trail-blazing

Welcome to gordon d cook's blog 2



Are brands pretty bubbles of hot air?

COMMUNICATE visual by South African artist Simon Ford 

I've had a long term ethical struggle with the concept of brand along with the omnipresent communication campaigns that stimulate rampant consumption in our societies.



I have eventually resolved that, unique to us as people, is indeed the concept of becoming conscious of our own identity and then associating ourselves with networks of other identities with whom we relate. In a way, this is how we select friends and partners and schools to send our children to and companies we wish to work for. 

This extends further to buying things which will further expand our network of associations and thereby reinforce our assumed, actual or envisioned, identity. Perhaps we buy a Rolex to suggest our sophistication and success, a Jeep to signal that we are connected with the outdoors and are robust by nature. Pathetic as it may be, I have come to believe this is how it works.

The issue now is which associations do we promise consumers and customers in our quest to sell brands? I think the history of advertising and brand communication is littered with puffery, over-promising and, if not deceitful, blatant lying. One can just think of  the grand cinematic advertisements for cigarette brands to being your passport for meeting the most beautiful bodies on the most beautiful beaches of the world. Of course the truth always was, and remains that it is simply a passport to hospital.

The more competitive the category and greater the clutter of communication, the more spaced-out seems to become the promise. Let us stop this nonsense and find ways to develop more meaningful and honest value propositions and communication promises.

An opportunity


I would suggest that the opportunity resides in linking brands to, not only honest reality as the Dove campaigns do rather well, (by promising you will still look like you after bathing with Dove and that is beautiful) but to extend this approach to linking brands to relevant community, social, cultural and or environmental causes. Thereafter for the brand to actually make tangible contributions to such causes.

The fact is that the combined intellectual and economic wealth of brands and their respective businesses exceeds the tax generated wealth of most governments.

National social and other issues will never be solved by government budgets alone. The private sector has to adopt a more open-system approach and contribute beyond the paying of salaries and providing returns to share holders. Rather than spending millions of dollars on arbitrary campaigns to suggest our soap cleans better, lets accept the truth that all soaps clean us but to then link our particular brand of soap to an issue relevant to our current and potential customers; maybe even as a category of soaps to work together to ensure, for example, hygiene at the birth of babies in Africa. This would immediately reduce the current unacceptable child mortality statistic.

In the meanwhile, let us use social media to dismiss the inflated, and often pathetic messaging of so many brand campaigns.

Ironically, I have come to believe that brands are indeed, perhaps one of our greatest assets for constructive change. Can we then ensure that these wonderful resources enter this space in a significant and authentic way.

Creative minds in agencies may interpret my argument as a campaign ideas killer. I would counter argue that there is little creativity in suggesting that a beer will find you a friend. We need far more fearless, visionary and responsible creative thinking.

The brilliant creative director, Sir John Hegarty wrote: Great creativity has a life beyond the confines of the audience it was originally conceived for. It becomes iconic. Instantly recognisable and powerfully influential. In reaching this status it becomes the benchmark for everything else that follows, rewriting the way the world looks at things.

Brands can be the great agents for positive change if we change our thinking about how we build and communicate them.