Cool Stuff vs Boring Fluff
In a creative business like marketing, most projects you start are designed – pun fully intended – to end up with a creative outcome. That creative outcome could be written (tag or copy lines, radio spot, etc), or visual, but it’s creative nonetheless. However, there are times when creative firms deliver a document, lacking in all creativity, the “brand position” or brand definition document. We just call it bull****.
Branding Background
Have you ever sat through exhaustive brand discovery meetings and listed adjective after adjective that describes you or your client’s business? Me too and I’ve been on both sides of the aisle.
In a re-branding (or sometimes even in an agency change, or new campaign) those meetings are a necessary evil. Business owners don’t spend their days focusing on what their brand is and how to describe it. They spend their days living it.
As marketers we find ways to get business owners to articulate their business and brand. Often through goofy exercises: “If you were an animal…” “If you had to invite three people to a party…”
These exercises are tolerable because of cool stuff that comes as a result, the new logo and brand collateral, the new shiny website, or the big document detailing the brand…
Wait a minute, scratch that, that isn’t right. The document detailing the brand? That isn’t cool stuff!. It’s boring! That’s what comes in between me and a new brand identity, in between me and a new website, in between me and a new ad campaign. Not only is it not cool, it doesn’t work.
How do we know it doesn’t work?
We’ve been part of it in past lives, but worse, we tried it with a client of ours. We came in… learned about their business… got them pumped up… came back with a document… they loved it. Weeks went by and we came back with cool names, but not cool enough… weeks went by and we tried again, and then again. Snooze. It took too long. They lost interest.
I like to do discovery before I attempt to solve a problem, it’s in my nature, I’m a 9 on Kolbe Fact Finder. I work best when I have all the facts, because I organize and present those facts, then solve a problem. So naturally I’d be the type of person who wants to document a client’s brand and make sure it’s right before we go on. Who wouldn’t? So then what is the problem delivering a document that outlines the brand as a deliverable? Why doesn’t this work?
Two reasons: momentum and expectations.
Why Fluff Failed (and will fail nearly every time)
When most people deliver a brand defining document, it usually not very creative. It is long and detailed and includes adjectives, elevator pitches and positioning statements. These are important, but after everyone is excited to start a project with a newly hired marketing agency, then goes through exercises, the last thing they want to do is read a big document. They want to see something visual. They want action. That’s why they hired you, because you produce creative, not because you produce documents.
When you send a brand position document to a client, even if it is dead on, it’s dead on arrival and it kills all momentum you gained during the interviews and brand meetings. Your document needs more, more story-telling, more visuals, more excitement.
Don’t just regurgitate facts, any hack can do that, give them more. Give them strategy, give them the pitch (with tag lines) for a new campaign, the sketched designs of a new logo and show the creative thought that went into it. Don’t give them a word document with their logo and your logo on it.
What we decided
We decided to promise ourselves – and our clients – not to kill another great campaign with boring fluff when we know our clients want cool stuff. As an agency, Spoke promises to not deliver a document devoid of creativity (unless it’s an invoice). We’ve learned from our and our industries’ mistakes. Every pitch we make, every client we take, even if we deliver brand facts, we deliver them with creative thoughts and ideas for future campaigns.
Our clients deserve this and even more, they want it.
Good advice, Dan. How about taking it once step further. Why not use video? With all the great tools out there for doing slideshows and screen capture and voiceover, you could present your results in video format, which is much more engaging and exciting. Just a thought…
Pat O’Brien
POB Marketing
Whoops! Sorry about that, Brian. I read another post by Dan, then read this one and failed to notice that you were the author, not Dan. My suggestion remains the same, of course. And we still need to get together for lunch one of these days and catch up on things.
Pat O’Brien
POB Marketing
Power brands are defined by their obsession with the minutia. I believe clients need to map out and define their customers and link ‘emotion’ to EVERY company touchpoint.
Special care should be given to the points of failure. Here is my real life example:
I found a coarse, black and white hair in my Quizno’s Torpendo sandwich. This was from an animal (I know, I have dogs). Along with a nonchalant attitude I was handed a new sandwich and as an after thouht, an ‘Oops, we can do better’ card. Free sandwich, right? Wrong. Phone number and name of the manager or franchise owner asking me to let them know if I was satisfied with the resolution? No.
Incredibly, the card was for 50% off my NEXT sandwich. Right…you screw up, then invite me back to your store to spend more money with you.
We all know people talk more about what you did wrong than all the times you operated flawlessly. So what’s needed, are different levels of ‘Oops cards’. Failing to put cheese on my sandwich doesn’t rank with finding a hair.
Each customer has an expectation for treatment and for me, I just wanted the franchise owner to know and care about what happened.
Maybe brand ID should include the emotional exposure of failure and the operational process (expense) they’re willing to undertake to toward customer trust building. Will the words be followed with specific actions?
Brian,
I’m a 7 on Kolbe Fact Finder – my highest ranking. Interesting take on applying this to the brand discovery process. The dilemma to me is to perhaps consider ways to engage the client a bit more in the discovery process with you – so they are part of the team and as excited about this as you all are.
And I thought the “dead on, dead on arrival” turn of phrase is simply poetic. Well done! Say Hi to Dan K for me. Met him years ago at CSPRC.
Kelly
Kelly, thanks for reading and your response (and being a fellow fact finder). We’ve found that even the most engaged clients, need to see creative during the delivery of a discovery. It’s not the lack of engagement during the process, it’s the lack of excitement for the deliverables. In fact the problem I’m trying to articulate is that after all that build up and excitement from the engagement and throughout the discovery meetings, delivering something devoid of creative (like a plain word doc) tends to have a “that’s it?” result.
Some people like visuals, some are text-readers, most are both. Even little touches during the discovery document, like images from comparable (or aspirational) brands, potential imagery or tag lines, makes a huge step towards maintaining the excitement through this process and towards the next step.
I’ll tell Dan you said hello. Dan and I have spoke at a few CSPRC events, including the Spectrum conference a few years back. Hope that group is doing well. We’re still in touch with Deb and just helped her with a campaign.
Cheers,
Brian
Agreed Pat. Video can work (especially for remote clients). Finding the right balance between fluffy and not too fluffy is the key.
Every clients is different, of course, and finding that balance of creative is key to help keeping them engaged.
Certainly need to grab lunch soon. Hope to see you at a happy hour soon as well.
Cheers,
Brian
Tanalyn,
Good points (and I love your site). This topic is worthy of it’s one post about how brands should respond to those touch-points and triggers.
It makes me think of something that comes up during branding conversations. Authenticity. If a client, who is a business owner, says they are ‘X’ and you ask the same question to the junior staff members and they say ‘Y’, there can be a problem with perception of the brand versus reality. Because the actions of both people define (or in this case, confuse) the brand. Authenticity has to come through. These people have to live the brand, day in and day out.
Of course Quizno’s (corporate) says that they have great customer service, but if the employee / manager doesn’t it, it doesn’t matter.
Sorry for the slow response and thanks for reading.
Cheers,
Brian