Time for altered images?

 

The last couple of times I’ve signed on to my internet banking with Commerzbank, I’ve had a lovely little seasonal surprise. The visual, above, drawing my attention to the bank’s Christmas charity drive. They have partnered with brotZeit e.V , an organisation that provides free breakfasts for schoolchildren. And, sad as it is, there are plenty of children in Germany at the moment who could benefit from this charity.

Why am I commenting on this? Well, the visual itself is striking and eye-catching, with its healthy snacks in the guise of seasonal characters. Pictures do paint a thousand words and fun, hope, cheerfulness, children, health, colourfulness, yumminess, friendliness, cosiness, kindness, imagination and creativity are just a dozen to start with. This is so much richer than the type of visuals that usually confront me on opening the website.

Typically in the last year, these will either be the usual grinning plastic people looking thrilled and excited over their laptops. Or pairs of said plastic people smooching. I’ve written about these plastic people here, and I don’t think it needs repeating. 

What I wondering is - in the obsession with representation, diversity and “people who look like me”, have we forgotten the power of the abstract and the symbolic? Long, long ago, we handled the Commerzbank account at Saatchi. We created a striking look, and from what I remember, there were no visuals of human beings. Everything was symbolic, from squirrels to oak trees. And plenty of less expected, yet rich, evocative imagery, too. 

Why does everything have to be so literal? Surely communication works harder when the visual is not merely a reflection of the text? The problem with using the thrilled and excited plastic people is that everyone else is using them too. Within the banking category and without. 

Advertisements from the golden age of posters are now regarded as art. 

Isn’t it time to give the thrilled and excited plastic people and their laptops a rest?

Her Royal Brandness

There's a rather good series of articles running at Marketing Week to celebrate the publication's 40th anniversary. I remember Marketing Week if not 40 years ago, then - ahem - certainly 30 years ago. Of the "trade publications" we received, it was my second favourite after Campaign, and certainly infinitely more readable than The Grocer, which seemed to smell vaguely of brown paper.

The articles are written by industry luminaries, and I was pleased to see my old boss from my Saatchi days elevated to branding royalty with this excellent article . Rita Clifton reflects on brands and branding over the last few decades and concludes that for success, strong brands must remain the anchor point, organising principle, heart, call it what you will, of a business.

One thing that hasn't changed in my decades of marketing and advertising is the continual dichotomy: (long-term) building the brand and (short-term) sales - today characterised as "taps, clicks and bricks." I expect our arguments in the last century weren't helped by so much mumbo-jumbo surrounding the idea of a brand. The whole idea seemed vague and airy-fairy, with the continual reference to 'brand image', as well as the contrived and frankly up-their-owm-backside ways that various practitioners conjured-up an enigmatic 'brand essence.'

Images and essences aside, it's interesting that today's most powerful brands are what we used to call single-shot or mono-brands in terms of brand architecture. Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, Instagram, Pinterest and Co. don't lurk in the depths of mysterious 'brand temples' - more mumbo-jumbo - these are completely clear and upfront in their presentation.

One more reflection on the article: back in the last century, brands were dominated by what we used to call FMCG - Fast Moving Consumer Goods. Groceries in plain language.

It's ironic that the biggest changes that have impacted on branding in the last couple of decades are to do with speed and scale.

When those 20th century marketeers talked about Fast-Moving, they didn't know the half of it!

Rebel bands and brands

I went to an open-air rock concert at the weekend, something I hadn't done for some time. One aspect of the experience that intrigued me was that they seemed to be giving away ear plugs at the bar. Rather weird, if you ask me. I asked the girl behind the bar what that was all about and she didn't really seem to know but commented that "maybe some people are sensitive."

A strange remark, I thought, but there seemed to be a streak of concern for the sensitive running throughout the show. At the entrance was a security sign telling you what was allowed and not allowed in terms of bringing stuff into the show. All very well. But then there was an extra section listing what is not liked at the venue: racism, sexism, homophobia and so on, but also stuff like overstepping personal boundaries, coming on to people inappropriately and that sort of thing. Look, I don't like that stuff either - but does it really need to be spelled out to adults?

It reminded me of the sort of sign you get at swimming pools: no running, no jumping, no diving and all the rest. And even though I've left my adolescence behind long ago, those sort of signs always make me want to do exactly the opposite.

The band's singer gave us some cod philosophy about "the rules are there to be broken", but I felt pretty sure that no-one would look kindly on anyone breaking those rules of desirable behaviour that the venue has laid down. I wondered vaguely if the venue's management go through the back-catalogue of lyrics with a red pen each time some rock dinosaurs come to strut their stuff.

Hate is only acceptable when it's channeled in approved directions.

Perhaps the conversation Johnny has in The Wild Ones would go like this today:

- Hey, Johnny, what are you rebelling against?
- What's on the approved list?

This is important for brands, as I sense an increasing homogeneity: brand values are interchangeable, and even "rebel" brands seem to be more and more conformist. I am not a great fan of those "12 Brand Archetypes" tools, for a number of reasons. Not only is there rather too much over-simplification involved, but the whole thing seems to be about fitting in rather than standing out. ("Which Disney Princess is your brand?" to which a real rebel brand should really answer "None of 'em!").

Are the "usual suspects" who get held up as Outlaws or Rebels really so? Harley Davidson, Virgin, Diesel et al? Or are they merely the establishment's idea of an acceptable rebel?

I'm on the lookout for brands that do something genuinely rebellious. Existing only in the Internot, for example.

Are your roots showing?

A long time ago, when I was still in the UK and working on the British Airways account, they set up a fascinating piece of international 'Britishness' research which looked at impressions of Great Britain in a number of countries around the world. This was qualitative research, and people in each country were asked to imagine a typical British town and what the characters were like there: policeman, doctor, teenager, manual worker and so on. It was rather like that 'Heaven and Hell'  joke, one version of which you can see above. And - surprise, surprise - there was little consistency in the way Britain was seen around the world - sweet and quaint in the US, compared to pushy and arrogant in Australia.

I've just read a long article in The Guardian about the rise of nation and place branding, which appears to be a booming business. Not just from the point of view of attracting tourists, but for governments to attract investors, workers, students, or to allocate resources and increase esteem generally internally and externally, much as you would use a Brand Purpose or Position.

It's not an easy job. Apart from an uneven playing field to start with (as in the differing impressions of US and Australia in the example above),  just think how quickly the overall impression of a country can change due to a change in its leadership. Obama's USA and Trump's USA - worlds apart. Or how a personality associated with a country or place can make or break impressions. Or how a natural disaster can overshadow everything. The article quotes Naomi Klein: Diversity and debate are the enemies of branding. Is it folly to try and reduce something as complex and multi-faceted as a place to a mere brand?

As mentioned in the article, Institute for Identity are having a good try. Their work sounds like a dream job - travelling around, getting the feel of the place, talking with the people, everyone from historians to lace-makers to film-makers.

And even if it seems a step too far to attempt to distill an entire country with all its dynamism, history and diversity down to a slogan and a logo, in these days of globalisation it's increasingly important for brands to be unique and authentic. And part of that has to come from the provenance. How has where the brand came from, where it was founded, informed its purpose and values? Instid have some useful tools and techniques on their website for getting a clearer understanding of a place - through the intellect, emotions and senses.

For brands, as for people, it's important to never forget where you came from.

From Brand Image to Brand = Image

I've got to the stage in my career where I expect there are far more planners who have come after me than have come before me. But one planner who came before me and is still active thinking, writing, strategising and planning is Paul Feldwick. Paul was one of the early BMP Planners in the 1970s and worked for BMP/DDB right up until 2005. I can thoroughly recommend his books and articles to young and not-so-young planners: they are classics. I still refer to What is Brand Equity Anyway? and much enjoyed Paul's most recent book, The Anatomy of Humbug. Most refreshing and intelligent after all those 25 Secrets Of Highly Successful Halfwits And How You Can Join Them business books.

On Paul's website are links to more articles, including one originally published in Admap March 2014, entitled, simply Brand = Image.  This is a provocative title, as 'Brand Image' has become a dirty word - or phrase - for those of us in the industry. Why have something as ethereal as an image when you can have an Experience or a Platform?

Anyway, the article starts with the creation of what was to become the Nike logo, which earned its creator all of $35 initially. The point is made that maybe it's neither necessary nor desirable to start building a brand from a 'brand essence' definition in words. Many brands start with a visual image, which becomes imbued with meaning via the stakeholders of that brand.

Why does this work? Let me drag out my ancient copy of Man and his Symbols (see illustration above.) In this, Carl Jung states:

What we call a symbol is a term, name or even a picture that may be familiar in daily life, yet that possesses specific connotations in addition to its conventional and obvious meaning. It implies something vague, unknown or hidden from us.

Many brand symbols or logos seem to arise by chance - Paul Feldwick cites the Dulux Dog and the Andrex Puppy - rather than via a conscious process. Chance, yes, but intuition and serendipity also play a role. I have written about a couple of my favourite brand symbols here and here.

Paul talks about the strength of images: they are polyvalent, meaning they carry a multitude of meaning.

I wonder, especially in this global world, whether brands would do better to find a 'one symbol equity' rather than a 'one word equity.'

Shudder

Three cheers for Sheryl Sandberg!A while ago, I wrote about how the harmless qualitative market research technique of 'brands as people' seemed to have erupted into a full-scale industry - 'people as brands.' I let out a quiet 'hooray!' as I read this article which quotes Ms Sandberg's answer to the question of how business people should manage their personal brands.

You don't have a brand.

She also added the expression made her shudder. Me too.

I have a number of reasons for rejecting the idea. First of all, I agree that stuffing yourself into a soap-powder-shaped box tends to be somewhat restricting:

When we are packaged, we're ineffective and inauthentic.

And human beings are so much more gloriously complicated and full of - emotion, conscious and unconscious thought, life, reason, intelligence - all those things no product or service can ever have.

And finally, because I just loathe all those snake-oil merchants who go around peddling their platforms and wares. Take an area I know a little about: authors. There are over 23 millions hits on Google in reply to 'author branding.' And so many of the articles and services offered include 'And Why You Need It' in the title.

So much time and energy is wasted by authors fretting about their 'author brand' and working with these charlatans instead of getting on and doing what they are good at.

Think about any human being who could possibly be considered 'a brand.' Einstein, The Queen, Salvador Dali, Che Guevara - take your pick.

Did they spend hours with a snake-oil salesman 'discovering their personal brand'?

Did they heck!

Switzerland First

The best way to make the business news these days is to devise some form of ranking. There are numerous rankings and indices for brands - Meaningful Brands, Powerful Brands, Ethical Brands, Simple Brands - and so on ad infinitum, it seems.

On a slightly different tack, Y&R's BAV Consulting have got together with U.S.News & World Report and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania to produce the World's Best Countries report for the second year running.

The survey asks 21,000 residents of 80 nations to rate countries on political, economic, citizenship and quality of life factors.

And is it America First? Well, no. In chaotic times, maybe it's no surprise that people yearn for stability and neutrality, as exemplified by the winner, Switzerland. Co-incidentally, Switzerland had one of the funnier 'America First' spoof films that hit the social media a few weeks back.

The U.S. has tumbled from 4th to 7th place in the last year, while Britain has (maybe surprisingly) held on to its third place.

In fact, with Switzerland first, Canada second and the UK third, the three best countries also sport some of the best national logos from around the globe. Coincidence?

Put a tiger in the bank

Brands have long used symbols from the animal world in their logos, names and advertising. Animals are universal symbols, and can quickly convey a host of easily-understood values or characteristics. From the bears on Hofmeister beer and Fox's Glacier Mints, to the black horse used by Lloyds Bank, the Peugot lion, or the Andrex puppy, animals are used to convey anything from strength to softness, to cleverness.

One of the most popular animals used as a symbol is the tiger. My childhood memories include the famous 'put a tiger in your tank' from Esso and Tony, the Kellogg's Frosties tiger. But sadly, the number of tigers in the wild is now far fewer than in those days, with the numbers left in the low thousands. Tigers are on the brink of extinction.

When I published my children's book The Bother in Burmeon , whose storyline involves rescuing a tiger from a most horrible fate as a tiger skin rug, I decided to donate some  of the royalties to a tiger charity, and chose Tiger Awareness.

I am now very pleased to see a great idea from the Panthera conservation organisation: Tiger Royalty. 
This is one of those ideas that's just so brilliant and spot-on that I'm amazed no-one has thought of it before - royalties for tigers from all the tiger-inspired brands and products that are produced around the world, an artistic rights fee for tigers that goes towards the funding of Panthera's Tigers Forever Program.

As Tony the Frosties tiger would have said - That's Terrrrrific!

Getting sentimental over you

I read an interesting article from The Book of Life recently, entitled Sentimentality in Art - and Business.  In it, the author makes the observation that sentimentality has moved from the art arena to the business arena. I assume it's meant that sentimentality hasn't completely decamped from the art arena, as I see it as alive and kicking, especially when it comes to popular art and entertainment - from the moody photos of hunky man holding vulnerable baby to the paintings of Thomas Kinkade - and a large percentage of what's shared on Facebook, if you can class that as art.

The article includes Oscar Wilde's definition of sentimentality from De Profundis: 'the desire to feed off an emotion without paying for it' - so all of the positive elements with none of the shadow side.

I would contest whether the move into the business arena is a new thing. Advertising has always been  escapist, larger than life, a utopia, escapism - right back to the impossibly cute Pears children and before. But, by and large, advertising plays by rules that people accept as part and parcel. No one is so naive as to believe that this is a representation of reality. Even if, these days, so many brands are trying to populate the same utopia - see Vignette Roulette for a cruel but amusing illustration of just how interchangeable these various brand worlds are.

But these days, as we know, the borders between brand and corporate, employee and customer, business and private are blurring in a social media fog that's actually far from transparent. Sentimental language and behaviour has crept into the boardroom - 'Lovemarks', 'embracing' this and that, 'reaching out' to all and sundry, 'passionate' about anything from loo rolls to insurance.

This has spawned all manner of sentimental company manifestos and employee brand statements about a better planet, about mother love, about future generations.

No longer confined to external advertising, the sentimentality is flowing through companies in a syrupy tide and no-one is looking at the shadow side.

And this is where it gets tricky, because no-one wants to pay.

Maps and Metaphors

I read a very interesting blog post by Martin Weigel on his Canalside View blog recently, in which he argues for scrapping the "brand as human" metaphor in favour of a new metaphor more applicable to the 21st century - "brand as software."

The argument goes that human personality traits don't really differentiate brands and quotes Guy Murphy: "the democracy of information has allowed consumers to focus on more rational and "real" aspects of the product itself" - the observation here that a string on one-star product reviews can destroy even a strong emotional brand.

It's a thought-provoking article and well-worth reading, as are the comments relating to it.

But maybe I'm not geeky enough, or simply too old, but I didn't feel an overwhelming urge to adopt the "brand as software" metaphor.

A few reasons. First of all, I have never bought this "brand exists just in the consumer's head" stuff. All brands, as far as I am aware, exist in the world as products or services. I can't think of any brand that has no concrete products or services attached to it. And surely getting the product or service right was always the basis. In all the various models and metaphors that I have had the dubious pleasure of using over the years, all of them had some sort of stuff about what the brand is or does, or benefits, or attributes before you got onto all that airy-fairy personality and values stuff.

And, in the end, although metaphors may help marketers to think about brands, we shouldn't be held prisoner to them. And brands and marketers are different. Some brands may suit the software metaphor,  if it simplifies the thought process. Others not. Some marketing people like all those pyramids and onions and keys. Others find them self-indulgent intellectual you-know-what.

The map is not the territory. It's one way of looking at it. You use the right kind of map to suit your purpose.

I wonder if "brand" has ever been used as a metaphor?

Which would you rather be?

For global brands, especially those in retail or fast-food, consistency is still high on the list of desired ways to communicate and behave. We want to be sure that the customer has a similar experience in each of our outlets, and that the picture of the brand he or she gets from our communication is clear and doesn't contradict the reality.

This is fair enough up to a certain point. Of course we want someone in a strange town to recognise our coffee shop and feel a sense of familiarity and knowing what to expect. And design manuals do have a place in terms of making sure that our badges and logos don't start running off and doing their own thing. This is the positive side of consistency - stability and constancy, reliability if you like.

But is it enough? The buzz words describing brands in the 21st century also include a lot about flexibility, adaptability, agility and 'embracing diversity'. And can you really stay ahead if you never pleasantly surprise your customers? Consistency can also mean lack of change, lack of deviation, uniformity.

When people talk of consistency in relation to brands, it is worth looking behind the word to see what the speaker really means. If it starts to sound like speaking with one voice (dictated from some global HQ), regardless of who we are speaking with, dressing in a brand uniform with no regard for individuality, carrying our "matching luggage," then warning bells should sound. This is about control of the organisation, not doing the best for the customers.

I prefer to use the word integrity with its dual meaning of unity/coherence/a whole and the quality of honesty.

It's more difficult to achieve, but in the end, which is more likely to attract more support - a consistent brand or a brand with integrity? 

You are what you lead?

The hullabaloo in the last week over Brendan Eich, the ex-CEO of the Mozilla Corporation, has got me thinking about the role that senior executives play when shaping a company's public perception.

I don't want to get into Mr Eich's views, especially those that lost him his job, but I believe there is a strong need in these days of transparency for senior executives - and maybe other employees - to give careful thought as to whether their personal views and opinions are compatible with the values of the company they work for.

Brendan Eich has been called everything from "horribly bullied" to an "obnoxious homophobe" recently but I wonder if he would have been under similar pressure to step down if he had worked in a more conservative industry - arms manufacture to take a silly example, or the automobile industry to take a more realistic one.

Back in the last century, you had your Mission Statement and Brand Values on the wall of the boardroom and no-one paid them much attention. Only rare exceptions when it came to CEOs could really be said to be living the values of the company - Anita Roddick, or Richard Branson for example. Or Ingvar Kamprad (above) - an interesting case, who certainly makes a point of living a low cost life but came on very shaky ground for a company that believes in democracy and diversity when certain aspects of his early life were revealed.

These days it's difficult to hide and companies must ensure that their senior representatives fit culturally with what the company is about. And the onus is also on the executive him/her self. If you're used to a luxury lifestyle, IKEA probably isn't the place for you. Nor is Procter & Gamble if you're an animal rights activist in your spare time.

The Eich case isn't that simple, as Brendan Eich founded Mozilla himself.

Even so, he should never been offered the position of CEO, or accepted it.

Burning your brand at the stake?

I read an interesting piece from Trendwatching recently entitled Heritage Heresy, about the increasing acceptance of brands that play with, subvert or even explode their own heritage. I'm not sure that it's a new trend or a necessity: something that brands over a certain age may simply have to do as a matter of course as parts of their heritage become irrelevant. Probably the most extreme example I can remember was Butlin's in the UK literally blowing up their dated Hi-de-Hi style holiday camp in a spectacular TV commercial to make way for the more contemporary Holiday Worlds.

The practice is alive and well today, whether it's Moet Hennessy launching sparkling wine from India or Versace bringing out a collection based on cheap street copies of their designs - or even Edeka and Supergeil.

A confident brand can always do this, especially if being playful, a little bit anarchic or subversive is tucked away in its character somewhere. It's about knowing when you can break the rules. The kind of brand that can't - or won't - do this is the sort that has to have a huge manual full of "our brand must always..." and "our brand must never...", because the brand is so bloody complex that no-one can understand it intuitively.

In a lot of this, it's not what you do, but how you do it. So, when IKEA launches a rather more pricey collection, it's called Stockholm, and done in a Scandinavian Design way.

Maybe people worry that messing with your heritage will destroy your brand. They worry about "eroding brand values," "alienating the loyal consumer" and "speaking with one voice". But these are exactly the things that could lead to a long, lingering death for the brand, because it has simply become dull and predictable.

And these days, if you don't play around with and subvert your brand yourself, there are enough other people out there who will.

Individually the same

The other day, I came across the website of a self-confessed avatar collector who admits to having "too much free time on his hands." The man's name is Albert Huberts, he's from Holland and this is his site.

Next time you have too much free time on your hands, take a look. He's grouped avatars together by theme, from No Forehead Girl to Hair-stache. Fascinating, that we hear so much about social media with its continual parade of selfies being an outlet for individuality and self-expression, but so many of the avatars are similar. Mr Huberts remarks on 'the ease with which we surrender our individuality to the collective identity,' and quips that 'selfies are as individualistic as slices of bread.'

And it's not just a 21st century phenomenon. Albert Huberts points to 1920s family photo albums, which all look remarkably similar. And I don't suppose my 1970s teenage photo booth poses are too different to anyone else's.

Brand logos have the same problem. A lot of logos are interchangeable and are characterised by the design vogue of the decade in which they were created - or updated. There's the famous millennium  swish and swoosh, above, inspired (if one can use that word) by Nike. Or the chunky typefaces and orange/brown look of the 70s, the neon sign on black 80s style or all those badges and petrol blues from the 1930s.

The latest logo trend seems to be to remove the name of the brand. In a world of interchangeability, where will that leave us?

Graven Images

Most retail or service brands that I worked on in the past sooner or later came up against the dilemma:

How much of my communications budget do I put behind my brand image?

And how much should go on directly driving traffic?

With British Airways, for example, most of the money as well as the blood, sweat and tears went on building the image, with rather less outgoings on advertising special prices and offers, especially in those early days of CRM. However, my colleagues down the corridor who worked on Currys and Dixons spent very little time worrying about anything as lofty and pretentious as image. It was roll-your-sleeves-up-and-get-stuck-in time.

I'm rather pleased that the huge changes in media in the last few years have put paid to this kind of compartmentalised thinking. The point is, that no car, motor-bike, pony-trap or any other kind of traffic (can you tell I hate that word in that context?) is going to drive itself to your store or your website if your brand is a grey nonentity. And conversely, if you spend your whole time pontificating about your Vision to 2030 without letting anyone know what's new this season or when your sale is, people aren't going to turn up in droves, either.

All advertising should be an invitation to your store or website, if you are a retailer - communications that convey some mysterious, ethereal image that is detached from who you are and what you sell are money wasted.

Communications work in three ways - through the mind, through the emotions, through the senses (or persuasion, involvement and salience as laid out originally by Hall & Partners in 1991.)

And modern brands are tangible and substantial, not just a collection of images in "the consumer's" mind.