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360 Degree Vision
There is so much written about brands these days that I hesitate to add to the sum of all this wisdom with yet another essay on brand theory. Current thinking comes in many shapes and sizes, variously trussed up into onions, diamonds, and double helix spirals, sometimes actively used, sometimes popped into the brand bible or some such tome, until the time comes to dust them off and repeat the process.
Undaunted, I will brave the potential brickbats and lay out our philosophy on building brands with true sustainability and value, and on the type of informed collaboration that we think leads to design excellence across the brand mix.
As brand strategy specialists, our view is that there is still some brand thinking promulgated that has neither the robustness nor depth that is needed today. Given the increasing complexity of markets, and the ever-smarter consumer, what is needed is a much stronger idea at the centre of the brand, premised on deep self knowledge and a clear point of view. Deep thought must be given to what exactly is going to make a brand more magnetic and persuasive to its target markets.
Without this focus core brands may be never able to express themselves adequately to either current or potential customers - underneath they will lack the basic confidence and self awareness that inner knowledge brings, and will risk creating a void between expectation and experience.
Nowhere is this more important than in the development of the brand’s visual identity - the way the thinking behind the brand comes to life for its target consumers.
One brand, many aims
And yet there is still a temptation amongst brand owners to model their brands in too narrow a way, with only one particular end in mind - sometimes visual identity, more often advertising communications. This can lead to creativity dictating rather than informing strategic direction. Sometimes the thinking is just too flimsy and undifferentiated to give real direction and purpose. Sometimes it works well in one medium but not in another.
Sometimes the void created can be temporarily filled by clever communications and natty design, but in reality, without strong foundations, the edifice soon begins to crumble and crack. How many times have we asked clients ‘what would the world miss about you if you suddenly disappeared’, only to be met with blank looks?
So our way of looking at brands includes building strong foundations for it, giving it strong direction and leveraging points of true competitive difference – what the customer wants as well as what the brand is capable of delivering. Being visionary is critical.
The current success of Monsoon Men shows this. Here is a well known brand that hasn’t allowed itself to become trapped in a narrow view of what it can and should do. It has taken its unique, strong ideas about fashion, beauty, and looking good, and taken these to an entirely new set of consumers – namely men. Part of our job was to create a clear understanding of what the brand could and should mean in this context, so that this could be expressed through the design of both the collection and the environments for the brand.
Nicky Clarke is another strong brand, in this instance centred around a person and what he represents. In a market, which like fashion, moves incredibly fast, the brand needed to find a way of staying true to its roots (excuse the pun) but staying fresh and vital. Our work for Nicky Clarke involved laying down a similar set of foundations and ‘rules of engagement’ for the brand, to enable it to use its strong base to springboard into new markets beyond haircare.
Both these examples also show how authenticity and honesty are equally as important as having a strong core idea. Not only must you define who is going to buy and why, but also how we can support the claims we make.
Strategic rigour
Though we would never argue that creative expression can only ever be a consequence of imaginative strategy, we do think that there is a need for greater rigour and applied expertise in the development of the strategic framework. I can hear the chants of ‘they would say that wouldn’t they’ but it’s our view that time and effort spent developing a robust strategy that takes a 360 degree view of the brand and its world produces the richness of thinking that enables rather than constrains excellence in creative expression.
This means keeping the entire brand mix in mind when developing the strategy, so that design can be applied in the right way when it comes to executing it. I had a recent example with a client in the financial services arena looking to re-develop their visual identity. The solution obeyed the usual norms in terms of the market, showing just enough difference to achieve stand out and impact without looking too far out of the mainstream. However, it failed to acknowledge a key attribute of the brand – that of thrift when it came to spending customers’ money on frivolities such as product literature. The solution looked too expensive looking to be right despite being a nice piece of creative in its own right.
Gold standard
All a brand is after all is a set of ideas and attributes that have painstakingly been built up over time through constant and consistent application. The analogy we like to use is that of applying gold leaf. It takes time, lots of coats, and imperfections and blemishes ruin the final effect. Just so with brands. You need a clear template and model at the centre so that you don’t create the blemishes that create doubt in the mind of your customers.
When it comes to creative expression, we find that some of our best work comes from an early collaboration between ourselves and a design partner. One of the things I have learned over the years is that the best answers arise where strategy informs creativity and vice versa. The sparks that fly from the interaction of different styles of thinking and different perspectives generate the originality that brand owners need to get the right solution for any given situation. This interaction helps move our thinking along and gives the design team a real in depth understanding of the brand that they need to give it an edge. Talk to CDT or Brownjohn or any of the creative partners with whom we have recently worked if you want to hear about the benefits of this approach from their perspective.
Brand owners would do well therefore to look for agency partners who prefer to collaborate rather than compete, looking to combine expertise in brand strategy with excellence in creative expression, in a forum where each brings their own unique perspective to the task in hand.
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