The Brand Innovation Manifesto

How to Build Brands, Redefine Markets & Defy Conventions

John Grant

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9780470027516
  9780470027516
• eBook ISBN:
  9781119995036
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

The days of the image brands are over, and new marketing has gone mainstream. The worlds biggest companies are pursuing a post-advertising strategy, moving away from advertising and investing in leading edge alternatives. In the vanguard of the revolution has been John Grant, co-founder of the legendary agency St. Lukes and author of The New Marketing Manifesto, whose radical thinking has informed a generation. Now Grant is set to stun the industry again. In The Brand Innovation Manifesto, he redefines the nature of brands, showing why old models and scales no longer work and revealing that the key to success today is impacting peoples lifestyles (think Starbucks, iPod and eBay). At the heart of the book is the concept of the brand molecule to which new cultural ideas can be constantly added to keep pace with change. Cataloguing 32 classes of idea, Grant presents a practical approach to mixing and matching them within your own market to develop new brand ideas - and new ideas for existing brands.

SECTION II

A TYPOLOGY OF BRAND IDEAS

Building Your Molecule: 32 Brand Elements

How do you create and develop brands?

I have already suggested that they could be seen as like a molecule, with new cultural ideas being attached to the existing ones. And that you need a definite strategy. You could think of strategy as the purpose of the molecule (haemoglobin isn’t just a tangled mess of carbon, hydrogen and other elements, it transports oxygen around the blood). If you don’t have tight strategy then the danger is you might create a free-associating mess of unconnected ideas. Some companies do find coherence implicitly, for instance companies that do most of their brand ideas in house (or have a long, intimate and deep relationship with others who do the ideas) and have a strong sense of direction without it being spelled out as a brand strategy per se. There needs to be focus and direction.

But where do you get the ideas?

A simple answer is this:

1. Work out which sorts of ideas your market already uses.

2. Compare that with a longer list of ideas that other markets have used.

3. Find new ideas, sparked by “exotic imports” that your market hasn’t used before.

To assist you in this, I have set out a list of 32 types of brand idea. I am also producing a brand tarot pack, which you will be able to buy so that – if you are similar to me and you like to play with your hands – you can have a workshop-style tool to play with as you do this. You will find all the details at www.brandtarot.com.

The molecule model says that brands are made out of cultural ideas. Culture is fabulously abundant, like a teeming jungle. Not only are there millions of individual species in this ecology of ideas, but there are very different genera too, classes or types of culture that are different from each other. These general headings are the kind of area we will be looking at in this section. They exist because “culture” is a diverse term encompassing all sorts of things, for instance:

• Symbols, words, images, things with meaning.

• Arts and entertainment, experiences and the resulting feelings/ideas.

• Lifestyle practices, customs, habits.

• Artefacts, designs, manmade objects.

• Technologies, tools, media etc. as extensions of ability.

• Patterns of belonging, allegiance, identity.

• Values, belief systems, knowledge.

• Institutions, organisations, structures, rules.

• Economic activity and exchange.

• Conventions, fashions, modes and tropes.

• Relationships: couples, families, relatives, colleagues.

• Status, hierarchy, aspirations.

• Life stages, development, learning.

• Religion, spirituality, sacredness and reverence.

• Politics, citizenship, class and other divisions.

• Norms, beliefs, conventions and common sense.

In the old model of branding everything cultural was reduced to one heading: “added values”. These were mostly about a social class-based identity, being the “right drink” for a male, middle-class, middle-aged, middle manager (probably blended Scotch).

Today social identities are more pick and mix. The same middle-aged manager might be an eco-protestor, community police officer, football coach, be studying for a second or third career and so on. We feel less need to conform to type, life is less predictable, people have a greater range of self-expression and seem more able to compartmentalise different parts of their lives and different identities.

What is obvious from that long list of types of culture is that there are many more types of cultural idea than identity (“this brand is for this sort of person, to reflect and reinforce their station in life”). This section sets out 32 types of cultural ideas that have been attached to brands to good effect. This list is neither definitive nor exhaustive. In developing this book I have veered between lists as short as 7 and as long as 98 headings. Coming out with 32 headings was a process of trial and error – ensuring that the ideas under each heading seemed to go together, that they genuinely did seem to tap a distinct part of cultural life, that there was more to any heading than one narrow idea that had been repeated in a few settings, and so on.

The value in having this catalogue of headings and examples is that they may inspire new applications in your market. It seems that many breakthrough ideas are a remake of ideas that have already worked in other categories. A lot of lingerie advertising over the years had been sexy, and even some chocolate advertising, but Häagen-Dazs was the first to use this type of eroticised idea for ice cream, certainly in the UK.

Does it matter if a different category has used a similar idea? Apparently it doesn’t. Innocent smoothies are a virtual carbon copy of the ideas behind Ben & Jerry’s ice cream:

• Founded by old friends.

• Producing high-minded statements and manifestos.

• Hippy values, packaging, language.

• All natural ingredients.

• Measuring ingredients in “chunks” or “apples”.

• Expensive, premium.

• Backing charities and having a social conscience.

• Holding a Woodstock-style music festival.

The one big difference (and it is a big difference) with Innocent’s products are their health benefits. If they had both been ice creams or frozen yoghurts then it would have looked like a ripoff. But because they are in different categories – i.e. different categories in people’s minds, not just different markets – there seems to be very little confusion or drawback.

It is similar with Accenture using Tiger Woods to make Nike-style advertising (Go on, be a Tiger). It seems to work. Especially as there is a credible link: that Accenture had sponsored golf for many years (since long before Nike got into the sport). I know management consultants who like this advertising and I suspect their clients do too. It makes something a bit more heroic and exciting out of what in reality often concerns projects with titles like “enterprise-wide software systems implementation”!

I am not suggesting that the only way to come up with an idea is to copy someone else’s. These two examples are rare in being so close in form to the originals. Rather, if there are 32 of these categories, and your competitors are only using 8 of them, there are often opportunities that have been missed among the other 24. I have used this approach on projects and it has proved helpful. For instance, in a workshop with product marketing people from The Co-operative Bank, we looked at other types of retailing (clothes shops, internet auctions and so on) and asked: “Are there any ideas they are using that we could adapt?” We quickly came up with a list of about six strong contenders that we would not have necessarily thought of otherwise. And an example of that style of thinking that has already launched is HSBC running a January sale.

To adopt those sorts of ideas, you need a different approach than “messaging”. Many of these cultural ideas do not “say” anything explicitly. They involve people, who will come to their own conclusions. The underlying message of establishing a cultural idea that really does stand apart from your category is one of currency. People could have got that idea through joining a community, seeing the product being worn, talking to enthusiasts, taking part in an experience . . . What the idea tells people is that your brand is a living tradition: the way things are done these days.

Chapter Structure

The 32 cultural ideas we will be exploring in this section are wide-ranging, but I have used a common structure, so they can be compared and referenced more easily.

Cultural Heading

Brands are usually made up of a mixture of different ideas. But it is possible to categorise these into types of idea: spectacular ideas, faith ideas and so on.

General Description of This Cultural Territory, with Nonbrand Examples

None of these types of cultural idea (unlike the idea of “advertising” or “design”) is restricted to brand building. They were already features in our own and other historical cultures. They seem to point to a shared human nature. Understanding the ideas on this level, the insight behind them, why people seem to find them compelling, how they seem to work makes this more than just a list of brand ideas. And it also makes the whole exercise of working on marketing campaigns more interesting: every project shines a torch on a slightly different aspect of human nature. These sections draw on several decades that I have spent conducting focus groups and consorting with anthropologists, psychoanalysts, cognitive psychologists and anybody else I thought could put the question of how brands worked in some sort of context.

Example 1: A Brand for Which This Was the Core Idea

Earlier in the book I suggested that the tasks of coming up with new brands and promoting existing ones both came down to this question of a cultural idea.

Successful new brands often put a cultural idea into the product. This anticipates and responds to something in everyday life – as if they had read our minds. Like Gary Hamel’s example of table-ready salad, which is the latest in a series of products whose idea is restaurant food at home.

Example 2: A Brand for Which This Was a Cultural Extension/Platform

I have also made sure to highlight one example of the idea used to promote an existing brand; in these cases you can see the importance of there being a credible link.

Other Instructive Examples

As the heading says, I have included other briefer examples, to explore the same cultural idea from different angles and in different settings. As Ingvar Kamprad, IKEA founder, once wrote: “Nothing succeeds like a good example.” The best way to come up with ideas is often absorbing lots of inspiring examples.

A Periodic Table for Brand Ideas

In initial drafts of the book I had all the types of idea set out as a long list. Several readers pointed out that this could be a bit overwhelming and suggested that some sort of structure or grouping might be helpful.

Such a structure could only ever be provisional. There is no reason I know of in theory to assume that there is any underlying “order” in culture. As a street map it would always be more like London than New York – something evolved not designed. Theories that do assume that there is some underlying logic tend to be simplistic, reductive and misleading (like the idea of the “selfish gene”, which has a hard time explaining altruism or anything frivolous and unconcerned with survival or mating chances).

However, much to my surprise, there did prove to be quite a simple and intuitive way of dividing the ideas under different headings, both in the type of cultural idea being described and also in the “scale” of the idea. Rather pleasingly, given all the stuff on building a brand molecule, this turns out to be something like a periodic table – an idea I am sure most readers will remember from school chemistry lessons.

Figure II.1 The periodic table – a typology of cultural ideas

The headings may not mean too much at this stage (although the brand examples listed will give some indication of the sorts of thing I mean), but to start with the overall structure and then work into the detail, Figure ii.1 is the periodic table in all its glory.

I will deal with headings for each row of this table (1. New traditions, 2. Belief systems ...) as well as the individual types of idea under each heading (in row 1: A. Habits, B. Spectaculars . . .) in the chapters that follow.

But it is probably worth saying something now about the columns I see these, just as in the real periodic table of elements, as saying something about the “scale” of the idea. It wasn’t always easy to divide up the ideas in this way and there are several decisions that are certainly contestable, but it surprised me how well it works in nearly all cases. Perhaps because most cultural ideas do seem to roughly fall into four “spheres”:

a. Personal: ideas that are entertained in a very individual and idiosyncratic way, for instance personal fantasies, fascinations, preferences and interactive products such as customisation and self-publishing.

b. Immediate: ideas that are experienced and felt in the here and now – be they aesthetic experiences, sporting events, social interactions (and the flow of conversation). These often have a social context, for instance being in a public space, rather than being private like those in the ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• SECTION I - BRAND THEORY REVISITED
• SECTION II - A TYPOLOGY OF BRAND IDEAS
• SECTION III - DEVELOPING BRAND STRATEGIES
• References
• Index