Branded displays dilute your meage

--

Branded displays dilute your message --

Wed, 23 Apr 2014 13:54

--

For some companies putting as much branding on a product as possible is essential to their marketing plan. Its easy to see why this approach has appeal, particularly in sectors like fashion, where the brand and the product are deeply intertwined. Would people fork out thousands of rands for a Louis Vuitton handbag if there was no indication on it as to which company made it? When it comes to digital displays or other products that are intended expressly to advertise things other than themselves, one has to ask whether this approach still makes sense.

At PVision, our decision not to brand our products is deliberate. We don t believe people purchasing our products to use as tools to communicate information should be forced to promote our brand at the same time. The most important thing is their message, and branding dilutes that message. Some of our clientele operate content networks that supply display materials, and they may want to advertise their own content delivery services on their devices. If we have a PVision logo on the display we end up getting those calls.

There s another, less obvious reason we ve forgone branding: it results in a cleaner looking display and means a display can be installed and operated in either portrait or landscape orientation.

Digital displays are particular tools intended for particular purposes in specific locations and thus don t gain anything with branding. In the early days we did brand our displays, but we found there were no benefits to doing so, perhaps because we don t sell direct to the public. Moreover, we ve found that our clients respond well to the the lack of branding because it doesn t imply an allegiance from them.

Its almost impossible to do away with branding entirely, and when you start up our displays there is an image with our name on it, but its only clients and not their customers who see that.

From a traditional marketing perspective this lack of branding or removal or brand equity from our products seems counterintuitive, but unlike a handbag, people don t buy our products so that others will know where it comes from. Our clients are promoting us through their purchases, and in some instances that actually makes our offerings more appealing.

Further, this approach speaks to the quality of our hardware. Theres no need to brand it because its performance and specifications speak for themselves.

Some companies have gotten wise to the degree of free advertising branded products result in and we ve heard of instances where companies operating public spaces have wanted to bill hardware companies for the advertising branding their products gives them, resulting in logos having to be removed a potentially messy and damaging process or hastily covering them.

Removing branding from our products hasn t hurt our business at all; if anything, it s strengthened it by setting PVision displays apart from rival products. Once a client has bought a product they shouldnt be forced to implicitly advertise it as well through the branding on it. At the end of the day, the quality of a product should be advertisement enough.

David Ross, Pvision Director

Related Articles



-- --

-- --

-- Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. comments powered by Disqus

LINK:	http://www.screenafrica.com/page/news/displays-n-monitoring/1641704-Br...
	See more stories from screenafrica

Most recent headlines