January 12, 2005
brand geography.
Lots of people on Madison Avenue like to talk about “Brand Personality”.
If our product was a person, what would it look and behave like?
It’s common thought that if you can successfully anthropomorphize your brand, people will relate to it better.
Hence the usual doozies you get from the “Positioning” school of advertising:
“Wow. Tony the Tiger is more than a delicious and nutritious breakfast cereal– he’s more like a trusted family friend!”
“Gee, Apple Macintosh is like the older brother I never had.”
“Gosh, Aunt Jemima is like that old, wise, ample-bosomed babysitter from my childhood who I always looked up to and respected…”
After “Brand Personality” got a bit old in the 1980s, folk started talking about “Brand Architecture”. The idea here was “The Brand” was held together by both real and abstract building blocks, in order to form a cohesive, elegant, functioning final shape, the way a Roman arch held together stone blocks in order to form a cohesive, elegant, functioning doorway. Take one block away and the whole thing collapses etc.
As you can imagine, with “Brand Architeture” the hipsters had a field day. High-paid consultants in Italian suits waffling on about an actual Campbell Soup can in the same fashion of the art critic waffling on about a Warhol Campell Soup can.
Luckily for those of us who are forced to sit through these hipster presentations, there’s been a shift. The clients no longer want us to pay us agency types the big money in order to waffle on about “postioning”, “personality” and “architecture”. Not like they used to.
So some bright agency chaps, in order to keep those revenue streams pumping in, have been trying to come up with some post-postioning, post-brand thinking. From the conservative (Lovemarks) to the extreme (Cluetrain), and everything in between (e.g. Mark Earl’s excellent “Purpose-Idea”). There are lots of ideas out there, all fighting for whatever long-term position they can use to keep the client’s checkbook open. We’re all greedy. We all want to rule the world.
My own lust for power and wealth has led me to write “The Hughtrain” (Download the PDF here), or more specifically it has led me to write The Kinetic Quality, where I ask readers to stop imagining the brand as a thing– an object, person, personality etc.- and start imagining it as a place.
A place where something happens, hence the word “Kinetic”.
A place where something happens when somebody (not necessarily the customer) interacts with it:
–By interacting with Gerber, she becomes a better-informed mom.
–By interacting with The Wall Street Journal, she becomes more tuned into the world of capitalism.
–By interacting with Apple, she brings her entrepreneurial dreams closer to reality.
–By interacting with McDonald’s, her busy schedule is made slightly easier by avoiding a lot of fuss over lunch.
–By interacting with Ralston Purina, she becomes more attached to her canine friend.
–By interacting with your brand, she becomes…?
And so forth.
Hence why I prefer to use the term “Brand Geography”, as opposed to “Brand Architecture”.
You go somewhere, something happens, and then you leave. Hopefully something positive happens. The more glaringly obvious the transformation, the better.
Still, it’s only a buzzword. One of thousands currently doing the rounds. But it isn’t where the long-term value actually lies.
The value lies in how your an ad agency can help its client re-invent his business.
That’s where I see the industry going. The smart part of it, anyway.
I think the smart money will start going “Bottom-Top”. From starting with a blog, perhaps, or wee postcard and coupon campaigns, then scaling up to the Superbowl ad as need demands. But only bringing out the heavy guns once the conversation is actually going somewhere useful.
As opposed to the mostly preferred method of “Top-Bottom”- where you try to start the conversation with the mass media Superbowl ad, then scale down afterwards for smaller and smaller niche markets.
It isn’t rocket science. It’s “Smarter Conversations”.
That’s my two cents, anyway.
Isn’t this reverse transference? I like the term “brand geography” but it is definitely relational. Two specific scenerios here:
Because Anne is a good mom, she uses Gerber. (transference of self to product)
or
Because using Gerber means you want the best for your baby (message), Anne uses Gerber to be a good mom. (transference of brand to self)
The latter is easier because it plays upon people’s fears of inadequacy and reinforces those fears to push product. And there are more people out there who are “wanting” (financially, emotionally, etc.) than there are people who have it all together.
hugh, Your THE brand for gapingvoid.. so if I take a look at the ‘Brand Geography’ — who am I to interact with ?? Hugh or gapingvoid ?? Markets care conversations correct, but then it needs to be spoken with a human voice.. so if gapingvoid is taken over by some joeblow, would this change the brand geography for you or gapingvoid ..or not ??
If agencies are to reinvent the client’s business, what are the brand people supposed to do? Blindly execute on what the almighty agency people are recommending?
Or should the agency just do/be what it’s supposed to do/be — outsourced design and media creation function that’s prohibitively expensive to build from the group up for every brand. At its most complex (therefore, most lucrative), it seems that an agency could be a thought-provoker. Not actually doing the strategy, planning, re-thinking, but spurring the guys with the brains, desire and mandate to do “it.”
In short, shouldn’t agencies look to make the brand folks the heros (and giving them the tools/rope) instead of making themselve mini-celebrities? Isn’t that where we all win — brands, agencies and consumers?
The community (mediated by the conversations) is the brand.
Here’s the exhilarating and terrifying part of this (much like the SMARTER CONVERSATIONS blog/thread) — it’s that if Hugh is right, and companies DO start looking at a Bottom-Top strategy — uh, where’s the “Bottom?”
It’s where their EMPLOYEES are.
So imagine a company wants to do this — do you think a smart exec would go pay an agency or marketing or brand guy tens of thousands of dollars to figure out his own business and report back, or do you think a smart exec might leverage the technology that’s driving this revolution, and encourage his (or HER) own employees to help reshape the company (perhaps via an internal blog?).
It could be a disaster, or it could be spectacularly successful.
Once again, I think it might start being a LOT harder for the incompetent managerial assholes to stay hidden in the shadows when a company starts being a smarter company. (Oh, and Post Note — SMART IS NOT SUBJECTIVE.)
“it’s that if Hugh is right, and companies DO start looking at a Bottom-Top strategy — uh, where’s the “Bottom?”
It’s where their EMPLOYEES are.”
Agreed, Jon.… that’s why I said in The Hughtrain, “the future of advertising is internal”.
Incompetent manager assholes are a thing of the past. Sit back and watch the cull
It’s kind of an odd construction for me, Hugh. I don’t speak about interacting “with” a place, I interact with someone (or something) “within” a place. I can twist the thing a bit and say I’m interacting with a place if I, for example, relax in it, but it feels clumsy. Conversations do take place somewhere, but they take place between entities.
Brand Architects Give Ground To Brand Geographers
Hugh MacLeod, the writer-guy who draws (sometimes raunchy) comics on the back of business cards, says brands are a place. “A place where something happens when somebody (not necessarily the customer) interacts with it: –By interacting with Gerber, she …
What Tom, you mean you can’t/don’t interact with an environment?
Seriously, if the metaphor doesn’t work for you, find one that does.
Both “true” and “talk” are metaphors, also
In my view, branding is all about connecting into the consumer’s belief system. The mom has beliefs about what good moms do. Everything about the Gerber brand – its architecture, its positioning, its personality – is an attempt to insert the brand into the belief system.
These tdon’t replace each other; it’s not a progression from personality to architecture over the years. They work together to work the brand into the consumer’s belief system. The “Kinetic Quality”, or thinking of brand as a place, is another way of characterizing this belief system, but I don’t think it replaces the other ways we talk about the brand.
The interaction with the brand always involves personality and architecture and promise and positioning, whether the marketer intends it or not. The consumer has to process all of these things in order to move in the geography.
So, I guess what I’m saying is, I agree that interaction and movement are fundamental to branding, but I think they are ideas that build upon, not replace, the many dimensions of branding that have been developed over the years.
They talked personality brand, which is the language of making and selling dreams or nightmares …
Sound bites don’t last this long, so the personality brand trends must be real …
Ach, because using Fred Allen means you want the best for your future (smile)
“I don’t want to own anything that won’t fit in my coffin.”
- Fred Allen (quoted in John Dunning, On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio)
Well, I “live in” environments, but I don’t usually speak of that as interacting with them according to the construction you’ve created. Here’s an example:
““By interacting with Gerber, she becomes a better-informed mom.”
Here the word, “Gerber” is hard for me to understand as an environment.
It’s like saying, “by interacting with ‘Connecticut,’ she’s become a better mom.” I believe a real person might say, “because of the people, relationships and experiences she’s had in Connecticut, she’s become a better mom,” and that would sound more like, ahem, TrueTalk to me.
I’m just curious about the value (benefits) of changing the notion of “relationship” from one between conscious agents (people) to one between a person and a context (environments). Not that we don’t have relationships with environments, but that those relationships are very different than the richly interactive kind we have with other people.
Hey Hugh, you were way clearer in this post than in some of your ‘not-so-edited’ Hughtrain thoughts. Good stuff.
Tom, the word “Brand” is a metaphor. Brands are interactive. Interacting with brands therefore is perfectly kosher.
Of course, Hugh. I agree. I’m just puzzled by the “environment” metaphor.
Tom, “environment”, from the Latin root, which means “surround”.
It is traditional for companies to start from the bottom and build, unless of course they are children of rich parent companies. Advertising has traditionally glommed onto the already wealthy and ready to be wealthier model. But as is the way witha ll things that grow they will get big and top heavy and come a-tumblin down. This is archetypal and not new. However we find new bottoms to start from and that is exciting, we’ve reached a new low people, but new heights await as well,
trippin’