The dizzy heights of failure (and other stories)

When it comes to social commentary, I have often found music much more insightful than the latest trend report. The Clash, Dylan, The Jam, Nirvana. Poetry, not PowerPoint.

Whatever your personal preferences, Britpop, for example, neatly summed up the attitude of a generation in the UK. So much so that it's only fitting the last word should have gone to Jarvis Cocker of Pulp fame. His first solo release delivered a great one-liner on the state of the nation post Labour's resurgence under Prime Minister Tony Blair.

"The cream cannot help but always rise up to the top. Well, I say: Shit floats."

And, to be perfectly blunt, I think the same is true of many management teams.

David Maister, the renowned professional services thinker, has always said that at any one time, 10% of your workforce are underperforming and should be managed out of the business. Whenever people hear this view (or is it a statistic?), most automatically assume that means 10% of the rank and file, but that would be a gross oversight given the impact of the decisions made by an organisation's top echelon. And, as Jarvis so graphically explained, the cream isn't necessarily the only thing that rises to the top.

The economic crisis has caused a raft of issues. Few more worrying for your top executive than the unwanted exposure brought on by the fact that many of the so-called cream have received hefty bonuses, seemingly as a reward for failure.

Careers have been killed, but at the same time I have also seen countless underperformers actually promoted through failure. No doubt promoted into a position from where they could presumably do less harm, but hardly the right signal for those surging through the ranks on the wave of success. Jarvis would feel vindicated.

It would be easy to see where this is all heading, if it weren't for the fact that failure is often viewed as a good thing.

In short, if you're not failing, you're simply not trying hard enough. And according to many, this recent failure of our economic systems was inevitable. They say it was the recession that had to happen. We had to fail in order to reset the balance.

So it seems our fate was more in the hands of the gods and fickle fortune than the chief executives and their chairmen. It wasn't their fault, just plain old bad luck.

Not quite.

If we were to take Jarvis at face value, things simply rise and fall. But that isn't quite true, actually they go around in cycles. Which conveniently brings me back to the point where I started. The Britpop revolution of the 1990s (Blur, Oasis, Pulp) took many of its cues from the British Invasion of the 1960s (The Who, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks). Similar trends, similar times. And it won't be long before the 1960s come to life again in another age.

The same can be said for our current economic situation, only none of our financial leaders saw it coming with the same vision or insight as those record executives. History will say that we failed, so let's hope we change our tune in time for the encore. If not, then Kevin Rudd – the cream of Canberra – will be back shouting from the very top of the steaming pile about "the usual political shitstorm". Jarvis would be proud.

Heads or tails?

Managing relationships is always an important factor when it comes to doing great work – and I've always found that I've done my best work for my best clients. However, whether or not you have a great relationship with your clients can often seem like a lottery. As with most things in life, there's two sides to every story, but there are things that you can do to ensure success does not come down to the flip of a coin.

So it pains me to write that I managed to find myself at the whim of fickle fortune only this week. Developing creative work without a clear brief for a company where the key decision maker felt unable to explain exactly what was expected – I think the notion of "something abstract" was as far as we got. Juniors were sent to review progress on the decision maker's behalf, each of whom had only a limited handle on their manager's expectations. And, of course, we had barely enough time to crack the idea.

To make matters worse, we weren't actually the first team to get this non-existent brief. We were the fourth. But no one had thought to consider whether the way in which the relationship was being handled was the real issue, not the quality or character of the creative work.

Unsurprisingly, it seems we didn't crack the idea. Although, I think it would be more accurate to say that we didn't crack the relationship.

To use a sporting analogy, developing any solution for a client is always a combination of playing both the man and the ball. The world's finest sportsmen are not only incredibly skillful but they are also well versed in the nuances of their opposite numbers. And they will not only play to their own strengths but also to their opponents' weaknesses.

It's slightly different in our arena in so far as we need to play to our strengths and then also to the strengths of our clients, ideally with a cumulative effect rather than one where they cancel each other out.

All of which points to the simple fact that you need to understand your client in as much detail as you understand their brief.

Logos, literally

Logos look great, but they rarely tell the whole story. Often they don't quite know what they really want to say, or they can't find the words to say it. And this is a missed opportunity on a massive scale, given that language lives within each of us. However, all too often, its voice lies smothered under a dull blanket of senselessness – its lips are moving, but we feel little connection to the words and what they really mean.

Decades of being taught at school to end letters "Yours sincerely" have only succeeded in forging generations of insincerity, albeit delivered in the most polite manner. Letter writing is now, for better or for worse, a lost art, replaced by letter writing 2.0. Politeness has now been replaced with the blunt force of the email and its brutal attack on nuance and tone. And we are left in a world where people no longer understand the difference between information and conversation, fact and insight, idiom and idiot.

Thousands of years ago, language evolved to become the intelligent aspect of life that set us apart from other living things. And storytelling evolved to provide the means by which knowledge was passed from one generation to the next. The group dynamic to storytelling was incredibly important as this passage of knowledge provided a vital social bond. I can only imagine what the elders would make of the relative hubris of iPods and earphones, the modern day equivalent of learning a new language from cassette tapes, a poor (and very isolating) cousin to the more rewarding act of actually visiting the country in question to immerse yourself in the people and the culture.

I remember my first son being incredibly frustrated around the age of 18 months as he struggled to find the words to express himself. Now that he can express his thoughts and ideas and emotions, he is much happier. Not only for the act of self-expression but also the experience of sharing with those around him. His words connect himself to his world, he says what he sees and he sees what he says. His language and his life are inextricably interwoven.

All of which brings me to my point.

Language is an incredibly powerful device (to use the modern day vernacular). It has the unique ability to pinpoint your exact meaning, thought or emotion in a way that is simply not possible without the power of speech. It brings us together as the uniting force for sharing stories, knowledge and experience. And it gives us the opportunity to reach out beyond ourselves and touch the world around us.

My point is that a logo is not a brand. A brand can tell a story. A logo can barely spell.

This brand's going to be the death of me

Creatives have always received the accolades when it comes to building the profile of an agency, but the title of brand strategist has begun to increase dramatically in cachet.

There’s simply no elegant way of writing this, but it seems that every Tom, Dick and Harry harbours the aspirations – but not necessarily the skills – to become a brand strategist. I receive enquiries on a weekly basis from people keen to see how they can transpose their account management skills and acquired strategic marketing experience into the role of a full-time, hands-on original thinker. More often than not, the signs are not promising. However, what frustrates me is not the fact that strategy is receiving so much attention (on the contrary, I think this is a great step forward for our industry), but rather the inconsistency between the level of significance that agencies put on the glamour of brand planning versus the daily grind of brand execution.

It is a simple fact that strategy alone does not differentiate your brand, it is the execution of that strategy that sets you apart as you deliver your message and actions in accordance with your business goals.

With that in mind, I find it ironic that the implementation phase of most branding initiatives is referred to as “brand execution”, given that this is inevitably the point at which you run the greatest risk of killing your brand.

There are a variety of acknowledged ways in which you can “execute” your brand, some more visceral than others. What follows is a look at the different challenges that will test an organisation’s commitment when it comes to implementing their brand’s strategy. It highlights a critical area of branding that does not necessarily receive the same accolades or attention as those of strategy and creative, as it is fundamental to achieving the ultimate goal of any brand, namely a successful business outcome.

#1 Death from natural causes

By far the most acceptable way in which to execute your brand is simply to allow it to pass away in the quiet of the night.

The signs of old age were obvious for all to see, but nobody took any action to do anything more than ensure the brand’s basic survival, certainly not enough to encourage growth or even reinvention. What’s even more unfortunate is that often customers do not even notice the passing of their once favourite brand. They switch seamlessly to the young pretender whose lack of substance is at least counterbalanced by a swathe of enthusiasm and energy.

Your customers now face an incredible number of choices for their business, and the basics of segmentation, targeting, positioning and delivery are more important than ever. Branding is not for the fainthearted, and the most successful brands are the ones that take the bravest decisions. Had it not been for this attitude, IBM would have died with the typewriter like many of their competitors (may they rest in peace). Instead IBM chose to reinvent their business and reap the rewards.

#2 Death from cardiac arrest

In some cases, organisations decide to take their brands into overdrive.

As they strive to commission special projects, accumulate steering committees, and launch working parties with a magpie’s enthusiasm for the new, visionary papers and innovative strategies are engineered and embedded on an almost daily basis until eventually the organisation grinds to a shuddering halt. The veins of its corridors and cables now jammed with ambitions that far exceed its operational capabilities, the organisation admits defeat in the face of a yawning chasm between the realities of today and a rare future that they could only envision. The faint beating of the heart of the brand can barely be heard above executives clamouring to distance themselves from once lauded strategies as they consign their brand to the history books – only for the next generation to conduct a cursory post mortem before proceeding to repeat the same formula.

What often goes unnoticed is that the fact that the strategy itself was pretty accurate, but that it was let down by unrealistic expectations in the way that the strategy could be implemented. In the same way that most people don’t like change, most businesses don’t like revolution. They prefer a transformation more akin to evolution. Time is not only the great healer, it is also an ideal lubricant to help ease organisations into a new pair of shoes. It gives employees and customers alike the space and respect to find their own feet in the stiff leather of any new arena.

Complex strategies in cluttered markets call for multiple horizons if any brand strategy is to be successful. This is a lesson that Mayne learned firsthand when they restructured their business with insufficient consultation with their key customers, and as a result the strategy was quickly deemed to have failed and a very unhealthy diagnosis for the company was soon forecast.

#3 Death by public hanging

Hangings have always been a very public way to meet your end, even doubling as a mild form of entertainment in medieval times. These days, they are equally entertaining for business editors and students of the branding industry, condemning brands to a slow and painful death that is painstakingly recorded on blogs and front pages all over the world.

When businesses hang themselves, it is typically a result of making promises with their brand and communications that their organisation cannot deliver.

In the UK, Abbey rebranded themselves a few years ago under the premise that they would democratise the world of high street banking. They made a massive investment of time and money to redesign their advertising, collateral, retail presence and other marketing communications only to have their customers find that they had not in fact reinvented their business as promise, they had merely redecorated their brand.

Empty promises, unmet promises, and promises that are carefully worded with spin but without any substance all result in your customers quickly becoming disillusioned and dissatisfied. Ultimately, they become someone else’s customers and, with the smell of new paint still lingering in high streets across the country, Abbey’s customers simply left them to hang.

#4 Death by lethal injection

Brands used to be the domain of marketing departments and represented little more than the company’s logo reproduced on the office stationery. Nowadays, branding represents a core discipline of any successful business, an organising principle for how the organisation behaves and the decisions it makes.

With many more stakeholders involved in a branding process that has far wider implications than in the past, aligning and managing their expectations is a critical factor. Of course, the marketing department need to know how to develop their communications and collateral, but the finance department also need to know what value to put on their brand and how to manage that investment as an asset; the call centre need to know how (and how quickly) to answer the phone; and, the human resources department need to know how to promote and measure employee performance, as well as recognise future leaders.

Branding plays a pivotal role in all these scenarios, but all too often the implications of an organisation’s brand are not fully understood and therefore underleveraged, or otherwise they are misconstrued and a fragmented message quickly appears just as soon as the strength of their brand disappears.

Either way, once confusion spreads, it is difficult to contain and before too long, the brand is no longer the great asset that your shareholders had hoped that it might become.

Instead, it is a daily liability that must be neutralised – and before those marketing guys cause any more trouble in the otherwise stable worlds of finance, product development and corporate strategy.

And once the lethal injection has been administered, it is already too late.

At a loss for design

The past few weeks have been a bit of a roller-coaster in the world of design – or at least in my little neck of the woods.

First, there was the design industry tying itself in knots over the new AWARD identity on Brand New.

Then, we had the crowd-sourcing debacle on Mumbrella (see the previous post – Logo lemons – for my quick, soul-cleansing rant).

And finally, the crème de la crème, the absolute sense of horror that accompanied the launch of the City of Melbourne identity on Brand New (again) and the AGDA blog.

Comment after comment has rained down as all and sundry waded into each debate with the collective fervor of a 6-year old defending his corner of the sandbox. Arms flailing amid a whirr of windmills. The expectant mob waiting with bated breath for the first sight of scarlet in a classic schoolyard fight to the end.

I would love to say that careers have been racked and ruined, egos smashed on the rocks of egalitarianism, and studios shattered by the demands of artistic integrity, but I'm afraid we have nothing more than a hurty knee. The first sign of trouble, and we have been reduced to a ranting mess. The sheer number of comments speaks not of our industry's strength under scrutiny but of its parochialism, pretension and paranoia.

For a profession supposedly steeped in creativity, conservatism and cynicism rule supreme. Just ask the guys at Wolff Olins who designed NYC or London 2012. Brilliant work that breaks the rules and sets a new standard for how we ought to be building brands. But sadly no. We would prefer to wax lyrical over the miracle that is the new Qantas logo. It's embarrassing.

In sport, whenever two sides at the pinnacle of their powers slug it out in the heat of battle, whether your side wins or loses – and please excuse the cliché – the sport itself is always the true winner.

However, when it comes to new brands and their logos, it appears that designers would much rather destroy than create.