🏆Let’s Get Physical
How unexpected physical goods can build brand love and keep you on a client’s mind year-round.
We are all very online. All the time. And there’s a good chance your brand is, too.
Maybe your specialty is digital activations. Or an app people use in their daily lives. Or a communication platform for ideas-sharing. Or maybe… yours is an events-based business. Regardless of your focus, you likely use digital to capture and promote your services.
But there is still nothing like a tangible manifestation of your brand that pulls customers in and builds deeper affinity. There is an unexplainable joy in having something in your possession that reminds you of your favorite brand.
It shouldn’t be expensive to make – or complicated to own – but suddenly, you become more than a URL or an icon on a screen or an event they look back on fondly… you’re in their home, always within reach.
TL;DR:
No matter how valuable your brand’s online or IRL offering, people connect to your brand in entirely new ways if you create something that they can have — and keep — in their space. This way, you remain on their mind between the moments they engage with your brand.
The details:
There are so many ways to tap into physical goods to build brand love, and bonus points if yours is a value-add to a customer’s life. Here are a few of our favorite examples.
Capture The Feeling
One of our key clients is an experience-based business. Most of their revenue comes from bringing visitors into their space for tours and special events. But those experiences – while magnificent and memorable – are fleeting.
So, earlier this year, they tasked us with creating a physical keepsake that potential customers, clients and partners could hold onto as a walkaway gift.
In response to their brief, we took the interactive website we had already built for them – which showcases their many capabilities – and brought it into the tangible world. The result is a beautiful, 80-page, perfect-bound brochure, filled with witty writing, stellar photography and tasteful design.
The brochure is printed on matte paper and feels akin to a limited-edition art magazine. So much so that when our client took a handful with him to a recent conference, they were snatched off his desk before he could even pass them out.
The hope here is that people who snagged a copy of the book will keep it on their desks for inspiration or reference, and eventually think of the brand when it’s time to book their next event. Luckily, they’ll find our client’s website and number on the back.
Keep It Easy
We love podcasts here at Robin. A favorite is “Talk Easy,” a weekly interview series hosted by Sam Fragoso, who dives into thoughtful conversations with some of the greatest thinkers in music, television and film.
While it’s effortless to engage with the “Talk Easy” product on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, one of the smarter things they’ve done for brand-building is release a line of mugs. It’s the only merch available on the site – aside from a live vinyl record of a conversation with Fran Leibowitz – and it comes in two colorways. They are well-constructed, with elegant branding you wouldn’t mind seeing in your cupboard.
The key here is creating something authentic to your brand. Most people listen to a podcast with their morning coffee, and by creating a tactile manifestation of that, you enter the mental conversation of your consumer. And every time they reach for your mug, they might also reach for their phone to engage with your show.
Physical 🔁 Physical
You don’t only have to be an experience or digital-based brand to create a memorable physical product. One of the best examples of this is the Designed by Apple in California book, an artistic retrospective of twenty years of Apple design, spanning the iMac, iPod and more.
Filled with stunning product photography and ultra-considered copywriting, the book was released in the years after Steve Jobs’ passing and became an instant classic for fans of the brand who nerded out over the decades of innovative engineering and design.
In the years since, Apple has stopped selling the book, and it has become a collector’s item of sorts, creating a market on eBay among resellers. In turn, Apple has created a rare commodity that people are eager to show off on their bookshelves and coffee tables.
And while it is essentially a brochure for the products most of us already own and use, the book continues to evangelize the brand and hints to all of the innovation that is yet to come.
The Creative Conversation
It’s not just brands that understand the value of physical goods. Even some agencies get in on the fun, selling clever items that do the work of brand amplification.
While most client-services companies usually function behind the scenes, the smart ones also understand the power of building love for their own brand, so that when you – a potential client – are thinking about your next collaborator, you might subconsciously think of them because you see their name on a product every single day.
One of our favorite examples is a NY-based production company called On Lunch Break. They designed now-iconic t-shirts and hoodies for their teams, with the word “TALENT” in big print across the back. The joke being that, usually, the people in front of the camera are called “talent” on a film set film, but in this case, OLB has reclaimed the word and amplified its behind-the-scenes players to be called “talent” in their own right.
Another great example is branding studio Uncommon London, who sell items like notebooks and pencils on their website, expressly for the documentation of “uncommon ideas.” By manufacturing these products at low costs and selling them without the intention of big sales or profit margins, Uncommon is able to offer subtly-branded items to potential collaborators who might use them in their day-to-day ideation.
Final Thoughts
With so much internet detritus floating around in our eyeballs – and in our brains – on an hourly basis, there is true value to be gained from taking your branding efforts from the digital space and into the physical realm.
Remember that your goods don’t have to be a moneymaker. They should be affordable and accessible; or in the case of brochures and zines, maybe even free. The key is to walk the line between free giveaway swag and thoughtful, collectible merch.
No matter how online we are, humans are tactile and sentimental creatures, and we love having things within arms reach that make us feel good, make us think, or simply make us feel something. If your brand can evoke emotion within someone’s space, they are more likely to reach out to you when they need you next.
🤝Let’s work together. If you would like to learn more about Robin, or want to talk about your brand’s marketing, communications, and product development initiatives, contact us at hello@androbin.co.
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