Making brands more distinctive

Even the most hard-hearted cynic must have been moved at the vision of dozens of athletes blubbing and wailing as they mumbled through various national anthems clutching their medals.

I guess the tears and emotion come from the huge relief at having completed a goal. Years of work and expectation leading to a final recognition that, yes, you are “good at something”. Even getting to the Olympics as part of a national team is a huge success (in my lardy opinion).

No such joy for the marketer, product developer, adman or designer. There’s no end game, final parade or medal ceremony before we can rightly rest on our laurels. There is a necessary drive to review, re-invent and restart. This compulsion doesn’t just come from clients but also from within.

Looking to the Olympic movement for inspiration may seem trite (faster, higher, stronger etc) but there are a couple of things that I’m reminded of when a major sporting event comes around.

The first is the idea, often propounded buy agencies and clients alike, that good things can be done quickly and cheaply. You just can’t have both. If you want things quick then you need experience and unfortunately that is costly. If you want lower costs then you may have to wait a little longer until some slack appears.

Secondly the idea that “new” is best. This is a difficult area for an adman as the “new” concept is something of an holy grail. But the processes to get to that idea: planning, insight generation and idea creation should be well worn and honed to a fine javelin-like point. New ways of doing things must be tested, refined and integrated with care and consideration.

Nobody won at the Olympics by doing their training quickly or cheaply and rather than relying on an unproven training system most improve on well-tested techniques to achieve that all important extra 10th of a second.

The long way around may be harder work and mean more investment in money or time but the returns can be gold.

Joe

PS: Talking of parallels, didn’t the Uneven Bars used to be called the Asymmetric Bars? Who decided we were too stupid to understand?