Making brands more distinctive

I always thought that my teenage self was an incoherent bag of self-righteous liberal naivety. A trait not uncommon with media types you know.

As a young gun whose teenage years occurred through the lefty liberalism of the 1980s I was pretty sure that big business was bad. Evil empires trading their branded goods were the source of all things wrong with the world. They kept western populations fat, dumb and happy enthralled with sugar and lo-fi TV.

Behind the scenes I envisaged evil capitalists conspiring with greasy politicians to rig the system in the favour of those with power and money. A pretty standard teenage fantasy which, with age and maturity, faded into the background as I started working with and for the very brands that would in a previous life have been seen as unholy. I was happy enough to put my earlier teenage ethics down to hormones and angst.

Watching the anti-capitalist protesters of recent years a mocking smile would play on my lips as they marched on Whitehall, dreadlocks and tie dyed robes swinging in unison, the scent of mung bean burgers and patchouli oil filling the air combined with a group sense of utter righteousness. Oh how I patronise them, seeing, fondly, my own youthful naivety in their group-think.

And now, in the past few weeks we find that the banks where indeed manipulating the system with little nudges here and there from politicians and state bankers (allegedly..). Not only had the banks proved themselves greedy and stupid in relation to the recession causing subprime mortgage fiasco they were also undeniably corrupt.

The RBS fine of hundreds of millions of pounds pales into insignificance next to GlaxoSmithKline’s £3 BILLION pound fine for selling drugs for the unapproved use by, wait for it, children. Holy crap, my teenage self-righteousness is surfacing.

What does this mean for branding and by extension brand communications? Well, it means that all those campaigns communicating truthfulness, honesty, integrity and trust that the major corporates love to run will be perceived as utter bolleux, whether they are or not. This will have a wider impact on all organisations that trade on trust and integrity, and let’s face it, who doesn’t?

The branding and advertising industry has always been looked on with a certain amount of distrust because at our core our purpose is to help our clients sell things. With that purpose comes the temptation to over-promise.

Organisations need to get make sure that they get back to basics with their branding. It’s not (and never has been) good enough just to say the right thing. You’ve got to do it too.

Only time will tell if the damage to consumer confidence in brands will be forever damaged by these revelations. What I do know that branding and ad men like me are now going to have to work a whole lot harder to convince the public that we’re being legal, decent, honest and truthful.

Joe