Venti, please

In today’s digitally-growing world, both large and small brands must keep up with their consumers. People are shifting from physical advertising and consuming to online shopping, online branding and online interacting. Corporations are being forced to think innovatively to keep consumers’ attention in a world where so much is being thrown at them at once and avoiding the hustle and bustle is as easy as one click of a mouse.

Starbucks Coffee has digitally branded itself through a highly-interactive website, online advertisements, a Twitter account, a Foursquare page and hundreds of Facebook pages. Part of digital branding is knowing who your audience is. Starbucks pays many websites to have its ads run where its target audience shops  and socializes. The Starbucks website is easy to navigate and cohesive aesthetically, and it leads consumers easily and quickly to promotions. Starbucks brands itself through the colors green, yellow, brown and purple and modern typography and design. The Starbucks Twitter and Foursquare accounts allow for short and easy promotions to catch a reader’s eye, while the Facebook page allows for more information in a more leisurely environment. 

Through these things, Starbucks is making its brand known in the digital age. One suggestion I have for Starbucks is better utilization of QR codes; nothing says twenty-first century consumer like doing as little work as possible to gain or buy.

I live for the applause.

Within the past few months, Kia has rebranded the Soul as transformed. After years of trying to sell a car that did not receive the extraordinary feedback the creators so hoped, Kia decided to change the way it advertised for the Soul. Instead of changing the look of the car and risk admitting that they messed up, Kia changed the way they branded the item.

If you’re trying to make an item seem glamorous, you associate it with glamorous people and glamorous things. If you’re trying to make an item seem innovative, you use innovative language and place it in an innovative setting. Kia rebranded the Soul as “transformed” and wanted to sell an advertisement that portrayed that while appealing to something most people in today’s society have a strong need for.

In my opinion, Kia rebranded beautifully. The Soul did not change aesthetically very much in the rebrand, but the entire approach to the car changed. This advertisement for the Soul appeals to basic desires in people today—the need to look good, the need to be special and the need to be praised—while staying lighthearted and keeping the audience attached. Every time I see this commercial, I am instantly entranced by the television that plays idly in the background while I do my homework. Kia chose a song that is not only wildly popular right now but also ties strikingly to the underlying tone of the attention people desire. Kia successfully conveys the struggle of working toward transformation and the reward of applause and attention at the end while managing to keep levity in the atmosphere by using hamsters as people. The ending is a beautiful combination of the transformed, dashing hamsters, the climax of Lady Gaga’s “Applause” and the transformed Kia Soul. I believe Kia manages to "transform" the product in the eyes of the audience while sticking to the ingenuity of original design, which is exactly what they were going for.