Unique vs. Original

 

In the last few years, I've often been involved in those conversations about differentiation and distinctiveness when it comes to brands and advertising. In the early part of my career, differentiation was the thing: setting your brand apart from competition by focussing in on some aspect of the brand - how it's made, a secret ingredient, what it can do for you, and how it can deliver these benefits better than any other brand in the category.

But things changed, and the internet happened, and a new genus called platform brands grew up, and lots of clever bods did smart analyses, and the point of view now is that brands should be distinctive, that is, to stand out via impactful brand assets.

I've been wondering recently, in a similar fashion, about "uniqueness". It was always my belief that brands should strive for uniqueness in their totality - to be unequalled - the opposite of "generic" or "interchangeable" and to emerge out of that cliched "sea of sameness."

But does uniqueness alone really do anything for a brand? I could create a unique brand but that wouldn't necessarily make it desirable, or relevant. Uniqueness is not necessarily good. It could be quite the opposite.

Uniqueness is like a statement of fact. It doesn't involve human emotion or judgement in a positive or negative way. A landscape or a micro-climate can be described as unique.

Now think about the word "originality". A far richer word, which has associations with the word "origins" and thus, authenticity. It feels fresh, newly-created, pioneering, not imitative, absolute, novel. You know there are stories to be discovered. A past, present and future. You say "Oooooh! That's original", but you'd never say "Ooooooh! That's unique."

We talk about "original thought", "original ideas". The human is entangled in the concept of originality. It's not detached, like "uniqueness."

"Unique" should mean unusual or remarkable, but quite often it doesn't.

I am sure that a unique new brand could easily be generated by a machine these days.

But an original new brand can only be created by humans.   

Out and about

2016 was full of shocks for the pollsters and indeed, many bright young things working in advertising and marketing. How could we have got things so wrong? What? The collected opinions of my Facebook friends don't constitute what the Great British Public is thinking? I thought that if I 'de-friended' a few of those people whose views I didn't like, then they'd disappear into a puff of ether and I'd never have to be troubled by them again.

I blogged about the return of the Untrendy here and so far, 2017 has been full of references to bubbles, echo chambers and the like in everything from song lyrics through to advertisements (Heineken springs to mind) so I suppose at least there's awareness now that that the world is full of different views, not all of which may be palatable to us personally.

As a marketer, there's no way you can guarantee that your brand will be desired and bought only by people whose demographics appeal to you, or whose worldview co-incides with your own. So what can you do, to find out how other people tick? At the risk of sounding obvious, you have to go out and meet them, observe them, talk with them, listen to them. And not through the filter of the screen. The agency Ogilvy and Mather announced their intention, last year, of sending their planners out and about around the country, under the banner 'Get Out There.'

My first reaction as an old fogey in this world was a wry smile and something of a sense of bemusement. Surely this is what planners at ad agencies do? It appears not. Kevin Chesters, the Chief Strategy Officer at Ogilvy in London is quoted as saying that only 2% of creative briefs are informed by original first-hand research.

When on earth did we lose touch so badly?

Once I'd gulped and realised just how dire things had got, I had a look at the Get Out There blog.  There are clips and articles about Oldies in Eastbourne, the question of Brexit in Boston, Christianity in Hereford and so on. Yes, you could pick holes in stuff like the journalistic approach (picking on towns that are 'extreme' in one sense or another and packaging it all up with video clips and snappy headlines) but that's the way of the world these days. I trust that there's some good substance and insight behind the public exterior and in the end, at least they are doing something rather than debating and pontificating.

I notice the Marketing Society is re-naming its 'Brand of the Year' 'BRAVE Brand of the Year' to reward risk-taking. I'm looking forward to seeing a brand marketing to appeal to people out of the hipster London bubble.

The Age of Paradox?

Polarities, opposites, tensions, contrasts, paradoxes - whatever you call them, it's my belief that these are the key to a strong brand. I have blogged about how being able to synthesise apparent contractions in human needs and desires (the need for individuality and to belong to something bigger, the need to be effective without causing harm, the need for the familiar and the new and surprising) is vital to being a successful brand - here, here, here, here and here (!)

Nice to know I'm not the only one harping on about this. The 5th Trend Report of IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) is entitled The Uncompromising Customer: Addressing the Paradoxes of the Age of I.

The main theme of the report is, especially in this day and age, people don't want either/or - they want the best of both worlds: 'the best trade-off is no trade-off.'

I'm not sure whether this is particular to the age we live in: I can remember endless arguments about Health vs. Taste/Indulgence and Effectiveness vs. Care from my advertising days in the last century. But the authors of the report describe 'The Age of I' as reflecting one huge human paradox - the desire for inclusion in a meaningful group while protecting and expressing one's individuality.

Within this mega-paradox, the authors have defined 4 sort-of-mega paradoxes:

1. The Paradox of Separate but Connected: The new definition of connection
2. The Paradox of Abundant Rarity: The changing definition of luxury
3. The Paradox of Seeking a Better Me and a Better We: Responsible Individualism
4. The Paradox of Do It Myself and Do It For Me in My Way: Rethinking Consumer Control.

These are not a bad place to start in terms of positioning your brand. Think about which tensions or paradoxes exist within human needs, wants and desires associated with your product, service, market or territory. And what is the unique energy within your brand that you can use to resolve that paradox?

That's all folks!

Oh, sorry. Wrong cartoon.

Pseudo Choice

I'm reading a dystopian/speculative/sci-fi whatever-it's-called-these-days novel at the moment: Future Perfect by Katrina Mountfort. 150 years into the future, the human race live in CitiDomes rather reminiscent of Center Parcs, subscribe to a set of MindValues that wouldn't be out of place on a boardroom wall and have given up worshipping anything remotely spiritual. Instead, the idols are those that have BodyPerfect status and are the media darlings of the non-stop diet of reality shows. Needless to say, the BodyPerfect guys and girls look as if they have swooshed out of advertising stock photos.

It's fiction but it doesn't feel so far from the truth that we're seeing now. Chris Anderson's book The Long Tail is now 8 years old and while it's true that we do have endless choice, not only does Google make it difficult for us to find the end of the tail (or even the beginning of the end of the tail) - did you mean X? Show results for etc. etc. etc - but when it comes to it, most people are more comfortable not having to bother. Who goes beyond the first page of search engine results on a regular basis?

I wrote about conformity in my last post and I sometimes wonder in branding and advertising if we are seeing a mass-homogenisation, a group tending towards the mean. Although globalisation does have its benefits, it does mean that everyone is using those same corporate values, chasing the same perfect customer experience, latching onto the same cultural insights while believing they're creating something unique. It's not just the stock shots that we're all dipping into, but the strategic part, too.

I read a brilliant article in the New Yorker a couple of weeks ago, which mentioned Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School regarding "Pop Culture as an instrument of economic and political control, enforcing conformity behind a permissive screen."

Are we offering genuine choice with our brands and communication? Or, to quote Adorno, "Freedom to choose what is always the same?"

Goodness that comes from the heart

I'm all for brands being a force for good in the world, not just fulfilling individual needs and dreams, but making a difference in the community and the world at large. But I find that this kind of goodness works better for everyone when it involves action and when it comes from the heart.

What do I mean by heart? Well, to me, it's not usually enough to say that we're a product used by women so we'll have a big brand message that's all about empowering girls. No, the best ideas go back to the heart of the brand which I think is the product, not some vague philosophical "essence".

What is your product? What can it do? And what can it do to make the world a better place? A great example is the Let's Colour project from Dulux, which aims to colour 1 million people's lives by 2020 since its start in 2011. Communities have already been brightened up from London to Rio de Janeiro, from Paris to Jodhpur.

Also making a difference in the community, but in the opposite way, is Cif in Romania. The brand has launched an app which gives people an easy way to report racist or otherwise offensive graffiti. A cleaning team in a Cif-branded van turn up to remove the stupid scribbles.

Not only do such initiatives do communities good, they do the brand good. Because if you link to what's at the brand's heart, what the product can do, that's the best kind of branding of all.

Conform

I do like this blog to be mainly a channel for my own musings, but I occasionally read something that I wish I'd written and take the opportunity to pass it on.

Some time ago, I think it must have been the early 90s, I noticed that almost every print ad had the same look. That was the time, of course, when art directors started doing layouts on their Macs. It led to a certain conformity of style.

Jim Carroll, the Chairman of BBH London, remarks that a similar thing happened to cars around 1983. They all started looking the same, because they'd all been through the same wind tunnel. And in this article, well-worth a read, Jim bemoans what he calls "wind-tunnel marketing" that has resulted in a conformity of output of advertising agencies.

Expertise and judgement losing importance in favour of systems and testing, Jim says. And while we learned, back in the 80s, that branded communication should be relevant, motivating

and different, relevance, in Jim's words "has trumped difference."

Is this just another "sour grapes" agency chairman, trotting out the cliche about "research killing creativity"? No. Like me, Jim started his career in market research where I expect he received a good grounding in what research can and cannot do.

Did you spot the deliberate mistake? Of course, "research" cannot do anything. It is inanimate. Nor can it speak, last time I looked, so do remember that the next time someone uses the expression "but the research says..." They probably have fairies at the bottom of the garden, too.