The human brain loves familiarity, patterns, and repetition because they become easier to remember as they appear again. See, familiarity triggers the brain’s cognitive long-term memory. So if we take that knowledge and apply it to design and strategy, we get branding or brand identity. With strong brand awareness, you can create a stronger consumer connection through familiarity.
Strength the Consumer Connection Through Visual Familiarity
Humans have used visuals to trigger our iconic memory since the beginning of time. Think hieroglyphs, pictographs, war patterns, tribal markings, or as we commonly see today as icons and emojis. These visual representations (patterns, images, markings, shapes, and combinations of colors) are designed to be remembered and associated with things, people, and brands.
Think of a street light; as a community, we have associated red for stop, yellow for slow, and green for go. Yet green can also mean that something is fresh, natural, and good for you. Now, think of Apple products or even Apple’s packaging; whether you own one or not, you know what it looks like because they maintain their signature clean white simplistic packaging.
Having a solid visible color and design system for your brand and products will ultimately create a stronger consumer familiarity. Meaning, your consumer will easily recognize your brand by its color, design, and patterns among the competition.
Strength the Consumer Connection Through Audio Familiarity
Audio can create patterns through a simple chime, song, jingle, melody, or phrase to trigger our echoic memory. Audio, just like visuals, is associated with things, people, and brands.
Take a look at these slogans and commercial jingles (video brought to you by REACT) (Second video brought to you by REACT) stored in our echoic memory forever. Whether you remember them because they’re good or purely annoying, you and the consumer will remember them. For bonus points, the commercial can use a celebrity voice to add a layer of familiarity. Having memorable branded audio will create an additional layer of consumer familiarity, which will build trust and brand awareness.
- Nike: “Just do it.”
- Allstate: “You’re in good hands.”
- Capital One: “What’s in your wallet?”
- Kentucky Fried Chicken: “Finger-lickin’ good.”
- Staples: “That was easy.”
- Dunkin Donuts: “America runs on Dunkin.”
- JG Wentworth: “Call JG Wenthwotrth 877-Cash-Now.”
- Empire Today: “800-588-2300 Empire Today”
- Subway: “5 dollar, 5 dollar foot long! Any any”
- O’Reilly Auto Parts: “O-O’Reilly Auto Parts Wow!”
- Goldfish: “A snack that smiles back – Goldfish!”
Quick Recap on Visual & Audio Familiarity
Visuals trigger our iconic memory and consist of patterns, images, markings, shapes, colors, or combinations of colors. These visual representations are associated with things, people, and brands. Having a solid visible color and design system for your brand and products will ultimately create a more substantial consumer familiarity.
Audio triggers our echoic memory and consists of chimes, songs, jingles, melodies, or phrases. Having memorable branded audio will create an additional layer of consumer familiarity, which will build trust and brand awareness.
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