In our increasingly visual, digital, world of video posts and selfie poses, Pinterest, and Snapchat, a powerful non-verbal attitude is a must for a brand. Brand attitude is not claimed. It must be designed into the brand experience.

McKinsey & Co. posted an article on their website, “Ten Design Practices to Deliver Business Value.” McKinsey & Co. points out that design is a top-level priority for the CEO, design being a necessity for long-term performance.

Design has many definitions. Design has always been placed into the “emotional” business bucket, the art side of the business. And, design has, in most cases, been a concept attached to a brand later rather than built into the brand from the beginning. Brand management must be integrated with brand design management. The word “design” means, to “create, invent, devise, execute, or construct.” Brand design focuses on creating, inventing, devising, executing, and constructing a distinctive attitude into the experience.

Effective brand management is about the design of a relevant, differentiated brand experience. A brand is a trustworthy promise of relevant, differentiated experience. It is more than a promise of features and functions. It is about creating a distinctive brand attitude that is designed into the experience. Brands are promises of brand-designed experiences. Trustworthy brand-designed experiences are the real enduring differentiators.  

Brand design integrates the voice and the emotion of the customer into renovation and innovation. Brand design brings creativity into the development and implementation of the total brand experience.

Brand design harnesses a brand’s elements into something tangible, memorable, and visceral creating a special brand attitude. The brand attitude is the non-verbal perceptual impression that makes the brand feel special. The brand’s attitude expresses the brand’s character in nonverbal ways that can be seen, sensed, understood, heard, and felt. A brand’s attitude is the unified expression of aesthetic cues. These non-verbal elements guide how a brand will be identified in the marketplace. Brand attitude answers the question: “How do we want people to recognize, sense, know or feel this particular brand experience?”

Creating and owning a brand attitude is a vital tool for building a strong brand. It is key for projecting a brand’s promise across all communication media. Brand attitude is an interpretive guide for the consistent expression of the brand’s promise. Brand attitude is not easy to create, but well worth creating. Crafting a non-verbal brand attitude for consistent use across all of a brand’s touch-points is an art. Brand attitude is that all-important art that must be a part of any brand policy.