New research from The Make it Unmistakable study named Bunnings as Australia’s most unmistakable brand and Jetstar’s logo as its most misattributed.
The study is a a joint initiative led by research firm The Navigators and branding agency Principals that surveyed 2,500 Australians on 121 assets across 77 brands. Respondents were exposed to a set of brand assets including a mix of asset types such as logos, colours, lexical, sonic and graphical elements. Respondents were asked if they recognised the asset, then asked which brand it belonged to.
“Building fame remains essential to brand growth. But fame alone is not always enough. Brands are increasingly seen but not clearly recognised; remembered, but sometimes misattributed. Unmistakability is what makes fame work harder. It ensures that when people notice your brand, they recognise it faster, process it more easily and attribute it to the right source.” said Principals strategy director Charlie Rose.
Bunnings rose to the top of the study on the back of its logo. Stripped of the word ‘Bunnings’, the combination of the red and green colour palette, the blocky, utilitarian typography, and the warehouse shape made it the most recognised and correctly attributed asset in the study.
“When attention is fleeting, brands need assets that work together to create cognitive shortcuts, helping consumers identify them quickly and correctly. Even without the word ‘Bunnings’, consumers found the Bunnings logo impossible to mistake.” said The Navigators founder Cecile Thornley.
Beyond Bunnings, the symbols of banks Westpac and CommBank performed strongly in the study, as did retailers Woolworths and Officeworks.
The top five Australian distinctive brand assets included: Bunnings block logo, Westpac’s W, Woolworths W/apple, the CommBank diamond and Officeworks OW symbol.
At the other end of the spectrum, JetStar’s jumping people was the most frequently misattributed asset, with respondents confusing the image with Toyota. Harvey Norman’s catalogue page, Industry Super Fund’s hand symbol, Anaconda’s ‘Play more’ tagline and NIB’s illustration style of people/customers we also among the top five.
“Distinctiveness is not built by isolated assets. It is built with connected systems that make brands so effortless to recognise that marketing investment is immediately working harder. Assets that work together create a compounding effect. They are consistent, but more importantly, coherent and reinforce a clear, ownable idea.” said Rose.
“Brands that build consistently used asset systems can compound advantage over time; however, brands that rely on broad cues shared within a category, attempt to borrow brand equity from celebrities, or don’t allow time for assets to bed into the memory structures of their audience risk becoming wallpaper or worse, mistaken for another brand.” Thornley added.
