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Well... We often preach the merits of clarity of thought being the precursor to great creative. Further to that there is unequivocal research to show the power of great creative in the marketing industry.
When a brand that has matured enough to understand that that the brand itself is a commodity that people emotionally buy into, and that this is arguably the most important plateau it should strive for, the brand realizes that it no longer needs to litter it's marketing or products with superfluous 'bumf' borne out of insecurity or overzealous attempts to out-trump the competition.
Here is a beautiful case in point.
Take away the logo and you are presented with a clean, simple, clever, beautiful, confident and assured product. Now, I don't know whether the earphones are particularly good or how they perform against competitors on the shelf but what this brand seem to grasp is the difference between rational and emotional reactions to how it is positioning itself... and the staggering power of the latter.
I would seriously consider buying this product over others on the shelf for these emotional reasons, as indescribable as they may be. The problem with promoting purchase decisions based upon rational reasoning is that "there is always a bigger fish". You put yourself in a position with there is a clear way for your competitors to beat you.
Promoting your brand, and symbiotically, your products via emotional reasoning means you are making a personality of your brand to which you can attach values, quirks, tones of voice, ways of behaving. These things combine to create something that is almost a real relationship. Something like this is much harder to rationalise, even for the consumer. But, something as ephemeral as this is not something that is easily compared and discarded.
Once someone has bought into a brand on this basis they have a relationship with it and that is something not as easily knocked.
So, now we add the logo back to this packaging, we see clearly the symbiotic relationship between the material and the brand. The values that the consumer attaches to the product are now attached to the brand. Further reinforcement will further solidify it in the mind of the consumer making the brand more important than the product. This can only be a good thing as when the brand expands it's portfolio of products, it can be reasonably sure that they have the first battle won.
