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.