Over-complicating the simple and oversimplifying the complex
I’ve been doing some competitive research lately, and for once it’s not for a client. It’s for my own company (the one that now employs me), which means I’m examining brand consulting firms and other shops that do basically what we do but maybe call it something different. (Which, by the way, is a plague in this industry—an industry that demands its clients communicate clearly, and yet insists on using nebulous terms interchangeably and coming up with proprietary “processes” that are little more than trademarked names for the same thing all their competitors do. But we can talk about that some other time.)
I looked at fourteen companies in total, including Landor, Interbrand, Futurebrand, The Brand Union, Lippincott, Wolff Olins, Prophet, Siegel+Gale, Added Value, BrandLogic, and four smaller, Asia-based agencies. I chose these firms based on a variety of factors including size, reputation, presence in Asia, and so on. It’s not necessarily meant to be comprehensive, but hopefully a nice look at “who’s out there” and what they’re saying about themselves. Feel free to tell me who I left out.
As part of my quick look at these firms and a few others, as well as my own experience in the industry, I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of brand strategy firms (not necessarily those mentioned above) are over-complicating one of the core deliverables of brand strategy—an idea upon which a client organization can build its brand. Conversely, many firms are oversimplifying the research phase of brand strategy engagements, substituting deep-probing studies of consumer perceptions and competitive strategies for a handful of cursory interviews and a look at the competition’s website. These two trends (if I’m not imagining them) could add up to, at the very least, a significant disservice to clients, agencies, and “brand strategy” as a practice.
Brand ideas should be simple
I was pleasantly surprised to see that a lot of the firms listed above include “brand idea” or “brand idea development” among their services or deliverables. In a world of catchwords like “mantra” and “cause,” “brand idea” seems to me like an honest and stripped-down description of what we hope to deliver—an idea. You can call it your value prop or your promise, and maybe that terminology is more relevant and/or helpful, but either way, it is an idea.
But in order to be useful for the purposes in question, the idea needs to be easily digestible. In a post from awhile ago I complained about positioning being repositioned, with some firms seemingly delivering pithy taglines as brand ideas. Now we have brand onions and other complex schematics that try to throw so many ideas into one diagram that I’m not sure what they mean anymore.
Brand research should be…maybe not complex, but at least as detailed as a brand onion
Maybe it’s because the margins are lower, but it seems to me like a lot of brand strategy work is light on research. Instead of large-scale quantitative studies of consumer perceptions, some agencies (and clients!) seem satisfied with a four-hour workshop with management and then, voilà, we have an idea for your brand (let me guess, either “innovation” or “leadership”). The implication seems to be that brand strategy as a standalone discipline is so powerful that it no longer needs to be informed by pesky things like talking to customers.
Let’s un-complicate the simple and un-simplify the complex
Getting back to basics, I think the point is to collect a lot of information—some of it will turn out to be irrelevant, maybe—and then decide what the most important information is in terms of a brand idea. Instead, it seems the trend is to collect very little information, and avoid making any tough decisions by throwing everything into a diagram and calling it an onion. How about if we just call it what it is? A good idea—something that’s easy to understand, but not easy to come by.
(Tangential question: Why is “over-complicate” hyphenated but “oversimplify” not?)
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Speaking of semantics, the online marketing world has spawned a confusing array of titles and services. Are you a Social Media Marketer, a Social Business Marketer, a Social Branding Agency, an Online Marketing Specialist…Strategist…Brand Strategist? Sheesh! Every communication should start with stating the business goals of the organization and/or the Web site. Without a target, no strategy will be successful.
As one notable branding exec stated in groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies, “Your brand is who your customer says it is.”
Welcome to the new world of branding.
P.S. Thankfully, the anti-spam word was simple and to the point: toast (or was that a hidden message about what will happen to agencies who don’t get?)