branding - the even more dismal science

I think this is something that'll turn into a Campaign piece when I have to submit something over the weekend, but I wanted to write some about it here first, because it's wandering around in my head and it ties up some threads for me.

And it was finally precipitated for me by all the furore over the 2012 logo. I was struck by how much of the criticism involved people pointing and laughing at the vacuous and flabby brand jargon employed in its defense. And this lined up with a conversation we were having at psfk about how the idea of a brand has been so devalued by overuse, over-claim and over-thinking. So in the usual tradition of me being unable to have a single coherent thought, here are a bundle of ideas.

But here's a distinction before we start. I'm not going to argue that brands don't exist and we shouldn't ever think about them in those terms. But I am going to argue that most branding/communication theory is nonsense and that the flaccid rhetoric that tends to surround the word is mostly unhelpful and counterproductive. And I'm probably going to contradict myself, repeat myself and disagree with myself.

Branding is no longer the future of business.

There was a point in the 80s when branding was the future of business. Businesses realised you could stick brand value on their balance sheets, so they did. Consultants realised they could charge a lot of money for advice about brands so they did. And the money people looked to the branding people (often conflated with the marketing people) for all the money making ideas. So you got line extensions, big ads, expensive logos, brand onions. You got branding. And most of it was as intellectually rigorous as phrenology. Actually it was probably more like Scientology; it was somewhere between a fake religion and a false science.

Not everything is a brand

Fairly soon you had huge consultancies charging people big sums to talk to them about their brands. And it was, of course, in their interests to say that everything was a brand. Yup, that's a brand, we can advise you on that. It's about as useful as being a thing consultant and saying that everything is a thing. That eventually leaked into the media and you got Brand Beckham, and Brasilian Football or Welsh Singing being described as 'brands'. The low point for me was when Channel 4 got a load of ad people in to talk about Brand Blair when he announced his resignation.

This was brought home most forcefully to me by working with Honda, who had an inherent distrust of the word brand and refused to let us use it. This may well be a broader Japanese instinct. They thought of branding as a trick to disguise a weak product.

Branding is being replaced by design/technology as the future of business.

The dismal nature of the branding science has started to become clear to business recently and they're starting to vote with their investments and appointments. They're turning from the people who create perceptions of value to the people who create actual value - the designers, technologists, innovators. Hence branded utility, hence 'design is the new management consultancy', hence the current Business Week heroes being IDEO and Ives not CHI and Chiat Day. Hence the limited tenures of CMOs. Hence the rise of communications businesses that can actually make stuff rather than just think of stuff.

It's not just that 'branding science' is bollocks, it's also to do with the sterility of branding culture.

The PSFK last week was great, really well organised, smart people, good speakers. But I have to admit, I didn't hear that much was that new or stimulating. It was mostly the same old stuff. (And I was as bad as everyone else.) I think that's partly because we're stuck in an intellectual cul-de-sac; the brand model is broken and it's stopping us thinking. A lot of communications thinking at the moment seems to be about taking all the old assumptions and just applying them to different channels and different technologies. It's as if the phrenologists, on finally realising that phrenology wasn't working, decided to just feel the bumps on people's feet instead. People like Mark are trying to shove us out of those patterns and I think the sustainability debate will help to do that too, because it forces us to examine some basic assumptions, but branding is just not an intellectually fertile or engaging field right now.

And I sat in the psfk thing watching the twittering coming from reboot and Dan's write-ups coming from Postopolis and I think a lot of it's to do with the fact that branding exists in a tight, hierarchical, inward-facing culture, and while that helped to institutionalise it and strengthen it while the going was good, as soon as the foundations get knocked a little it doesn't have the flexibility to recover. I know the grass always looks greener but the contrast between the branding business culture and the culture of 'web 2.0' and design innovation is worth marking. They seem to delight in sharing every little thought that crosses their minds, they tend towards open events, intellectual curiosity, and huge ambition. No wonder business finds the language and culture of design and web2.0 infectious and engaging in comparison to the smugness and false doctrines of the branding business. There is energy, optimism and a thirst for outside influence in their conversations that I don't see in talk about brands.

The baby/bathwater caveat

Which is not to say obviously, that everything written about brands is rubbish, that there are no such things as brands, that all advertising is a waste of money or any of that simplistic nonsense. The idea of a brand is a useful one, provided it's used carefully, not as a subsitute for product, company, organisation, service, design, logo, idea, style of singing or thing. And while I've somewhat distinguished above the difference between 'real value' and the percieved value that branded communications can create that's obviously a false distinction.  The value that the Balls ad injects into a Sony TV is real and is probably cheaper and more effective than putting actual technological innovation in the product. It's just you can't survive on that alone anymore (if you ever could.)

The way forward

I think it's the hubris we have to get rid of. Launching logos is not the way forward. A logo should be repository of meaning, not a substitute for it. And you have to build that meaning, not borrow it.  We should be announcing smart and interesting things and then saying; by the way, this is the logo for it.

I suspect if we recognised our limitations that would also help us remember what we are good at; the power of the eyecandy, (via matt) the creation of experience hooks, we can occasionally do magic, but we need to remember our place.

Comments

[Will]

I don't think that that's contradictory. I think it hits the nail on the head - especially the bit about branding being like Scientology. Great analogy.

[John Dodds]

Marketing good, marketers bad?

[Herb]

I've been having similar thoughts. I call it Brand Disenfranchisement.

If the brand is defined in the mind of the consumer (or I would argue consumers), it seems lately that the brand-in-mind is wandering:
- tangible goods (brands?) not defining us (http://www.johnniemoore.com/blog/archives/001620.php)
- consumers ignore brands as cultural icons (http://www.psfk.com/2007/05/cultural_creati.html)

Ok, I admit, some large jumps in logic - but how is the consumer defining 'brand' these days?

Another way I've thought about this is - that if media fragmentation, consumer empowerment, technology, social connections, etc., has changed everything else in the marketing landscape why wouldn't 'brand' need to change as well?

It does seem like we are stuck in the change that is surrounding us. Part of me thinks that it is hard to understand change till change happens. Another part of me thinks that we need to start asking the right/better questions. Like what is 'brand' for todays consumer?

Design is something that I've completely geeked out on lately (well besides soccer). The reason I love design is that it solves problems aesthetically (once again an over generalization...but role with me). Design solves the problem of needing to sit down by creating a chair yet the chair enhances the environment it lives in as well.

I think branding has something to learn from design. So when I think about a brand I work on, I try to think about strategy with a design cap on. Solve the problem, functionally and aesthetically. Or something like that.

Still thinking about his...

Herb

[ann michael]

Wow - I think you summed it up when you said "it was somewhere between a fake religion and a false science."

Both based on some degree of truth gone awry.

[Valeria Maltoni]

This rambling of yours makes a lot of sense. May be the reason why many companies are now realizing that they need to hire people who are 'hands on', not just strategists. For a while there, everyone who wanted to make more money labeled themselves a strategist, until the word became quite useless.

I think what businesses are trying to say is: 'we need something concrete, real.' YOu write "A logo should be repository of meaning, not a substitute for it. And you have to build that meaning, not borrow it."

Yet, few are ready to make the business decisions that will lead to the meaning -- as in better product, service, real innovation, etc. All they want is by and large a new coat of paint so they can sell what they've got. When I interview with companies, I always ask what kind of business decisions they are ready to make so that we can build that meaning into what we're selling first.

[BJ]

I say branding, u say communication, he says marketing, others say advertising... and so on.

It's not the word that defines branding, it's the existence of it (through one and all communication ways). And yes, branding itself shouldn't be an action, it should be a way of being. Don't do, be.

[BJ]

I say branding, u say communication, he says marketing, others say advertising... and so on.

It's not the word that defines branding, it's the existence of it (through one and all communication ways). And yes, branding itself shouldn't be an action, it should be a way of being. Don't do, be.

[Mark Earls]

Great post, R. This should be a Campaign piece.

Thanks for the namecheck. A long time ago I suggested we all start using the word BNARD to discourage mis- or floppy-use of the other Bword.

Would that still be a good idea?

[Rish]

Nope that all pretty much makes sense. It's the designers that are making the running, and the stuff that matters, the stuff that is getting people excited now is not the big over-arching idea, but the small-scale and incremental. And it's web2.0 culture that's showing the way, in terms of openness, tinkering, community, being porous...

[Roger Anderson]

Russell, as always you push me to think and I appreciate that.
Branding, Image, and perception are all sort of the same thing. We just like to put new titles on old things to make them seem new. Viral Marketing is just buzz, which was just word-of-mouth, which was just popular.
Branding is not dead any more than image or perception. What is happening is just a shift in the catchphrase to try to differentiate your action/function as a marketer. Call it a new paradigm if you like but "A rose by any other name..."
The "new" idea of quality over image is not new at all. It is just one of the 5-Fold Way points I keep trying to show people. Maybe this is just what I need to get my concept more visibility.
Superior Quality only works if you can back it up. SO many people have tried to use Best Service to compensate for quality issues. The rise of the amateur journalist is a very good example of a Best Service trying to cover for lack of Quality. Brand building in the TV age was the same. Many companies tried to convince us they were our friend (service) and so we were taught to ignore quality differences. Now we have the Internet where the product experience of others is easier to find. Now quality issues are exposed in ways that are difficult to hide. So the herd moves to quality as the position to take. Soon they will all be touting the qualities of their products. The sad part of this is that service will begin to suffer since it is not the focus of the "brand" builders.

Look forward to your comments.

[Raimo van der Klein]

Holy crap what a post...

[Alex Nisbett]

Great post indeed. To my mind, we are talking about moving From Décor to Core. And in this new place, the currency of business value will be branded utilities - or to use their other names, Service and Experience Design.

The challenge for the branding and ad agencies will be around the people - who can do this stuff?

They'll need slightly different brains - more empathic, people-centred people, who, yes, can create big ideas but also play them out along customer journeys across multiple touchpoints (and I'm not talking TV, radio, outdoor etc.) and over time.

We also need to give users, consumers, people, the credibility they deserve and do much of this stuff with them.

Go service! Go experience! Bye Bye Brand?

[Jez]

Here's a related post from Nigel Hollis at Millward Brown.

He's discussing the 'death' of branding and the impact it may have on businesses.

I wonder if wider economic factors such as private equity involement in business could be accelerating the demise of branding? Where does this ambigious use of the word brand come from?

read: http://www.mb-blog.com/index.php/2007/05/31/the-doomsday-brand-scenario/

[NP]

Please make sure this turns into a Campaign piece. Uncommon sense, truly.

[Raimo van der KLein]

@Alex,

Great comment!!

[David Tiltman]

Interesting post. The zeitgeist now is surely for the real, the authentic, etc - hence the emphasis shifting from 'strategic' brand wankery to brands that actually mean something in terms of consumer experience (even if that something is being against the notion of a brand in the first place). But won't it be the same agencies offering this brave new world as the ones responsible for all the 'false science'?

[sidekick]

you talk too much

[collyn ahart]

First off, Interesting was WONDERFUL (note the caps) yesterday. Thank you for all you put into that.

Second, I completely agree. This is actually hitting home on something that I've gone on about for a while now. As I work in a branding agency, I have to be careful here, but I do think the future of the 'b' word is in giving people tangible and meaningful relationships with companies/products. 'Experience' is the big word usually inserted here, but for sake of argument, I think it's more about enjoyment and engagement. I think our conventional logo design and identity consultancies are going to have to evolve fairly quickly to address this need for better retail, event, cultural, etc really engaging and fun 'brand' experiences. There is a great potential here for a lot more cross-disciplinary design, too. Branding agencies working more with architects and interiors, film, etc. I think there is also a lot of potential for the way strategy is going to evolve.

At its core planning will be the same as it has been, but planners will have to learn how to communicate with these other disciplines. This is really exciting! Maybe it's not just about 'remembering our place', but about testing to possibilities of what we can do?

[Rob Gough]

Excellent post. Some thought provoking ideas for sure, and expressed well.

Much of your post really hit home for me, as someone who has grown increasingly weary of the over/mis-use of the word "brand" (and its derivatives).

I would add that, while there does seem to be a growing backlash against this type of empty and/or misguided rhetoric, I find some aspects of that swell troubling as well. For example, the word "authentic" (or authenticity) seems to be thrown about far too carelessly these days. Moreover, some of this liberal usage is not careless at all. Rather, it is quite intentional, in an attempt to manufacture real from fake. It is this kind of disturbing trend that has recently given rise to terms such as "astroturfing", coined to describe efforts to create falsified grass-roots support.

Thanks again for the food for thought.