Category Archives: Branding
The insecure brand.
When we consciously try to be unique, we turn out all the same.
Recently, a mathematician managed to come up with an equation explaining why all hipsters turn out looking the same.
“If you take […] any group that decides to go against the majority—by trying to be different, they will ultimately all do the same thing at the same time”
The same goes for brands.
Most conform by trying to be unique.
After all, it’s only human. And brands are supposed to be human, right?
Brands display what American novelist Edith Wharton called “symptom of immaturity” or the “dread of doing what has been done before.”
And in the process they wind up doing the same as everyone else.
Their picture of “new” and “different” is the same – at exactly the same time – as everyone else’s.
Shakespeare said “To thine own self be true”.
To have a self, to which to be true.
Brands struggle to be themselves every day, just like everyone else.
When they find themselves, it’s not uncommon that they come off as genuine as opposed to fake.
And instil an unusual sense of trust and authenticity in others.
They might become leaders in their field if they find some cause really important to them.
Or not. Which is fine.
They might find great success – or not, as their cause might be one that rarely gets much attention.
Which is also fine.
Remember, “success is the completion of anything intended”.
And not everyone intends the same thing – at exactly the same time – as everyone else.
Planning is not dead. Man.
Some say that planning is dead because we can test and learn from concepts in advertising in a more agile way today than ever before. That might be true, however we can’t deny that planning narrows the list of concepts we have to test a hell of a lot.
Great thinking never gets old, but execution does.
A simple, and wonderfully frank talk by Dave Trott at APG in the UK regarding the art of persuasion.
Everything from freud to Husserl, all mixed in with some football references.
Some highlights:
“Never assume an ad will be noticed”
“Behavioural economics is about moving questions upstream enough to find out how we can solve business problems with a really great idea.”
“Insight doesn’t sell, an idea does. An idea based on insight.”
For a longer version –>
Is “loyalty”, “fans”, “fanbase” just narcissistic self-talk by careerists who wish they were rockstars?
“Your consumers are just someone else’s consumers who occasionally buy you.” The attack on brand loyalty has been raging for a while now with many referring to the emergence of user reviews etc, where consumers circumvent the traditional trust and promises of brands. Not only that, some, including Martin Weigel of W + K in Amsterdam argue that a brand’s revenue depend more on broad audiences than of depth of loyalty and refers to research where a majority of revenue is from one-time purchases rather than repeat purchase loyalists, arguing that “Fans produce publicity, not revenue.”
Weather that’s the case or not, how is it then that the idea of “fans”, “followers” have lodged itself so firmly in our collective conscious? Certainly social media (twitter, facebook) has a part where the metaphor of “brand personality”, and anthropomorphism of brands initiated by famed planner Stephen King of JWT may have been extended way beyond its usefulness (See this interview with Mark Tomblin or TAXI Canada.
“Compared to human relationships, brand relationships are thin” Martin Weigel argues, which might be true when brands overestimate the relationship people do have, and want to have with them. Another, and maybe more hypothetical reason for why more and more brands claim having “fans” (rather than customers) could be due to the rise of epithets like “Guru”, “Rockstar” traditionally preserved for great, significant achievements in art and religion suddenly emerged in more mundane contexts of the corporate and startup world, where the unglamorous “customers” by necessity turned into “fans” and “followers” in a form of narcissistic self-congratulatory fantasy inflating the significance of what most corporations (big or small) actually do – sell products and services to people. In our age of helicopter parenting, selfies and what psychologist Jean Twenge calls the “most narcissistic generation in history” could it be that most can’t live with the fact that (as opposed to real rockstars and guru’s) they have no significant “following”?
Doug Kessler from Velocity recently noted regarding the perceived lack of glamor of working with B2B content strategy that “It doesn’t have to be glamorous to be important, worth the effort, or interesting. There’s so many things other than glamour” which might not unsettle the more seasoned of professionals but might not sit very well with the grade-inflated “totally awesome” and “super-talented” generation.
Isn’t it time for brands to scrap their shot at glamour, reinstating “customer” in favour for the more submissive “fan”, and while doing so shifting focus away from themselves – to whom they serve, not necessarily writing a new War and Peace or Abbey Road but selling laundry detergent, office supplies or designing nifty tools like smartphones. We’ll go back to an existence of humble service, seeing revenue as a quiet token of gratitude of the maybe unglamorous but yet significant good we do while working for (some) brands. I think it was legendary Brand Strategist Wally Olins who once said “Brands that are good for people are best for business”. That should be enough shouldn’t it?
CONOET - The Constitution of Everyday Things. 