Artful Realist

Scout’s Honor

Imagine that you and I can eavesdrop in the team rooms of some of the world’s leading brands. We sit there inconspicuously listening to the conversations they have about their brands. We’d keep a tally of the keywords that pop up again and again. Invariably, we’d see that positioning, promise, purpose, strategy, image, identity and personality would have very high scores. Our glossary would also certainly include words like voice, values, attributes, and architecture. But there’s one word that I’d be willing to bet we’d never hear in all our snooping: honor.

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Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.

// William Shakespeare

The Brand Resolution

Attention business managers: Happy New Year! Welcome to 2012.

If somewhere inside your business plan you list building your brand as a critical part of your success then it’s time to make a New Year’s resolution. Unlike the list you may have created for yourself, the resolution you need to make for your brand doesn’t require you to lose weight or cut back on the drinking. It’s actually very simple. It goes something like this:

This year, my brand promises to deliver {insert a valuable benefit} to all of our stakeholders (including customers, employees, investors, etc.). 

See. Told you it was simple. Before you hire that fabulous designer to create a logo or update your website, focus all your energy on fulfilling this one resolution. Make yourself crazy and make everyone in your organization crazy striving to live up to this resolution for a full year. Everything you do should serve this goal—marketing, product development, customer service, hiring, capital investment decisions … everything. Because that’s what makes a real brand.

We’ll talk in 2013 about your next resolution. 

Create your own visual style… let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.

// Orson Welles

A sentence is understood more easily if it describes what an … agent does than if it describes what something is, what properties it has.

// 

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

I love this quote because it validates something I have been telling brand strategists for years: a brand promise should be active, not existential. Strategists love to write promises that declare what a brand is. But these promises are harder to grasp and less likely to stick in memory. We understand characters in action. The next time you think about defining your brand this way — “Brand X is a …” — think again. Don’t tell me what your brand is. Tell me what it does.

Promise is most given when the least is said.

// George Chapman

Stop Over-Branding

Sorting through some files I’d set aside for my book, I came across this article again. I think I posted it once before, but it’s worth posting again. It’s time for brands to learn that less is more.

Social media turns branding into a true (if often accidental) collaboration between company and customer…

// Alexandra Samuel, “Social Media Fail, Airline Style”

Which Political Party Brand Delivers on its Promises

Mitt Romney launched a new advertising campaign yesterday that portrays President Obama as a man who broke many promises made in the last Presidential campaign. So far, the ad is tracking well. My guess is that both political parties will draw upon this rhetorical tactic in the year ahead because voters are deeply divided and skeptical of both party brands. The average voter believes Republicans and Democrats make big claims but fail in the delivery of their promises.

Make no mistake, political parties are brands. The same laws of brand equity apply to them as apply to Apple and Nike. They gain equity when the brand experience meets or exceeds the expectations of the brand promise. Given that only 9% of the American population approved of Congress in a recent CBS News poll, it’s fair to say that most Americans don’t think our political parties are living up to our expectations.

It makes the coming race all the more interesting. Not since the Nixon administration has there been such a large gap between generational opinions of government and politics. The fissures are amplified by general unhappiness with our situation and negative attitudes towards Washington, D.C.. Millennials, in particular, are becoming more disillusioned while Americans who are 65+ are becoming angrier. Perhaps the party that wants to win the election might follow the lead of brands who have recovered from crisis. Rather than point the finger at outside influences, reveal the flaws inside your own brand, make a pledge to fix them right now (instead of after election day), and lay out a system of accountability that reassures voters you will do what you say you will.

A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.

// Jeff Bezos