What is “Blanding”?

Blanding is, in my opinion, best showcased with bootstrap websites. You know, those sites that look decent with lots of white space, giant video hero banners, clean imagery, etc. but are in fact just a very simple good-looking template.

So, you may ask, “What's wrong with it if it's easy, cheap, and looks good?”. The answer is, nothing. Because the problem isn't with those aspects of it. The problem is that there are a million websites that look identical. Imagine, if you will, that you own a shoe company called “Bobs Shoes” and they are super high quality shoes, you have amazing customer service and you make your beautiful bootstrap site. Now, your competitor “Tim's Shoes” are terribly made, with poor customer service, but they externally look very similar to your quality product and they make a similar bootstrap website.

Now, visually, your competitor looks very similar to you. They aren't you, but if your customers aren't super focused on you, aren't a brand advocate, or don't care, they may mistake “Tim's Shoes” for “Bob's Shoes”. You may not only lose a client, but garner negative word of mouth due to Tim's product quality. You are battling over equity at this point. You are gaining Tim's negative equity, and he is leeching off of your positive equity.

Where are you in this mix? Take a look at your site. Now imagine it without your logo and product pictures. Is it just an empty page that looks like everyone else's site if they did the same?

This is the value of secondary brand elements. Your brand is not exclusively your logo. Secondary brand elements are the treatment of photos, how you align and separate elements, use of colour and texture, iconography and more. So, if your website is still visually distinct without your logo and product images, then you truly have a visual brand, and you are part of the way there.

Now, it's time to think about written brand tone, audible branding, concept based engagement and more. There is a lot to this, so make sure you're working with people that have these aspects in mind.

Stay tuned. I hope to cover more of these concepts in future!