Keywords

1 Introduction

Brands play an important role in the individuals’ stimuli and adherence to a product or service. They can mirror the self-image (the real and ideal self) of the subjects, creating loyal customers [1, 2]. However, so far there has been little research on creating emotionally engaging brands by involving the users in the branding process through the transference of their self-concept into brand attributes [3,4,5].

As it is widely known, we are living in an increasingly ageing society [5, 6]. Age-related changes in the brain are likely to influence the consumer behaviors and the values that are prioritized in a brand.

The aim of this paper is to present a method that supports the process of branding an Online Community for older adults, by involving the target audience in the process, thus generating a more meaningful brand through the effect of self-brand mirroring. This paper begins by reviewing and defining the key functional criteria behind the branding and naming processes. Then, it proceeds by highlighting what makes older adults to be attracted by brands and in what consists the process of user-generated branding. It ends with the presentation of Participatory Design methods relevant to harness the user-generated input and participation in the naming and branding development process. The methodology section describes the implementation of the participatory branding process for an online community with a focus group of older adults as its end-users. Finally, the results and conclusion sections provide an evaluation of the methods used and discusses the limitations and further research needed on this topic.

2 Literature Review

2.1 Branding and Brands

Branding can be defined as the process used to build awareness, increase the visibility, and encourage the loyalty of consumers towards a product, service, or company [7], through different associations with commercial purposes [8]. More than just a name, the Brand is both a sign and a symbol [9] resulting from the Name, Symbol, Design, or the combination of any of the previous elements that communicate the intrinsic qualities of the product, or service through its image, language, or associations. Hence, brands are decisive in the subjects’ choices and self-identification towards it, or to differentiate it from others [10,11,12,13].

According to a number of authors [1, 7, 11, 14], the Brand encompasses all the elements from which it is built and unifies them into a system. These elements can be: (a) Name; (b) Logotype; (c) Tag Line, True Line, Slogan or Brand Mantra; (d) Symbol, Icon or Brand; (e) Signatures or Trademarks; (f) Color; (g) Typography; (h) Iconography; (i) Sound; (j) Motion; (k) Smell or Taste; (l) Shapes or forms of interaction; or (m) any other application or touchpoints that can be registered.

Although many authors have also highlighted some guidelines for a successful branding process [15, 16], Walvis has stressed that out of these “soft rules”, we have to choose which ones serve our branding purposes in the best manner. In other words, we have to define our branding strategy and the different brand elements’ Functional Criteria.

In order to do so, we should first develop a specific product strategy [7, 14, 17, 18] that usually encompasses the following: (a) Brand Brief in which it should be clear the product, or the brand’ purpose, mission, values and goals; (b) the Competition and the brand’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats; (c) the Brand Positioning, that is also known as the combination of the Brand Equity and Brand Parity [11, 19,20,21,22,23]; and (d) the product or the Brand’s Essence (stated by Olgivy in the 1960’ as the “Big Idea”, or more recently by Kotler as the USP – Unique Selling Proposition). Once these are established, one can proceed to develop the (5) Brand Mantra [11], or Brand Messaging that comprises the Brief, Name, Descriptors, True Line, Tag Line or Slogan [7, 14, 24]. Therefore, the messaging, as a final and comprehensive step of the Branding strategy is very important, if not the most important one, as it embodies all the information of the Brand’s Positioning and Values. Building a strong identity through branding has to be achieved not only through the development of a great product, but also through the values being added by the elements of the Equity elements of the Branding system [10, 11, 19, 25].

2.2 Branding and Naming Functional Criteria

The reasons that guide the choices made in the development of the brand elements should be based on objective and functional criteria [11]. These criteria have different names, and spread throughout different subjects, such as business, management, architecture, arts and communication [26]. Within the scope of these subjects, we selected the Academic (A) and Professional (P) dimensions, in the multiple practice contexts such as Communication Design (CD); Naming (N); Branding (B) and Marketing (M). We have analyzed a sample of the literature available from different dimensions and multiple contexts (Table 1).

Table 1. Sample and characterization of the number or the criteria found in the literature analyzed, according to Professional (P) and Academic (A) dimensions. And to Communication Design (CD), Naming (N), Branding (B) or Marketing (M) contexts.
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This literature review allowed us to synthesize a list of all the criteria addressed by the authors into a set of 10 Functional Criteria that can be applied in the brand messaging development (e.g. the name, wordmark, or the logotype): (1) Simple, short and easy to pronounce; (2) Relevant, descriptive and profound (it must represent the values of the product or service, links to the stakeholder’s mindset and be representative); (3) Embed traditions (avoid trends) and be future-oriented; (4) Distinctive (differentiating factor and the ability to draw attention); (5) Memorable; (6) Flexible (on a formal scale), modular, extensible or translatable into other contexts; (7) Focused (convey a strong idea) and minimal (graphical excellence); (8) Transmit a positive tone and image associations; (9) Easily to like and emotionally engaging; and (10) Protectable.

Due the nature of the different contexts, the authors set a different number of criteria. Nevertheless, from the analysis of the 23 sampled references, the authors present a set of criteria that ranges from a minimum of 2 to a maximum of 11, on an average of 7,5 criteria presented by each author (Table 2).

Table 2. Number of functional criteria by author and by criteria in the sampled literature.
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As a result, we can conclude that, from a holistic point of view relative to the 5 criteria that are the most relevant for the academic and professional dimensions, these are: (1) to be simple, short and easy to pronounce; (2) to be relevant, descriptive and profound; (4) to be distinctive; (6) to be flexible; and (8) to transmit a positive tone and image associations (setting the threshold of the analysis on double the average number of criteria per author >= 15). When analyzed only through the Naming context literature, these are also the most valued criteria alongside with the (9) Protectable. Nevertheless, this last one is not only one of the naming criteria, but also a prerequisite for registering a new brand name.

2.3 The Process of Naming

For Wheeler [7], the term Naming encompasses: (a) Revising the positioning (the objectives and target audience previously defined); (b) Evaluating the leading brand names on the market and the concurrency; (c) Planning the process (define a deadline, the teamwork, identify the brainstorm techniques, the research method and its validation); (d) Defining the naming criteria (performance, position, legal issues); (e) Conducting the brainstorm sessions; (f) Selecting the names that are easy-to-pronounce, meeting the legal issues and corresponding the brand to its market position; (g) Testing the selected name in the real context and; (h) Verifying the availability for registering the brand.

In another major study, Perry and Wisnom [24] suggest to: (a) generate a long ‘master’ list of names and compare them with the communication values and attributes desired for the product or service; (b) generate new names, regarding the rationale for designing the brand; (c) generate a shorter ‘master’ list with the names that meet the best communication attributes; (d) Verify the availability for registering; (e) Check the linguistic and cultural significance; and (f) Test the name with the target audience.

Hart mentions that the name development process invoices a “careful refining process” [32]. Through a process of filtering the candidates through the functional, or trademark criteria, the vast initial vast list of names can be reduced to a small number of names from which the shortlist preferred by the stakeholders is taken into testing.

Although these studies suggest testing the selected name in the real context or with the target audience [7, 24], difficulties arise when attempt is made to implement this recommendation. Nevertheless, the name testing process, regardless the method employed, should be used to identify names with a positive and negative connotation, the sound symbolism [43, 44], the latent associations and to test the name level of engagement by potential users [31, 45].

2.4 Being Attracted by Brands at a Later Age (the Older Adults’ Characteristics)

During the past few years, more information has become available on branding and on the older adult consumer behavior. Indeed, there seems to be a consensus among social scientists that the older adults are more driven by emotions and personal experiences [46,47,48]. Nevertheless, we have to take into account that the users who experience more intense negative and positive affective states in the real world, have the least positive perceptions towards online brands [49]. This is also true for older adults.

Before analyzing the literature on what motivates the older adults to be attracted by brands, it is necessary here to clarify exactly what means being an older adult. In around 75% of world countries, an older adult can be defined as an individual aged 65 or over (legal aspect) [50]. However, this chronological standard is insufficient to encompass biological, cognitive, psychological and social effects.

During the ageing process, changes in the brain structure (i.e. whereas there is a decline in memory, emotion processing is likely to remain intact) tend to affect the older adult consumer behavior. According to Drolet et al. [51], these changes can, on the one hand, reduce the individual capacity to make free associations. On the other hand, the older adults’ tendency to repeat behaviors is often increased. As a result, long-term interpersonal relationships, values (such as giving and helping), friends’ behaviors [47] and self-relevant information [51] may lead this target group to act.

Moreover, as the socio-emotional selectivity theory emphasizes, during the ageing process, people tend to become more selective and guided by emotional stimuli and positive information [47, 52].

In general, further research is needed to understand the older adult consumer patterns. Despite the fact that there is some criticism around the aged market [39] the older adult segment deserves our attention as the consumer behavior also changes with ageing [53, 54].

2.5 Participatory Design

Participatory Design (PD) may be broadly defined as a method for involving the end user, as a co-designer, in the activities that inform, test and lead the development of products or services [55,56,57]. The research team and the end users are not necessarily united in the final result, but work together to achieve a common goal.

The participatory design method is also related to the process by which technologies are designed and stakeholders are involved [58]. In addition, participatory methodologies vary accordingly with the goals and resources provided [55, 59].

In this study, the focus group workshop was chosen because it enables stakeholders to share and communicate a set of pre-determined goals. And subsequently it helps to define strategies and assess its outcomes [55]. Even if the empirical work does not seem to strictly follow the best-known workshop format—the Future Workshop [60], the main activities involved the end-users to partake as full participants, providing enough personal information and insight for the brand development [61].

3 Methodology

A qualitative approach was deployed to provide a better understanding of the values and messages that would be important to transmit with the final brand. The development of the miOne brand presents a unique situation. We have approached the whole process by dividing the empirical work into 3 phases: (a) the brand brief development; (b) the participation of the older adults; and (c) the synthesis of the brand insights and development of the final brand.

The first phase corresponded to the involvement of the development team in defining the brand brief—the brand essence, mission, values, the naming criteria and the evaluation of the final name candidates. Then, the second phase was related with the involvement of the main stakeholders—the older adults—in the self-branding process.

Regarding the fact that some studies [62,63,64] and countries (e.g. Africa) consider individuals aged 50 and over as being older adults, we also included members of this age in the focus group. Thus, their inclusion allowed us to have heterogeneous group and to understand the differences and resemblances in the current and the next generation of older adults.

In the third and final phase, the data was gathered from the clinical self-concept inventory scale [65] and from the contributions of the older adults in the participatory workshop. The final candidates were generated and evaluated taking into account the functional criteria as brand heuristics alongside with the self-concept and self-brand attributes known.

3.1 A Brand for an Online Social Community: The Case Study of miOne

miOne is an online social community developed with the active participation of older adults from four community-dwelling centers of a Portuguese municipality. While the online community was being developed and tested, it was necessary to assign it a name and a distinctive brand (both by social factors, such as recognition, identification, and legal issues—the online domain and trademark registration).

Prior to this study, the research team developed a code name for the online community—‘digital senior’. However, during the test sessions and thorough the iterative design sprints of the online community, the end users reported that they did not identify themselves with the name adopted for the prototype. The word ‘digital’ was not descriptive and meaningful enough. In addition, the word ‘senior’ had a negative connotation—it reminded the users of the negative aspects that occur during the ageing process.

As a consequence of this attempt to create a meaningful brand, the research team decided to involve the end-users in the process, regarding the fact that all services offered by the online social community were already a result of this design partnering.

3.2 Brand and Naming Brief

A fundamental component of the visual identity of a brand is the Brand Brief [7]. In the miOne Brand Brief (Fig. 1), the brand’s vision, mission, attributes, competitive advantages, value proposition, key competitors and main stakeholders were described.

Fig. 1.
figure 1

Visual Brand Brief of the online social community miOne.

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The community aims to be an open, accessible and easy to use platform for everyone, by focusing first on the older adult’s needs as its interaction reference and progressively enhancing them for everyone. Users can create and strengthen their personal connections or affective bonds, since it has been also developed in a Participatory Design (PD) approach [55, 59, 66] with older adults, with a low literacy level.

The brand brief (Fig. 1) defined by the research team was important in order to know the values that the internal stakeholders wanted to transmit and, then, to compare them with the results obtained from the involvement of a sample of the target market.

3.3 Defining Naming Criteria

For the purpose of identifying the most relevant criteria for choosing and evaluating brand names, the research team analyzed the literature from the theory and practice of the branding process and reviewed the desirable criteria previously defined for a brand name. From the set of the five most important ones we’ve highlighted the: (1) to be simple, short and easy to pronounce; (4) to be distinctive; and (8) to transmit a positive tone and image associations as the most important criteria to include in the name development process. This was mainly due to the fact that this target audience does not relate to digital technologies. So, the (2) relevant, descriptive and profound criteria would be a very difficult goal to achieve. The positive image was to be achieved not only by the name, but also mainly through the combined messaging elements (e.g. the brand with the tagline). And the last criteria, the (6) flexibility was to be achieved in combination with the (9) protectable criteria. In other words, the brand developed would have to adapt itself not only to the several areas of the community (internal flexibility) as to other languages or international settings (external flexibility). These naming criteria were the basis to formulate the questions of the focus group with main target audience (the older adults).

3.4 Creating the Panel List of Names

After having the brand brief document and the naming criteria, the process of brain writing followed. This process was iterative and continued until every member contributed as many ideas as possible in three sessions. In the end, a total of 809 names were generated. Only twenty candidates that matched the selected functional criteria were selected to proceed to the evaluation phase.

3.5 Older Adults’ Participation: Sample Selection and Characterization

For the purpose of this study, a convenience sample comprised of ten participants were recruited from a day-care center and from a course of Introduction to Multimedia aimed at older adults, lectured by the authors, at the University. 60% of the sample was women and 36% were men aged between 52 and 87 (M = 72, SD = 10.6).

In addition, the criteria for selecting the subjects were: (a) being over 50; and (b) having interest in information and communication technologies (ICT). Furthermore, all participants were assured that their participation was voluntary. An overview of participants’ characteristics is summarized in Table 3.

Table 3. The main characteristics of the sample
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Although the demographic indicators are in line with our sample [50], caution must be applied, as the subjects are not representative of all older adults, and the number of subjects and the surplus of women compromises representativeness. Nevertheless, previous studies that evaluate self-brand congruity [67, 68] demonstrate that these user-generated brands are likely to positively communicate with the audience.

In our sample, we have integrated five older adults who were autonomous in using information and communication technologies (ICT) and other five older adults who used ICT, only if accompanied with somebody else (either by a caregiver, researcher, relatives or friends). Those two different profiles of the sample are important to possess the necessary characteristics about the population (older adults who feel at ease with ICT and the ones who are having the first contact with technological devices and need to be accompanied in using them).

3.6 The Involvement of the Older Adults: The Procedure

Before proceeding to the field study, the participants’ consent was obtained. The empirical research began with the administration of the Clinical Self-Concept Inventory [65] and a semi-structured interview (“Describe here your personal characteristics. Please begin with the sentence ‘I am…’”) in order to assess participants’ self-concept analysis. Closed and open-ended questions were used, as many older adults tend to manifest difficulty in self-expression. We later employed seven coders in order to analyze their answers: (A1) Sympathy/Friendliness/Positiveness/Familiarity; (A2) Communication (skills); (A3) Persistence; (A4) Tolerance; (A5) Practical; (A6) Competency/Professional (profile); (A7) Energy/Velocity/Immediacy. Nearly fifteen minutes were spent to complete the survey on paper and describe themselves.

The participants were then given a set of post-it notes in which the color corresponded to the brands’ functional criteria in a self-brand exercise. They were presented with a list of 20 selected names from the master list (in no particular order) in the form of post-it boards (i.e. Raízes – Roots, Penta, Poli, Farol – Lighthouse, Atlas, Liga Digital – Digital League, Convívio – Mingle, Terra – Land, Elo – Bond, Pátio – Courtyard, Terreiro – Yard, Digital, Centro – Centre, Social, Sénior – Senior, Entre amigos – Among friends, Entre Nós – Among us, Comunique – Communicate, Sénior digital – Digital Senior and Vida – Life). The goal was for them to code each one with different color-codes, matching different characteristics they valued in the brand name, namely (B1) Familiarity, (B2) Security, (B3) Distinctiveness, (B4) Relevancy, (B5) Memorability, (B6) Extendibility and (B7) Energy. Afterwards they chose which ones corresponded better to the main branding functional criteria. For a clear understanding and richer interaction with the participants, the following questions were posed:

  • Which of these names are you more familiar with?

  • Which of these names inspire more confidence?

  • Which are the names that stand out?

  • Which are the names that suggest the concept of relationships?

  • Which are the names that stay longer in memory?

  • Which are the names most suitable for an online community?

  • Which are the names that can be used for other things?

  • Which are the names that transmit energy?

The first and last functional criteria (simple and protectable) were deprecated in this end-user evaluation. Overall, the entire procedure took 90 min to complete.

We later designed a grid to evaluate the focus group self-evaluation and name coding results in order to better understand the importance of distinct brand values for the older adults as end-users. The candidates were evaluated accordingly with the Positive, Negative and Interesting (PNI) aspects method [69]. Then, we generated a new name list by applying the SCAMPER method on the most valued ones, in order to obtain a short list of viable final name candidates.

4 Results

4.1 Self-concept Analysis

From the results of the Clinical Self-Concept Inventory and the semi-structured interview, we analyzed the answers of each participant relatively to their self-concept.

From the data obtained, we could verify that trust, a sense of connectedness, being competent and being responsible are the characteristics more valued and cited by the respondents (Table 4). Furthermore, as a group, the Older Adults of our sample are not afraid to reach out for help. Hence, these values have been added to the functional criteria in order to evaluate the final name candidates suggested for the online community.

Table 4. Sample participants’ self-concepts summary
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4.2 Self-brand Exercise

The concepts Convívio (Mingle), Centro (Centre), Social (Social), Entre Amigos (Between friends), Comunique (Communication) and Vida (Life) were the most cited in the brand name’s values evaluation. These were considered important because they translated values that were defined by the development team needed in the brand. As U5 stated: “I think the concepts of Convívio (Mingle) and Digital suggest social bonds – a new generation, who gets together”. U3 pointed out: “The concept of Vida (Life) suggests youth and memory. In addition, getting social is a way of being in life - a philosophy of life, a choice […]. It suggests participation, living with intensity”. Meanwhile, U2 reminded us to: “Regardless the name or the concept, it should encourage trust and union”.

4.3 The Online Community Brand Insights

Briefly, everybody agreed with the fact that “Life, relationships, and being digital are important concepts that the online community should transmit as values.” Hence, the sense of connectedness, union, social bonds and trust will be on focus of this brand. As a result, the name miOne was developed. We opted for a coined word to enhance the distinctive and unique aspect of the community in favor of the memorability achieved with a familiar word [32]. Familiarity with the digital nature of an online community is a very difficult connection to achieve with these users. This type of name also allows for the brand to extend to additional international contexts. We have also opted for a 5-letter short word, composed by a combination of stop and fricative consonants (“m” and “n”), and stressing the lower-frequency vowel “O”, in order to convey a symbolism of “largeness” [44], and to relate to the sense of union and connectedness reported by the users (Table 4). The tagline ‘Life in online community. For me. For you. For everyone!’ emerged in order to reinforce the memorability, description and relevance of the brand messaging. Moreover, having the members’ photo embedded on the O of the logo reinforces the individuality of the online social community (‘mi’ – ‘I am’ embedded in ‘One’ community).

4.4 The Online Community User Interface Visual System as a Holistic Brand Experience

Throughout the brand development process, the Online Community prototype was developed and tested with a larger set of participants. As such, the miOne brand was being experienced not only through the brand messaging, but also through the online digital touch points—namely the community visual interface (Fig. 2). As described by Goodwin and Wheeler [7, 61], the careful development of the different aspects of the interface—the Visual System—extend to the Identity, Name, Logotype, Color, Typography, Content, Iconography and User Controls, Layout Grids, Application Behavior and Interaction. These are crucial touch points to support the branding process throughout the whole user experience. Hence, the Visual System was developed as an integrated documentation [70].

Fig. 2.
figure 2

The branded online community visual interface.

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We have opted for a moderate color palette, mainly based on a low saturated blue as its primary color. Additional colors were used to provide the necessary functionality [61, 71]. In respect to the typography selection, we have opted for the font Arial—its parameters, such as body size, line height and column width were tweaked in order to achieve the best compromise between the connection performance, technical quality, and reading comfort for these users [72]. Nowadays, recent developments in Variable and Web Fonts technologies offer more options in this regard. Content was also carefully planned and, due to the public’s low literacy skills, the messages were designed to be the most clear, directive and non-ambiguous as possible. Therefore, we have employed short and descriptive sentences with simple and direct-action verbs. This provides for an enhanced sense of trust within the community. For the Iconography and User Controls, we have opted for simple and familiar patterns and whenever needed, we have developed new and more simple solutions to address the lack of familiarity with the expected interface actions—such as the big and explicit scrollbar buttons. We have also highlighted the most obvious and expected actions through enlarged size and color-coded call-to-actions. Finally, the Layout Grid tries to accommodate as much white space as possible in order to improve its legibility and meet the ‘openness’ attribute.

5 Conclusion

This paper has addressed the process of involving the older adults in generating meaningful brands. The study was designed to develop an online community brand name, taking into account the self-concept and self-brand associations established by this target group.

In general, it seems that the process of developing a brand with the participation of the end users encompasses three phases. The first phase corresponds to the involvement of the development team in (a) discussing the brand brief, (b) brand writing, (c) defining the name criteria and (d) creating a panel list of names. The second phase is devoted to the involvement of the target audience in the process of their self-concept evaluation and transference of self-attributes into the brand being developed. Then, the third phase ended with the evaluation of final name candidates and the generation of a new name, using the PNI and SCAMPER methods. The process was guided mainly through a set of brand heuristics derived from the current list of the identified functional criteria in academic and professional literature.

Applying this process with adults aged 50 and over allowed us to experience that, as proposed by the literature review, this target group was motivated by emotions and tended to value brand names, which transmitted a sense of connectedness, trust and union. Moreover, while conducting the empirical study, we verified the importance of using both open and close-ended questions with the older adults, as these subjects experience a decline in the capacity of self-expression.

In this paper, we have proposed and described a framework for participatory branding of digital products, such as the Online Community, specifically involving older adults. It incorporates a set of 10 branding Functional Criteria that serve as heuristics for developing and evaluating the whole brand creation process.

Finally, a number of important limitations need to be considered. Firstly, we must proceed with caution, as the findings might not be transferable to other contexts, given a small sized convenience sample. Secondly, we involved a group of adults aged 50 and over in the focus group workshop and, although they formed a small heterogeneous group, their inclusion was beneficial to understand the differences and resemblances in the current and the next generation of older adults.

To sum up, further work needs to be done to achieve the generalizability of the results. Moreover, this study provides a starting point for studying older adults’ brand behaviors and techniques for involving them in the user-generated branding process.