| Assignment type | Practical/written assignment |
| Estimated time | 1 day |
| Assignment | Visit a popular store, like an Apple, Nike, Levi, H&M or an Ikea store. The brand should be well-known and you must visit a shop where their products are being displayed or distributed. In smaller towns you may not have access to these stores, in this case you will need to find a section showcasing these items and view how they are displayed or laid out. Before going to the shop, determine the following about their brand identity and, once at the shop, evaluate how they remain true to their brand identity or not. How is the brand identity enhanced (or, perhaps, not expressed) at the point of customer interaction? Hand in a write-up with photos of the following:
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| Unit | 4 – Brand Identity |
I chose Monki. I know this is a far smaller brand than Apple, Nike, Levi’s, H&M and Ikea, but they are of decent size, and it is definitely a popular store. Also, I wanted to chose a store that I’m interested in myself, and Monki definitely meets that criteria.
Monki Logo
Monki is a 10 year old Swedish store concept and women’s clothes brand. They’re trendy and offer both basic and quirky fashion to affordable prices. In addition to clothes, they also sell other products, such as shoes, accessories and stationary. Their target group is women in their teens and twenties, who value quality to a good price. Their competitors include major international clothing brands such as H&M, Weekday, Asos, Topshop and Urban Outfitters. Monki is present online and on social media. They use a variety of unique design elements and illustrations both in the products and the marketing.
What brand identity element are they using in their logo?
Monki uses a word mark logo created with a simple, generic sans-serif typeface, which is not particularly recognizable in itself. An arch on either side, attached to the first and the last letter, adds a characteristic touch to the otherwise generic logotype. This detail brings an element of playfulness to the logo, which I think fits nicely with the brand identity. The logo is normally used black on white background or white on black background. A version of the logo uses the federally registered trademark ® as the dot above the “i”, as shown below.
What do you think their brand ideal is?
From what I can see, Monki has two main brand ideals; female empowerment and sustainability/ethics.
Monki has taken a public stand for women by launching a campaign called Monkifesto. Through this campaign, Monki seeks to crate an empowering space for self expression for young women. They encourage women to be the bosses of their own bodies, lives and choices, and to not be ashamed of who they are. I believe Monki’s commitment to female empowerment lies deeper than this campaign, and is something they stand for and work for as brand continuously.
Monki also has an initiative called Monki Cares, which is a set of commitments they have made to make the world a better place and to make fashion more sustainable. Monki Cares pledges to be sustainable and ethical in terms of production, materials, garment care and recycling. However, this only applies to a small selection of their products. These products are labeled with the symbol below.
WWF, Plan International and I:CO are partners of Monki Cares.
Evaluation
Female empowerment: I saw many products promoting this ideal; a shirt that said “I can make change”, a cap that said “Make change”, and a phone case and a patch that said “My own boss”, to name a few. A lot of products representing this ideal were very clearly visible and strategically placed around the store.
Seeing as the Monkifesto campaign is so strongly advertised on Monki’s website that the brand logo is completely covered by a #monkifesto banner, I would’ve expected to find a sign, a poster, a flyer or really any indication that there is such a campaign, but none of these things were present in the shop.
Sustainability/ethics: I also found a few ethical products. As described online, Monki Cares products are indeed clearly labelled with the Monki Cares symbol. The labels are made from recycled materials, and contain information about which requirements are met.
There was a large sign that said “100 % organic cotton”, and images of jeans models this applied to. There were a fair few ethical products that were not jeans, though, and I would expect these products to be grouped together as well, and a poster or sign indicating that they’re ethical and sustainable. This was not the case; instead these products were placed side-by-side with the regular products, making it hard to navigate as the only thing that separated these products were the labels.
As with the first ideal, I would also have expected Monki Cares to be promoted in the store, but this was not the case.
Reflected Journal 