Branding is an interesting area of marketing, usually vanilla’d down to blandness by people who are too afraid to be anything. I’m not suggesting that we all need controversial brands, far from it. I’m suggesting that brand values need to be more succinct with the offering and the organisation… and it needs to be more than words on a piece of paper.
Have you ever asked someone about their company and they blurt out the usual ” we are professional, knowledgable, innovative” stuff. Who wouldn’t say that?
Of course you are professional! You are asking me to pay you. And then, a disconnect often comes with the service you actually get when you the go on to use the company where the brand experience doesn’t match the sales pitch. Try having a look at one of your long-term suppliers branding and see if they really live up to what they say they do.
The amount of times in the past I have sat with a client who likened themselves to Innocent, BMW or another quality consumer brand when talking about what their business is about…. NO YOU’RE NOT, YOU SELL A BORING BUSINESS SERVICE! Inevitably, the project ends up… you guessed it…. very vanilla.
Actions Speak Louder Than Words
The design industry, in which I spent 20 years, always made me laugh for exactly these reasons. Many small companies trying to be ‘designery’ and clever with their offering, straight after they finish laying out the artwork for a form for their top client… Boring Inc.
It’s like Spinal Tap. What’s wrong with defining your brand for what you are as an organisation and maximising that? Or, defining the brand then developing the business to be exactly that… even if it means ditching some clients.
B2B Marketers should read Scott’s book. It may wake you up a little.
I highlighted a few paragraphs in my copy on [about] page 101-104 about branding that discusses the essence and behaviours of a brand.
Behaviours
For me, behaviours is the word that encapsulates it all. What are we, if we are not just a bunch of behaviours as individuals and organisations?
Of course, behaviours are contextual- you wouldn’t see the swearing me that watches football in a meeting room with clients, or with my children; for the same reason that I speak to my children in a different way to how I speak to clients – which makes setting behaviours for an organisation a very viable proposition – by focusing what you are and want to be.
We have to be flexible and we have to be able to communicate our relevant brand behaviours to staff because they are the number one deliverers of your brand. Depending on the size of your organisation and the top management team, that can be the hardest part. After all, you can’t force peoples behaviours – you can only bring them out together.
Get it right and you are onto a winner – you will attract the right clients and more of the right staff. Get it wrong and you’ll enjoy more of the same of what you are getting now. Don’t get me wrong, that may be enough. Is it?
I wanna swear and say yeah to that and yet feel a little hypocritical that I’m not pushing certain brands I’m involved with any harder (Being too involved in editing, writing & SEO put paid to that)
I totally see/feel your passion for the industry and the clients, Craig, but I see so many that are happy with being “safe” and they tend to be pretty old school, stick-in-the-mud types. It’s not *can* we change them but *how* do we change them, how do we inspire them? Will the up-coming generation have a different attitude? Will longevity & sustainability be possible with new, ever-changing, bold brands?
I’d buy a new book now (Creative B2B Branding) but think I’ll wait until a nice cheap second-hand one comes up for sale.
I know where you are coming from and being a hypocrite myself, I often get caught in in very safe projects that frustrate the pants off of me… And, nothing wrong with safe… as long as the brand matches the behaviours and it all works succinctly.
With increased ability for people to find other businesses though web you’d have to wonder about how to stand out.
Good post. It clearly came from heart. I wrote a post a while ago about the possibility of being honest in marketing:
http://www.abccopywriting.com/blog/2009/11/13/lets-be-honest/
Taking a long, hard look at why people really choose you is a good first step to some effective marketing. Unfortunately, a lot of B2B marketers are bored with their own service – they can’t get into the mindset of a new customer for whom their offering is actually something new and exciting. So they end up missing the target by overcomplicating the message, or gilding the lily.
I can see why B2B companies aspire to B2C branding (Innocent, BMW). They want their customers to love them in the same way that consumers love those brands. Unfortunately, B2B buying decisions just don’t work that way – at least, not consciously. Your B2B buyer is never going to admit to using an office cleaning service because they love the brand. So you need to have a brand message that works primarily on a rational level, while bringing in as much B2C love as is possible, or plausible.
The problem is differentiation. In B2B, every rival will be saying the same thing – professional, innovative, solution-focused etc. All that may be true, but it ends up sounding generic. The best antidote to that, as far as I can tell, is detail and evidence – e.g. from case studies.
@Craig Absolutely. I had a fairly conservative client down your way some years back. The sales people sold a website and that was it, they said the client was quite boring. But when I met him to talk about his brand and bounce around some new ideas he was really receptive and probably one of the best clients I ever had. I miss that.
@Tom You’re right about getting “bored with their own service”. After 10 years with one brand I’m digging deep to find some newfound mojo for them… and it’s working… slowly.
Craig, firstly thank you for the book plug – it’s appreciated. It does my heart good to have industry practitioners pick up the themes and run. Together, we will achieve change.
I think ‘safe’ can sometimes be appropriate. Brand equity is hard fought and hard won and not to be lightly thrown away. But there’s a significant difference between mitigation of corporate risk, and inertia. We see the latter far too often. The market, the customers, the digital landscape DEMAND change. The business (the brand) must be able to respond, or it will simply become irrelevant. ‘If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got’. As industry practitioners, the obligation is with us to lead the charge.
Tom – differentiation isn’t always about the case study. It can simply be about identifying the piece of turf you want to ‘own’ and defending it (creatively) to the exclusion of all others.
Paul – grab a new copy quick. The last time I looked on Amazon http://ht.ly/2oaFI , the ‘used’ ones were more expensive! (Go figure…
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Thanks Craig – Hope ‘Creative B2B Branding (no, really)’ inspires more of your thoughts. (No, really… etc.
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S