Have you heard of Adele? (If not, don’t tell my boyfriend, he’s a cuckoo fan). Adele is a British singer-songwriter who has sold over 100 million albums worldwide. She was born in London, and I think she’s pretty damn iconic. I mean, you probably have heard some Adele music, even if you haven’t heard of her. But what does she have to do with brand recognition? Glad you asked.
What is brand recognition? Investopedia defines it as “the ability of consumers to recognize an identifying characteristic of one company versus a competitor”. In other words, brand recognition is being recognizable (duh).
Minimum Effort, Major Impact
Now, in our house, the recent “30” album release caused a big stir. My boyfriend was sitting in the live stream for the “Easy on Me” premiere and proceeded to play it over and over again. Go EE-EE-EEE-EEE-EEEEA-SY. (Yes, I’m being held hostage by my boyfriend.) For those unfamiliar with the events surrounding the drop. The essential “promotion” was a PR stunt where a series of projectors across the globe projected a giant gold “30” in Adele’s typeface and colors. Then she waited a few days to confirm the projections were even related to her album. Despite the relative lack of promotion, the “Easy on Me” video (the first music video to go out) at the time of writing has 161 million views on YouTube. The “30” album had sold the equivalent of over 5 million copies (as of Dec 2021).
Bare Minimum
I have to admire the minimum effort needed to attain these insane numbers of sales and streams. I mean, there are a lot of people out there who would have never thought of releasing an album this way. But it worked! Aside from that, there was a few video and TV appearances, a few radio interviews, Vogue (British and US), two streams of a live concert, she visited Zane Lowe on Apple Music, performed at the BRITs, and had a televised interview slash concert with Oprah and a handpicked group of celebrities. We can’t neglect the Instagram Live session either (truly hilarious).
So how was Adele able to pull this off?
Adele’s brand has become so recognizable and buzz-worthy that every time she does, well, anything, she starts to trend. (Seriously, she trends after posting on Instagram) Adele’s brand positioning has become so strong that she and her team were able to create a campaign from literally nothing. While I’m sure there was a lot of planning, strategizing, and rough drafts, the end result is a campaign so simple it’s insanely impactful.
I want to leverage my brand too!
Everything from a branding perspective is about positioning, being unique, and being cohesive. To build your brand, you must follow rigorous research, rewriting, and planning processes! This is where the rubber meets the mat.
👉 Just for you: How to Start Your Brand
I already have an established brand.
Great! You’re ahead of the game. You already have a brand. You just need to build it to become recognizable. Here’s the basic checklist:
- Use your logo on everything
- Use your typeface on all written and visual content
- Make decisions for your brand that match your brand values
- Brand your own hashtag
- Use the same social media handles across the web
- Use PR to get the word out once you’ve got a handle on your brand image and voice
Wrap Up!
So, what did Adele teach us? Keep it simple, stay in brand, know your audience and less is more. To become a recognizable brand, you have to know your audience like the back of your hand. You have to be consistent and you have to be true to your brand!
