Today, the strength of visual language is such that the presentation of your material is every bit as important as what's being said. And if they're both strong, then you have really effective branding, or really effective communication. Every brand out there is struggling to stand apart and look different, because they are all chasing the same consumer and the same set of values. A brand is a set of images, stories, myths, or experiences that people have in common. And these beliefs that they hold in common give certain products, or certain companies, or certain things, a certain quality that's valuable.
Brands are a currency within a social system.
When I think of Coke, for example, which is just a can of sugar water, I have images in my mind and experiences that somebody in Thailand or Sudan or Canada may actually share with me, because the Coke brand is so strong. What you can see is that consumers now have the ability to communicate with one another, and brands have to fit into that model. We realized that we needed to connect mouthwash to the multiple communities on the Internet. Instead of trying to broadcast one message out to lots of consumers, we let the brand message live inside direct communication among consumers. In January of this year, Target launched our Michael Graves initiative, with over 250 household products.