Automotive branding is about way more than logos and names. A vehicle's unique character forges an emotional bond that can span generations, bridge cultures, and create customer loyalty unseen in other industries.
To achieve this level of branding, automotive companies must customize and carefully curate every aspect of their brand's image.
Of course, this includes the technical specifications of a brand’s vehicles. Whether a car is naturally aspirated or turbocharged, a V6 or V8, electric or gas, and more determines customers’ unique perception of the vehicle and its associated brand.
Even the engine sounds of some vehicles, like Ferraris , are carefully tuned to fit the brand’s exact specifications.
Building the Brand Experience
However, a brand's image extends far beyond the technical specifications of its vehicles. The purchase/service experience, the organizations that the brand sponsors or collaborates with, and more all determine the complete brand experience for customers.
Visuals also play an incredibly important role in developing a brand image and enhancing the customer's brand experience.
Our last two artists of the month and their 3D rendering work are perfect illustrations of the power of visuals for automotive branding.
Our March artist of the month, Sükrü Cengil, created beautiful renders of a Porsche 911 Targa on a race track. The blurred motion, stunning golden-hour lighting, and smooth lines with diffuse shading all exude the sophistication and speed of this iconic European brand.
Brand Differentiation through Visuals
In both cases, the designers are working from digital twins of their respective vehicles. But the end results couldn’t be more different, achieved by choosing different HDRi Maps and Backplates for their renders.
The choice of visuals—and the embedded lighting data that accompanies them—makes a dramatic difference in how the vehicle appears and how a customer would perceive the vehicle’s brand.
Visuals can help distinguish automotive brands from each other, but they also convey different emotions and experiences within the brand.
Choosing an HDRi Map of a rugged, backwoods location with stark and dramatic lighting would help to highlight a brand's association with toughness, adventure, and resilience.
Conversley, showing the same vehicle digital twin rendered using an HDRi Map and Backplate of a suburban driveway with warm, diffuse light, would convey how the same brand can also stand for everyday comfort and practicality.
Again, the vehicle itself won’t have changed; changing the lighting and visuals in an automotive render dramatically changes the customer's brand experience, creating differentiation both between brands and within a single brand.
Visual Storytelling
In short, building an automotive brand is all about visual storytelling. Choosing the right visuals can quickly convey a brand's core values and unique aspects of a particular vehicle, and can quickly differentiate one brand’s essential purpose from another’s.
Altering these visuals for a specific vehicle can show multiple facets of how that vehicle might be used, helping customers understand its versatility. Visuals are an incredibly powerful tool for automotive branding, and can help tell nearly any story about a vehicle or brand.
Here at CGI.Backgrounds, our massive library of over 200,000 HDRi Maps and Backplates, captured from more than 7,000 locations worldwide, enables automotive brands and agencies to customize their visual storytelling to convey their exact brand message. Aston Martin, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, and many more have leveraged our imagery to tell compelling visual stories.
Interested in using our HDRi Maps and Backplates for your brand? Reach out to us at contact@cgibackgrounds.com , or take a look at our plans and pricing page.
