If your drinks brand walked into a bar, who would it be?

The Art & Science of Memorability

If I think about the drinks brands that have stuck with me over the years, I mean really stuck, the ones I could describe right now without looking anything up, most of them have something I can picture. A character, something I can see without being shown.

Not a logo or a colour palette or a strapline I have to think twice about. Something I could draw on the back of a napkin.

Most brands in crowded categories don't have that. They look right, sound right and tick every box, but there's nothing distinct enough for people to picture, describe or recognise without seeing the logo. And in a crowded market, that makes being remembered a lot harder.

Orlando Wood's work, drawing on extensive IPA business data, shows that brand characters deliver larger and longer-term business effects than celebrity endorsements. The reason is simple, characters are ownable. Every bit of emotion and storytelling is attributed directly to your brand. A celebrity shares that equity with every other brand they endorse.

Now imagine your brand had one. A character, a face, a figure with attitude and meaning that shows up everywhere and compounds every time it appears. Something people remember without being told who you are.

The most memorable brands do exactly that. I call it Character Creation, one of our Brand Memorability Hacks, a set of creative levers for brands that know playing it safe is forgettable and being brave is more memorable.

Here is what that looks like.

1. The Guinness Toucan.

Guinness was a dark, heavy stout sold on medicinal benefits when the toucan first appeared in 1935. A colourful, surreal character that had nothing to do with the drink. The toucan changed how people felt about the brand. Decades later, toucan merchandise still outsells almost everything else at the Guinness Storehouse. The character outlived every campaign it ever appeared in.

2. Hofmeister's George the Bear.

Hofmeister was a forgettable lager going nowhere. They gave it George, a streetwise, confident bear in a pork-pie hat. "For great lager, follow the bear." George turned Hofmeister into one of the top-selling beers of the 1980s. When the brand relaunched over thirty years later, it was George that opened every door. The character still had more equity than the beer ever had on its own.

3. Johnnie Walker created the Striding Man.

A cartoonist sketched a figure on the back of a menu card. A man striding forward. By the late 1990s the brand was in decline. BBH put the Striding Man at the centre of "Keep Walking," it reversed the decline and drove over two billion dollars in incremental sales. One character, one idea, decades of growth.

That's Character Creation in action.

A toucan, a bear, a striding man. You can see them right now without me showing you a single image.

Now ask yourself: what would people picture if they thought of yours?

If the answer is nothing, that isn't a creative problem, it's a memorability problem. And no amount of playing it safe will fix it. The most memorable brands created something worth picturing, and that took bravery most aren't willing to show.

Our programmes help brands build the kind of distinctive assets that compound for decades. Not just recognised. Remembered.