Suddenly I see

On a train back into London last week, I sat next to a blind couple and their guide dog. It was interesting to watch them complete tasks we sighted people take for granted - storing their bags, settling into their seats, and ensuring their dog wasn’t in the way of people in the aisle. As we approached the city, they began to discuss their immediate plans upon arrival. The woman suggested they find a bench and use BlindSquare to - as she put it - “see where they were”. I’d not previously heard of BlindSquare, which is an award-winning app that “makes use of the latest features available in smartphones to aid the blind and visually impaired in their daily lives”. According to the website, BlindSquare uses information from Foursquare and Open Street Map to make spoken recommendations for the user. As a blind interviewee was recently quoted in the New York Times, “The belief was the tools for the visually impaired must have a tactile screen, which, it turns out, is completely untrue”. Of course, noone who works in branding or advertising can ever observe new or unusual human behaviour without immediately wondering how they’ll be able to incorporate it into a PowerPoint presentation. So, while watching this couple disappear into the crowds at London Bridge, I was imagining what a non-visual world meant for brands. If we removed sight, what could we see?

It is now commonly understood that a modern brand is built on experience; how it feels to use and interact with. And yet it is undeniable that a great deal of our affinity with brands is based on how they look - the emotions we associate with the experience of the brand often prompted by seeing the logo or visiting it online or in-store. Even with brands we are unfamiliar with, we can use subtle visual signals such as naming, typeface or colour palette to determine whether it might be something we’re interested in. I’ve written previously about how lost I found myself in Havana - the land without brands. Indeed, without sight the visual signals that help us find our way, discover new things and even keep us safe disappear, and brands lose their power. For the couple on the train, BlindSquare provides vocal prompts to help them navigate London, but what else could a brand do to assert their presence? How could a brand use smell, touch, sound and even taste to quickly prompt that comforting feeling of recognition not just in blind people but in everyone? 

Data and the new brand strategy

This is a long read, but there's quite a bit I want to cover. So please bear with me. I’m going to try and break it down, because this is important and I am keen to get feedback.

Last week I had a run in with Virgin Media. But that’s not what this post is about, so read on. Despite going to hell and back trying to rectify the situation, what emerged - phoenix like - from the burning embers of my belief in the Virgin brand, was a light bulb moment with regards to the future of brand strategy.

In short, my belief if this:

We, the branding industry, are ultimately failing our clients by omitting to tie their brand strategy to their data strategy


Business strategy + brand strategy = proof of process 
Good brand strategy is intrinsically linked to a client’s business objectives. They’re generally what drives the brief in the first place, and they act as one of the few measurable proof points for what branding can achieve. This approach still stands. It is important to note, however, that increasingly those business objectives have come to include terms like “user engagement” and “digital leaders in our industry”.

The new brand strategy 
In the past few years, what a brand is, what it stands for, how it is accessed and how it is expected to behave have fundamentally changed. With the rise and rise of social media and technology in general, the number of brand touchpoints has grown limitless. A brand now needs to be consistently recognisable, whether it’s on the homepage of their website or on their regionalised Instagram feed.

In response, agencies have had to learn how to bring in people with new skillsets, usually with the word “digital” in front of their title. For some companies, this has meant recruiting, for others it’s meant buying/merging with digital agencies. As a result, agency offerings now include things like UX/UI, bespoke app creation and social media guidelines. This is a good thing.

Brand strategy - Data strategy = unhappy customers 
Unfortunately, as we’ve become experts in “thinking outside the box” and “pushing boundaries”, and got busy making all the assets that go along with it, we’ve forgotten one crucial thing. We forgot to explain to our clients what to do with all the data these digital touchpoints create. Yes, we may have told them how valuable the data is, and what amazing insights it can give them. But we’re not really helping them go beyond that. It’s like we’ve delivered the big screen tv, and have left them to sort out the wiring. This needs to change fast.

Case study: Virgin Media 
Virgin - one of the world’s largest and best known brands. I trust them. I was more than happy to go with them for my broadband. When I hit a problem, however, it quickly became apparent that their social media team was entirely silo-ed from their customer service team who - in turn - were silo-ed from their technicians on the ground. My conversations with Virgin Media on Twitter were not reflected in my conversations with them on the phone. Meaning, that while they had the Twitter account, and the tone of voice guidelines, and the staff, they were unable to identify me as a customer and pass my concerns on to someone who could actually help. Their information flow was failing to match consumer expectations, or to put it another way, they had the TV and had not plugged it in. 

Lots of information = big data 
The experience I had with Virgin Media was mainly due to one piece of information failing to be passed through to the correct channels. But my issue can’t possibly have been unique to me, Virgin Media must deal with thousands of similar issues on a daily basis. And lots of similar information is known as “data”. If a company as big as Virgin have a data disconnect that's this visible and this damaging to their brand, what others do they have hiding beneath the surface? If they’re not looking at their data, and mixing it up with other data from other departments like, for example, their technical team, then they are running an inefficient business. Business, brand, data - it all works together.

The Solution 
1. As brands increasingly express themselves and come to life through technology, so they generate vast amounts of real-time qualitative and quantitative data that is valuable to every part of the business. 
2. The branding industry need to work with data scientists if they are to offer the most impactful digital solutions for their clients. The two skill sets can no longer thrive in isolation. 
3. It is the responsibility of the branding industry to clearly identify what data each of their recommended touchpoints creates, and how that data should be gathered, managed, processed, interpreted and acted upon by the entire organisation. 
4. Moving forward, a data strategy should act as the glue between the business objectives and the brand strategy.

So there we have it. Thoughts? Is it possible? Is it crazy? Or might it just be the future? Let me know.

You Talkin' To Me?

The new one week old* Samsung Galaxy ad is brilliant not just for giving Apple - and their fanboys - a well-deserved clip round the ear, but also for the acute attention to detail on casting and styling. Though the visual and behavioural differences between the Apple fanboys and the Samsung converts are slight, they are nonetheless powerful. These minute signals represent a deep understanding, on behalf of Samsung, for where their potential market lies.

While other technology brands are busy striving to become Apple, Samsung have looked for ways to beat them. And they found it in Apple's customers. In a post-Jobs world, there's a growing legion of Apple devotees who are getting sick of the taste of the Apple kool-aid. They've learnt the value of a great piece of mobile kit, and they're increasingly unconvinced that the iPhone is - or always will be - the only option for their needs.

Furthermore, and as is smartly yet subtly observed in the Samsung ad, Apple customers are fed up with wearing the metaphorical "I'm a Mac" t-shirt at all times. Back in the day (2009), being a "Mac" meant you had taste. You had a subscription to Monocle and Wired. And you wore your artisan aged denim with a Supreme shirt. Now it all feels a bit obvious and, worst of all, normal. As the Samsung ad highlights - even our parents are "Macs" now. Ouch.

Of course, Apple has its eyes on the largest market share possible and will hardly be trembling at the idea of losing its niche group of designer-type fanboys to Samsung. But being both loved and cool is a tricky game for brands, and it rests in the hands of the world's taste makers. If Samsung can lure that group over to their team, it doesn't mean they'll win the game right away but people will still turn out for the show.

*Thanks @planbstudio

Melts at body temperature

Do you remember when Haagen-Dazs was a thing? A sexy, naughty, erotic thing? In a recent 80’s movie marathon, it was exhilarating to see Haagen-Dazs product placement in both Wall Street and Fatal Attraction as a signal to conspicuous consumption and grown-up decadence. In the former, Daryl Hannah throws a tub in the microwave while making bedroom eyes at Charlie Sheen, who is busy with his MagiMix (yes, really. These were simpler times for us all). While in the latter, pre-crazy Glen Close is a “strange girl” to Micheal Douglas’ “naughty boy” over a pot of pralines and cream. The branding and advertising of Haagen-Dazs in the late 80’s and early 90’s was so risque, my pre-teen self was almost certain that it lay at the heart of how babies got made. Lunch may have been for wimps but Haagen-Dazs was for sexy-times.


So what the hell happened? Why did a brand who encouraged us to “lose control” end up losing its mojo? Since when did Haagen-Dazs get relegated to the freezer cabinets of corner shops and the clutches of single females who want to eat their feelings?

Firstly, I blame Nigella. I blame her for a variety of things, mainly for fauxgasming into her fridge in the middle of the night. But in this instance, I blame her for luring women back into dessert making with the promise of turning each and every one of us into a ‘domestic goddess’. Before she came along - and as Daryl Hannah’s character in Wall Street is testament to - all a woman had to do to snag a man was to backcomb her fringe, chuck some white silk sheets on the bed and crack open the Haagen-Dazs. No Cath Kidston pinnies and coo-ing over cupcakes for Daryl. The Haagen-Dazs advertising may have been provocative and alluring, but the subtext (or the reality for its target market of 28-35 year old couples) was that it was acceptable for a hostess to put a tub of ice cream on the dinner table and call it dessert.

Mostly, however, I blame Haagen-Dazs. They had everything going for them, even in the face of adversity and rising competition. They achieved what so many fattening or unhealthy food brands would kill for - turning their main criticism into its main selling point. Until 1997, BBH created memorable, award-winning campaigns that transcended the category by positioning ice-cream as a glamourous, indulgent treat that absolutely wasn’t for kids. Quadrupling sales in the process. And yet, since dropping BBH, Haagen-Dazs have slid slowly towards the unremarkable. Just a different packaging to Ben & Jerry’s or Green & Blacks.

In 1995 The Independent noted BBH’s leveraging of “post-aspirationals” - “Five years of recession and a complexifying market place have encouraged advertisers to appeal to consumers not so much on the increasingly intangible attraction of what they want to be, but rather on the more certain repulsion of what they definitely do not want to be”. Recession and a complex market place? Sounds familiar. If there was ever a moment to persuade people that they definitely do not want to be a bunch of post-Olympic, cash-strapped, homemade bunt cake-making, frozen yogurt eaters, this is it. Haagen-Dazs - we want you to bring sexy back. No spoons required.

Brand Bedales

It’s not always with the clearest vision that one can look analytically at the formative factors of your lifestyle choices - the culture, brands and rituals that act as the ‘nurture’ overlay to one’s ‘nature’. But having recently watched the final installment of Grayson Perry’s ‘In the best possible taste’, and my ten year reunion occurring this Saturday, I feel enough time has slipped by to look at Bedales.

Most haven’t heard of Bedales School - why would they? It’s just a small, secluded boarding school in the Hampshire countryside. But those that have are often in no doubt of its reputation. From nude mixed bathing in the 1930’s, to underage, drunken threesomes just last year, Bedales has always represented the rebellious underbelly of public schools. A key theme in Grayson’s analysis of the British upper classes was “appropriateness” - something Bedalians (and more importantly Bedalian parents) flaunted their derision of with aplomb. While I remember sitting through many a school assembly being ordered never to consider ourselves “privileged”, I would argue with hindsight that ‘inappropriate privilege’ was the driving force behind everything Bedales did and said.

Bedales attracted two disparate ‘tribes’. In one corner were the deviant aristos - the infamous ‘bad seeds’ unlikely ever to be writ large on their sprawling family trees or immortalised in oil and hung on an ancestral mahogany stairwell. To them, Bedales stood at the furthest end of the shabby chic continuum as a way to reject their aristocratic identity without any of the tiresome day-to-day parenting encouraged by the state education system. Bedales represents the ultimate ‘fuck you’ to the family name by spending the last of the inheritance on preposterous school fees so Tariq could bake artisan bread, roll incredible spliffs and fail all his A levels.

In the other corner were the princes and princesses of the Rock and Roll establishment. The insanely good looking offspring of The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Pogues, The Clash, or those with suggestive surnames like Paxman, Dahl and Day-Lewis. This lot came at it from a different angle - they may have had loads of money but it was all new money - the very worst kind of money. To Rock and Roll parents, Bedales was an easy and fast way to buy into a very specific type of wealthy bohemia. Grayson Perry describes this lifestyle as being “like a play set in the 20s, on lovely misty lawns with decorated swans” and, with its sprawling grounds and moss-covered buildings Bedales offered up just that. 

As a brand, Bedales did a fantastic job of appealing hugely to their two target audiences. It had everything a luxury lifestyle brand requires - a compelling heritage, a distinct reputation, an ownable aesthetic and, most importantly, a price tag which made it both aspirational and exclusive. As students, we were the brand's greatest assets and the expectation to fall in line with its values was high. And what great ambassadors we were - directing plays, digging ponds, and indulging in narcotics, eating disorders, alcohol and sex like they were chocolate buttons. Hogwarts on meth.

There’s a line in Absolutely Fabulous where a furious Eddy chastises her daughter for being studious and “normal” with the line “When I think of the schools I sent you to darling, I mean BEDALES for God’s sake!”. The comment implies that being a Bedalian makes you a certain type of person and, to a certain extent both negatively and positively, it does. As a teenager it’s comforting to be totally “on-brand” and “on-message”. After ten years, however, I like to think it’s just a small part of who I am - a streak of rebellious, inappropriate ‘nurture’ running through layer upon layer of nature.