Grayling Blog

Brands in Action

Posted on 26.05.2010 by Christine Boehlke

I do a lot of branding for clients, having worked with a branding company earlier in my career on how to "bring brands to life" on the PR side - as only PR can really do. I've been living and breathing brands ever since then, studying the great ones and helping create a few winners of my own.

"Living and breathing brands" is the right way to say it, because brands are all about life. Building great brands is about defining the brand personality and fine-tuning the brand performance on a mega-level as well as bonding it to individual life and work styles. As I love to tell clients, "a brand is not a slogan but the way a company behaves".

Last year we helped our client Tetris, the world's most popular computer video game, celebrate its 25th anniversary. We generated more than a billion worldwide impressions and so much global buzz that Google turned its logo into Tetris Tetraminos (playing pieces) for the anniversary day. Talk about 'bringing a brand to life"! From our San Francisco office, we watched the Google home page morph into a salute to Tetris at 10 am in Sydney. At 11 am in Tokyo. And on around the world throughout the 24 hours.

Another popular life-related phrase is "put legs on the brand." Here, taken at last weekend's famous "Bay to Breakers" annual fun race in San Francisco - named because it goes the 7 miles from Bay to Ocean - is an ultimate example of that. These people came dressed as Tetris Tetraminos of their own choosing - we had nothing to do with it - not directly, anyway.

Just like with Google - it is the ultimate result of "bringing the brand to life" - where the brand has done such a great job of going to the people - that the people want to come to the brand.