Is brand-speak past its sell-by date?
I’ve gotten involved in this little public spat about brands vs companies. I have been saying that it’s lazy thinking to work on ‘branding’ and talk about the ‘brand’ as some identifiable entity that can be crafted by creatively sensitive folk.
In reality, if a brand is just a collection of perceptions in the mind of the consumer then brands are just a random collection of stuff that can be perceived. So a brand is a by-product of a company that is doing stuff - the stuff people can perceive and have a point of view on.
So why do we obsess about brands in isolation? Surely we should be in the business of helping companies do stuff in a better way, so their brand is better perceived.
One always encounters a ‘Yes but’ to researched company/product claims and ads that claim. Punters say ‘Yes but…their customer service is crap’, or similar. We all talk about the limited role of advertising and comms in the face of the ‘Yes but’, and that we can’t fix everything. So perhaps we’d be more appreciated by clients if we tell it as it really is in a precise way…? That brand-speak is a distraction, a waste of time that diverts us from knuckling down and helping companies be more interesting so people start to believe they really are. That brand-speak places an unhelpful veneer of internal waffle between the problem and possible solutions.
What is google’s brand? I’ve no idea and I don’t care. All I know is that it’s a successful, fun loving but innovative company with great products. It stands for things (like this) and so I like it, and I perceive good things about it. Values, tone, attitude, missions, people, buildings, products, work environments, share prices, success, CEOs, experiments etc etc, yes…But let’s lose the loose talk of a ‘brand’. Let’s be specific. All of the above make a brand and comms can only effect a teeny bit of it. So let’s not think we’re its guardians.
If we focus on making a company the most recommended in its category, then we elevate ourselves from brand-as-god strategic cul-de-sacs and get thinking instead on innovation and being useful to customers. We also get away from the thinking that creative advertising will solve all business ills and that clients should automatically listen to us. Harder work has to happen to effect sales in the long-term. How often have we seen brand tracking that looks like BOGOF sales offers tracking - little peaks followed by flat lining.
M&S was reborn through leadership, product and store design. Twiggy made people feel good, but I bet she’d have done that without the rejuvenation in the product and few sales would have materialised. Feel good comms made a difference, but not the difference. The M&S food ads are classic - as tactical uplift ads. That’s one of the best things ads on TV can do - shift loads of product quickly. Expecting our ads to carry the weight of the company’s total perception is asking too much. Even the haloed Skoda received $2bn from VW to solve its product problems before marketing could promote it. It was a smart marketing strategy, but the hard work had been done. The advertising sped up a perception shift that undoubtedly would have occurred regardless. Ol’ Bernbach said “A great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster.” He also highlights the tactical necessity behind advertising: ““There is no such thing as a good or bad ad in isolation. What is good at one moment is bad at another.”
‘Branding’ has always been shorthand for everything that effects perceptions. Perhaps it’s better to remove the shorthand altogether, as I feel marketers can too easily avoid the real issues by talking in code about their ‘brand’ and missing the opportunity to effect the important stuff with creative thinking that will have a real effect. It’s a company you’re working for, it’s companies and products people buy. Let’s make them better. A positive perception will be a pleasant by-product of all the effort.
