing retail company, Spotify is a consumer-facing service company. Spotify is diferent enough to show the Brand Identity

Pyramid can apply outside of the specific retail field, but similar enough that it can be reasonably compared to Sears and Target.

One limitation of this methodology is the types of brands I looked at. I did not look at business-to-business companies, companies that exclusively make products (such as Procter &

Gamble,) product lines in a brand portfolio (such as Tide,) companies that market directly to consumers, or financial service companies; I suspect that the model would still apply to those brands, although it may need to be tailored or revised on a case-by-case basis. I also did not look at celebrity brands, influencers, causes, or political candidates; I’m certain that elements of my research would apply to these brands as well, but I can’t confidently predict the model would work for understanding or building those brands.

Tese are the steps I took to determine and interpret branding goals at each level.

Tier 1: Customer Experience – Company With regards to the customer experience, all successful companies should share the same goal: ensure the customer has the best possible experience when interacting with the company.

31

To evaluate how this goal applies to a given company, I identified the most common interactions between the customer and the company (not the product or brand, but the company itself). From there, I used whatever resources were available to determine the response from customers. Most typically, these resources were press, such as newspapers or online magazines; these articles frequently used contemporary social listening, and included examples of tweets from customers to illustrate the atitude toward the brand at the time.

Tier 2: Customer Experience – Product As with the company, the customer’s experience with the product itself should be positive. I used a similar process to determine the customer experience with the product, but I followed these additional steps:

• Identify the product’s unique selling proposition. • Identify the benefits leveraged in the product’s marketing. • Use available resources to determine the reaction to these products.

Tier 3: Personality & Story As detailed in the model and literature review, brands have personalities. I atempted to derive the personality of each brand by mapping it on the Five-Factor Model (FFM). For each factor of the FFM (Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and

Openness) I found the best-fiting adjective. I also identified to which tier of Maslow’s Hierarchy the brand strategy was atempting to appeal. From this point I analyzed whether this personality model matched with the target audience.

Tier 4: Voice Atribution Teory says that people seek to assign motivations to others’ actions. In order to make the brand personality more relevant and relatable, the brand should cultivate a specific voice. I analyzed advertising, marketing, social media posts, and other customer-facing copy to determine the anthropomorphic characteristics that each brand was seeking to exemplify.

32

Tier 5: Visual Identity Ofen agencies will create expansive documents explaining the logic behind a visual identity. When available, I used these explanations to determine the strategy behind the visual identity. Tere is also great interest in visual identity within the graphic design community, and I was able to use blogs and publications to find analysis of these identities as they were being released. I also used my background in graphic design to interpret the implications of visual elements such as logo, typography, color, composition, and collateral. Tis is literally as much art as science, so I’m certain other designers could come to diferent conclusions; however, I backed up my own assertions with similar published opinions where possible.

Methodology Conclusion In summary, I developed the Brand Identity Pyramid by combining psychological theory with industry knowledge, academic literature, and empirical observation. I then used the case study method to test, iterate, and further develop an empirical justification of the model’s efectiveness. When creating the case studies used for this process, I used a combination of historical documentation, news reporting, analysis and coding of advertising, both public and industry response to visual brand elements, and my own analysis as a graphic designer.

33

Case Study: Sears

Company History Richard W. Sears created the R. W. Sears Watch Company in Minneapolis in 1886

(Encyclopedia Britannica, 2019). He moved it to Chicago the following year and—although he sold it two years later—he and Alvah C. Roebuck, his watch technician, created a second mail- order business: Sears, Roebuck, and Company. Tey grew to prominence through their famous catalogs; one of the most popular items they sold was home kits: for between $650 and $2,500, a customer could order blueprints and all the materials required to build a house, which would be delivered to them. Sears sold nearly 100,000 such homes between 1908 and 1940, many of which are still standing today (Sears, Roebuck, and Co., 1912/1998; Cooke & Friedman, 2001).

In 1925, as automobiles gave customers greater traveling capacity, Sears opened its first retail location in Chicago (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2019). Sears launched some of its most famous brands, including Kenmore in 1913, Crafsman in 1927, and Allstate in 1931 (Sears

Archives, 2012). Allowing people to pay in installments, coupled with ofering car insurance, allowed Sears to remain unscathed by the Great Depression (Wilson et al., 2005). As shopping malls proliferated across the United States, Sears became a common anchor store. Te Sears

Catalog remained a mainstay of American households, although its relevance ebbed as retail took center stage (Doblin, 1996). Sears was king, a position not seriously threatened “until the

1980’s, when the Kmart Corporation surpassed it in total sales” (Encyclopedia Britannica,

2019).

In an efort to stay ahead, Sears diversified into finance, and in 1981 acquired Coldwell,

Banker & Co. (a real estate firm) and Dean Witer, Reynolds Inc. (a brokerage company); together with Allstate, this made Sears the largest financial services company in the United

States (Gillan et al., 2000). In 1985 Sears, through Witer, launched the Discover credit card.

Tis was groundbreaking in a number of industry-disrupting ways, including no annual fees, high

34

credit-limits, a reduced fee structure, and cashback programs (Fernando, 2020). Despite this, retail sales continued to flag, and Sears spun of its financial services into Dean Witer, Discover

& Co. in 1993 (Gillan et al., 2000; Sears Archives, 2012). Sears discontinued its famous catalog that year, which had grown into a bloated and expensive 1600+ pages (Scussel, 1991), and two years later spun of Allstate as well. Over the course of the 90s, Walmart overtook Sears and

Kmart to become the number one retailer—not just in North America, but in the world

(Encyclopedia Britannica, 2019).

In 2004, Sears was purchased by Kmart, both reorganized under the new Sears

Holdings. Te chairman of Kmart, Eddie Lampert, took over as chairman of Sears Holdings, and in 2013 became CEO.

Over the last twenty years, Sears’s eforts at managing both their brand and their business may best be described as “flailing.” In an efort to gain relevance in the clothing sector,

Sears acquired Lands’ End in 2002 for $1.9 billion in cash; the move was widely criticized as a bad fit, given that Lands’ End had a reputation for higher-prices and higher-quality, which didn’t

fit with Sears’s status as a discount department store (Money, 2002; Chintagunta, 2017).

Indeed, in 2013 they spun of Lands’ End. Tey sold their Crafsman brand to Stanley Black &

Decker in 2017; afer the sale, they continued to represent Crafsman as their own brand and were promptly sued over it (Miller, 2019). Although they retain the Kenmore brand, it is exclusively produced by other companies (“Who makes Sears Kenmore?”, n.d.), giving Sears very litle control over the product quality.

Sears Holdings filed for bankruptcy in 2018, and was sold to Lampert’s hedge fund in

2019 under the trade name Transformco (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2019). Te number of Sears and Kmart stores shrunk from 3.6 thousand in 2010 to fewer than 200 in 2020 (Peterson & Gal,

2019), and fewer than 100 in 2021, although Transformco is cagey about the exact number still open (Shoulberg, 2021).

35

2004–Present It is impossible to discuss the failure of Sears without talking about Eddie Lampert.

Although there were certainly bad business decisions made before he took the helm, they accelerated under his leadership. He reorganized the company according to Ayn Rand-ian principles, piting diferent units against each other (Cummins, 2016). He has been accused of being out of touch with the company; according to reporting, he would rarely come into the ofce in-person, sometimes only once per year for the annual shareholders meeting. He could

fly of the handle if employees said the wrong word to him—such as saying “consumer” instead of “member”—and “fostered a climate of fear among the company's most senior managers”

(Peterson, 2017). He neglected the physical Sears and Kmart stores to the point of dilapidation

(Peterson, 2016; Wahba, 2019). He cut life insurance benefits of 90,000 retirees, while simultaneously awarding $25 million in bonuses to executives, in the midst of bankruptcy proceedings (Folley, 2019). He was accused by creditors as orchestrating a “multiyear and multifaceted scheme” to strip Sears’s assets at the expense of its business, wasting cash on stock buybacks that benefited his hedge fund and engaging in self-serving and potentially fraudulent business practices (Bomey, 2019). Although the purpose of this case study is to examine branding—and make no mistake, Sears is an example of abject brand failure—it is worth noting that this demise was not driven by a poor brand, but rather by squandering a strong one.

Case Analysis Sears has a long history, and the brand has evolved a number of times. Our modern understanding of “brand” solidified in the late 20th century, while Sears was still a powerful and established company. Tis 1980s–90s version of Sears is the snapshot of their brand that I believe is most relevant in modern customers’ minds, and is what I focus on in the analysis as a baseline.

36

Preliminary As the 21st century retail picture came into view, it was clear that Sears had faced hurdles. Although Sears had its roots in catalog sales, customers had grown uninterested in this decades earlier. Although Sears was a discounter when compared to other department stores,

Walmart took pricing to a level where Sears couldn’t compete. Although Sears ofered clothing, it had Walmart quality with Target prices.

Eddie Lampert decided that brick-and-mortar was the past and e-commerce was the future. In 2007, he said, “We will not spend money on capital expenditures to build new stores or upgrade our existing base simply because our competitors do” (Wahba, 2019).

Tis was ignoring two fundamental facts. Te first was a problem with the market: although Sears had a full-service web store as early as July 2000, they made no meaningful improvements to it for years; during that time, Amazon transformed themselves from an online bookstore into the controlling interest of web commerce (Delventhal, 2019). By 2005, when the Sears-Kmart merger was complete, Sears had a tremendous amount of digital ground to cover. Te second fact was about the customer experience, which falls into behavioral branding.

Behavioral Branding Te most fundamental part of a brand is the customer’s experience. For brands like Amazon, this manifests in subtle ways, such as shipping speed, customer service, and price, along with any number of smaller details.

For a brand like Sears, which is a brick-and-mortar business, the store is important.

Today, Amazon shares a duopoly on ecommerce with the remainder of the internet. Despite this, since 2005 the bulk of Sears’s resources have gone into their ecommerce department, while their stores atrophied.

In 2004, when a customer entered a store, they could expect to see a well-stafed and well-stocked store with quality merchandise—if not enough customers. Likely, if someone went to a Sears store at all, it was for their appliances, tools, or auto departments. Erik Gordon, at the time a marketing professor at Johns Hopkins University, gave this analysis: “Unless you're buying a car batery, monkey wrench or dryer, you don't think of Sears… Sears hasn’t figured

37

out how to reinvent itself” in the face of competition from Walmart, Lowes, Best Buy, and others (Chandler, 2004). While it was true that Sears had not “reinvented itself,” it was still delivering on a model that had been successful for decades, which involved a pleasant shopping experience.

Within ten years, this had all changed. Customers entering Sears today are likely to have difculty finding an employee to help them, due to chronic and severe understafng. Once they’ve tracked an employee down, the incentive structure means that employee will aggressively try to sell the customer on the Shop Your Way rewards program (Peterson, 2016). Te stores themselves are full of empty shelves (Wahba, 2019). Tey sometimes have bedsheets blocking of unused sections. Pipes might be leaky, or the door-side security detectors visibly broken.

Retailers who have successfully entered the ecommerce world (such as Kohls) lack the great distribution warehouses Amazon has, but are able to leverage their stores as smaller distribution centers (Wahba, 2019). Sears is a store. Neglecting its brick-and-mortar locations (or closing them all) did nothing but hurt the brand.

Although the customer’s experience with the company is the most important tier of the Brand Identity Pyramid, the second is experience with the product, which Sears also struggles with. Sears diferentiated itself early on, and consistently through most of its history, with products that matched quality with cost-efectiveness. By the 2010’s, this had entirely changed. Internal corporate divisions were forced to compete against each other, sourcing their own products, which led to quality concessions in an efort to stay afloat (Delventhal, 2019). As noted in the company history above, they have sold their Crafsman brand, and don’t manufacture their Kenmore brand. With few product brands of its own, Sears no longer has control over their quality. Furthermore, product exclusivity is no longer a reason to shop at Sears.

Affective Branding Sears does not seem to have intentional afective branding. Afective branding is about the story of a company. Right now, the story of Sears is one of failure. An ancient behemoth, existing entirely on momentum. Momentum which has almost run out. Tis is not a good story.

38

Tere are a couple of reasons why this is the story, not least of which being it’s the truth. But perhaps Sears could have changed this by seting a solid foundation of a good customer experience, then building on that with a carefully crafed narrative, and a brand personality that embodies it. Instead, they tried inefectively to use this tier of branding as a bandage, using advertising to correct the fallout of an ongoing issue.

Sears’s advertising budget has predictably shrunk year-over-year (they stopped advertising Kmart altogether in 2018). In fact, they have gone so far in the other direction that they actually sell advertising space on Sears.com (Sears.com, n.d.).

Sears’s brand voice has been on a journey, from touching, to confusing, to where it is today: incoherent. In 1991, the brand slogan was “You Can Count on Me” (Schmeltzer, 1991).

Tis simple appeal was designed to put customers at ease. Tey moved on from there to “Come

See the Sofer Side of Sears” (Tice, 2010). By 2010 the slogan was “Life. Well Spent.” If ever there has been a brand sounding its own death knell, this was it. Finally, 2019 brought with it:

“Making Moments Mater” (Peterson, 2019).

“Making Moments Mater” is generic to the point of boring. According to a Chicago

Tribune interview with chief brand ofcer Peter Boutros, it is targeted at “baby boomers and young families” (Peterson, 2019). Tis lack of focus in audience is emblematic of the lack of focus in brand story.

Te Brand Identity Pyramid calls for a company to profile its customers with five adjectives on the Five-Factor Personality Model, as well as a tier of Maslow’s Hierarchy. Te company can then use this data to inform the brand personality they adopt. Given that their brand personality is so fragmented, I don’t think it’s possible to reverse engineer a personality from it. I do think the tier of Maslow’s they are targeting with their brand story is “love and belonging.” Although this works very nicely for a brand like Target, it doesn’t for Sears.

Appliances, such as refrigerators and laundry machines, fall into the physiological needs

39

category, while tools would fall more into safety or self-actualization. Framing Sears as a place for family connections to happen doesn’t fit with the products they sell.

It’s important for the afective branding to build on the customer experience. Te fact that Sears has not taken any strides to focus on the customer experience in recent years means the story was developed outside of that. Te idea of “making moments mater,” while touching, is hard to believe when the actual experience of shopping in a Sears store is so unpleasant. Te brand message that Sears is presenting is unrelated to the actual experience customers have with their company.

It’s also difcult to see how that falls in line with their strategy goals of a web-first model, although it does fit with the ill-advised shif toward sof-lines.

Heuristic Branding Te Brand Identity Pyramid is designed to dispel the myth that “branding” is equivalent to “visual identity.” Sears is a perfect example of how visual identity cannot fix problems further down the pyramid. Sears’s most famous logo was unveiled in 1984, and remained virtually unchanged until 2004. Since 2004, Sears has had 4 diferent logos, each a further deviation from the bold and recognizable logo the customers were used to (MixDex Wire, n.d.; Vit, 2019;

Vit, 2020). To further complicate maters, Sears Canada came up with a completely unrelated logo in 2016, which they used until they shutered in 2018. In the face of deep, structural problems, Sears tried to do a facelif. (See Figure 9.)

Tere were several problems with this strategy. Te first traces back to strategy and customer experience: these logos were part of an efort to look more contemporary while competing in an ecommerce world, but the lack of support for collateral in stores meant that the old logo was what customers would see when they went to the physical location. Tis also led to a situation where the signage on various stores showed diferent logo versions, which was diferent still from the website. Tis diluted the strength of the logo as a heuristic.

40

Logo 1984–1994 Logo 1994–2004

Logo 2004–2010 Logo 2010–2019

Logo 2020–present Logo 2019-2020

Sears Canada Logo 2016–2018 Figure 9. Sears Logo Evolution

A second problem was the logos were not well received (e.g., Peterson, 2019; Vit, 2019;

Vit, 2020). As a graphic designer, I feel qualified to agree with both consumers and the graphic design community that these logo evolutions—especially the two most recent—are a mess.

Tey appear to be chasing trends—such as the move toward thinner, lower-case fonts—but without any logic behind this choice. Te 2019 wordmark, while rather bland, at least is a logical evolution. Te accompanying icon is terrible. Armin Vit, a graphic designer who runs Brand

New, a blog that examines when companies change their visual branding, opined:

An icon that wants to be everything — a home, a heart, an infinity loop, a washer and dryer (I made that last one up) — but ultimately is nothing. As a drawing, it’s fine, but as a value-add to the Sears brand it’s fairly useless: if Sears has anything going for it is its name and the fact that the name has survived so many decades and this recent bankruptcy is a testament to its holding power. Diluting it with a gratuitous icon, at this point in its history, comes across as a desperate move for relevance. (Vit, 2019)

41

Tere is a poll at the end of the article, where the community of graphic designers can rate each element on a 3-point Likert scale.8 Te wordmark was beter received, with 44.1% of the more than 2,400 calling it “fine” while 47.2% called it “bad.” More than 2500 voted on the icon, and 82.8% found it “bad.” In addition, the icon was openly mocked as a rip-of of Airbnb’s logo, which has been speculated to drive the next change, one year later (Vit, 2020).

Regardless, this is an example of the wrong approach to branding. Heuristics branding should be a shortcut, a visual way to remind the consumer about the brand story and his experience with the company and its products. Logos should never be used in an efort to reinvent a brand; the brand is not the property of the company.

Case Conclusion Objectively, Sears has failed as a brand. As of writing this case study in March 2021, there are a handful of stores still in operation, but the once-great behemoth is gone. It’s probably too late to do anything about it.

Sears started their most recent branding journey with a flawed foundation; rather than doing the necessary preparation to understand the market’s needs (what customers actually wanted from them) they pivoted in a strange and unexpected direction. From there, they allowed the customer’s experience with both the company and its products to deteriorate. Tey bounced from message to message, before finally trying to tell a fictional story of a thriving business that was integral to the shopper’s family. And they squandered the equity and recognition of their previous visual identity by trying to make a sofer, more modern logo, also in an efort of convincing customers that Sears was something it wasn’t.

8 Great, Fine, Bad

42

Tis case study was actually the most helpful for me to develop the brand identity pyramid. By understanding what they did wrong, it helped me trace the root of the problems.

Te first was not understanding what consumers wanted from the company. Te second was failing to deliver a good experience at the customer’s touchpoints with the brand. Te third was trying to tell a story unrelated to that customer experience. And the fourth was to try to fix the whole mess with shiny graphics.

Figure 10. Sears Brand Summary.

43

Case Study: Target Company History Target, Walmart, Kohls, and Kmart all opened their doors over the course of 1962, and the “discounter” concept was born. Te next several decades saw fierce posturing, marketing, and expansion, set against a backdrop of war, recession, and technological proliferation. By marketing as a hybrid department store, general store, and grocery, these companies acted as a counterpoint to the higher-priced department stores or local mom-and-pop stores that consumers were used to. Te convenience and value proved alluring, although initially the customer base was “class- and income-driven” (Zmuda, 2012).

Although Target began as a single piece of Dayton-Hudson’s brand portfolio, along with several other chain department stores, it enjoyed success that soon propelled it ahead of its siblings. It became the most important piece of the portfolio, to the point that in 2004 the

Dayton-Hudson Corporation changed its name to the Target Corporation.

Tis is a case study of Target, but it is worth mentioning those other brands: Walmart, discussed more below as one of Target’s chief competitors, is the largest global company by revenue (Fortune, 2020). Kohls pivoted firmly into the department store lane, and is currently the second largest department store by revenue globally (Statista Research Department, 2020).

Kmart, on the other hand is virtually extinct, for many of the same reasons as detailed in the

Sears case study; Kmart was initially Sears’s fiercest rival, but since 2005 the two companies have been owned by the same parent company, with the same CEO, subject to the same brand mismanagement.

Case Analysis

Preliminary Since its doors first opened, Target focused on diferentiating itself with a clean, bright, and friendly store culture (Zmuda, 2012). Remember, the definition of brand we’re using is entirely about customer perceptions; despite diferentiating itself from other discounters,

44

Target was still firmly a discounter. In 2000, Target atempted to place an ad in Vogue, and were firmly told no. Vogue responded to Target’s request saying, “We don’t want your money, because including a brand like Target would diminish the quality of our advertising” (Parekh,

2012). Target had advertised for their entire history, but this rejection inspired them to step back and rebrand.

Target tasked their ad agency, Peterson Milla Hooks, to fix it. And they did. Tey realigned the company’s branding eforts with the new strategy of being afordable-chic

(Parekh, 2012). Tey spent the next twenty years continually doubling down on that goal, particularly with their clothing (Rodriguez, 2015).

Behavioral Branding Consumers love Target, and this is by design. Target has focused a lot of time and energy on their customers’ experience, both with the company and its products. Te following store design elements are there to help customers enjoy their experience (and, incidentally, to spend more money): (Gonella, 2020; Hanbury, 2019; Tyler, 2018)

• A Starbucks near the entrance borrows that brand’s equity as a “third place” where customers can hang out and browse, rather than rushing through a stressful shopping experience. • Clear and efective signage allows customers to easily navigate the shopping experience. • Store layout moves customers between product categories in a natural and seamless way. • Store shelves are kept tidy and well-stocked.

Customers expect a good experience when they enter a Target store. Tey expect to find afordable and fashionable clothing. Tey expect low prices, but they also don’t want to feel like they’re shopping at a discounter. Target customers expect to have fun with shopping, and

Target delivers (McGrath, 2016).

When it comes to products, Target delivers as well. Teir private labels (store brands) are immensely popular, and are anchored by high-profile partnerships, such as with Chip &

45

Joana Gaines and Vineyard Vines. And although the well-documented “Target Efect” means customers regularly purchase more than they meant to—sometimes hundreds of dollars more—the key to Target’s success on this tier is that customers “don’t actually regret buying anything” (Gonella, 2020). Target’s products are good quality, and customers are happy with them.

Affective Branding Research tells us that the way people interact with brands mirrors the way we interact with each other (Kervyn et al., 2012). Companies can leverage this by building a brand personality, essentially a persona to which consumers can orient themselves. As detailed in the model and methodology sections, the Five-Factor Personality Model (FFM) is a useful way to quantify the brand persona. Although it lacks the binary spectrums of the FFM, including

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as a sixth factor is an excellent way to see the messaging priorities of the company.

My analysis indicates that Target is trying to build a persona quantified by these traits on the FFM:

o Extraversion: Energetic o Agreeableness: Friendly o Conscientiousness: Spontaneous o Neuroticism: Confident o Openness: Imaginative

Te brand story appears to be targeted at evoking:

o Needs: Love & Belonging

To rephrase that in two sentences: Target is atempting to be trendy, fun, and adventurous. By using this as the platform for its personality and story, Target is focusing their message at people who view themselves as similarly adventurous—regardless of whether it’s true or not.

46

Te truth is, Target is not too diferent than Walmart (although with a trendier selection) or Bed Bath & Beyond (although they carry more product categories.) By presenting themselves using the personality outlined above, Target efectively diferentiates themselves, appealing to a sizeable niche in the population. Te message presented is: “Sure, Walmart’s cheap. Yeah, Bed

Bath & Beyond is for people looking for home goods. But Target is fun, and you’re fun, right?

You aren’t boring, so why would you shop somewhere that is?”

Tis is directly in line with their behavioral branding. Everything from the trendy clothing to the Starbucks by the door is about making customers feel “trendy, fun, and adventurous.”

Because the customer experience is already designed around this, the brand personality and story feels like a natural extension.

Target’s afective branding is very much aligned with the strategy goals of being

“afordable-chic.” By analyzing the FFM, they have positioned themselves on the more positive end of each spectrum, without being extreme. However, the position on Maslow’s hierarchy is solidly in the middle. Te messaging in the ads focuses less on Esteem, as is the case with many fashion brands, and more on familial connections. Many of their advertisements explicitly show family members together. Others do this implicitly, showing children and adults separately, but still in the same TV spot. Tis perfectly encapsulates the ethos of Target’s largely white, female, middle-class audience.

Heuristic Branding Target has had a remarkably consistent visual identity for years. Nearly all visual marketing consists of the logo (or sometimes the elements of the logo), along with Target’s specific red and white (e.g., Melander, 2014; Peters et al., 2014; Peters et al., 2015). Te simplicity of the logo, just a dot and a ring, allow those elements to be separated and reused in a way that would look busy—or just plain bad—for most other logos. When Target uses colors other than red, they are usually bold primary or secondary colors.

47

Te font choice is typically a bold Helvetica Neue font (Melander, 2014), which is sleek and modern, while simultaneously being traditional and reliable.9 Te type weight in advertising also shows strength, and the color always contrasts well with the background—ofen because the font is white over a bold primary or secondary color.

Te music in Target advertising is always upbeat and energetic. Te voiceovers, when they have them, strike a conversational tone, and are frequently in a pleasant, female, generically-American voice (in the United States, at least.)

Tese heuristic cues support the afective branding factors identified very nicely. Te bright colors and music are energetic, the typography is confident, the way the logo is deployed is imaginative, and yet Target’s TV spots typically highlight the family and belonging needs that people seek.

Te heuristic branding is also tied directly into the customer experience. Te color red is integral to shopping at Target—the sign on the door, the signage inside, the paint in the dressing rooms, and even Target’s store credit card: the RedCard. Signage is writen using the brand voice. TVs in the electronics section display promotional material made in the visual style of the current advertising. Tis fulfils the core purpose of a branding heuristic: creating a shortcut in the customer’s brain linking each tier of the brand identity pyramid into a cohesive brand.

Seeing the Target logo should remind customers of the positioning and experience of the brand.

Te voice and visual identity adeptly build on the afective branding to realize Target’s strategy goals. Te product is a tidy, engaging, and efective brand.

9 It may sound paradoxical, but Helvetica is one of the few fonts that can reliably do that when employed

properly.

48

Case Conclusion Target always diferentiated itself by demonstrating a level of care for its stores that was not present in many other retailers; however, the brand as it existed in the public’s minds did not live up to their goals of being trendy. By making their stores welcoming, clean, and organized, Target made the customer experience with the company relaxing and enjoyable.

Tey provided name brand goods, coupled with high-quality private label products, and made sure that everything looked modern. Tey pioneered the fast fashion game, with new and fashionable (and afordable!) clothing lines every season. Tey made sure that customers never lef the store upset, and that they never regreted their purchases, cementing a good customer experience with the product.

Building of the updated merchandise, Target made an efort to position itself in all communication as a fun, trendy, and adventurous brand; a great place to shop for young people, and parents who still wanted to feel fun and young despite having kids. Te brand voice was perfectly in line with that story, making it clear that everything Target sold was afordable and fashionable, and emphasizing family in the advertising content. Finally, Target’s visual brand tied everything together, using bold colors, fonts, and images to remind customers of the

“fun-trendy-adventurous” story. Target also included visual branding—namely the logo and their trademarked red color—in nearly every single touchpoint the customer has with the entire brand experience, amplifying its impact and usefulness as a heuristic shortcut.

It’s difcult to determine which parts of a company’s success can be atributed to the strength of its brand, especially since market forces and any other number of factors can be atributed as well. One thing is clear: since 2000 (when Target first decided to adopt their modern branding,) the stock price has increased more than 420% (Yahoo Finance, 2020).

I’m not qualified to explain how competition, technology, monopolization, consolidation, or social issues afected this trend. I do feel qualified to pronounce Target’s brand, as explained by the Brand Identity Pyramid, to be a success. Target developed a plan, built a customer

49

experience around that plan, built a brand personality around that experience, and then rigorously developed their voice and visual identity to recall that personality.

Figure 11. Target Brand Summary.

50

Case Study: Spotify Company History Spotify is a Swedish music-streaming company, created in 2006. It launched in 2008 in several European markets, and expanded to the United States in 2011 (Reisinger, 2011). By that point, they had 1.6 million paying subscribers (Reisinger, 2011); nine years later, they have 138 million subscribers, and 299 million monthly active users (Spotify, 2020).

Spotify did something that had never been done before, and revolutionized an industry still reeling from its last revolution. In 2003 the iTunes store redefined how music was purchased, making it about songs rather than albums. Five short years later, Spotify made it about the library, not the song. By allowing users access to—essentially—every song ever made, for the cost of a monthly subscription, Spotify revolutionized the landscape. Free users have access to the same service, although it has some limitations and is supported by advertising.

Others followed suit. Tere are dozens of other music subscription services, and none of them difer too widely from the model set by Spotify (Germain, 2020).

Although Spotify is one of the world’s largest brands today, by all accounts that’s not how they started. Te name “Spotify” was derived by accident, based on one founder mishearing another founder’s suggestion. Tey searched it on Google, found that nobody else had claimed it, and registered the domain name “a few minutes later” (Ek, 2010). Te “-ify” appendix was very trendy at the time, but meant nothing in the context of building their brand.

Similarly, Spotify’s original logo was a rushed blend of trendiness and availability. Te “radio wave” iconography was very common in logos at the time (a trend that has only accelerated), and the color was merely a green that hadn’t been claimed by another brand (Bowie, 2020).

Tere was no strategy or brand vision guiding these decisions. Although this sometimes happens in startups, it is important to redefine the brand before it has had enough exposure to stick.

Unlike Amazon (known as Cadabra for its first several months), Spotify did not change things in

51

time. Tey had an uninspired name, an uninspired logo, and a lot of brand recognition (Bowie,

2020).

Tis is not to say that Spotify has a bad brand. As I detail in the case analysis, they have a very strong brand. However, the company’s initial success was as a result of its strong product ofering, rather than any sort of grand understanding of branding principles.

In recent years, Spotify has focused on expanding their purview into everything audio.

Tey have invested heavily in podcasts, with several “high-profile acquisitions…including the

Ringer, Gimlet, Joe Rogan, and…Megaphone” (Nadi, 2020) as well as a podcast hosted by

Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen. Tey have introduced technology allowing Spotify- exclusive podcasts to include full-length songs in their episodes (although users without paid subscriptions will only be able to hear 30-second previews) (Carman, 2020). Tey are hoping to grow advertising revenue through this strategy (Ioannou, 2020), and are reportedly considering adding a podcast subscription service to their repertoire (Kastrenakes, 2020). Tey are also establishing themselves as an institution with the introduction of music charts (Spotify Charts,

2020) and awards (Spangler, 2019), and as a thought leader with a new podcast about the future of audio (Bapna, 2020).

Case

Preliminary Spotify’s history is much shorter than a brand like Sears. Tis means they’ve had less time to grow and change, but it also means that their early decisions are still relevant. It doesn’t really mater today (or forty years ago, for that mater) which logo was on the Sears Catalog in

1930; it maters immensely the choices Spotify was making in 2006, however.

When Spotify started, all they cared about was the product, and it showed. Tey didn’t have a plan. Tey did, however, change this. As the platform’s popularity took of, Spotify combined customer research with market research to make a game plan: continue to expand their music ofering, expand into all digital sound, and establish themselves as an institution.

52

Although I don’t have any cited sources for this process, I think it can safely be assumed based on the outcome that Spotify started their branding process with research. It’s even quite possible they may not have realized that these decisions were related to brand; regardless, since the customer’s experience with the company and its products are the foundation of a brand, Spotify’s decision to focus on that experience contributed greatly to its behavioral branding.

Behavioral Branding Spotify took the world by storm. People were obsessed with it. Before it was available in the United States, Americans tried every technological trick in the book to gain access (Calore,

2009). As time has passed, Spotify has consistently measured and shaped public opinion, seting trends within the industry and growing its user base by leaps and bounds. Although there are other streaming services, Spotify has set the standard. All smart phones may be measured against the Apple’s iPhone, but even Apple Music is measured against Spotify (e.g. Adorno,

2021).

Spotify’s brand was built on its behavioral branding. As detailed above, the heuristic branding at launch was incidental and uninspired (afective branding as well, to a lesser extent).

Although surely those customers associated Spotify with the puke green and radio waves, for the bulk of its rise, Spotify’s brand was defined by customer experience.

Spotify is one of those companies that is inextricably tied to its product ofering. I don’t think there was enough distinction early on to make the customer experience with the company any diferent than with the product. Later on, however, they have done an excellent job establishing their company in a way that builds value in the brand. For example, hosting the

Spotify music awards, creating brand partnerships (such as with Starbucks or SXSW), and pivoting to brand themselves as a music company (instead of a tech company.) Tese moves help appeal to consumers’ Personal “Values” process, and multiple Environmental processes on the Social Cognitive Teory model.

53

However, Spotify did not seem to have well established brand values when they launched. Perhaps this was part of why the company (as an entity) did not meaningfully contribute to the brand. In 2016 they introduced corporate values; in my opinion, they were not revolutionary, but still efectively established a common goal for the company. Te fact that they were developed with extensive employee feedback and voting definitely contributed to a sense of ownership and buy-in from the employees. Having enthusiastic employees is a sure way to enhance the customer experience with any company.

In 2013, Spotify focused the majority of their brand update on enhancing and streamlining the systems of the platform, namely the user interface and user experience. Tey have continued to update their processes as time goes on, growing their design and development departments, and deploying new frameworks to enable “aligned autonomy” between units (Kaiser et al., 2020).

At their early stages, Spotify especially appealed to consumer’s Behavioral processes in the SCT model. Specifically, Spotify activated consumers’ Behavioral “Choice of Activities” process. Additionally, in its first years, international users (including Americans) who wanted to use the platform would need to jump through hoops to gain access—this activated their

Behavioral “Persistence” and “Achievement” processes, and their Personal “Self-Efcacy” process. As Spotify has grown, they have introduced new features to capitalize on other elements of SCT. For instance, personalized year-end playlists activate Personal “Atribution” processes, giving atributional feedback that Spotify is what enabled a user to experience the music they enjoy.

Affective Branding Early on, Spotify had a slapdash strategy with their afective branding. Tey positioned themselves very efectively, however their brand story was built on this positioning, rather than on any sort of afective goal.

54

Spotify’s positioning early on was simple, but it worked. Framing themselves as an alternative to the iTunes Store and traditional physical media allowed Spotify to quickly and efectively diferentiate themselves. Teir 2015 rebrand very efectively repositioned them as a music company, which also enabled them to redefine their brand story organically.

Spotify’s story at launch was nothing more than their product ofering. Tis actually isn’t uncommon with new products. When the technology is new, messaging ofen needs to be more about information than emotion—for example, Apple’s first iPod commercial was a forgetable spot about the number of songs it could hold. (Apple quickly pivoted into dancing silhouetes.)

However, it took Spotify a long time to reinvent their story; in the meantime, I believe the story of their brand grew without corporate input. Fortunately, the story that customer’s wrote was favorable and gave the company a suitable starting point when they did rebrand.

My analysis indicates that Spotify is trying to build a persona quantified by these traits on the FFM:

o Extraversion: Sociable o Agreeableness: Contributing o Conscientiousness: Organized o Neuroticism: Fearless o Openness: Curious

Te brand story appears to be targeted at evoking:

o Needs: Esteem

With their recent branding eforts, I think Spotify has writen an excellent story for themselves. Tey are simultaneously an industry leader (the most-subscribed streaming service), a disruptor (upending the music industry), an underdog (competing against beter- funded Apple and Amazon), and an establishment (releasing music charts and hosting awards).

Despite these contradicting stances, Spotify’s story compellingly represents each of them, and the brand positioning backs it up.

55

Spotify’s afective branding started of adequately. It wasn’t inspired, but it was efective enough to support the brand, which was still being driven largely by the Tier 2 product experience. Once the company was large enough to branch out, they successfully reinvented their afective branding to be in line with their strategy goals. In my assessment, existing users should be able to adjust to this branding, since it is a logical progression of the brand, drawn from strategic foundation which understands its audience.

Heuristic Branding Spotify started its visual journey from a disappointing place, with a logo I would characterize as cheesy and poorly-designed. For example, the serif on the botom of the “S” is the only one that’s rounded, and is also longer than any other serifs, making the S feel both botom-heavy and like it’s about to tip over into the “p”. Te “fy” has a ligature, which is a bit unusual although not unheard of; the issue with it is the ligature combines the bar on the “f” with serif on the “y”, which makes the “f” look lopsided and the “y” look like it’s crowding in.

Te logo also requires five colors, which is too many: the white leters, the light green background, one shade darker for the first bar and leter outlines, two shades darker for the second bar, three shades darker for the third bar. Tere’s no reason for the “o” to be raised, no reason I can tell for the radio waves to be at that angle. Because of their coloring, the radio waves don’t feel like they’re actually part of the logo. It’s also impossible to use this logo on any background other than that green, which greatly limits graphic applications of the logo in both digital and print formats.

Spotify revamped their visual identity in 2013, to generally favorable reaction. It was characterized it as “playful, bubbly…[and] lively” (Kastrenakes, 2013) and was listed fourth on

Business Insider’s “10 Best Corporate Logo Changes of 2013” (Feloni, 2013). Te wordmark was very good. Te sans-serif font is a medium-weight Gotham, edited to have rounded corners and a circle over the “i” instead of a square (Ha, 2013). Te choice to ditch the serifs meant that

56

the entire logo was cleaner. In a nod to the earlier logo, they kept the “fy” ligature, which feels much more balanced without the serifs. Tey simplified the colors, making it easier to see across formats, which boosted its accessibility.

However, my personal assessment is that Spotify made a mistake here and consequently missed an opportunity. Tey moved the radio waves into a circle all on their own, and overlaid it with a gradient of the same green as before. (I don’t like the color, but it was a good choice to keep it during this redesign, as it made the transitional experience smoother for Spotify’s users.)

Te wordmark is great, but prety generic; it could have elevated a great new icon, but instead just highlighted how inadequate the radio wave icon was. Look at the app icons in Figure 12. Te choice to simplify the colors was in line with other tech companies at the time, and was almost certainly driven by making the logo more versatile across platforms, but you don’t need to be a graphic designer to see that the waves in the circle have less personality than the original version, and being encircled made their crookedness feel so much less tolerable.

Figure 12. Spotify’s logos (top row) and app icons (bottom row) for launch, 2013, and 2015.

57

Tis first redesign was crucial, since it was their opportunity either to update their icon or to enshrine it; they chose the later. Te 2015 brand refresh made a lot of good decisions about other visual collateral, but the only thing about the logo that changed was the color.

I know, I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the Spotify logo, certainly more than I have for the other case studies. Te reason for that is I want to really illustrate why I think Spotify is an example of a great brand—and a brand with great visual branding—even despite the handicap of a subpar logo.

Teir other heuristic branding is quite good, using a cocky voice, speaking directly to the audience, and using bright colors and scrapbook-esque imagery. Additionally, Spotify backs up their brand messaging by using user data to do some really clever advertising, such as out-of- home displays with the following messages:

• Dear person who played “Sorry” 42 times on Valentine’s Day: What did you do? • “God is a man” vs. “God is a woman,” according to fan-made playlists: o Man – 9 playlists o Woman – 28,802 playlists • Dear person who made a playlist called “One Night Stand with Jeb Bush like He’s a Bond Girl in a European Casino”: We have so many questions. • 2018 Goals: Have fewer issues than the person who streamed “Issues” over 3,152 times this year. • 2018 Goals: Be as confident as the person who made the “every good song, ever” playlist. An image search for “Spotify billboard” will turn up dozens more like these. Tis brand voice delivers perfectly on the personality. Te accompanying imagery also feels natural with this voice, for example the billboard in Figure 13.

58

Figure 13. A billboard in Spotify's data-driven "2018 Goals" campaign (bMedia Group, 2018). Ultimately, all brands redound to customer experience, and this visual branding does support that. Although the Spotify logo isn’t as efective or relevant to the product as it could be, it still serves the fundamental purpose of a heuristic cue, in that it is recognizable. It serves that shortcut function, making users think of their experience with the brand.

Case Conclusion As I’ve explained (repeatedly) Spotify should have been more conscious of their brand when they first launched in 2008. Te founders were careless when naming the company, and they didn’t give much thought to the brand story, voice, personality, or even logo. However, they did pour their energy into the customer experience, and that paid of.

In 2013, they did a major branding efort. Although the logo was what people noticed and talked about, this actually demonstrated their commitment to experience; the bulk of the rebrand was focused on user experience design, and set the company up for continued success.

Tey did miss their opportunity to design a logo beter aligned with the brand (and used more easily in more setings,) but this proves the core argument of this thesis: visual branding is less important than afective or behavioral branding.

59

Due in part to that strong user experience, Spotify’s brand story grew on its own in a direction with which any brand manager would be pleased. When they began to really exert control over their afective branding in 2014–15, they were able to pick up where the customers had lef of, with a revolutionary product from a scrappy startup. Tis proves the corollary of the core argument of this thesis: behavioral branding is the most important thing, and afective and visual branding only work when built on its strong foundation.

Moving into the second half of the decade, Spotify improved its visual branding greatly, and used it to support their self-declared transition into the authority on all things sound. It seems to be working so far. Only time will tell if it works long-term. Maybe “authority on all things sound” is too far removed from the way customers see Spotify, and is inauthentic to the brand. Maybe it’s the natural progression of the tool built 15 years ago in Sweden. From where

I’m standing right now, though, Spotify is a solid brand. Perfect? No, but they’re definitely doing alright.

Figure 14. Spotify Brand Summary.

60

Conclusion

Tis project grew from my observation of the disconnect between academia and industry on the subject of brand, coupled with the finding that—despite most branding experts agreeing that brand is a company’s reflection in the minds of its customers—no branding experts had created a holistic model that explains how good bands are built through the lens of psychology.

Te Brand Identity Pyramid bridges that gap. Te model hierarchically identifies the most important elements (or categories of elements) in a brand identity: preparation, customer experience – company, customer experience – product, personality & story, voice, visual identity. It then explains why consumers respond to each element, and lays a groundwork for building good brands, or evaluating existing ones.

Tis model is both predictive and instructive. It has academic value in that it can be used to predict the success or failure, along with relative strength, of a brand. It is also instructive, and has industrial value for creative firms, branding specialists, and business decision makers.

When it comes time to build a brand, referencing the Brand Identity Pyramid can help everyone on the branding team make smart decisions. It is not a step-by-step instructional guide, but by providing an understanding of which parts of the brand should be developed first, readers in business or industry can use this model to succeed.

Te case studies developed to test this model were very focused on a specific type of brand. All three were businesses, they were platforms that sold their products or services directly to consumers, and they had widespread brand recognition. Two of them sold products, and the third sold a service designed to replace products. Tere are many types of brands out there, and this thesis ignored most of them.

I would suggest the next direction for further academic study would be to test the model for brands in categories adjacent to those observed. Suggested categories include products

(e.g., Tide, Gillete,) services with less tangible benefit than Spotify (e.g., Facebook, Amtrak,)

61

large companies that manage many brands (e.g., Unilever, Procter & Gamble, General Motors,

Disney,) non-profit organizations (e.g., Feeding America, Te Boys & Girls Clubs of America,) or

B2B Brands (e.g., Salesforce, Mailchimp,) or small companies with a very limited footprint.

Tere are also other brand categories which are further removed from those examined, which may yield interesting results if studied more closely. Tese categories include social causes (e.g., voting rights, trans rights,) political organizations (e.g., political parties or candidates,) musicians, and celebrities.

Brand is one of the most valuable assets a company has, and it’s one they don’t technically own.10 A well-cultivated brand will inspire a community of customers, who accept your brand as part of their identity, buy everything you’re selling and then some, and spread the word to all their friends. A negative brand turns customers of and turns them away.

It is my hope that at some point, someone who reads this will be in the room when an executive suggests a “rebrand” to goose sales. I hope that person is able to speak up, and ask

“Do you mean a rebrand or a visual refresh?” I hope that person can ensure their company’s rebrand accounts for the big picture, and that by the time the project is dropped in front of a graphic designer, all she needs to do is craf a gleaming capstone for an otherwise sturdy pyramid.

10 I mean this from a brand theory perspective. Legally, a company’s brand is an asset with real value

which they own.

62

References

Aaker, D. A. (1996). Building strong brands. Te Free Press.

Aaker, D. A. (2014). Aaker on branding: 20 Principles that drive success. Morgan James Publishing.

Adorno, J. (2021). Opinion: Apple Music needs these features and fixes to catch up to Spotify. 9to5Mac. htps://9to5mac.com/2021/03/13/opinion-apple-music-needs-these-features- and-fixes-to-catch-up-to-spotify/

Bapna, A. (2020). Spotify and Te Drum launch podcast series to educate on the future of audio. Te Drum. htps://www.thedrum.com/news/2020/12/10/spotify-and-the-drum-launch- podcast-series-educate-the-future-audio

Bastos, W., & Levy, S. J. (2012). A history of the concept of branding: practice and theory. Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, 4(3), 347-368. htps://doi.org/10.1108/17557501211252934

Baxter, S., Ilicic, J., & Kulczynski, A. (2018). Roses are red, violets are blue, sophisticated brands have a Tifany Hue: the efect of iconic brand color priming on brand personality judgments. Journal of Brand Management, 25(4), 384-394. htps://doi.org/10.1057/s41262-017-0086-9 bMedia Group (2018). Spotify Funny Billboard Ads. htps://www.bmediagroup.com/news/spotify-funny-billboard-ads/

Bomey, N. (2019). Ex-Sears CEO Eddie Lampert orchestrated ‘scheme’ to ‘steal’ Sears, creditors allege. USA Today. htps://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/01/24/sears-bankruptcy-eddie- lampert/2667949002/

Bowie, J. I. (2020). Te Strange, Uninspired History of Spotify’s Bland Logo. Marker. htps://marker.medium.com/the-strange-uninspired-history-of-spotifys-bland-logo- 7493362338a

Boy Scouts of America (2011). Brand Identity Guide. htps://filestore.scouting.org/filestore/marketing/pdf/Brand_Identity.pdf

Budelmann, K., & Kim, Y. (2019). Brand Identity Essentials: 100 Principles for Building Brands. Rockport.

Calore, M. (2009). Spotify’s Restrictions Can’t Keep the Music Nerds Out. Wired. htps://www.wired.com/2009/02/spotifys-restri/

63

Carman, A. (2020). Spotify will let its podcast hosts include full songs in their shows. Te Verge. htps://www.theverge.com/2020/10/14/21514855/spotify-music-podcast-format- anchor-listen

Cellucci, C. (2018). Teory building as problem solving building theories: Heuristics and hypotheses in sciences. In D. Danks & E. Ippoliti (Eds.) Buidling theories (pp. 63-79). Springer International Publishing. htps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72787-5_4

Chandler, S. (2004). Kmart-Sears: 2 broken retailers might not add up to success. Te Baltimore Sun. htps://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2004-11-18-0411180332-story.html

Chintagunta, P. K. (2017). As Sears fails, who will buy its brands? Chicago Booth Review. htps://review.chicagobooth.edu/marketing/2017/article/sears-fails-who-will-buy-its- brands

CNN Money. (2002). Sears buys Lands’ End. CNN Money. htps://money.cnn.com/2002/05/13/news/deals/sears/index.htm

Cooke, A., & Friedman, A. (2001). Ahead of their time: the Sears catalogue prefabricated houses. Journal of Design History, 14(1), 53-70. htps://doi.org/ 10.1093/jdh/14.1.53

Cowan, K. (2021). Design Bridge helps New Holland Brewing Co. to reconnect with its Dutch roots. Creative Boom. htps://www.creativeboom.com/inspiration/new-holland-brewing/

Cummins, D. (2016). Tis is what happens when you take Ayn Rand seriously. PBS NewsHour. htps://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/column-this-is-what-happens-when-you-take- ayn-rand-seriously de Villiers, R. (2015). Consumer brand enmeshment: Typography and complexity modeling of consumer brand engagement and brand loyalty enactments. Journal of Business Research, 68(9), 1953-1963. htps://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2015.01.005

Delventhal, S. (2019). Who Killed Sears? Fify Years on the Road to Ruin. Investopedia. htps://www.investopedia.com/news/downfall-of-sears/

Doblin, G. (1996). Breakthroughs. Design Quarterly, 167), 1-31. htps://doi.org/10.2307/4091345

Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Building theories from case study research. Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 532-550. htp://doi.org/ 10.5465/AMR.1989.4308385

Ek, D. (2010). Daniel Ek’s Answer to “How did Spotify get its name?”. Quora. htps://www.quora.com/How-did-Spotify-get-its-name

Encyclopedia Britannica (2019). Sears. In Encyclopedia Britannica. htps://www.britannica.com/topic/Sears-Roebuck-and-Company

64

Feloni, R. (2013). Te 10 Best Corporate Logo Changes Of 2013. Business Insider. htps://www.businessinsider.com/best-corporate-logo-changes-of-2013-2013-12

Fernando, J. (2020). Discover Card. Investopedia. htps://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/discover-card.asp

Finkle, C. (2015). What is a Brand? Brand Marketing Blog. htps://brandmarketingblog.com/articles/branding-definitions/what-is-a-brand/

Folley, A. (2019). Sears cuting life insurance benefits for up to 90,000 retirees. Te Hill. htps://thehill.com/policy/finance/436593-sears-cuts-life-insurance-benefits-for-up-to- 90000-retirees

Fortune. (2020). Global 500: Walmart Company Profile. Fortune. Retrieved 2020-10-28 from htps://fortune.com/company/walmart/global500/

Germain, T. (2020). Best Music Streaming Services. Consumer Reports. htps://www.consumerreports.org/streaming-music-services/best-music-streaming- service-for-you/

Gillan, S. L., Kensinger, J. W., & Martin, J. D. (2000). Value creation and corporate diversification: the case of Sears, Roebuck & Co. Journal of Financial Economics, 55(1), 103-137. htps://doi.org/10.1016/S0304-405X(99)00046-X

Gonella, C. (2020). How ‘Te Target Efect’ gets customers to spend more money than they were expecting [Video]. Insider. htps://www.businessinsider.com/target-efect-how- retailer-gets-you-spend-more-money-2018-10

Gregory, S. (2021). 11 Simple Steps for a Successful Brand Building Process. FreshSparks. htps://freshsparks.com/successful-brand-building-process/

Ha, P. (2013). How Spotify got itself a new logo. Gizmodo. htps://gizmodo.com/how-spotify-got-itself-a-new-logo-5995060

Hanbury, M. (2019). 8 clever tricks that Target uses to get you to keep spending money in its stores. Business Insider. htps://www.businessinsider.com/how-target-gets-you-to- spend-more-money-in-store-2018-4

Hardy, T. (2021). 17 rebranding failures and how much they cost (updated: March 2021). Canny Creative. htps://www.canny-creative.com/rebranding-failures-how-much-they-cost/

Hardy, T. (2021). What is branding? (updated April 2021). Canny Creative. htps://www.canny-creative.com/what-is-branding/

65

Peterson, H. (2016). ‘It was a ghost town’: Shoppers reveal why they’ve abandoned Sears and Kmart. Business Insider. htps://www.businessinsider.com/why-people-dont-shop-at-sears-and-kmart-2016-9

Peterson, H. (2019). Sears reveals the symbolism behind its new logo that some people are mocking and comparing to Airbnb. Business Insider. htps://www.businessinsider.com/sears-reveals-new-logo-slogan-2019-5

Peterson, H., & Gal, S. (2019). One chart shows how far Sears has fallen from its status as the world’s largest retailer. Business Insider. htps://www.businessinsider.com/sears-and- kmart-close-thousands-stores-over-decade-2019-11

Hill, A. (2012). Beauty Typhography: [sic] A window into brand personality. Global Cosmetic Industry, 180(4), 62-66.

Investopedia. (2020). Similarities Between Product Diferentiation and Positioning. Investopedia. htps://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/062415/what-are-similarities-between- product-diferentiation-and-product-positioning.asp

Ioannou, L. (2020). How Spotify hopes to win the podcasting wars. CNBC. htps://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/03/how-spotify-hopes-to-win-the-podcasting-wars.html

Jaworski, B., Lutz, R., Marshall, G. W., Price, L., & Varadarajan, R. (2017). Definitions of Marketing. American Marketing Association. htps://www.ama.org/the-definition-of- marketing-what-is-marketing/

Kaiser, G., Posniak, M., & Bent, S. (2020). Reimagining design systems at spotify. Spotify Design. htps://spotify.design/article/reimagining-design-systems-at-spotify

Kastrenakes, J. (2013). Spotify gets serious with a new, streamlined logo. Te Verge. htps://www.theverge.com/2013/3/28/4157210/spotify-debuts-new-logo-serious- redesign

Kastrenakes, J. (2020). Spotify hints at subscription podcast service. Te Verge. htps://www.theverge.com/2020/11/6/21552822/spotify-podcast-subscription-service- survey

Kervyn, N., Fiske, S. T., & Malone, C. (2012). Brands as intentional agents framework: How perceived intentions and ability can map brand perception. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 22(2), 166-176. htps://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2011.09.006

Levinson, J. C. (2007). Guerilla Marketing (4th ed.). Houghton Mifin.

Lin, C., & Chen, M. (2015). “Being hooked” by a brand story: a view of regulatory focus. European Journal Of Marketing. htps://doi.org/ 10.1108/EJM-07-2013-0381

Eur. J. Market., 49(5-6), 692-712. htps://doi.org/10.1108/EJM-07-2013-0381

66

Lewis, J. D. (2017). Brand vs. wild: Building resilient brands for harsh business environments. Bibliomotion. htps://doi.org/10.4324/9781315186177

Macinnis, D., & Folkes, V. (2016). Humanizing brands: When brands seem to be like me, part of me, and in a relationship with me. Journal of Consumer Psychology. htps://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2016.12.003

Malik, A., Sudhakar, B. D., & Rahman, M. S. (2016). Brand positioning constructs and indicators for measurement of consumer’s positive psychology toward brands. Indian Journal of Positive Psychology, 7(1), 124-126.

McGrath, L. (2016). Te Creepy Science Behind Why You Love Target So Much. Philadelphia Magazine. htps://www.phillymag.com/shoppist/2016/06/23/why-you-love-target/

Melander, A. (2014). Target Brand Book. Retrieved 2020-11-23 from htps://www.behance.net/gallery/21293187/Target-Brand-Book

Miller, B. (2019). Stanley sues Sears over Crafsman brand. Chicago Business Journal. htps://www.bizjournals.com/chicago/news/2019/03/07/stanley-sues-sears-over- crafsman-brand.html

Mithat, Y., & Merve, E. (2017). Visual rhetoric in logo design [Abstract]. Sanat Eğitimi Dergisi, 5(2). htps://doi.org/10.7816/sed-05-02-05

MixDex Wire, T. (n.d.). A look back at Sears logo design history. MixDex. Retrieved 2021-02-11 from htps://www.mixdexhq.com/logo-design/a-look-back-at-sears-logo-design-history/

Nadi, D. (2020). Spotify has 300 million users. It wants more of them to listen to podcasts. Vox. htps://www.vox.com/recode/2020/11/19/21575952/lydia-polgreen-gimlet-spotify- podcast-strategy-megaphone-code-media-home-interview

Neumeier, M. (2006). Te Brand Gap: How to Bridge the Distance Between Business Strategy and Design (Revised ed.). New Riders.

Neumeier, M. (2013). Te dictionary of brand (BrandLab Edition ed.). Almaden Press. htps://www.slideshare.net/liquidagency/the-dictionary-of-brand-by-marty-neumeier

New Holland Brewing Co. (2021). New Holland Brewing – Brewery and distillery in Holland, MI. Retrieved 2021-04-15 from htps://www.newhollandbrew.com/

Ogilvy, D. (1955). Te image of the brand – a new approach to creative operations [Conference presentation]. American Association of Advertising Agencies Luncheon, Chicago.

Parekh, R. (2012). How PMH gave Target its signature look. Advertising Age, 83(12), 22.

67

Peters, A. [Design/ACD], Waterbury, T. [CCO], Langer, J. [ECD], Richardson, D. [GCD], Arford, R [Style AD] (2015) Target branding 2015. Retrieved 2020-10-26 from htps://cargocollective.com/peters/Target-Branding-2015

Peters, A. [Sr. AD / Designer], Langer, J. [Sr. Creative Manager], Selg, D. [Creative Manager], Tieman, A [Sr. CW], Tao, M. [Photographer], Clary, S. [Stylist] (2014). Target branding 2011–2014. Retrieved 2020-10-26 from htps://cargocollective.com/peters/Target-Branding-2011-14

Peterson, H. (2017). Inside Sears’ death spiral: How an iconic American brand has been driven to the edge of bankruptcy. Business Insider. htps://www.businessinsider.com/sears- failing-stores-closing-edward-lampert-bankruptcy-chances-2017-1

Pety, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). Te Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. 19, 123-205. htps://doi.org10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60214-2

Pham, M. T., & Avnet, T. (2009). Contingent reliance on the afect heuristic as a function of regulatory focus. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 108(2), 267- 278. htps://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2008.10.001

Piontek, K. (2019). How to strengthen your brand with your marketing strategy. Articulate. htps://www.articulatemarketing.com/blog/strengthen-your-brand

Reeves, B., & Nass, C. (1996). Te Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Televisions, and New Media as Real People and Places. Center for the Study of Language and Information & Cambridge University Press.

Reisinger, D. (2011). Spotify (finally) launches in the U.S. CNET. htps://www.cnet.com/news/spotify-finally-launches-in-the-u-s/

Ridder, H.-G. (2017). Te theory contribution of case study research designs. Business Research, 10(2), 281-305. htps://doi.org/10.1007/s40685-017-0045-z

Rodriguez, A. (2015). Trending topic; Te Minneapolis retailer that once defined contemporary chic is bidding to regain that image by doubling down on design that is both fab and functional. Can Target get its Tar-zhay back? Advertising Age, 86(16), 18.

Schmeltzer, J. (1991). Sears counts on new slogan, ad campaign to lure shoppers. Chicago Tribune. htps://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1991-11-27-9104170228-story.html

Schunk, D. H., & DiBenedeto, M. K. (2020). Motivation and social cognitive theory. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 60, 101832. htps://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2019.101832

Scussel, P. A. (1991). Can Sear’s catalog be saved? Catalog Age, 8(9), 5.

68

Sears Archives. (2012). A brief chronology of Sears history. Sears Archives. htp://www.searsarchives.com/history/chronologies/chronology_brief.htm

Sears, Roebuck, and Co. (1998). Homes in a box: Modern homes from Sears Roebuck. [Facsimile reproduction of the Sears modern home catalog 1912]. Schifer Publishing.

Sears.com. Advertise with Sears. Retrieved 2021-02-25 from htp://www.sears.com/en_us/dap/advertise-with-us.html

Shoulberg, W. (2021). How Many Sears And Kmarts Will Be Lef By 2021’s End? Forbes. htps://www.forbes.com/sites/warrenshoulberg/2021/01/05/how-many-sears-and- kmarts-will-be-lef-by-2021s-end/

Smith, K., & Hanover, D. (2016). Experiential marketing: Secrets, strategies, and success stories from the world’s greatest brands. John Wiley & Sons.

Spangler, T. (2019). Spotify Is Launching Its Own Music Awards, Based on Streaming Data. Variety. htps://variety.com/2019/digital/global/spotify-launching-music-awards-1203413060/

Spotify. (2020). Company Info. For the Record [Spotify Newsroom]. Retrieved 2020-10-12 from htps://newsroom.spotify.com/company-info/

Spotify Charts [@spotifycharts]. (2020). Introducing Spotify Weekly Charts. A snapshot of what music fans are loving around the world, powered by @Spotify [Tweet]. htps://twiter.com/spotifycharts/status/1313100436421967872

Statista Research Department. (2020). Leading global department stores based on revenue 2019. Statista.

Taddei, M. (2021). 35 Examples of a Rebranding Fail And What We Can Learn [2021 Update]. Klint Marketing. htps://klintmarketing.com/35-rebranding-fails/

Tang, J. (2016). What I learned from one company that said no to clients, worked less and ballooned profits. Forbes. htps://www.forbes.com/sites/jeantang/2016/01/22/what-i- learned-from-one-company-that-said-no-to-clients-worked-less-and-ballooned-profits/

Tice, C. (2010). Quick, name Sears’ marketing slogan: Inside their branding collapse. CBS News.

Trafimow, D. (2013). Atribution theory. In H. Pashler (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the mind (Vol. 1, pp. 84-85). SAGE Publications. htps://www.doi.org/10.4135/9781452257044.n32

Tyler, J. (2018). We visited a Walmart and a Target store to see which one is beter prepared to take on Amazon, and the winner was clear. Business Insider. htps://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-and-target-compared-pictures-details-2018-3

69

Vit, A. (2019). Too legit to quit. Brand New. htps://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/new_logo_for_sears.php

Vit, A. (2020). From bad to worse to Sears. Brand New. htps://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/new_logo_for_sears_again.php

Wahba, P. (2019). Sears’ Implosion Proves You Can’t Neglect Stores Even in the Amazon Era. Fortune. htps://fortune.com/2019/01/08/sears-bankruptcy-3/

Weiss, J. D. (2018). Analyzing conversations on social media platforms and the potential impact of brand voice [Master’s thesis, Te University of Texas at Austin]. Texas ScholarWorks. htp://hdl.handle.net/2152/68926

Wheeler, A. (2013). Designing brand identity: An essential guide for the whole branding team. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Who Makes Sears Kenmore? (n.d.) ApplianceAssistant.com. htps://applianceassistant.com/Appliance-Repair/Who-Makes-Sears-Kenmore.php

Wilson, M. R., Porter, S. R., & Reif, J. L. (2005). Sears, Roebuck & Co. Encyclopedia of Chicago [Electronic Edition].

Yahoo Finance. (2020). TGT Interactive Stock Chart. Retrieved 2020-12-03 from htps://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TGT

Yohn, D. L. (2018). Achieving Fusion. Leader to Leader, 2018(90), 12-17. htps://doi.org/ 10.1002/ltl.20384

Zmuda, N. (2012). Walmart, Target, Kmart, Kohl’s: Leading 50 years of retail revolution. Advertising Age, 83(12), 2-4.

70