Do CMOs Understand "Brand"?

Over the years I have found many an agency that was willing to give companies exactly what they were looking for - to sell Brand as the Holy Grail of marketing, the appropriate packaging and spin included.

This dis-connect comes probably from many of the factors I will point out in a moment. We are looking for science and certainty in the wrong places.

I have been reflecting upon how Mark Earls, a highly respected brand guru, articulated thoughts from his own experience in an interview with Hugh MacLeod at Gapingvoid. The quoted part with a bit of editing (emphasis mine):

Let's start with the good stuff about "Brand": it's clearly a popular idea, it's spread far and wide into politics and self-help books. It's useful, in that it allows us to talk about the cluster of stuff that floats around reputation and perception and so on. It looks like we can measure it because it's something that seems like folk out there in Consumerland can talk about.

So what's wrong with it: well, first of all "Brand" is a metaphor. It's not a thing, even though we talk about it as if it were: it's a way of talking as if.

Second, it's a fat-metaphor: there is no agreed definition, so we can use it to mean just about anything we want - to pre- or proscribe whatever we want. Most brand conversations need an agreed set of definitions or...

Third, "Brand" is what you get as a result of doing great, not a good guide to what to do - it's the scoreboard, not the game.

Fourth, "Brand" is a distraction from the main game, which is doing great stuff for customers and staff ("baking it in", as for example the Zeus Jones go on about). P***ing about in Brandland is a good excuse not to really get to grips with the stuff you need to get to grips with, and it tends to lead you off into "communications" rather than actually doing something.

Fifth, "Brand" perpetuates the myths we like to hold tight to, about the power of marketing and communication - sometimes when you hear brand folk talk, they seem to imagine they are sorcerers and magicians, weaving binding spells and illusions. More often than not, they like to use military metaphors. The truth of course is that mostly were neither of these things and have a marginal effect at best.

If you read the rest of the interview, you will find that Mark proposed an alternative to talking about brand as the end-all/be-all - the purpose-idea. It seems pretty simple, the purpose-idea explains to customers why they should buy your product or service and it tells employees why they come in early and stay late. There is nothing very strategic about passion, and engagement, and sentiments like those. They just are.

When you think about what business you're in, the best way to articulate it is not a long list of what you do, even when that is carefully researched and crafted. The truth is more around what you believe in and what drives you - and what makes you believable, thus driving customers to choose you. Reputation and perception emerge from stories of execution and experience with your service.

If I were to craft a series of conversations with customers and employees about a company, I would start with why it exists - the big idea, not a slogan. Then I would make it come alive with a story or series of stories. To make it real it needs to connect with the experience of those who are in the conversation with that company. It needs to be real, it needs to be something people actually can care about.

Business is about making things people want. Everything the organization does is marketing, not the other way around.

Comments

[Mike Driehorst]

In some ways, brand definitely is the be-all, end-all -- isn't it? Brand is the sum of the passion, the whats, the whys and other aspects that make up a company, association or individual.

A company can impact its brand by how it markets itself, how its people work with customers, the community, and other ways.

The brand also is how a company is perceived -- how the company's actions are accepted.

A positive brand is your destination -- of what you want to be. Things like noted above (marketing, your people, etc. and how they are perceived) are the directions.

Granted, sometimes you get lost, but good companies will right themselves.
-Mike

[Valeria Maltoni]

I look at it as the container. I like how you talk about direction. I now wish my good friend Peter saw your remark, as he is very insightful on direction. Thank you for opening up a new avenue with your comment. Sometimes we get lost as individuals.

[MikeTrap]

Not sure this approach to defining a brand is much more actionable than the non-definition that exists everywhere.

For me a brand boils down to a collective emotional response. All of the above are levers in driving that response, but they are not the brand itself.

Views of one McCann/FCB/Ogilvy alum, FWIW. http://miketrap.wordpress.com/2007/05/04/brands/

[Valeria Maltoni]

Good thinking there, Mike. Thank you for sharing. I go back to being a marketer and wanting to tell the story of how a product or service helps customers. We have come to define those activities as branding (metaphor).

[Brett Duncan]

It's amazing how such a central theme of marketing is so fuzzily defined.

In addition, we all feel like we have to have our own definition of it, which is why there are so many definitions to begin with.

Love the quotes from the interview; I'm about to go check the whole thing out.

Here is my own confession that I really don't know what "brand" is, either, with a collection of other marketing stars' opinions: http://www.marketinginprogress.com/2007/02/17/branding-is-the-difference/

[Peter]

Personally, I don't find brand a helpful concept in business.

Brand is my being in business. It is the potentiality of all my consequences that only becomes real and tangible in the presence of another. Then disappears to travel forward in time to greet me again in the presence of another.

As rightly pointed out brand is a consequence - that becomes ill shaped the more you try and shape it. My advice is to look less at your brand and more at what you trade and receive in return - but more on what you recieve in return.

Of course if your brand is misshaped to begin with..

Always a pleasure to stop by.

[richardatdell]

Hi Valeria

Enjoyed the post...and agree that is a really interesting interview. I just finished reading Mark Earl's book, the Creative Age. Hugh recommended I read it. Check it out if you get a chance....worth the read and raises a lot of interesting questions about traditional marketing assumptions

Nice to stop by and catch up with your blog. thanks for the enjoyable posts and perspectives

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Brett - the desire to have one's own definition probably comes from the need to "control" the message and conversation. I have experienced that in my career when colleagues who did not understand business = marketing at every step of the way and who never practiced it expected to take over the function or dictate how it is done. Indeed, brand is what you get as a result of doing right by your customers. Thank you for continuing the conversation.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Peter - brand is the sum total of expressions and impressions - both an intention and a consequence. It's about who you are as a business and what you manifest as a result of your being that. Or, if your brand is dysfunctional... I have noted how many business transactions go south because they start from an assumption that embeds a lie.

@Richard - glad you mentioned the book as I have just spent a delightful evening with Mark himself talking about challenging artificial constructs and the messiness of dealing with humans. Perhaps it is helpful to know that I do not come from traditional marketing, I come to marketing from an understanding of the behavioral sciences and communications. In fact, given my education, I'd probably go as far as stating that I come from conversation. Thank you for stopping by. I am honored that you did.

[richardatdell]

Hi Valeria,

I dont come out of marketing either. Political science and lobbying is my background before I landed in the USA :-)

Enjoy the weekend

[Matthew T. Grant]

Whoa. I was just telling someone today that brands are metaphors, and then I read this. So I was right after all!