Interview with Wolfgang Gruschwitz

Brands and Branded Worlds

What is a brand, Wolfgang Gruschwitz?

A brand is a life philosophy combined with an image. Products, services or persons – everything and everybody could be stylized to a brand. Brands serve as guidelines. Real brands offer security and trust in its strength. They claim to be reliability, since they are also vulnerable. An image can be built, can be changed but also can be destroyed.

Brands in daily life

One uses brands even more in daily life then one is aware of that – e.g. the crate of “silent water” of Krumbach in your office. Only a few brands have the status that one decides for it being aware of this certain brand, e.g. fabric brands like Boss, Joop or Adidas.

Professor Wolfgang Ullrich writes that additional costs are definitive profitable for a good created brand product. One gains a little portion of psychotherapy and enhanced the own life. What do you think of that?

I can totally support this statement. In the present, we are gaining social acceptance through brands and the combined lifestyle in our society. But brands are also petting our own ego, e.g. that you buy yourself a certain product of a brand as a reward.

Brands and architecture, how does this belong together?

Large companies like to engage known architects. The famous architect serves as a brand for the company and decides about the corporate taste. The Architect gives the building automatically the necessary PR.

In Munich is the Allianz Arena, the BMW World or the Olympic tent sights of the city and the companies taking the award of the architecture!

The demand of the brands to present themselves re-reflects in different facets - in the emblem in the logo, the colour, the building, stores or the interior - setting a symbol is a must!
Architecture implicates what or who someone is or what one wants to present.

“The human shapes the house first, then the house forms the human”, I can just support this statement of Sir Winston Churchill.

What is the largest challenge for the architecture by creating a conception for a brand world?

The brand needs to live and needs to get experiences with all senses. It is not enough to define the brand only on paper today.

Brand worlds exist to show the customer what exist behind the brands. The strength of the brand needs to be relocated in its architecture, its ambiance and its surrounding.

Not only architecture needs to be harmonious inside the brand world but everything needs to be embossed by the breath of the brand – the ambiance, the relax area, even the bathrooms. The smallest dissonance in the production could affect the authenticity of the brand world and could leave an un-well feeling by the customer. The worst case scenario could be the non purchase or a different decision.

The challenge for the architecture is it to transfer the philosophy of a brand into a building or an interior arrangement. Only with lots of sympathy and total internalization is one able to design and achieve a brand world.

Do brands only address certain targets groups?

No. Brand exists for everybody visible, since everything we do is communication, even silence. As long as humans try to interpret brands, discuss and talk about them with passion as long is the brand alive.

Of course does a brand only gain a certain target group as customers, the brand needs to have a profile, should be controversial but always in a positive way. Only then is one able to identify themselves with it and is able to accept its leading rights.

Thank you for this chat

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