Branding and Marketing Exercise: Logos You See in One Day

Purpose

We are exposed to many brands every day in our environment as well as direct advertisement. It is estimated that an average American sees as much as 16000 brands every single day! What does each brand mean to us? How do we respond to each brand? How should brands be marketed to have the highest impact? How do brands compare?

This is where marketing comes into place. With so many brands competing for attention, we have little time to notice them all. We have learned to filter out a lot form our complex environment so we can focus on what matters to us. Only a select few brands can stand out and become memorable or at the extreme end of the scale, come to define a particular way of life on a global scale.

This engaging exercise is designed to kick start a discussion on branding for delegates who attend a course on branding, marketing or a similar topic. It can be used for:

• Branding
• Logo design
• Brand familiarity
• Analysis on use of colour, shapes and common patterns in logos
• Typography
• Social trends
• Behavioural patterns

The exercise requires a pre-course activity where delegates have to prepare materials and bring them to the class.

Objective

Review some of the brands seen on a typical day, record them and bring them to the class.

What You Need

• Delegates need to have access to a camera before attending the course.
• Delegates must be able to bring a series of digital images or printout of these images to the class.

Setup

Pre-Course Activity

• Explain the following activity to delegates before they attend the course. You can send the instructions to them by email.
  • Ask delegates to use a camera and record a typical day by taking a picture of the logos they see.
  • You can set a target for the total number of pictures to take so delegates know the scale of the activity. Aim for 30 to 60 logos depending on how many delegates you have and how much time you want to spend on during the course to go through every image.
  • Pictures must have a time stamp so they can be shown in the right sequence and the audient can see when they were taken during the day. Most cameras have a setting to time stamp an image when it is taken.
  • Delegates should store these images on a USB stick or a similar storage device so they can bring them to the class and show them to others.
  • Alternatively, delegates can bring a printout of these pictures. Ideally, these pictures should be in colour to get the full effect. An example of a series of images seen on a particular day is shown below along with a time stamp for each.

Course Activity

• Before the course starts, get a copy of all delegates’ images so you can show the images as a slide show. This helps to form a story as the images are played back in sequence.
• Once everyone is ready, show the series of images of each delegate.
• At the end of each person’s sequence ask delegates:
  • “Can you follow this person’s day just by looking at the logos? What does it suggest?”
  • “Are there logos or products that you are not familiar with?”
  • “Are there logos that all of you are familiar with?”
  • “How come you can understand what the other person has done just by looking at a series of logos?”
• Go through all the images and then follow with a discussion.

Timing

Explaining the Exercise: 10 minutes (collecting images)

Activity: 15 minutes

Group Feedback: 10 minutes

Discussion

• How does each brand compare with other brands?
• What does this exercise tell you about marketing and branding products?
• What does it say about you?
• What makes a particular brand stand out from others?
• What do you think of various logo designs?

To Tutor: Encourage a discussion on the effect of branding and our exposure to them. Guide the conversation towards the main topic of your course such as marketing, logo design branding and so on. The images can be used as a useful resource during the course for various kinds of topics and exercises such as logo design, marketing campaign and so on.

 

Example of Logos Observed