Through a glass darkly

The theme to Interbrand's Best Global Brands 2018 is "Activating Brave", which is another variation on the theme of "long-term agility" - the acknowledged approach for brand growth in the 21st century.

In this article, Daniel Binns from Interbrand explains a little more about how the best brands grow:

“What are these brands doing to achieve success? They are harnessing the ability to take bold short-term action in pursuit of a clear and aligned long-term vision. The key to Activating Brave is to simultaneously look through a microscope and a telescope, and have the courage to intercept the future, not just flow with it,”

I like the idea of the simultaneous microscope and telescope - but does it miss something? Or, rather, are we in danger of missing something if we are forever looking through this lens or another - the customers lens, the consumer lens, the competitor lens. In marketing workshops these days, there seem to be more lenses than at Specsavers!

How would it be if we also used those perfectly good lenses behind the aqueous humour and looked at how brands exist out there in the real world, too?

As the Good Book says (1 Corinthians Chapter 13, v12): 
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 

It's not just digitalisation

I have had a bit of an Aha Moment this week. I've been banging on in this blog and in my work, about digital and analogue, and how increasingly the division is disappearing. How customers don't really distinguish between on- and off-line, or the different online channels, and that it's the brand behind it all that matters.

I've now learned that we're in the 4th Industrial Revolution, a term coined by Klaus Schwab, Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, and that this isn't just about "phygital" - it's about the fusion of technologies blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres aka cyber-physical systems. Some of those technologies are robotics, AI, nanotechnology, quantum computing, biotechnology, the Internet of Things and 5th generation (5G) wireless technology.

For the record, here is the series of Industrial Revolutions:

1st Industrial Revolution: in the 18th/19th century, when rural moved to industrial and urban, powered by steam

2nd Industrial Revolution: 1870 - 1914, the age of mass-production, powered by electricity

3rd Industrial Revolution aka Digital Revolution: this started in the 1980s, it's about automation and the internet. We're still in the midst of it although we're now seeing the beginnings of the

4th Industrial Revolution aka Industry 4.0 which is about the embedding of technology into human beings and society

An interesting implication of this is found in the speech by Mark Carney entitled "The Future of Work".  Thanks to Good Business for highlighting this in their super newsletter.

While previous industrial revolutions meant that machines will take on tasks previously done by human hands, today, tasks involving cognitive (head) work are increasingly being automated. Does this mean a resurgence in the importance of the human heart? One can only hope so.

The Gospel according to Powerpoint

I must make a confession. I am not a regular church-goer, either here in Germany or back in the UK. Having said that, I do have many memories of church from my childhood, and I have to say that most of those are related to what marketing people today would call the 'experience' rather than the 'communication.'

Church-related communication has always been charmingly amateur, in my experience. Amateur in a positive way: not slick, not 'professional', communication that looks hand-made. For all the 'hand-written' and 'hand-crafted' yet carefully designed communication that commercial brands and enterprises put out these days in an attempt to appear authentic, they could well take a leaf out of the local church's poster advertising the Summer Fete, or the parish magazine. It's amateur in the sense that the people producing these communications genuinely love what they are doing.

As for the 'experience' - well, that's quite different, and I'm not in any way alarmed by this inconsistency. My memories of the experience, certainly in retrospect, include feelings such as wonder at the mystery of it all and, yes, awe in its original sense. Whether it's stained glass windows, bells ringing, organ music, polished candlesticks and pews, ancient texts or stories from two thousand years ago, there is plenty to stimulate the mind, the senses and the spirit.

So imagine how I felt when I attended a church service on a recent trip to the UK (not to the beautiful church pictured above, I hasten to add) and heard the language of the boardroom and the management consultant. Now, admittedly, the management types pinched the idea of a 'vision' from the spiritual types to start with, but it was rather alarming to hear it played back in the context of a 'Vision Statement' for this particular church. Not just that, but talk of priorities and process, enablement and empowerment, roadmaps and workshops. I didn't actually hear mention of Change Drivers and KPIs but I suspect they may be part of the package.

My view of the beautiful stained glass windows was somewhat obscured by a series of posters depicting a number of 'pillars' relating to the 'Vision', which looked as if they had come from a Powerpoint design-your-own-strategy-presentation background format.

Maybe I'm over-sensitive and others less close to the world of business will welcome this more down-to-earth approach (is it?) - and maybe God moves in mysterious ways - but I would rather leave the bullshit bingo in the boardroom.

Good news for you, bad news for me

With the hurricanes bashing America, the catalogue of terrorist attacks and the fighting talk between Mr Trump and North Korea, it's all too easy to get depressed about the future of the human race. And hot off the press is the CAF World Giving Index, which shows a decrease across the globe of the % of people claiming to help a stranger, donate money to charity or volunteer time. More bad news.

I read a fascinating article in The Guardian a few weeks back, which looks in detail at the 'New Optimists' - a group of academics and commentators who take the fact-based view that, actually, if you look at it longer-term, life for the human race is improving as a whole. Diseases are being eliminated, child mortality is down, literacy is is on the up, there's less poverty and so on. I've blogged before about Hans Rosling, one of the key figures in this group.

The article gives the New Optimists' main argument for why people are nevertheless pessimistic and fearful for the future: it's an evolutionary one to do with survival. If your default setting is that there's a wild beast about to jump on you and gobble you up, you're more likely to survive long-term than if you take the view that gobbly wild beasts are the stuff of fairy tales.

The author makes a point towards the end of the article that these long-term, objective fact-based views are all well and good, but unfortunately all of us, as human beings are prone to being selfish, childish, egotistical, and emotion can take over from the sensible 'view from outer space' in the heat of the moment. Why should I care about infant mortality in the third world when I've just lost my job?

I agree - happiness works through the specific, the personal. Much as we may mean it when we say 'I'm really happy for you' to a friend, in our heart of hearts, we know our own feelings of happiness are so much more intense. When we use facts and stats in brand communication, it is important, too, to allow for personal relevance. How does that connect with me, and how I feel? Getting to the human beings behind the statistics may sound like a cliche, but it has been said loud and often for a reason.

Another thing about joy, and happiness is that it only exists when we have also experienced the opposite. As human beings we need melancholy, sadness, fear and the rest of the so-called negative emotions.

Only then do our lives - and the world - start making sense.

Halfway to the future

I love looking at my collection of business books from yesteryear, especially those that have the word 'future' in the title. One such is The Future of Brands, edited by Rita Clifton and Esther Maughan, which was published in 2000 to celebrate Interbrand's 25th anniversary. It's a book that was maybe ahead of its time, as it was a collaborative, co-operative effort. Rather than the Interbrand staff pontificating about their view, the editors questioned 25 different people on their 'vision of brands in 25 years' time.'

The 25 people represented some major brands of the time, including Starbucks, BMW, P&G, Samsung, The Body Shop and Reebok. In addition, other personalities a little further away from marketing and branding were included, such as Spike Lee, Paul Smith and one Sepp Blatter.

How well has it held up? This book was conceived and written in the last century, pre 9-11, pre Web 2.0 and in the days when the Interbrand Brand Value Table was topped by Coca Cola, Microsoft, IBM, GE and Ford. Google and amazon were nowhere to be seen and Facebook hadn't been invented.

The answer is, unsurprisingly well. The brands people felt would remain classics and be successful in the future - meaning in 2025 - included Coca Cola, Disney, Ben & Jerry's, BMW, CNN and Adidas. OK, there was rather a lot of mention of Gillette, Yahoo! and Kodak, too - with maybe the strangest anomaly for a 21st century reader being the 15-year-old surfer raving about the brand Kodak - but by and large, over halfway to the future, those predictions are holding up.

What was maybe more difficult was to predict which successful brands of the late 20th century would not fare so well. The obvious answer of Marlboro has been proved right, but it was interesting to see several commentators wondering how McDonalds, Microsoft or Aldi/Lidl might fare. Looking at McDonalds' latest business results, it looks as if they certainly aren't going to go out without a fight. And those German discounters are definitely going from strength to strength.

Ten observations on Brand Futures are listed at the end of the book:

A brand with no clear vision has no clear future
Values-led marketing will create stronger brand relationships
Brand relationships are created for people, by people
The next journey for many companies is inside
It will be increasingly important to understand what makes a brand valuable
Stakeholder brands for a stakeholder society
Individual brands for an individual society 
Simplicity, simplicity
If you don't plan the future you want, you get the one that shows up
Brands have the power to change people's lives - and to change the world

Have these passed the test of time?

10/10.

Roll up, Roll up for the Future!

It's a shame that I've already got something planned for next weekend, otherwise I'd pop over to London for the Future Fest, organised by Nesta, an innovation charity,

There's a packed programme - at a very reasonable price - of talks, experiences, debates and tastings arranged around 6 themes:
Future of Democracy
Global Cities
Machine & Human Interaction
Money
Music
Thrills

The speakers include Edward Snowden (from a safe distance, I expect) as well as Dame Vivienne Westwood and Baroness Helena Kennedy QC. Experiences include the Sweetshop of the Future and the World's First Neurological Thrill Ride.

I love the idea of this - back in the 19th & 20th centuries there were all those huge exhibitions in glass palaces that celebrated the majesty of now. I guess it's indicative of our progress as a society that we revel in the glory - or the horror - of the past, or hope for the future, without too much consideration of the present.

Must put it in the diary for next year.

Short-term performance and Long-term health

There's a lot of pressure on marketers these days to have their brand "doing stuff". It's all about the customer experience, the here and now. Real time. Being "out there". Acts not ads. Agility. Brand as verb. Participating.

I've written enough about it in this blog.

And it's true that there are lot more possibilities open to brands to communicate with their users and potential users than there were even 10 years ago.

But it's a mistake to be doing stuff just because we can, in the same way that it's a mistake to lose track of why we're doing it. While I'm not a fan of spending months sitting pontificating about what is an emotional benefit or what is a physical attribute in some complex brand model that bears little relation to reality, I do believe that senior marketers have a responsibility to take a long-term view - maybe not quite as long-term as the Long Now foundation (!) - but certainly beyond the latest app and viral campaign. What is my brand's purpose? Where is it heading? What is our vision - and how does all the "stuff" we're going to be doing fit with that?

That is certainly the thinking behind P&G's recent re-organisation of their Marketing Division into Brand Management, with former Marketing Directors becoming Brand Directors.

If you pump an athlete full of drugs, they might be able to attain short-term success in one performance. But where is their health going long-term?