By: Max Ottignon
There’s an uncomfortable truth at the heart of our industry.
We try and claim it’s all about the inspirational idea or the game-changing creative thought, but successful branding is about doing the basics right, over and over again.
Tjaco Walvis sums this up in one of my go-to books on marketing, Branding With Brains, writing that “our brain favors brands that stick to one specific idea, which is repeated always and in everything they do.“
Good Branding Means Coherence and Consistency
The best brands have borne this out. To reach for the most obvious examples, Nike and Apple have been extraordinarily consistent since their founding. Both in what they stand for, and how they communicate that purpose.
But there are endless brands – both smaller and bigger – that can’t decide what they’re about. And indecision breeds indecision. They flit around between ideas, purposes, identities and communication platforms at the drop of a hat. Consumers don’t know what they’re for, so they don’t form relationships with them. And the brand becomes a commodity, continuing to exist only through the sheer weight of media spend. Generally, the result is a mess.
A campaign-driven approach to marketing is one of the biggest causes of this problem. If a brand has no underlying idea, it’s all too easy to try and create one through a new campaign. I’ve lost count of the number of advertising presentations I’ve seen that start with a new brand idea.
By definition, campaigns are short-term and few last more than a couple years. They aren’t designed to build brands because they have to drive awareness, recruit consumers and drive sales. They’re necessary objectives, but they’re focused on the here and now.
The Role of Brand Guardians
This tendency to focus on the present is why I believe it’s crucial to put brand strategy – as opposed to short-term communications strategy – in the hands of people who are given different, longer-term objectives. Generally, that means a branding agency.
A good branding agency should fight for coherence and consistency. As brand guardians, they can work alongside the roster of other agencies, fighting for the less glamorous elements of brand building.
They should be champions of the brand strategy, regardless of whether they themselves created it, and their work should have an impact far beyond the marketing department. Proper brand ideas should sit right at the heart of a business, directing culture, service and product development, just as much as they drive identity and communications.
Clean energy start-up Bulb illustrates why this is so important. When they came to us in 2015, founders Amit Gudka and Hayden Wood already had a clear idea of where they wanted to be. So we worked with them to define a brand idea that captured their sense of purpose and tone.
This defined the name and identity, but their true success can be measured by the way it continues to shine through every part of their business, from their disarmingly helpful customer service team to the refreshing simplicity of their core product. Everyone who interacts with the brand has an experience that is unmistakably Bulb.
This coherence has helped deliver some extraordinary results. Between August 2016 and August 2017, Bulb’s member base grew by almost 4,000%. Meanwhile, their TrustPilot scores are market-leading – a powerful indication that they’re consistently delivering on their brand promise.
Long-Term Partnerships
And with long-term objectives comes a long-term relationship. Agencies and marketing personnel change regularly. The average CMO tends to last no more than 4.1 years, while the average marketer/agency relationship is 3.2 years. That’s why it’s important for a branding agency to be a point of consistency, the glue that keeps internal and external teams aware of the bigger picture.
We’ve worked for Grey Goose for over a decade, and while we’ve delivered big sexy briefs, (from global campaigns to a nightclub in Elton John’s garden), for me the most important thing we’ve done is fight for coherence. In giving us a long-term remit, the brand has empowered us to look beyond the next financial quarter. As agencies and personnel have changed, we’ve been a consistent presence, able to work with the broader team to help shape ideas so that they work as part of the bigger picture.
Visual Revolution
Of course, I’m aware that branding agencies are often responsible for that most noticeable of changes – the rebrand. There are many good, extremely valid reasons to rebrand. A change in offer, a change in business strategy, a drive to be more relevant. The list goes on. And there are plenty of examples of rebrands that have dramatically improved a business’ fortunes, from Old Spice to Airbnb.
But brands need to proceed with caution. Consumers, unlike marketers, don’t like change. Witness the uproar every time companies proudly announce their new identity. And there are the obvious financial costs to consider.
Most of all there’s the cost of visual and verbal coherence. I spoke to a marketing director of a household name the other day. His brand had recently run some consumer research on their identity. When asked to describe their current logo, most people described the one they’d replaced over 15 years ago. It can be hard work – and often harder than most people think – to build visual coherence in the mind of the consumer.
So if you’re going to change the identity, it should be underpinned by long-term thinking and a commitment to see it through.
When it became clear Grey Goose needed to change elements of their identity, we forced ourselves to put our egos aside and make the decision not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. They already had an iconic logo – the lone goose – and a blue they’d invested plenty of time and money in looking to own. So we sought to refresh it—evolution, not revolution. Building on what they had we added storytelling, nuance, flexibility, and scalability, all without sacrificing consistency or coherence.
We introduced a pattern that references the single-origin French wheat used to make Grey Goose, a set of graphics that highlight the quality of the ingredients and a suite of graphics and typographic elements that combine French ‘savoir vivre’ with a contemporary aesthetic. All supported by a new tone of voice that delivers key messages with warmth and elegance. But most importantly, we introduced a flexible, scalable system that enables agencies and markets to ensure the brand shows up consistently wherever it appears.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
Coherence might not be as sexy as a global rebrand or a big award-winning campaign. And endless repetition probably isn’t the reason we got into this industry in the first place. But without it, all that other stuff just doesn’t work.
As Co-founder of Ragged Edge, Max believes in branding with substance. He helps new and existing brands use truth and integrity to form longer, more meaningful relationships with their audiences.
Together with fellow Co-founder Matt Bland, Max runs an agency with a collaborative, no-egos culture and a commitment to delivering brands that work in the real world. The agency takes an integrated approach, working across a full range of channels, disciplines and sectors, all over the globe. Max has overseen branding projects for clients including Grey Goose, BBC, Camden Market and Giraffe alongside ambitious start-ups such as Bulb, Trussle and Salary Finance. Outside of work, Max enjoys exploring London’s restaurant scene and working it off on a tennis court.
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