A few weeks ago I received a BuzzFeed newsletter (it’s really great, and I’d recommend that you sign up for it if you haven’t already) that featured a "brand timeline " that had been created by an advertising account executive.  It was surprisingly revealing, and it made me realize that in many instances a brand name or logo alone is enough to conjure up an entire story.

Towards the bottom of her timeline, for example, there are four Durex logos–well, three, with one cut in half.  I had some idea as to what that very simple bit of editing signified, and sure enough, she added this note:

I’ve gotten a lot of questions about the 1/2 condom. It is very simple …. after all the beer and weed, you are “in the moment” and things break or things don’t last. I thought it was funny at the time …

That, in a word, is the power of branding, especially when properly executed. An identifiable brand that has been properly positioned can create in the subconscious mind an entire story about itself, about its users, and sometimes about its manufacturers.

I’m curious, though, at what point a brand actually reaches that kind of viability.  Clearly the age-old brands that we all recognize (e.g., Nestlé, Apple, Bic, Heineken, etc.) have power by themselves, and other brands that may not be immediately familiar sometimes contain enough information for us to be able to decode their meanings (e.g., names/logos containing words like "taxi," "pizza" or "coffee"), but if a brand isn’t immediately identifiable and it doesn’t contain any assistive words or phrases, I wonder how much more difficult it is for the brand to gain traction.