With great assets, you can create iconic brands: Kurnal Rawat

The 'Creative Opinion' session at the recently-held 4th e4m NEONS OOH Conference delved into the subject of 'Power of Content and Design'. The speaker, Kurnal Rawat, creative director, Landor & Fitch India, spoke about brands, the power of design and how design can help create iconic brands. “With outdoor, of course, being one of the most amazing areas of expression.” 

He kick-started the session by showing a few images and playing a few musical notes and asked the audience to guess the brand.  “These brands all have very well-crafted sacred brand assets. That's what we talk about. When you have great assets, you can create iconic brands. As we know, we have been talking about how the consumer is changing and brands really need to create a narrative which creates a meaningful connection between their brand assets. And I think brands are not really leveraging their assets to the optimum.”

He pointed out that we have been surrounded by old formats of guidelines and rigid stuff where the brands become stifled. “Those are the old brands but there are brands who are really taking and embracing this change and using their sacred brand asset and activating them in a more meaningful way and in meaningful spaces where it really lives and connects with the customer. So, when we are talking, in this whole complex scenario at this moment, brands really need to invest in their most powerful brand assets and bring value. And as we all know, to create iconic brands, we all need to invest in iconic creation or sharpen our iconic brand assets. And what could these assets be? It could be a brand colour, logo, topography, shape, voice or visuals. They all can become your sacred brand assets. But there are only two things that matter for brands and they are relevance and difference. When we talk about relevance, we know our brand is the most powerful platform for action for us and we need to make sure all our assets really work towards having the right and meaningful connection. But also, we know that we are working in a very competitive market. We have to be differentiated within the category – how can my assets help me stand out?”

Rawat, while speaking of relevance, displayed the logo of KFC, to demonstrate his point. “This is an iconic brand but does the face have to do anything with the customer who is buying chicken? Not really.” Then he displayed the popular logo and characters of the beloved chocolate brand M&M and explained, “But this is high on relevance, when the product comes alive and starts speaking to you, it connects to the customers.”