EVERYONE’s A BRAND CONSULTANT
by Q. Malandrino, Chairman & CEO - BrandLink Corporation
Everybody agrees that how a company is perceived is important toward business success, and many different professionals claim that they can help with optimizing perception. That’s why these days everyone does ‘branding’ and everyone is a ‘brand consultant.’ How can that be possible? It wasn’t like this a few years back, as everyone had their own specialty. Did everyone just study ‘branding’ really hard and became an expert in it? If that’s the case, can anyone tell me where that textbook is? I’d love to read it. No, the reason is simpler.
Once upon a time, there was a variety of specialist communications professionals. Everyone respected each others’ unique skills, and the client base knew who was good at what. Branding as a discrete discipline didn’t even exist, and the word Brand was used only in reference to trusted consumer products. In the early 1990s, the term Brand started to be applied to corporate entities as well as to b2b companies – and the revolution began. Every business organization wanted to become ‘a brand’, and all communications professionals rushed to add ‘branding’ to their names and become ‘brand consultants’. Mind you, virtually nobody bothered to define this new discipline, nor its precise components. All those professionals just grabbed the term and made it the umbrella for their own historical competency. The result is that today all the following practitioners say they do ‘Branding’, and ‘create brands’: Identity firms, Naming firms, Advertising agencies, Public Relations firms, Promotion Agencies, every type of Design firm, Management Consultants, Research firms, Marketing Strategists, Marketing Speakers, College Professors, Promotion Agencies, HR professionals, O.D. experts, Futurists, Financial Valuators, e-commerce strategists, Brand Licensing firms, Trade Show builders, and many many more. And yes, every one of them has written a book on it.
“OK”, you might say “enough with the history lesson. Just tell me who is entitled to use the label ‘Brand Consultant.” I’m glad you asked. A true Brand Consultant creates the strategic foundation of a brand, which is comprised of four components: Brand Positioning and related Message Segmentation, the internal Brand Culture framework, and Brand Architecture. The term ‘Branding’ is the umbrella term for those four conceptual components.
A true Brand Consultant believes in them, understands their proper sequence, can precisely define each of them in five words or less, can explain the bearing that one has on the others, and has case histories as proof points to show how they were carried out in real-life situations. Most importantly, a true Brand Consultant believes that those four components must be created on the basis of what’s strategically right – without even considering how they might eventually get communicated. That’s why ad agencies, PR firms and designers are ill-suited to create a strategic brand foundation: they will develop those conceptual components (when and if they do) on the basis of their communications potential, on how unique, sexy, memorable and different they can make them, and according to self-interest (if they want to stay in business, they HAVE to sell you their design, advertising, PR work.).
“So”, you might add “what is it they do, if they are not brand consultants?”
Again, I’m glad you asked. Here’s what they really do:
– create a corporate visual/verbal Identity (Identity firms)
– create corporate and product logos (design firms)
– create corporate and product names (naming firms)
– shout about + promote a company or a product (ad agencies)
– get a company message out (PR agencies)
– find out perceptions of a company (research firms)
– market a company while talking about the importance of ‘brand’ (marketing strategist)
– address corporate culture (HR and O.D. experts)
– address strategy and operations while talking about the importance of ‘brand’ (management consultants).
In other words, they 'work for' the brand, but they don't really create the tenets of it.
Each of their propositions goes something like this: “I am a brand consultant, the engine of Branding is ... (insert one’s own competency here)... and as a result of my work you’ll have a strong brand.” Branding and Brand for them is a by-product of what they actually do – and have done for decades – for a living. Very convenient.
But don’t take my word for it - here are a few tests. I think it would be fair to ask - after all, if you claim to be an expert in a discipline, you should know what it is, right? Ask them:
“Hey, ad agency, have you ever done a 'branding program' that did not include advertising?”
“Hey, identity firm, have you ever done a 'branding program' that did not include designing a new logo?” “
“How do you define the discipline of ‘Branding’?”. “What are the components of the discipline of Branding? Can you define in plain English each of them? How do they relate to one another?”
And finally, ask them: “what can you do for me and my Company?” You can bet that they’ll have a prompt answer, because they heard you according to where they sit; for example, an ad agency will hear your question as “what can advertising do for me/my Company?”. If you ask the same question to a true Brand Consultant, s/he won’t know how to answer, because s/he may not know enough about your challenges, and s/he fully recognizes that the discipline of (true) Branding may or may not be what’s needed to solve them.
OK, now you have gone through your source reviews, and the promised deliverables from various practitioners sound similar. But talk is cheap. Look more closely – there are very substantial differences.
More specifically:
If you are discussing Brand Positioning:
– did they show you examples like “a global leader committed to performance with unmatched resources?” That’s not Brand Positioning; that's "cramming as many concepts as you can in as few words as possible". You’ll have no use for it.
– did they use the words “exceeding expectations”? (stay clear of that! that’s the most un-deliverable concept in the history of concepts)
– were they only for external audiences, or were they 'slogans' (that’s an ad agency’s typical m.o.)? (if employees don’t ‘live’ it, Brand Positioning has limited value)
– were they the result of extensive research (that’s a marketing strategy’s typical m.o.)? (Brand Positioning is created on the basis of solid data; it’s not the automatic and direct result of it)
If you are discussing Brand Architecture:
– did they show you examples of repetitively homogeneous sets of branded properties? (that’s not necessarily good Brand Architecture; it’s often the easy way out, and it flattens discrete marketing power. And often it’s simply “let’s clean up your closet and organize the clothes”, as opposed to “let’s organize your clothes' closet so that you’ll know what to wear when.”)
If you are discussing Brand Culture:
how did they explain the difference between Corporate Culture and Brand Culture? (hint: “Brand Culture” is NOT simply “corporate culture + brand.”)
Finally, beware of ‘brand thinkers’ - people who show you lots of credible-sounding theories but cannot show you real-life case histories from paying clients plus several (not just one or two) real-life, real-project client references.
Bottom line: get a true Brand Consultant to create the foundations of your brand. Then ask various communications specialists to bring them to life.
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