In an innovative move, footballer Gareth Bale has applied for a trademark incorporating his use of the heart sign plus his shirt number in the hope that he can secure this intellectual property for his personal brand and use it on a range of merchandise.
Bale is not alone in adopting this motif and it’ll be interesting to see what Victoria Pendleton has to say about Bale’s application, having made the victory heart signal to her fiancé Scott Gardner famous during the London 2012 Olympics!
Both sports stars have realised that giving people something to do is a powerful way to change their attitudes towards a brand – in this case creating empathy for themselves. A customer making a ‘brand sign’ themselves is so much more powerful than just seeing an actor do it in an ad. They are behaving as if they are a brand user. Doing leads to feeling and thinking.Brand signs are nothing new, but using them to reinvent messaging and releasing their power online certainly is. The latest CSR campaign by Bacardi Limited utilises this symbolism with a ‘T-sign’ initiative for its ‘Champions Drink Responsibly’ campaign. This shorthand signal for taking time out from alcohol during an evening was developed by 23red and makes it easier and more socially acceptable for people to opt out when a friend is ordering drinks at the bar.
People have started to adopt this on social media, posting it for their friends to see, thus spreading the meme.
Phones4U has established a series of hand signals or visual mnemonic device to communicate their brand name memorably.
The ASDA ‘pocket the difference’ campaign was synthesised memorably in the ‘pat the wallet’ gesture which is used as the punctuation mark at the end of TV commercials, print ads and online.
Virgin media scored a great coup by signing up Usain Bolt and his lightning gesture to communicate their super-fast broadband service, pre-empting Visa’s Olympic commercial featuring the world’s fastest man. And showing how powerful these messaging signals can be, Virgin’s campaign got a huge boost when Prince Harry did his own version of Bolt’s famous lightning bolt on his goodwill visit to Jamaica.
One of the oldest and most famous examples of signalling in advertising was “let your fingers do the walking” for Yellow Pages which became so inextricably linked to the brand that the logo was redesigned to incorporate it with the fingers being the inverted ‘Y’. This signal is full of rich associations and communicates instantly what the brand is all about. It’s a vital asset that was destroyed by re-naming the company Hibu.
When a brand creates a signal for its messaging and people copy it, then behaviour change can be effected immediately and cost-effectively. Nowadays brands on social media are enabling people to show their friends on Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram how to use the signalling and spread the word – or the image.
Hamish Pringle is a strategic advisor at 23red
