Jean-Honoré Fragonard, *The Swing*, 1767

Branding is the answer. Most agencies aren’t

Recently there has been a backlash on brand initiatives throughout pretty much all industries. CMOs and CEOs have rightfully recognized that big investments in brand strategies, visual refreshes, and expensive, time-consuming evolutions as part of a company’s larger marketing efforts have not moved the needle much — and if so, only marginally. Once repositioned, refreshed, and relaunched, many brands are quickly back to the same margins and the same pre-rebrand numbers. By now we should have realized that neither an actionable brand strategy nor an effective design solution can be successfully developed without immediately considering a product’s quality and promise — and certainly not without considering the fluid nature of technologies through which the brand will communicate. Not recognizing the sensitivity of being able to understand what a product is and what the brand needs to be is the root of the failure. Having worked with the most prestigious agencies as both head of strategy and creative director, and having led global agencies from small to large, I can wholeheartedly say that given the general outdated processes of most agencies the disillusionment in marketing-led branding is completely deserved and understandable.

Let’s explore some of my thinking, as I believe that ‘branding’ in the sense of being an ultimate value exists, but not in the way the mainstream views it — and not in the way it has been delivered up to today by mostly unskilled marketers and co-dependent agencies that simply don’t understand how it actually works. In other words, many lack the training and courage to do something very unique to solve a problem that requires rare skills. With that, I declare that success in branding boils down to the true skill and mastery of extremely rare individuals and studios that can be participants and maintain an objective distance to solve problems simultaneously. A select few people who understand that they are working with dialectic dynamics: With movements that happen in the vision of executives, in parallel in the mechanics of products and ultimately in the heads of customers as brand perception. A mind that has the paradoxical power of spontaneous depth of perception. There are very few constants and many variables, and to recognize the one nucleus in millions of options of what a brand should be to be loved requires a one-in-a-million talent and agency.

Marketing is not branding

Without recognizing that marketing is not branding, failure is imminent. Marketing is about selling something. Branding is about being something. Marketing is about numbers. Branding is about emotion. Both need to be aligned and should never be out of sync. To exist for the sake of selling will always fail and defies the very definition of quality. For years, I’ve heard brand consultants — specifically brand strategists — call themselves “marketers.” Never, ever hire an individual who confuses the two. Branding and marketing need to be completely symbiotic and in harmony with one another, but they should never be seen as the same thing. Marketing will never create love — at most, it will conjure up appreciation or entertainment. If you want your brand to be loved, you need to connect on a deeper level than a price or a deal. Branding is about creating an intuition, a deep connection, something so clear and true to its promise that you can’t help but fall in love. It’s about giving something a soul. Finding that one completely actionable, direct, core nucleus that brings about desire and serves to justify the connection.

Marketing is about taking the soul of the brand and finding ways to popularize it — exploring the most appropriate opportunities to enable love to happen. Branding is the Why and What, and Design is the How. Marketing is about utilizing or transforming infrastructures of communication to do the brand justice. In effect, with the analytical historiography of marketing leading the charge, ‘pleasing’ takes priority. Things have become so dull and without any edge, point, or angle to wake the customer up. Brands are failing because, of course, no one is excited to have (or worse, no one can even imagine that there should be) a piercing element to an identity or a campaign, something to shake us up and engage our senses. Brand expression which exists to serve short term marketing goals is unremarkable, just pretty wallpaper — and painfully, it’s the majority of what we see today.

“You are not a drop in the ocean; you are the entire ocean in a drop” Rumi, 1273

A brand is the soul of the product’s body

From tech to consumer products, from hospitality to finance: no brand can be desired without a product that holds up to the brand’s promise. Aesthetics should never lead the conversation. An individual’s taste has no place here. This is about giving form to a body that has its own character, purpose, and needs. Design is in service of giving the brand story, our aforementioned nucleus, a form and should only be considered successful if it does so completely and unmistakably. Strategy, design, experience, and marketing need to be of one mind. And there can be no liberties in extending meaning through abstractions or patching up missing pieces through visuals.

Agencies have completely dropped the ball here and fallen into the twin traps of both not pressing strategists on actionability and pushing designers away from decoration. The ambiguous, safe cover of interpretation is particularly dangerous here as things can easily become vague and nonspecific, the exact opposite of what brand success aims for to be effective: to tell a story as quickly and as clearly as possible. Interpretation is a noble thought that often serves as a substitute for art which fails to deliver intention and effect. When was the last time anyone saw a logo that is courageously direct?

A good example would be the recent downgrading of Boston’s Houghton Mifflin Harcourt identity, which went from a clear, universal statement about discovery and curiosity (courtesy of the author) to a generic, confusing, and weak abstraction that lacks any form of statement or belief. This is not to say we have to be literal. In skilled and masterful hands, abstraction can become an ultimate clarifier. The connection of the product to the brand and the promise they have to each other should never be underestimated. If we can create experiences that 100% represent the product, then we don’t need branding — and that really would be the best branding of all time.

Large agencies are too conventional for our new world(s)

We’re living in many worlds now, with microcosms of generations popping up every day: trad-wife TikTok stars, luxury hypemen, meme brokers, GRWM skincare vloggers, hyperactive Twitch streamers. Big scales and slow processes work against us. They functioned well for one-world idealists in need of central broadcasting, but in a time of fluidity and media channels as oceans, we need to balance true skill with speed. As research has become more compressible, media-centric, and immediate, it has simultaneously become more substantial.

The creative palette has changed from design techniques to holistic storytelling through accessing, curating, and using as much visual media as possible. Strategists are design thinkers as much as data analysts. The days of many mediocre ‘experts’ mulling over decks are over. Get to the core fast. Build strategic hypotheses and prototype design with personal, agile teams that are critical and have the openness of thought and the undeniable power of judgment it takes to create brand love. New agility brings choices on how to structure and staff projects and have them be mutable to change all the time. Access all resources and screen them to narrow down to use the best of the hundreds available. This is not about careering and years-in-agencies to get up the food chain. The days of Mad Men are gone. With the right makeup of real-time know-how and experience, we no longer have to sacrifice quality for speed. This means establishing an undeniable foundation for clients that lets them make the right marketing decisions which in return means connecting the brand.

Would you rather hire an old-world agency that delivers a convoluted mash of mission, purpose, values, and interpretive design solutions in six months — or work with an agile firm that gives you a clear and actionable strategic brand foundation and bespoke, ready-to-go, experiential brand assets in one month?

One key can open all doors

Once CMOs really understand the value of branding outside of being a risky investment and just an OKR box to be checked — and recognize the immediate ways it can be conceived and substantiated — they will find a new and true appreciation for how contemporary branding can intelligently inform marketing tactics and drive the bottom line. The downturn of and disillusionment with large, ineffective brand programs, evolves, and refreshes is justified. The avoidance of developing a brand story with which customers can emotionally connect in order to believe in a product or service isn’t. But how much does a brand really need beyond understanding itself? Agencies have long failed to hire the right talent and scope realistically, not to mention distill and focus their services and products to match the needs of modern market dynamics. They add on to the old ways instead of rebuilding their operating system to rely less on guidelines but more on adaptability. Today, brand consistency is only golden if it addresses the soul and just only the outer dress. Unfortunately, most agencies are still operating top-down and slow internal hierarchies with barriers of pedantic brand formalism instead of fluid and dynamic collaboration. Their internal, hierarchical complexities distract the process even further.

But let’s make it simple. In the end, what’s this all about? To have customers believe in you and to have you become a symbol for that belief. If we know what it is that people can believe in and what your brand can deliver on, all we need to find is a way to show that very thing as directly as possible — or maybe even find a symbol for it. It’s always complicated and difficult, but with a unique mix of skill and know-how, it can be fast, compact, and of utmost value.