A few days ago, my three year old son was watching TV and I just happened to be in the same room working on something on my laptop. Scooby Doo the movie was playing on the kids' channel he was watching, and the clip below is the part I saw. When I lifted my head, I said, "Ohh Mr. Bean is in this movie....how nice!" He turned around, looked at me in shock and shook his head as he said, "No! That's not Mr. Bean." I was surprised because I could clearly see that was Rowan Atkinson so I argued with him a little more. "That's definitely Mr. Bean Kendrick, look carefully at that man." The little man had to get up from where he was sitting so he could knock sense into my head, "Mommy, that's not him, Mr. Bean doesn't talk, he uses sounds instead and Mr. Bean doesn't dress like that, he just wears the same clothes every day.
Just to give you a little background, my son is a big fan of Mr. Bean. He loves the series, as well as the animated version. On this particular day, he was looking at one of his favourite TV characters but couldn't tell that was him because he was not dressed and acting in a certain way that he is familiar with. After having the conversation which ended with agreeing to disagree, I realised there were branding lessons I could take away from the brief talk.
Attribute 1:
In all the Mr. Bean episodes that my son had watched, Rowan Atkinson was always wearing his white shirt, brown pants, black shoes, light brown jacket and a maroon tie, with teddy in his hand and sometimes pocket.
There are shops which sell and rent out the exact outfit to people who would want to play dress up for various occasions. If you ever saw a picture of a person wearing this outfit, you would immediately know that they were dressed up as Mr. Bean. It would be really obvious.
The Lesson:
Successful Brands have a Consistent Look. Consistency leads to familiarity and familiarity leads to trust. Every single day, your existing and potential customers are exposed to a lot of visual content online and offline. In this sea of content, it's now more difficult than ever to make your brand stand out. You can however build familiarity for your brand with people who are going to come across your brand more than once. The more they see your brand, the more they can recognise it and the better they will trust it.
Attribute 2:
In all the Mr. Bean episodes that my son had watched, the guy had never said any actual words. He was always communicating with different sounds and gestures. This is why my son couldn't believe that the guy talking in the Scooby Doo movie was actually Mr. Bean because to him, Mr. Bean doesn't actually speak English or Shona, he communicates with differently pitched grunts, mumbles and gestures.
The Lesson:
Successful Brands have a Consistent Voice. The voice of your brand is a very important element when it comes to connecting your brand with the right audience and customers.
You need to find your voice and the right tone, and when you do, it's very important to maintain that voice and tone in all your messaging across all your communication channels. Make sure that your brand voice is leaving the right impression on all the people who come across it and make sure that your tone is in line with what your brand stands for.
As I was concluding this article, I played the video clip above for my son and said to him, "Come and see this video of Mr. Bean." He watched the video and maintained that it's not Mr. Bean, but someone who looks like him. Very stubborn huh....but then again, he is only three.
Be Your Brand, not you brand's look alike!
Written by Charity Mbofana
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