Like it or not, every choice we make is a branding decision, so we might as well make it a great one.
Building brands seems to be a lot more difficult today compared with what it was a few decades ago. So what’s changed about the way we do branding? The world’s number one brand can’t be touched, does no advertising, yet plays an important role in our every day. According to the Millward Brown BrandZ Top 100 Brand Ranking, it’s Google.
It’s a reminder that branding is no longer about logos and packaging, but instead about experience.
So has branding changed altogether? Or is it the same at its heart?
Great branding has always been about building a bond with key stakeholders, according to John Varcoe of Scenario Communications. Marketers build that bond in order to create preference and pride of association. “Nothing’s really changed at that primary level,” he says, and many of his colleagues in branding circles agree.
Saatchi and Saatchi’s Andrew Stone, says the rules of branding have been the same for centuries. “These rules are about dreams, stories, emotion,” he says. “Brands are telling a story people want to hear. Our role is to tell those stories in as interesting and engaging a way as possible.”
So what’s changed about the way we do branding?
1. The market is crowded
Will any 21st century brands last for a century? Merilyn Havler of Beiersdorf AG, the parent company of iconic historical brands like Nivea, suspects not. “It’s harder to get cut-through and loyalty,” says Havler. “Our research shows that, in FMCG, people have a basket of products they’ll shop in, with up to three brands they feel comfortable with. It’s harder to move people from brand loyalty towards brand devotion.”
Alan Hunt of Visionz Marketing, says the stiff competition has diluted the effectiveness of brands. “If you go back 40 or 50 years,” he says, “brands were big – because they had room to be big.” Brands have also been challenged by the rise of cheaper house brands and imports. “Everything works, and you can get it at The $2 Shop,” says David MacGregor of BrandWorld. In a world driven by the bottom line, sometimes branding can make all the difference.
“Some brands still perform an emotional role in our emotionally retarded society,” says MacGregor. “People buy a Toyota Prius so they can be seen to be doing something about the environment. That’s why it looks different – there’d be no point if it looked the same.”
2. Niche is nice
Dave Bassett, founder of BrandNew, says big brands will struggle if they’re not already. “The era of the niche is upon us,” he says. “We’ll move from the age of the experience into the age of transformation when the person will become the brand.”
Bassett believes the stage is set for small and highly individualistic brands to do very well.
There’s also the opportunity for larger brands to personalise their offering, using customisation, as pioneered by Nike and Nokia, among others. Matthew Savage from Base Two points out that this doesn’t mean customers want a brand “just for them”. “It’s about surrounding themselves with a mix of brands that they believe will add up to a personal statement about them,” he says.
Traditional brand thinking maintains that brands must be consistent across all markets. That’s the approach Havler recommends. “The strength of the Nivea brand, or any iconic brand, is that you can go to Brazil or China and, while you may not be able to read the label, you’ll still know it’s Nivea,” she says.
But MacGregor is not so sure. “The Internet allows discreet conversations with different audiences,” he points out. “People want different things from the same product. Living in the Internet age, we’re able to have those conversations.”
3. Brands as movements
It’s no longer enough for a company to just make products. Everyone does that. Today’s consumers demand their brands to stand for something – and potentially against something.
“A company needs to stand for something and be vocal about it,” says Lynley Kirk-Smith, former Marketer of the Year and now marketing manager of Planet Fun. She cites brands like Apple, McDonald’s, Starbucks and Virgin that have successfully taken a stand. “They clearly defined their difference,” she says. “They uniquely, consistently and single-mindedly delivered it, taking risks and opportunities to really stand out and be noticed.”
MacGregor refers to Patrick Hanlon’s book Primal Branding, which says it’s just as important to have people who hate your brand as to have raving fans. “Great drama has a protagonist and an antagonist,” says MacGregor. “If Sam and Frodo had caught a number nine bus to Mount Doom and just popped the ring in, there wouldn’t be much of a story, would there?”
John Varcoe of Scenario Communications says brands are developing into enablers. “With the advent of the Internet, brands have become forums where customers are invited not just to buy things but to do things,” he says. He cites a slew of examples, from YouTube to lesser-known examples such as peer-to-peer lending service Zopa, and SellaBand, which lets the average Joe/Jane launch his/her favourite unknown band.
“As consumers are invited not to buy but to work and create content, functionality is a key issue,” he says. “Creating a brand, and designing the service behind it, are now inseparable.”
Varcoe says the corporation of the future may be more like a constellation than a monolith, with brands as the link. “Amazon.com may seem like a book-selling corporation, but it’s actually a constellation of retailers of electronics, homewares, toys and more – plus the wider constellation of people who review and recommend,” he says.
Varcoe suggests brand ownership may be a grey area in the future, as brands become less the property of an organisation and more the banner of a movement. “Logos, for example, may become things other organisations and individuals can borrow and adapt.”
4. Smart, powerful consumers
“The customer can dictate and influence,” says Kirk-Smith. “It means companies have to get it right every time so the customer experience is delivered consistently.”
It’s a world that’s no longer about selling, but buying. Varcoe says that while the basics of branding remain the same, what has changed is the range of media channels, and the ability of users to create and exchange content and compare company offerings from all over the world. “This represents a fundamental shift of control from companies to the consumer,” he says.
It’s not that consumers want brands to be afraid of them. But they do want transparency, accountability and humanity. “Companies – probably like humans – find it really hard to say sorry when they get it wrong,” says Kirk-Smith. “Customers are more likely to forgive an open ‘we’re sorry, we got it wrong, we’ll do all we can to get it right next time’, than seeing a company fudge it.”
Hunt senses a hunger for authenticity in the marketplace. “People feel they’ve been lied to,” he says. “Religion is on the rise again. In the ‘60s, religion was down the gurgler, because people felt there was a new beginning. But people are getting disillusioned with governments, products, whatever. They’re seeking a new truth.”
Hunt asks clients to visualise their business as a car. “Does it have tinted windows? Not good.”
5. The Definition Is Wider
“The same rules [of branding] still apply,” says Imagination CEO Brad Green, “but we’re playing the game better.” He’s referring to the many parts of a company that have a vital impact on a brand, but have not traditionally been the domain of brand consultants or even marketers, such as service delivery or product distribution.
“Five years ago, we did some of those aspects really badly, and ignored others because we just couldn’t do them – like corporate culture,” says Green.
Paul Stewart, CEO of ON-Brand Partners, works with CEOs to shape brands. “I spend a lot of time working with the CEO and their direct management team before we touch any other areas,” he says. “The CEO is ultimately the only person responsible for the integration of other parts of the business. Everyone else is thinking about their specialty area.”
Bassett agrees that brands need to start at the top, saying it’s a board-level issue. “Brands are top-down driven, bottom-up delivered,” he says.
With the rebranding of Stagecoach buses, Cameron Sanders of Cato Partners focused on the bottom-up end of the process. Instead of giving a single new brand to the company with over 2000 employees, he pitched Stagecoach’s new owner Infratil the idea of six separate community brands.
With top management onside, Cato Partners approached the most important stakeholders – the bus drivers and depot managers. After a suspicious initial reception, the drivers and managers realised they would own the brand, having been part of the process from the outset.
“As we got trust with that group of people, drivers started submitting their own ideas,” says Sanders. Once design ideas were finalised for each community brand, the depot managers would accompany Cato Partners to present the concepts to other stakeholders.
The results have been spectacular, according to Sanders. “As soon as the story and graphics for each community went on the buses, people connected,” he says. The redesign has dovetailed with staff training and mystery shoppers, and has resulted in a lift in customer satisfaction, presentation standards and driver satisfaction. “It’s all very well to paint a bus, but unless we change the culture, the exercise will fail,” says Sanders.
Cato Partners’ bottom-up approach may well be the future of branding. “We try and get the ownership further down in the company, versus just the marketing people or the executive management team,” says Sanders. “In the end they may make the final decision, but if we can integrate the staff into the process, the result becomes a lot stronger.”
Accidental Branding
According to author David Vinjamuri, the best branding is accidental.
In his book of the same title, he examines how entrepreneurs, untrained in marketing and branding, built some of the biggest and best-known consumer brands in the world. Here are his top rules for accidental branding:
1. Do sweat the small stuff. Tiny details can have a huge brand impact. Accidental branders border on obsession with their brands.
2. Pick a fight. Know what you stand for, and what you stand against. Have a point of view.
3. Be your own customer. Not just “understanding your own customer”, but actually being one. “Accidental brands are almost always created when people solve their own problems,” says Vinjamuri.
4. Be unnaturally persistent. Most of the brands featured in his book took 10 to 20 years to reach the $20 million mark.
5. Build a myth. “If you’re an entrepreneur solving your own problem, you have a story,” writes Vinjamuri.
6. Be faithful. Remember the customers who made your brand what it is.
Does Branding Need Rebranding?
To many branding practitioners, the word “brand” hinders as much as it helps. Nick Sampson, strategy director at DNA, says the B word sometimes actually gets in the way of helping clients. “I wish we could come up with a better word,” he says. “For so many people it’s just the external look and feel of a company.”
Likewise, Sven Baker of DesignWorks EIG calls branding a fundamentally misunderstood word, “at grave risk of being highly devalued in the lexicon of marketing communications agencies”.
Baker has one suggestion: Replace the word “brand” with the word “reputation”. “As soon as you do that, what you’re shaping in people’s minds are not visual assets, they are preferences built through reputation.”
Paul Stewart, CEO of ON-Brand partners and co-author of Branded Customer Experience, says reputation is key, as well as what people see as unique about you, and finally how much they trust you. “[Amazon.com CEO] Jeff Bezos defines a brand as what people say about you when you’re not in the room,” he adds. “Do they say you’re consistent and reliable to deliver to their expectations?”
Meanwhile, Dave Clark from Dave Clark Design thinks a lot of what gets called brand consulting is “marketing BS”. His cynicism comes from seeing 20-page branding documents which, in his view, need only occupy two or three lines.
Instead of offering exhaustive rationales, designers should do what they do best, and express the brand visually. “I’ve worked with a lot of marketers in my life,” says Clark. “Some are very analytical, but the most successful ones do it intuitively. They embrace simple precepts that a child of 10 could understand.”
Just as the most successful marketers embrace simplicity, perhaps brand advisers could do the same.