Nature or nurture? (*conditions apply)

One of the eternal struggles in our society is the tug of war between nature and nurture. It's the fundamental question of human behaviour, and the extent to which we are the product of our innate qualities from birth or our personal experiences as we develop.

It's a hotly debated topic – and one that is yet to be conclusively argued one way or the other – but there can be no doubt that our behaviour is shaped over time by the world around us.

You only need to take a quick flick through Jane Fulton Suri's book Thoughtless Acts to see all those intuitive ways we adapt, exploit, and react to things in our environment; things we do without really thinking – the result of her work as a partner at groundbreaking design and innovation firm, IDEO.

And so it is that we act instinctively (nature) or we are conditioned over time (nurture) to respond to our environment in intuitive ways.

One of the ways in which we have been more aggressively conditioned is the concept of fine print, a perennial bane of the modern world that allows businesses to make grand offers in ways that attract you, while at the same time limiting these offers in ways that suit them. We're used to having to read the fine print wherever we see the ubiquitous *conditions apply, and to ignore them is often perilous to say the least.

But last week, the tables were turned when Grill'd, the burger chain, seemingly forgot to include the fine print on this ad promoting 2-for-1 burgers for university students.

As it turns out, what they had intended to include was a disclaimer that limited the offer to the readership of the Uni Times publication in which it appeared. However, it wasn't long before consumers took advantage of the great deal on offer and starting making their way to their local Grill'd.

And that's when the real problems started.

Grill'd realised their error and naively tried to pass it off as a simple oversight. They wrote on their blog that they hoped all of our customers can appreciate the good faith in which the offer was released. But as you can read for yourself in the comments that follow, their customers held them fully accountable.

As it turned out, Nando's then dived in to exploit their competitor's error of judgment by offering to accept the vouchers at their own restaurants.

And only then did Grill'd apologise (finally! – with a message from the founder on their homepage), and agree to accept the 2-for-1 vouchers.

Ultimately, Grill'd failed in their bid to have customers overlook their error. Not simply because they refused to take responsibility and apologise, but more so as a result of the years of conditioning by corporations that have nurtured us to read the fine print.

*Because when any society is exposed to such a sustained effort to nurture our response in a particular way, it isn't too long before it switches from nurture to become second nature.

6 weeks later

Earlier in the year, a good friend pointed me in the direction of what is both a very curious and very productive social experiment in branding.

It's called 6 Weeks, and it's a project by a chap called Paul McCrudden.

Paul took it upon himself to measure the amount of time he spent with brands over a 6-week period (on his blog and using Daytum). And then – and this is the best bit – sent each of those businesses an invoice for his time.

,

£531.25 to Transport For London for time spent on the Tube.

£17 to the Royal Mail.

£97.75 to Sainsbury's.

And a host of others, including £25.50 to his local café, the Squat & Gobble. Who actually replied with the gift of a voucher.

As did Cranberry, EAT, Little Chef, Pizza Express and Pret A Manger with a variety of offers – and even actual payments.

Personally, this is my favourite branding idea of the year.

It prods and pokes the relationships that brands build with their consumers. It questions the value of those relationships. And it asks brands to recognise the value of not only their portfolio of products but also their share of consumers.

Paul's also gone to the trouble of publishing this summary below so that you can get the full story.

From Paul's perspective, the opportunity lies with better understanding PR and, in particular, social media. But I actually think there are bigger issues here that are fundamental to the role of branding in the 21st century.

But hey, it was his brilliant idea, not mine, so what do I know? All I need to do is get my invoice in the post.

Sending customers into a spin

Customers all over Australia have been sent into a bit of a spin this week – in pretty much every sense of the word.

It was Westpac who launched the downward spiral with an interest rate rise almost double that of the Reserve Bank, but things then plummeted to new lows with an animation emailed to customers that was a journalist's wet dream in the otherwise quiet pre-Christmas season.

Twitter was also abuzz, with my favourite being @bigriveroz who wrote: "hey westpac, last time i checked, the local cafe selling banana smoothies didn't make $3.4b while in a cosy cartel protected by the govt".

And it didn't end there. CEO Gail Kelly hit the press the next day to spruik the importance of customer service and the bank's commitment to relationships and reliability. But it was sheer folly for Westpac to try to promote the positive side of the bank sharing their problems with customers, especially as most of the positives seem to have taken the shape of profits sprinkled with the odd bonus. In the same week, reports from the Fairfax stables were suggesting an annual $2.6m cash bonus for Kelly's efforts alone. It's often said that money makes the world go round, but by now the insensitivity was making most people a little dizzy.

However, insensitivity seems to be a popular character trait for most customer service departments around Australia. In my case, it was Foxtel, the 900-pound gorilla of subscription TV, trying to cosy up to me with some sweet talk this week.

Let me give you the background. After months of frustration, I'd finally decided to send a short email to Foxtel to complain about a problem with my service. To be perfectly honest, it was more of a quibble than a problem. However, Foxtel's holier-than-thou advertising paints a vivid portrait of suburban delight, which only serves to grate on me even more when things go wrong.

The return call from customer services started well – the female voice at the other end of the phone seemed helpful and happy to talk.

However, when it quickly became obvious that the best she could do was a paltry "Yes, it's annoying for me too!", I started to wonder whether the point of her call was to sympathise with me, but not actually do anything.

I responded with a polite pitch for service not sympathy, but she immediately hit me out of the park with another gem: "If I help you, I have to help 1.7 million people".

And when I touched a couple of light volleys over the net to see if she would even acknowledge some level of responsibility, she gamely responded with a barrage of cross-court forehands that offered tips but no fix, and I found myself pinned at the back of the court, waving my racket in vain as the ball quite literally spun out of control.

Taking pity on me for a fleeting moment, she did offer a free copy of the Foxtel magazine. However, when I suggested that Foxtel might want to consider making this a monthly occurrence, she threw her racket to the ground in frustration, telling me that she simply didn't have the time to be able to make that happen.

I finally teed up another ball, only for her to shout at the top of my backswing that "I could downgrade my subscription if I wanted". I looked up for a split second in sheer astonishment – how could getting even less possibly be a helpful solution? Needless to say, I completely missed the ball, and my humiliation at the hands of Foxtel's customer service was complete.

I'm not quite certain at what point the phone call became more about Foxtel than me, but it reminded me that businesses like Foxtel and the banks appear to be more about profit than people. I'm all for success in commerce, but surely customers should be the linchpin of that success, rather than have it come at their cost.

I still don't know when Foxtel plan to fix my little quibble.

But maybe that's because there are obviously much bigger problems facing their customers which they need to fix first.

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.