11.18.13

#Trending in Branding

From fashion to sports (high tops to high heels), trends occur in all industries and across all platforms. And while we love our horn-rimmed glasses and apps for everything (see: app that actually warms up your hands), we’re in the business of all things branding. So, we’re sharing the top three trends we’ve seen this year.

#InsertBrandNameHere
Twitter led the hash tag army with “trending topics,” but hash tags have a new purpose now. Companies everywhere are using the popular social media tag to unwittingly brand their products. To put this in perspective, Instagram users tag certain brand names in images over 10,000 times daily. We’ve reached an era where companies, be it them or their consumers, are able to quickly create large-scale buzz and brand trackability through tagging key words via social media.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and the phrase couldn’t be more fitting as we see image over text marketing growing in popularity. According to statistics, 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual and 40% of people respond better to visual information. Keeping that in mind, companies are likely to garner more attention with images in marketing materials than with plain text alone. In addition, the shareability factor is crucial in this technology era. Online platforms are introducing image-focused layouts, not only to engage their audiences, but also to allow for sharing of content at the click of a button. Dare we say, gone are the days of lengthy copyright. Pictures are taking over.

The Bold & the Beautiful
If you’ve paid any attention to contemporary product packaging lately, you might have noticed a common trend: single to tri-colored labels with big, bold type. That’s it, plain and simple. It’s an ever-growing trend of finding the beauty and communicative ability in typography. While we may not all be design aficionados, one thing is certain…less is always more.