1998, the concept of "creative industry" was formally put forward for the first time in the British creative industry path document, which was defined as "an industry that originated from individual creativity, skills and talents and has the potential to create wealth and employment through the development and application of intellectual property rights." According to this definition, Britain identified 13 industries such as advertising, architecture, art and cultural relics trading, handicrafts, design, fashion design, movies, interactive leisure software, music, performing arts, publishing, software and television broadcasting as creative industries. The biggest difference between "creative industry" and traditional industry is that creativity provides cultural added value beyond practical value for products or services, and ultimately enhances the economic value of products. The output value created by creative industries in the world is as high as $22 billion every day, and it is still increasing at the rate of 5%. The growth rate of creative industries in developed countries such as the United States and Britain exceeded 10%. The rapid rise of creative industries marks the arrival of the era of creative economy. What does creative economy mean to brand building and communication? Before answering this question, we might as well look at a case first.
For brands, the arrival of creative economy will refresh the brand development pattern-the future brand will be centered on creativity. This is because the background of the development of creative economy lies in: first, the arrival of attention economy. As Michael H. Goldhaber said, in today's society, only one resource is scarce, and that is human attention. "To gain attention is to gain lasting wealth." Creative industry is a new economic form with attention as the market goal. Second, "experience" has become a new economic form. Experience has gradually become an economic form after agricultural economy, industrial economy and service economy. Creative industries are based on consumer experience and create consumer memories through cultural power. To paraphrase howard schultz, president of Starbucks, "Starbucks is not selling coffee, but the experience of coffee." In the era of creative economy, people value "not the brand, but the experience of the brand." Third, consumers' aesthetic needs have increased. With the improvement of people's living standards and their own quality, people are no longer satisfied with the material function of goods, but pay more and more attention to spiritual enjoyment and aesthetic pleasure in the process of consumption. Creative industries create rich spiritual values on products and meet consumers' aesthetic needs. It can be seen that in the era of creative economy, if a brand wants to become the center of people's attention, it must aim at the aesthetic needs of consumers and create unforgettable consumption experiences for consumers through creativity.
Moreover, if a brand wants to succeed in business creativity, it often needs to take a ride on the "creative economy" with the help of creative industries. The "creativity" mentioned here refers to the innovative ideas and behaviors that run through the process of brand building and communication, which embodies people's ability to produce some novel, unique and valuable achievements (creativity); It is not limited to advertising creativity. It includes advertising creativity, brand creativity, marketing creativity, product creativity, business model creativity, industrial strategy creativity and so on. Such a rich creative carrier can be grafted with various industries of creative industries, such as advertising creativity and advertising, brand image creativity and design, marketing creativity and media/art, etc. The development of creative industries is providing a strong impetus for commercial creativity and a solid foundation for brand development. Brand aesthetics is a new discipline to study the universal aesthetic law in the field of brand planning, design and communication. Its research contents mainly include the philosophy of brand beauty, brand aesthetic psychology and the application of brand aesthetics. The philosophy of brand beauty mainly points to the noumenon of brand beauty and studies the essence and origin of brand beauty; Brand aesthetic psychology mainly studies the law of people's psychological activities in the process of brand aesthetic, thus explaining the generation of people's aesthetic feeling in brand experience; The application of brand aesthetics mainly focuses on the specific application of brand aesthetics in the process of brand building and communication, which embodies the practical value of brand aesthetics.
Brand aesthetics is an ideological system to guide business creativity and communication planning. In the era of creative economy, its academic value and practical significance are particularly prominent. The guiding significance of brand to business creativity is reflected in the following aspects:
(1) realize advertising creativity. Advertising creativity is an important part of business creativity. Brand aesthetics, based on its profound insight into brand beauty and consumers, inspires advertisers to realize "big creativity" and thus achieve effective brand communication. This is an example of the legendary advertising work of Absolute Vodka brand, which takes the bottle shape as the foundation and source of all advertising creation-"Absolute bottle is always the protagonist" to interpret the absolute core values-purity, simplicity and perfection. In its series of city advertisements, its classic bottle-shaped incarnation is all kinds of objects around the world. Whether in Rome, Vienna, Geneva, London, Amsterdam, Madrid, Lisbon and Barcelona, everything you can see can become a symbol of absolute vodka, and the brand penetrates into every detail of consumers' lives through huge advertising creativity. Such a wise expression has not only been recognized by many advertisers, but more importantly touched every consumer.
(2) Realize brand creativity. Only through excellent brand creativity can we attract consumers' attention in the era of information explosion and even become a symbol of consumer belief, which is also one of the values of brand aesthetics. John E. Walker is the first brand of Scotch whisky, which is sold in more than 200 countries and 65,438+090 different markets around the world. The inspiration of its core idea, keep walking, comes from John E. Walker's famous image of "a gentleman who is advancing" and its broad spiritual meaning-all people, regardless of race, language, whatever job they are engaged in or facing different environments, want to advance at their own pace-symbolizing a tenacious attitude towards life, connecting human life values and emotions, and creating a brand identity. A well-known classic brand image advertisement is a legendary story interpreted by Italian football star Baggio. With the concept of keep walking, it perfectly connects Baggio's key winning performance in the 1998 World Cup, creates a shocking advertising image, and vividly presents the brand spirit to the public.
(3) Realize marketing creativity. Creativity is everywhere in brand operation, and naturally it also includes the creativity of marketing methods. In the past year, Japan's 7-Eleven convenience chain stores overcame the unfavorable factors of economic depression and inflation, and achieved impressive results of sales and profits increasing by 4% and 65,438+05% respectively, replacing Dai Rong chain stores as the leader of Japanese retail industry. Seven-Eleven's achievements can not be separated from the continuous innovation of its marketing model. Based on the advanced information technology system, we have timely and comprehensively fed back the market demand and established a strong cooperation network with suppliers and logistics service providers. For example, the system uses satellites to transmit satellite cloud pictures, weather maps, advertisements and so on. Go to the store so that the store can know the weather tomorrow and adjust its products in time. For example, if we know from satellite images that the temperature will rise by 3 degrees every day in the next two days, the store will put more ice cream and mineral water. In addition, July 11th is developing into the Internet field. It has established its own website with seven other companies to provide people with various goods and services, including CDs, concert tickets and travel services. Brand aesthetics pays attention to every detail of the brand, and business creativity similar to marketing level is an important content of brand aesthetics application research.
(4) Realize product creativity. Great product design ideas can often make a brand. According to a survey report from London, by the end of 2005, there will be 2,654,380,000 people using mobile music players worldwide, of which 65,438+0/4 will be iPod. The latest quarterly report of Apple Computer shows that Apple's profit is $295 million and its net profit rate is 8.45%, of which the sales revenue under iPod is $65.438+$200 million, accounting for 34.4% of the total revenue of $3.49 billion. The amazing growth of iPOD is supported by excellent industrial design. Aiming at the multi-dimensional and entertaining electronic consumption demand of contemporary consumers, the design style of iPOD is simple, fashionable and crystal clear. It is the first to integrate a wheel similar to a notebook touchpad in the player, which realizes the perfect combination of avant-garde and cool design, computer software and hardware technology and online music e-commerce, so that consumers can feel infinitely relaxed and casual aesthetic pleasure in use. This kind of lightweight magic made American TV presenters start poking fun at Bill Gates, and maybe one day he will "bring an Apple computer into the stadium". It is through the deep insight into consumers' needs and the innovation of technical knowledge that brand aesthetics constantly derives excellent product design ideas-needless to say, the product itself is enough to prove the powerful shock of the brand.
(5) Realize the creativity of business model. With the development of science and technology and the growth of human knowledge, smart businessmen can always succeed quickly through innovative business models. Amazon online bookstore is such a case. Amazon was founded just five years ago, and its global customers have reached 20 million. It is the most popular shopping website and a banner of global e-commerce. Amazon Bookstore takes the network as a new access mode, creating the advantages of never going out of business and long shelf life, which is incomparable to traditional bookstores. Coupled with the ubiquitous humanized service of bookstores, technology has become more gentle and charming. As Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon Bookstore, said, "For me, one of the biggest challenges is how to make every little detail of online shopping full of fun. Many of them focus on "interacting with customers", the "one-stop" design of bookstores, convenient and intimate search, preview and purchase methods, and open services such as "interactive novels" and readers' book reviews ... all of which make consumers feel warm and bring strong impact to the traditional publishing industry. One of the research significance of brand aesthetics is to explore the creative law of business model, so as to help brands win by surprise in creative economy.
(6) Realizing industrial strategic innovation. The practical significance of brand aesthetics is not limited to the marketing level. Brand is a systematic concept from the inside out, and the practical value of brand aesthetics can even change the industrial strategic model. Before World War I, facing the saturated citrus market, Sunkist Company cooperated with FCB Company and came up with a brilliant idea-orange juice. Sunkist Company produced millions of glass juicers, and then changed the consumer's demand pattern for oranges through advertising "Drink an orange", and the sales of oranges quadrupled. In the 1920s and 1930s, Sunkist Company made huge profits by publicizing that citrus was rich in vitamin C and other substances beneficial to health. It also promotes lemons to women, claiming that lemons are a good way to make women's hair more supple and smooth. Amazing business ideas again and again not only subvert the consumer's product use mode, but also subvert the strategic development mode of the industry, thus expanding the development space of the brand and making the brand constantly rejuvenate.