Change happens. Get over it.

One of the core questions for marketing people has always been centred around how to adapt and transform in an ever-changing world. There's an interesting and useful analysis here by two authors from the agency Flamingo, who have examined change in a wide variety of fields, and constructed a simple model showing four strategic directions a brand could choose - Guide, Translate, Create and Pivot - along with good examples of brands who have used those different strategies.

I like this analysis, although it does tiptoe into an area that seems to be, in my mind, rather over-played currently: that of the VUCA world "out there."

There can be few readers who haven't heard about VUCA from some source or another, but in case you haven't, the acronym stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous.

This acronym didn't come from some marketing consultant, but from the U.S. Military, in the context of Afghanistan and Iraq in the 1990s.

Is this really how we want to see the world we're operating in? Are our brands weapons in some kind of war?

I don't think so.

What if we thought of it this way:

For 'Volatile', read 'Spontaneous'

For 'Uncertain', read 'Surprising'

For 'Complex', read 'Diverse'

And for 'Ambiguous', read 'Enigmatic'

Because it's not us against them, there is no world "out there", "external" and "internal". We are all part of the world.

It's the role of brands not to provide stability in the sense of stasis and resistance to change, but rather to provide a clear purpose and direction as part of a wonderful, multi-facetted, animated, rich and mysterious world.

Live to work to live

I realised, with a large gulp, that this year, I'll have been a strategic planner for 30 years. I've been in this business longer than many of today's top brands have been around. There was no amazon when I started, and certainly no Google or Facebook. No one was wittering on about platforms, except for the man who told you to 'mind the gap' in the London rush hour.

I have been lucky with my work. I'm a stayer, rather than a flitter, not due to inertia, but rather due to change just happening as soon as I got itchy feet, rather as if I'd willed it. A new account, a completely different market, an international role. And then, of course, the changes in the world - through technology, which has had a huge impact on the ways of working. I remember the days when you didn't have to schedule a phone call. Yes, there were phones back then (but very few of them were mobile.)

But in terms of what I'm doing, rather than how I'm doing it, the same things are on the agenda. What makes people tick? Why do they behave the way they do? What drives them? And how can brands help to meet this infinite palette of human needs, dreams, desires, wants and hopes?

The agenda has widened for me - on top of this, what is the relation between brand and business? What role or responsibility have brand - and business - in society? These questions retain their fascination.

Back in my college days, I think I did one of those vocational questionnaires that guided me towards suitable fields of work. I seem to remember the legal profession and HM Inspector of Taxes being high on the list. Here is another kind of work-related questionnaire, and rather a good one, from The Book of Life. Rather than suggesting specific careers, it highlights what is important for you in your work, more in terms of what moves you.

I'm pleased to say, that for me, it was creativity. Some things don't change.

Useless, hopeless, rubbish and crap

I've commented before about this rather annoying tendency, and I'm going to comment again.

Why do so many people in the creative industries boast about not being good at maths? Or something like physics, come to that. It's not even - oh, I was better at English/History/Art and my maths was OK - oh, no! To do the true boast you have to say you were useless, hopeless, terrible, rubbish or totally crap at maths. And add a little grin or chuckle.

How many people in those professions would want to own up to being bloody dreadful at reading or writing? And, apart from slinging a few insults at the duller and more obscure aspects of grammar, who wants to boast about being a complete dud at English? Not many.

This tendency has long been commented on, for example in C.P.Snow's lecture The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. In this passage, Snow remarks on the (literary) intellectuals who bemoan the illiteracy of scientists:

“A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?”

I would certainly never employ a planner who claimed to be crap at maths. Or an account manager, brand manager or even a creative. Except in a few rare cases, everyone can be OK at maths. It just requires a bit of work, like everything else. I wouldn't want anyone working for me who had no feel for numbers and statistics and what meaning one can find in them. Or who was deliberately clueless  about how much of our world today works - money and markets, algorithms, Google - you name it.

Quite apart from the fact that maths trains the mind in puzzle-solving, in a particular way of thinking.

Having said all that, there is hope. A lot of those 'useless at maths' people can be spotted solving Sudoko puzzles. And not being so bad at it at all.  

I am what I do?

In these days, when brands need agility above all else in order to succeed, I often wonder about the wisdom of spending hours, days or months defining a Position. And then sticking there.

The very word Position suggests something static, set in stone - maybe in pyramidal form - and not really agile at all. By the time you have defined it, the world has moved on and you are left rather like Ozymandias.

Some sort of statement of what your brand is and what it stands for in people's hearts and minds is important. But the next step is to work out what that means for how your brand behaves - what it does. What is your brand's role in people's lives?

There's a useful presentation, Brand as Verb by Ben Grossman, in which he gives 5 principles for a brand as more than a noun - "Brands must see themselves as verbs."

Just do it!

Best supporting role?

It's generally agreed that, to be relevant, brands have to play a role in people's lives. And perhaps beyond that, a role in society. Havas have defined that a Meaningful Brand is one that makes a Contribution to improving the quality of people's lives (via a number of defined Personal and Collective Outcomes) and one to which people show Attachment - they would care if the brand were to disappear.

I don't think having a role is under dispute, but I do wonder whose job it should be to define that role. Have you ever tried to define a brand's role? It's not an easy job, and you tend to keep coming back to a rather fuzzy area where the brand is a helper/enabler/facilitator/deliverer in or of the brand's benefit or some other aspect of its positioning. Or else you get into the relationship metaphors and the brand is a friend, or a chum, or a buddy, or even an ally - but invariably with the adjective "helpful" plonked in front. Or you might simply state that your brand's role is to stand on a pedestal and be an Icon of whatever your one-word equity is.

In reality, the roles that brands really play in our lives are multi-faceted, complex and individualistic. Where does the brand Audi stop and my car, Red Freddie, start?

Maybe we shouldn't try too hard to define a brand role, as long as we're clear what that brand stands for. In the end, it's the user who writes the film script of their life - and probably does the casting.