There is a lot of talk about about building visual consistency into all brand touchpoints, but does that mean that everything needs to look the same?

I love to shop for groceries at Trader Joe's.  It is a very unique concept for a grocery store and business is booming for them.  One unique thing about Trader Joe's is that they only sell private label products, meaning that the only brand of food products available is the Trader Joe's brand.  An entire grocery store with only one brand inside can cause for a unique branding problem.

Conventional branding wisdom tells us that every extension of the brand should carry the same colors and graphic styles, yet that would be a bad strategy in this case because if everything looked the exact same it would feel stale and cookie-cutter, making it hard to make purchasing decisions.

I'm very impressed, however with how Trader Joe's handles this branding challenge.  Every product carries the Trader Joe's name on it, however there is a very wide variety of color schemes and graphic styles when it comes to the different products they sell.  This is a smart strategy in order to give the customer a sense of variety and choice in their shopping experience.

We've quoted Andy Spade a few times on this blog, and it's time to hear from him again…

"I think the myth in marketing is that consistency is the answer. What I think is happening is that they don’t have to look the same—they have to feel the same."

At Trader Joe's, everything doesn't look the same, but it the store does have a very consistent feel from the interior design, the way the employees treat the customer, the signage, etc.

There are two things we can learn from this look at Trader Joe's:

1. Every brand is unique and deserves its own custom strategy.
2. The main goal is for the customer to feel the same way when experiencing the brand and that doesn't always mean that everything looks the same.

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