I have several degrees in marketing and worked in marketing for years as a marketing director and as a member of IBM marketing during the time IBM was led by a marketing-oriented CEO, Louis Gerstner. I generally comment on someone doing something stupid with branding, like changing the font or icon related to the brand for no material reason.
But Qualcomm just launched Dragonwing, which consists of a lot of things that have nothing to do with Cell phones but a lot to do with AI and IoT, and surprisingly, the effort makes a lot of sense and appears well executed. This isn’t a subtle jab at Qualcomm but at the lack of branding competence in the industry in general which tends to be a mess of names that are unpronounceable, unrememberable, and mostly forgettable. Dragonwing is a breath of fresh air.
Let’s talk about branding this week.
What Is a Brand?
Basically, a brand represents a product or business’s identity broadly. The audience for a brand includes customers, investors, partners and employees. All must be considered when launching or changing a brand. This typically makes the job of the poor marketing person extremely difficult. I did brand work at IBM for a short time and came up with the rule “the only thing everyone will agree on when it comes to a new brand is that the person that came up with it is an idiot.” The group of people that has to like the brand is very diverse, making it nearly impossible to get a new brand approved. Then you have the problem of copyrights. Brands can be copyrighted, and if you don’t clear the copyright, you open yourself up to litigation.
Getting Through Approvals
Apple ran into this with the iPhone because Cisco already had a product in market with that name. That created what appeared to be a huge problem for the launch that Steve Jobs addressed by cutting a favorable deal with Cisco which really didn’t care that much about its iPhone line. But this problem is likely why the Apple Watch wasn’t the iWatch. Someone with resources likely had the rights to the iWatch name and Apple was unwilling to incur the cost of acquiring that name. This problem has even created problems for code names. Microsoft code-named its Windows 8 interface (that it later killed) Metro but got sued by a retailer out of Germany with that same name, forcing Microsoft to change it.
Then you have a problem with languages. Names can have different meanings in different countries. While the typical example of the Chevy Nova (no va supposedly meant no-go in Spanish) turned out to be false, you still have to make sure your new brand doesn’t mean something else in another country. Back in the 1990s, Microsoft and Intel used a huge ad company to launch the “Digital Joy,” a term used for on-line pornography in France and on a prominent porn website there. Microsoft ended up having to buy that website, which added insult to injury as the campaign was very poorly executed.
And finally, the key decision makers in the company need to sign off on the brand. If any of these people were part of coming up with it in the first place, they typically hate anything they didn’t think of themselves. IBM had a contest to name a new product, making the job of the poor sap (me) that had to name it a nightmare because none of the names that came out of the contest could get legal approvals (someone else owned them). Getting the final name approved was a nightmare.
Dragonwing
Dragonwing picks up on the Dragon side of Snapdragon which was an interesting play made possible because of earlier Qualcomm marketing efforts that changed the perception of the Snapdragon name from a flower to a cute, overpowered mini dragon.
A dragon wing is what helps a dragon fly. It’s a part of a thing, not the thing by itself, which makes it very appropriate for a line of products that include connectivity products, IoT components and services. I’d argue it is even a better brand than Snapdragon since the meaning of that name is generally a flower, not a part of something larger.
And finally, Dragonwing emphasizes Snapdragon as a dragon, not a flower, strengthening the image that was created years ago with the old Snapdragon campaign. The elements Qualcomm will endeavor to attach to the Dragonwing brand are appropriate to the name and include ascension, power and acceleration, and the color of the related logo will use purple which fuses Qualcomm blue with Snapdragon red (disclosure: purple is my favorite color).
Wrapping Up: Nicely Done!
It is rare that I see a branding effort that is well done even by companies that do a lot of it. Dragonwing is an exception. It has thought-out connections back to parent (Qualcomm) and peer (Snapdragon) brands. It conveys elements of the messaging Qualcomm intends to use with it, and builds rather than distracts from Snapdragon, making that brand potentially stronger. While I wish this effort were less of an exception, it was well done to the credit of the Qualcomm marketing team.
