Logo lemons

Over the past few days, one of the most infuriating debates has raged on Mumbrella.

The basic gristle is this. Whether crowd-sourcing is a credible means of designing an organisation's identity – or "brand", for the uninitiated.

On one side, we have the higher echelons of the design establishment. On the other, a pool of enthusiastic design amateurs.

Now while it is true that I belong to the former group by default, I generally tend to offer all available support to an amateur – someone who, quite literally, does something for the love of it.

That is on all occasions except for when the amateur is in fact a bald-faced entrepreneur, desperate for propaganda over passion. If someone tries to sell you an Aston Martin for an obscene fraction of the price, you can be pretty sure it's not an Aston Martin.

Check out this website for a real lemon.

More than words

Humans are an inquisitive bunch, demonstrated no less than when we wonder what such-and-such would say if only the baby-pet-car-thingamajig could speak.

More often than not it's a rhetorical question. Nevertheless, I wonder whether it may also be a question asked in vain, given the propensity of most of those blessed with the power of speech to default to the drearier corners of the English language. Words are no less a form of self expression than a means of communication, however, most people rely on their words for mere data transfer.

Like humans, many brands also try to strike up conversations with those around them.

Try me, buy me, cook with me, look at me.

Yet they seem to struggle just as much as humans when it comes to using their voice as a vehicle to convey emotion. Communications feel cold and corporate, jargon jockeying for position amid an avalanche of acronyms. You can have the most pleasant and rewarding conversation with the person in the call centre, only to receive the standard, automated letter from the call centre's computer. It may very well provide a neat summary of your discussion with word perfect precision, but you are now left wondering if you are really a customer to be cared for or simply a statistic to be served.

I read a piece earlier this week from The Writer, an agency in London that specialises in writing (not surprisingly), in which they were discussing the language of the car industry.

It started with Mercedes-Benz, that colossus of German engineering, and the way Mercedes describe the SL 65 AMG Black Series (a long name, I know!) in standard yet soulless fashion. "The new design reduces exhaust gas back-pressure. The acoustic side effect of this is to produce a distinctive 12-cylinder sound, from the two trapezoidal tail-pipes."

There's nothing necessarily wrong with what Mercedes have written, but you do have to wonder whether they've missed the point of a sports car at full speed. Especially when you consider the energy that Lamborghini inject into their language. "The exhaust in this car makes a sound that ranges from the heavy rumble of a stormy night, through the trumpeting of mighty elephants, through to the roar of a raging lion."

The difference is startling. It's not just what you say, but it's how you say it.

In some other bits and pieces I've read this week, I found a comparison of two famous authors, William Faulkner and Ernest Hemmingway, in the way in which they write about feeling tired.

In the words of Faulkner. "He did not still feel weak, he was merely luxuriating in that supremely gutful lassitude of convalescence in which time, hurry, doing, did not exist, the accumulating seconds and minutes and hours to which in its well state the body is slave both waking and sleeping, now reversed and time now the lip-server and mendicant to the body’s pleasure instead of the body thrall to time’s headlong course."

Or, according to Hemmingway. "Manuel drank his brandy. He felt sleepy. It was too hot to go out into the town. Besides there was nothing to do. He wanted to see Zurito. He would go to sleep while he waited."

Neither is right or wrong. For all that you feel from the words of Faulkner, each thought flowing freely into the next, the brevity of Hemmingway makes for an equally powerful statement, every word loaded with impact. If only brands recruited as many great writers as graphic designers, then maybe the best looking brands wouldn't feel like such a let down as soon as they started to speak.

A few years back, I remember reading an interview with Brett Anderson, lead singer of an English band named Suede who found fame in the 90s. He was talking about how, for better or worse, everything should create an emotional response. Love and hate were always better than an indifferent shrug of the shoulders.

The next week, arch rivals Blur released their latest album and, in another publication, Brett Anderson was asked for his opinion. Two simple words said it all. "It's ok."

I worry that most brands strike a similar note of indifference, to the point that the language they use becomes unnoticeable. Undifferentiated, uninspiring, unimpressive.

As much as humans can be inquisitive – as I wrote at the top of this blog – we are also reputed to use only a small percentage of our brain power. Likewise, brands often fail to take advantage of anything more than the bare minimum when it comes to the breadth of language available to them and the range of emotions that their words can explore.

Brands need to speak to their audiences. But that means more than words.

Every brand is an icon

Religion and the illegal drug trade have always had a lot to teach people about the merits of a telling a good story with focus and purpose to an audience whose specific needs they are targeting. As a result, both can lay claim to millions of loyal followers and a very high incidence of repeat purchase.

Too many brands nowadays take a more scattergun approach, hoping to reach anyone who'll listen with a message that contains something for everyone. And in the meantime, the definitive meaning of the brand itself is lost in the wash.

In particular, I am continually surprised by the number of brands who promote themselves as an "icon" without truly understanding the facets and implications of the term. Most brands claim icon status through sheer perseverance and heritage alone, but more often than not, their audience has simply grown as old as their brand. From personal experience, none of my grandparents found any solace in their old age, but instead they discovered every reason to rejoice in their youthful spirit. This is the crucial recognition that all brands must make in order to survive. Age has always just been a number, while a strong and youthful spirit is the driver of all life’s pursuits. Good brands never grow old. Unfortunately, too many brands die with their audience.

Brands face this battle against extinction on a daily basis and it is the very iconic nature of branding that enables customers to make instant purchase decisions without having to review a company’s entire corporate history to help make them. Technically speaking, every brand is an icon. Brands act as symbols to represent a larger entity and deeper meaning than simply the logo, a critical signpost for what you can expect and your invitation as a customer to participate. It is branding that makes it possible for you to purchase hundreds of products for your weekly supermarket shop in a matter of hours, or buy a car without having to inspect the factory itself and interview key personnel about production methods.

For any brand to be successful, it must by definition be iconic. However, too many brands start and end with the logo without investing deeper meaning in their brand. In countless taste tests for beer, people generally have difficulty picking between products until you serve the beer in branded glasses – and as it turns out, your favourite brand is sometimes not your favourite beer.

Apple means a lot to people. More importantly, the Apple brand means more than the specific technical features of the products themselves. The uplifting experience of breakthrough innovation and user-oriented technology is championed by employees and cherished by customers – even Steve Jobs’ keynote speeches were met with an exuberance and excitement more typically seen at political rallies and football matches.

If you were to take Virgin at face value, it clearly would not make sense to put your trust – and, in a variety of different ways, your life – in the hands of someone who is quite literally a virgin.

Similarly, Orange represented little more than a colour somewhere between red and yellow until Hutchison Whampoa injected it with the promise of demystifying the telecommunications market for consumers. The Orange brand symbolised not just a phone plan but more a philosophy that recognised customer needs and responded to them with a refreshingly candid approach to a complex and cluttered market. People liked the plans, but they liked the brand even more.

Apple, Virgin and Orange are all iconic brands. Not because they have discovered some holy grail of branding that lies beyond the reach of most marketing departments and their agencies, but simply because they have spent the time and energy creating a deeper meaning for their brand, their customers and employees.

What’s more, they are all brands that have invested in reinventing themselves over time – they have grown up without growing old.

Nudie achieved huge success with an entertaining story that meant so much more than communicating the real fruit content of its juice by blithely mirroring this with images of real fruit on its packaging. However, the big question for any successful brand like Nudie is always what they do next – sales figures signal a successful past, but they do not provide any guarantee of an equally successful future. And it seems that the copycat characteristics of the juice category that gave us a sea of spritzed oranges have now turned their attention to creating the comic book caricatures that have dragged Nudie back into the pack of pretenders.

One category facing this exact problem is wristwatches. Having enjoyed phenomenal success over the years, many watch brands have seen their premium cachet diluted by the fact that your watch is now far from the only personal accessory to showcase your luxury lifestyle in a split second. The unprecedented rise of the mobile phone as a statement of luxury (and not just a communications device) has drawn brands like Tag Heuer out of their shells and into the business of designing mobile phones as watches for the 21^st century. Car manufacturers picked up on exactly the same status cues when they started to invest more heavily in the branding and design of their car keys.

What a brand means is the single most important factor in its success. The most successful brands are built around a sustainable idea that transcends time and context. This is the basic premise for a brand’s equity and one of the key elements that enables businesses to value their brand both in financial terms and measures of commercial goodwill. Successful brands have to succeed financially if they are to deliver true and tangible value to the businesses that they represent, and too often in the past has the iconic nature of branding related purely to cult and boutique brands that never make it on the commercial stage.

A long and impressive heritage, a cult following, or a hero product is no longer enough to sustain a successful brand. What makes brands tick is the ongoing investment of time and energy that goes towards creating and codifying the meaningful expression of a unique point of view. As a result, inventing – and reinventing – the future is much more significant than reflecting on the past, something that has been impressively evidenced by the way in which Pacific Brands reinvigorated the once faded icon that was Bonds through their product development and communications.

To paraphrase George Orwell, all brands are iconic, but some are more iconic than others.

The politics of branding

Before I begin, let me tell you that I am one of the least political people I know.

That said, working on the branding of a political campaign had always been one of my career ambitions. There simply didn't seem to be any marketing challenge that could beat a political campaign for its sheer immediacy and interaction. Real-time polling. Strategy, and counter-strategy. A complex and incredibly dynamic competitive landscape. And, of course, a fickle electorate to make the final decision.

That was until political campaigns became dull, conventional and, ultimately, meaningless for pretty much everyone bar the political candidate and their cronies.

But then that all changed for me with the most recent American election and the campaign run by Barack Obama. Irrespective of my own political beliefs (and limited enthusiasm, as above), he instantly struck me as a man willing to stand for something more than the hackneyed, cautiously worded policies of times past. He dealt with issues in a way that not only seemed to make sense for the people, but also – and importantly so – just felt right.

In the world of commerce, they say that "in the absence of a clear business strategy, any brand strategy will do", and the same had often struck me about politicians. So often it's more about the individual policies than their political platform or philosophy (if they're the right terms), it's all short-term tactics and the political equivalent of discount sales to score votes as the public relations people are allowed to run riot.

So it was refreshing, to say to the least, to be able to hear David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, talk about some of the strategy behind the campaign at this seminar at Cannes last week. I won't attempt to paraphrase what he says – you're better off hearing him speak for yourself – but a couple of points in particular stood out for me.

Firstly, Obama set the strategy from the top and everything filtered down from his vision. Now if only we all had a leader like that.

And secondly, everything worked in sync. Messaging, media, events, door-knocking and so on all spruiked the same content on the same day in the same state as the campaign moved around the country.

Neither of those two things are easy to achieve, but just look what happens when you get them right.