Blast from the past
Why Branding Is An Artifact
Of The Past
Brian Millar
A short while ago, I wrote an article suggesting that you can’t build a brand simply
by setting out to build a brand. And in fact, thinking too much about brands can
actually get in the way of the real business of your company. I suggested that you
try an experiment: Stop talking about brands for a month, and see what happens.
The article got a lot of attention on Twitter, and provoked a lively debate in the
post’s comments section.
Almost all of the remarks were smart, good-humored, and well argued; the rest
were mainly mine. The objections seemed to fall into a few broad themes, and
Co.Design editor Belinda Lanks asked me to write a follow-up to expand on my
answers. For those who want to continue the conversation, I’ll be checking in
below.
Point #1: Brands are important. So you have to think about them a lot.
In Mary Poppins, we learn about Mr. Banks, the children’s father, and what he does for a living.
“ He sat on a large chair in front of a large desk and made money. All day long he worked, cutting out
pennies and shillings and half-crowns and threepenny-bits. And he brought them home with him in his
little black bag.”
It’s a charming way to describe something that only a small child,
and possibly Robert Mugabe, could ever believe: That you can make
money by literally making money.
Yet many people seem happy to apply this Mary Poppins logic to
branding: Brands are valuable, so you need to go to work to make
brands. There’s a category mistake at work here. Money isn’t valuable
because the paper it’s made of is valuable. It’s valuable because we
all agree it’s valuable. Society creates that value, not the printing
presses or the mints or the chaps in storybooks who cut pound notes
out with scissors.
So we go to work to make things and do stuff that people value,
and are willing to pay money for. Similarly, to build a brand your
organization needs to do and say things that people find valuable.
“BRAND TRACKING
MAKES ARTIFICIAL
DISTINCTIONS THAT
DON’T MODEL THE
WAY CONSUMERS
MAKE BUYING
DECISIONS.”
But it’s consumers who create the value intrinsic in brands: We all
judge companies by the things they say, the things they do, and how
those two things match up. If they match well (iPads do seem quite
magical), then their worth goes up in our minds. If they don’t (BP has a flowery logo and little windmills on its petrol
stations but destroyed a load of the Eastern seaboard of the U.S.), then we like--and value--them less.
Point #2: This doesn’t take into account behavioral economics, psychology, or the value of brand tracking.
The things that I consciously think about a brand belong to me. I’m also quite happy with the idea that I make a lot of
unconscious decisions about brands, possibly far more than I make conscious ones. And at Sense Worldwide, we frequently
work with clients to understand the psychological cues and behavioral economics behind consumers’ choices.