Companies have long valued hard-and-fast icons as immutable expressions of character. A branding icon that looks the same everywhere, the thinking goes - on a shoe, on a shirt, as a tattoo, as graffiti - communicates the consistency, dedication, and strength of the brand character.
Those days are over (see Wolff Olins). The brand today should be "flexible, the brand is a place of exchange, and it is not fixed, so there is not one logo. There is a recognizable form and recognizable communication and behavior but it's not one type of constrained and fixed thing." Blasphemy? No way, this is the future.
If there is one thing consumers kind of enjoy, it's brands that understand the human psyche as a dynamic collection of paradoxes that dislikes being on the receiving end of a pigeonhole process. So why not let the brand personality be as dynamic and paradoxical as the human mind? Why make it look the exact same way every single day? The brand should be after all, a profound personality that can inhabit the arena of celebrity narratives and modern-day mythologies.
In expanding the idea of a brand icon, the brand itself becomes light on its feet - capable of developing patterns of behavior and interacting quickly and fluidly with its environment. These patterns of behavior, rather than the static daily appearance of the icon, become the most important tools of the most progressive brands.
