Caricatures exaggerate certain key characteristics. This makes them easier to understand and remember. A caricature of your company doesn’t tell everything you do, but it tells the most important things in a way that’s easier for people to understand and act upon.
Cory at BoingBoing wrote on some research which has shown that people are more likely to identify crime suspects from a caricature of the person (like they draw at amusement parks) than from a traditional police sketch.
Seth Godin then makes the connection that brands that are a caricature are more likely to succeed than brands which attempt to tell the whole story of the company. Think of the Verizon series of advertisements showing the crowd of network support staff following a customer everywhere the customer goes. It exaggerates the idea that the entire network and its support staff is there to serve you when you make a call.
Most companies are reluctant to portray a caricature of themselves.
Technology companies that serve business buyers are especially reluctant. The engineering culture in the company wants the story to the market to be accurate. The business culture in the company wants to appeal to everyone in their potential market; they don’t want anyone to be put off by their message. Neither of these groups is comfortable exaggerating some product characteristics and diminishing others.
I can think of a few B2B technology companies who used this idea in their branding. Tandem Computers running the transactions on the New York Stock Exchange. Silicon Graphics doing the video for the special effects in Hollywood movies. At Hyperion the sales people used to refer to Essbase as “Excel on steroids”.
The advantage of using caricatures to position your company in the mind of the technology buyer is that it’s easier for people to understand and remember a few exaggerated characteristics. And if they remember you, they are more likely to think of you when they have a problem you can solve.
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