“A well designed product communicates a whole bundle of qualities and values, particularly if its expression is consistent with the other design elements of the brand – the communication, logo and packaging. It is therefore at the heart of what the company is about.”

- “Designed for Global Success”, International Enterprise Singapore

Design has become an important brand factor in determining whether a product and the company sinks or soars. International companies like Microsoft, Nokia and Apple have been such successful companies that have leveraged on design as a brand differentiator to create new market values for companies to capture substantial market share.

If you are a designer seeking to start a company on your own in Asia, branding is a very important key to help you carve a niche in the market, so here are some tips on building a strong brand:

1. Differentiate your brand identity amongst the rest
Finding a strong brand identity to describe what you are designing and marketing helps a lot in differentiating your products from the rest. A good way to brand your company is to consider the following factors: what your company’s unique qualities are and who your target market is. A brand identity will only have values when it is communicated correctly to the appropriate audience, and the views of the customers are determined by what they see and hear from the brand identity. Therefore, a strong brand identity will bring forth strong brand awareness.

The best brand names are brought to life with strong, clear and memorable visual identities that encapsulate the brand’s personality. With Asian brands gaining wider popularity, companies like the “Barang Barang” are lifestyle shops that have successfully communicated their brand identity with their modern Asian ways of marketing. With the Asian brand meaning of “everything” for “Barang Barang”, it is a name that many customers can identify with, when it comes to buying contemporary Asian furniture and accessories.

2. Being consistent in your design philosophy
Being consistent in promoting one’s design philosophy is important in creating a strong brand personality. When all the design expressions of a brand are tuned in to the same look and feel, the same promises and values, this can then therefore create stronger design branding to the target market.

Adopting a ’no-frills” design philosophy as the key to their branding, Stikfas has been very successful in creatively marketing their products to consumers throughout the years. When Stikfas was first advertised in Toyfare, a leading toy industry magazine a few years ago, it was the clean, starck design of Stikfas with the bold black lettering that attracted Hasbro, toy giant, to notice their advertisements. Even to this day, Stikfas ads and box covers still follow the same concept: a single large Stikfas figure with a white background and a bold black tagline that shows witty content, to attract the market worldwide.

3. Designing to suit your customer’s needs
According to trends analysts, the latest consumer movement entails customers having their say in product design. Globalization and the growth of the Internet have made the world’s 6 billion consumers more aware of choices across the planet. So people are more design-conscious of what they use and wear today, resulting in a rise of the creative class seeking for creative pursuits. Producers are therefore seeking greater customer input, to cater for people who want more control over what they use and wear.

Therefore, customization has been one good marketing strategy that caters to different peoples’ needs. Companies like Gmask has tapped on this idea of customization to create different design skins for different accessory designs (handphone, laptops, iPods), thus providing individuals the possibility of personifying their own possessions.

Branding is not about how much you spend on advertising and media, but rather about what you do differently to stand out from the crowd. Therefore, design plays an important key role in redefining the language of business marketing.

Since the first announcement about the I-phone and its revolutionary touch screen technology in Jan 2007, there have been rave reviews about how touch screen phone interface designs will evolve, changing the way people communicate.

Although this is the first time Apple launches its first phone design, many analysts have already cited I-Phone as “the prototype to the future of mobile phones.” Because of Apple’s new entry to the mobile phone market now, major phone makers like Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, Samsung and Motorola are taking precautions against Apple’s mobile phone entry, working hard to maintain their market share. They too, have since been researching on touch screen technology, and trying to incorporate it with other value added features to develop their own brand of touch screen mobile phones, as seen above.

In order to compete with Apple iPhone sales when it launches in other countries in Jan 2008, Asian phones makers like Samsung and Sony have included more high-technology features and slim line components to enhance their touch screen phone designs. For example, Samsung’s Ultra Smart F700, has included features like a slide down QWERTY keypad, other than the touch screen phone design, to enable interchangeability. As for Sony Walkman W960i, they have incorporated a very innovative Music Recognition Track ID System, which enables easy recognition of songs on air, and also TV-quality screening on the hand phone. On top of that, Sony-Ericsson is intending to expand its market share for low and mid-range phones to attract the market. This shows good evidence of how Asian phone makers are grabbing this opportunity to compete aggressively in sales.

Source: www.todayonline.com (13th Jul 2007)

Instead, the world’s current No.1 and No.2 phone makers, have not taken much realistic steps to commercialize a “power-packed phone design” to compete with I-phone in time, as compared to both Sony and Samsung. While Nokia has already conceptualized a very beautiful and sleek touch-screen phone called Aeon, the launch of this concept phone will probably not be anytime soon to match the launch of Apple’s I-phone design in a few months’ time. Motorola, likewise, has not added any other significant features into their designs to repackage its overall look as a “touch screen’ phone design.

Source: www.todayonline.com (13th Jul 2007)

So even as Apple’s mobile phone competitors are promoting their mobile phone designs with greater feature enhancements and more affordable costing, analysts are somehow still doubtful whether the other phones will succeed in the market. Because Apple has successfully created a strong brand recognition with their award winning I-Mac, I-Pod and I-Book designs, therefore Apple’s easy usability and signature design outlook, as seen in I-Phone, is already a design icon that most consumers can identify with very well. Therefore, many people may still want to buy it no matter what.

In fact, when Apple iPod was launched after Creative launched their Nomad MP3 players. Back then; Creative could never have foreseen how far Apple’s iPod sales would have leapt tremendously. Even though Creative has a strong in-house team of engineers and design team to come up with numerous MP3 designs, they were still not able to compete with Apple’s iPod sales. This clearly shows how Apple’s marketing strategy has worked well with their focus in strong design and branding consistency.

So how will the touch screen phone competition between Apple and the other developed mobile phone companies be? Time will tell who will emerge victorious.