I was first introduced to Tom Asacker a number of years ago when he and I were on the same contributor panel and I’ve always been taken by four qualities that come out time and again in his work: his call-it-the-way-it-is approach; his extraordinary ability to condense whole systems to meme-length summaries; his relentless search for new form; and above all his humanity and clarity.
At a time when communication is increasingly hailed as shorter and more visual, the way brands choose and use language (the verbal brand) continues to hugely influence a plethora of channels, from social media to search engines to advertising, public relations, website content, direct marketing and more.
Pitch a new brand identity system to almost any large company with multiple divisions and inevitably someone will plead to be an exception to the new rules. This is particularly true where brands or divisions have had their own identity in the past. Attempts to consolidate a myriad of “brands” into a consistent brand identity system or to replace a whole portfolio of marques with a single power brand will be met with varying volumes of indignation.
Language is one of the most important definers of any organisational culture. The language you choose, the language you don’t choose and the language you choose to replace are a reflection, and in some senses, a definition of your priorities. As the American writer Rita Mae Brown once observed, “Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.”
Analytics have changed not just what marketers measure but how brands now appraise success. The temptation is to see all the metrics we have access to as correlated and, by inference, of similar and perhaps even related measurable value. We look at one analytic and wonder what its impact will be on another and on the bottom line.
It’s hard to develop a brand. It takes enormous effort, huge willpower, confidence, resources, patience and a thick skin. You’ll face doubt, distractions and problems. It’s gruelling …. But none of that is the toughest bit. Far from it. The most intimidating aspect is actually building a brand that consciously and clearly stands apart from everything else that is being built – everything else that is competing for the same audience you want to reach.
It’s tempting to believe that our brand story is ours. It’s not of course. Today, it’s owned by everyone – in the sense that virtually anyone, anywhere can input. And that means you’re not the only one telling that story anymore. Once customers simply provided validation that your story was true. Now they are part of the narrative, because their experience of your brand can so quickly become everyone else’s opinion of your brand, or at least part of it.
Provocative question: Why do IP law firms generally have such ugly identities? I suspect it’s because most of them are about protection rather than attraction. And it’s interesting isn’t it that, for two parties that should work closely together, brand and IP strategists tend to remain curiously separated.
Commoditisation is a fact of market. I always remember that great observation by VJ Govindarajan that “Strategy starts dying the moment it is created”. It dies because its (potential) effectiveness dies and with that, its relative value. That idea, transposed to brand is, in reality, what commoditisation is: the (slow) death of relevant value. However, there are strategies you can put in place to reverse the speed and/or pace of that commoditising effect. Here are nine ways I outlined to a leadership forum in Malaysia recently to decommoditise your offering and reassert its branded value. In the presentation itself, I focused on actual commodities, but the principles are in fact applicable to any brand/product that doesn’t command the value that it needs to, or once did: 1. Think of the product in new ways – when you redefine what something is or could be, you reframe its context and it’s much easier to redefine what it can be used for. When you stop thinking of milk as a drink, for example, and start thinking of …
Some brands seem to rule the world. They’re big, powerful, profitable and widely adored. They talk and the world listens. They are the game-makers. They made the game and they continue to run it. Their playbook seems to pretty much decide the rules for most. But not everyone aspires to that level of success and not every market leader is at the apex of a totally satisfied segment. Which is why some brands opt for a different agenda. The gamechangers’ intentions are, quite literally, to change the world, or at least to shake the tree of the mighty incumbents. How do you do that without getting crushed or ignored? It depends. Did your brand start out as a challenger, or did challenging the status quo become your purpose as a brand? Because the starting point drives very different strategies and storylines. If your brand was a challenger from the start, one of the most powerful assets you have, providing it’s true of course, is a dirt-poor story. The brands that start from nothing and with …
