Imagine an architect who never has to build anything. Brand strategy detached from activation isn’t ‘consultation’, it’s a slippery slope to fluff writes Mark Cullen, head of strategy at MadeBrave.
So I’m more of a branding kinda gal. I know and love advertising, but have always preferred the deeper puzzle of a chunky rebrand.
But I’m old and ugly enough to admit how so much of my world runs close to the bullsh*t line. Even from the very best agencies and brands.
This may be an unfashionable view, but what isn’t helping is the growing trend to detach brand thinking from the campaigns that launch them. Two different agencies. One big gap for great work to fall through.
It’s brands and agencies who are bridging that gap that are making the best work.
Let’s go on a little journey. See if it sounds familiar.
A brand project begins. A brand consultancy does the stakeholder engagement, research, insight, positioning, values, essence (or whatever sits in your process this week). A very slick PDF is handed over.
Cue an awkward second pitch. Multiple new agencies now compete to execute the thinking from someone else they quietly don’t get or love that much.
The client spends lots of time and energy going back and forth, concerned the new agency ‘doesn’t really get’ the new brand, because they’ve dared to apply their own creative lens.
The truth is, behind the scenes most of the time the new agency doesn’t look at anything other than the typeface, colours and the endline. They definitely skip page 256 of the guidelines on how the brand essence is reflected in the art direction of a responsive grid layout.
Eventually a compromise is found. The launch is sort-of on-brand and good enough to sell something. The brand consultancy is grumpy because it’s not quite as perfect as their initial adcepts, if they’re even still in the room. The ad agency is stifled, but happy with a win.
This merry-go-round is now common in corporates worldwide. Yet it’s often as ineffective as it is wasteful. In time, money, creative quality and results.
Brand agencies are the best at what they do. They condense complex businesses and ambitions into clear human ideas and beautiful visual and verbal worlds. Often taking challenging stakeholders with them on the journey.
But advertising and campaigns are where the rubber meets the road, and where all that thinking is ultimately put to the test. You have less space, less time and an audience who hasn’t flicked through a 100-page PowerPoint. This cut-through and discipline is what is increasingly lacking from so much brand thinking today.
We all appreciate how having a specialist do their thing makes sense. But if your ultimate output is just a brand guideline, then of course you’re going milk the juice out of every value, proposition, purpose, personality, platform… (etc etc). But what you end up with is unclear fluff.
What matters isn’t what marketers see. It’s what gets out into the real world. If your brand agency can’t prove they know how to launch, or you don’t trust them to, then maybe don’t appoint them.
Look at some of the best creative work in recent years – across brand and ad-land. It’s been sublime brand thinking – seamlessly executed simply and elegantly. And yes – often by the same agency, rather than a suite of them.
At MadeBrave some of our best recent work has straddled both brand work – whether that’s a new brand or an evolved one, and then getting it ‘out there’.
Unless you have a foot in both brand thinking and campaign execution, you’re reliant on an interpretation of a PDF. And it’s the agencies that can do both, to an excellent standard, that are very, very rare indeed.
Marketers, procurement and business leads – ask yourself, do you really need to detach brand strategy from campaigns? You might find you get a sharper strategy, clearer brand, smoother launch, better work and bigger impact if you don’t.
At the very least, the PowerPoints will be shorter.
