Beware the Bloated Branding Process

In 2000, Saturday Night Live ran a TV ad for a fictional company called Westlink. Filled with beautifully vague images--a hang glider soars past a mountain top, Japanese children carry parasols, an elderly man walks with a pick-axe swung over his shoulder--it ended with an authoritative announcer stating, "Westlink: Even we don't know what we do."

I think of this ad when I see some of the bloated branding processes that flood the marketplace today. I'm sure that many of these processes (which are supposed to bring clarity to confused brands) are wonderful and worthwhile. But the last two that companies have shared with me seem built to achieve one of three objectives: to confuse, to introduce unnecessary complexity, or to fatten the agency's profit margins.

One was a finished brand consulting report filled with page after page of the company's supposed Core This and Core That. ("Core Values: Integrity, Innovation, Service"; "Core Personality Traits: Passion, Commitment, Fun!")

My Core Reaction: Puke. By the time I was finished, I was not only unable to determine what made the company unique; I couldn't even discern its industry. The second was a bloated but extremely well-designed proposal for a long and intensive branding process. The price tag: $75,000.

These kinds of reports make me want to swing a dead cat. Not because I don't think branding processes are worthwhile (everybody could use one). And not because they're packaged (I have my own, called Brand Intervention). It's because they're ultimately little more than a clever way of monetizing corporate navel-gazing. Who doesn't want to believe that their company, organization, product or department isn't centered on Integrity, Innovation, Commitment, Service and Passion? Is it worth $75,000 to pay an agency to say that, just to make you feel good (and to sound just like everybody else)?

I work from a simple premise: Marketing isn't about saying what you want to say; it's about saying what people want to hear. Sound crass? Sorry, but it's the reality. Sound manipulative? It is if you can't back it up. But the truth is, if you're not offering people what they want in the first place, and then telling them about it in ways they can understand and get behind, then you're in the wrong business or targeting the wrong customer. In other words, you've got bigger problems than branding.

Like good writing, good marketing isn't about more; it's about less... about stripping things away, making them simpler. Good designers, writers, photographers, videographers and motion graphics experts all know that one marketing cliche will always ring true: less is more.

Which reminds me, it's time to end this post.

The Joy of Controversy

A few weeks ago, I embedded a YouTube commercial Conk Creative co-produced for Anytime Fitness. As anticipated, that spot has now prompted a complaint letter from a certain well-known animal rights group.

What's interesting is that my client is demonstrating cutting-edge PR acumen by not shying away from the controversy. In fact, they've uploaded the video to their corporate Facebook page--as well as the complaint letter and their response--and they're encouraging everyone to make up their own mind about whether the ad is offensive.

I'm interested in your opinion as well. The Facebook page containing the video, the complaint letter and Anytime's response can be found here. I'd encourage you to follow this interesting tale of how PR and social media converge (which is most easily done by "fanning" the page, BTW). : )

Focus vs. Inclusion Part V

The biggest tension between the people who get paid to market their organizations and the people they hire to help them do so is the tug of war between Focus and Inclusion. I've written about this tension many times, and it has, in fact, become a small obsession of mine.

It goes like this:

When you're paid by an organization to be accountable for its marketing and communications, most of the value is placed on quantity ("We want people to know everything we know about ourselves or product X, because then they'll get it"). When you're paid as a general communicator, on the other hand, most of the value is placed on quality ("Let's find the most effective message and say it in the most effective way").

It's the difference between opening a door (and revealing something shiny inside) and pushing someone in the room and locking the door.

The other night, I was watching The Colbert Report and waiting to see another academic make a good point badly. This happens often on Colbert and The Daily Show. Colbert and Stewart do academia a tremendous favor by temporarily making a Dartmouth professor as sexy as Jessica Simpson (oops, bad choice). But too often, these professors are painfully bad at communicating in the late-night talk show format. Why? Because they want to say everything that's in their heads and in their books. And instead of having the improviser's knack for saying "yes, and..." to every curve ball thrown at them from the host, they're easily caught off guard and stubbornly (and humorlessly) try to maintain their agenda.

What a surprise, then, when Robert Ballard appeared on Colbert. Here's a guy who has either been media trained or just has a natural gift for communication. Who would think that an oceanic archaeologist could be interesting in a mainstream way? But Mr. Ballard knew that he had the time and format to get basically one point across: It's more important to study oceans than outer space. And he succeeded wonderfully.

Watch the clip and notice how he finds ways to say the same thing in different ways (e.g., "We know more about Mars than our own oceans"), and how he seamlessly returns to that message time and time again.

Focus: 1
Inclusion: 0

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