The Label Made Me Do It!

This is a story about a shirt I didn’t need, but I bought anyway. Why? Because of the label.

At the time, I didn’t realize that the well-designed label pushed me from “I kind of want it,” to “I have to have it.” 

But as many marketing professionals tend to do, I was mulling over the power of branding and design one night and realized the cold hard truth: the label made me do it!

The artful label was crafted out of light blue velvet. In retrospect, I realized that the label:

• Instantly upgraded the shirt to a higher level of quality: I was busting through the racks at TJ Maxx, and behold, a real treasure!

• Reminded me of an upscale brand named “Velvet” that uses a similar velvet label, which I didn’t even realize at the time.

• Impressed me with its logo: simple and slick, surely there was a savvy designer behind both the label and the shirt. As a marketing-minded person, I know for a fact that logo/label design is almost always outsourced to someone other than the fashion designer, but the shopper’s covet-bug had already claimed me. 

What Does Your Label Look Like?

When I say label, I’m not just talking about your logo (although a logo clearly counts when it comes to reflecting the brand image you want to project),
I’m talking about EVERYTHING visual that represents you and your company.

Sure, it’s your website and your presentations, but it’s also all the many bits and pieces that reflect your brand image, including:

• Email signature: Don’t let every member of your team customize their email signature with funky fonts and favorite colors; a united email signature stands for corporate cohesion and professionalism.

• Business card: Live networking still counts, so make sure you have something sleek and professional with a high-impact design to give out. People can tell if you’ve pulled a template off the Internet or asked Kinkos to craft one for you.

• Social media: Social media is a free, powerful way to reach consumers. Why not spend some time dressing it up? Using Twitter’s templates says a whole bunch of things about your brand – and none of them are good (“We don’t care how things look,” and “We’re too small and strapped to care about design,” are just two that come to mind). Check out what we’ve done with JCPR’s Twitter page to see what a little visual mojo can do.

What design image has driven you to buy something that you may not have otherwise needed?