In a brilliant bit of branding coup, Oscar Mayer has created and released an actual dating mobile app that aims to bring together like-minded people who share a deep and abiding love for…bacon!

Proving once again that “there’s an app for that” – this free iOS app called “Sizzl” aims to give dating apps like Tinder a run for their money and match up people nearby based on your preferences.  This is how it works:

Via adweek.com

You download the app, specify your bacon preferences in a customizable profile, upload photos and start swiping your greasy digits through pics of local fellow bacon lovers. Depending on how “Sizzl-ing” they are, you can message and meet up with other Sizzl users, based on a mutual-matching system, for what Oscar Mayer is calling “bacon-wrapped dates.”

“In love, as it is in bacon, it’s important to be discerning when selecting your perfect match and to never settle for less than the best,” Eric Dahmer, marketing director at Oscar Mayer, says in a statement. “We passionately cure our bacon for 12 hours, and lovingly smoke-house it for another 12, making it the true bacon for bacon lovers. With the launch of Sizzl, we’re thrilled to give our true bacon lovers the chance to find each other and potentially meet their soulmates, in life and in bacon.”

https://youtu.be/Vh3RuV-xoZc

This Sizzl app from Oscar Mayer is a great example of what you get when you take a pinch of strategy, mix in 3 parts creativity, add a bit of branding – and package it all in a custom developed mobile app cleverly designed to engage your core and desired target audience and generate buzz.

Very clever indeed!

If you want to check out the Sizzl app for yourself – it’s only available for download for the next 6 months – and exclusively on iOS, for iPhone 5 and up (sorry Android and Windows users).

Branding is critically important to any product and company. We know this instinctively – either as advertising and marketing professionals – or as consumers in the marketplace. Done well, effective branding creates true corporate value and an emotional connection that can be worth billions.

Names Those Brands…In 60 Seconds

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Via adweek.com

“Even if you change the most important thing of every brand—the name—if all other elements are strong enough—color, typography—you will still be able to recognize the brand in a second,” Inetdesign partner Martin Rickmann tells AdFreak.

That’s because the clip uses famous logos to explain the importance of branding. Sort of. The colors, dimensions and basic design elements of the corporate marks are unchanged, but the company names have been replaced by words from the video’s story. For example, “design” is rendered in the fashion of Disney’s monochrome logo, “future” follows Facebook’s blocky minimalist model, and perhaps best of all, “loud and clear” glows against a starry background, like an affirmation from a Jedi knight setting off on some celestial crusade. (And there are many more to sample.)

Even though this video cleverly shows the power of a well-recognized brand, every one of these have undergone a logo redesign over the years.

Redesigning a logo successfully is a delicate balance of honoring the brand equity and consumer recognition that has already been achieved – and then strategically and visually transitioning the brand identity to a new place in the hearts and minds of the consumer.