Wild Thinking

25 Unconventional Ideas to Grow Your Brand and Your Business

Nick Liddell, Richard Buchanan

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780749484507
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780749484514
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

Who is McLaren's greatest nemesis?
What disappoints Ocado about their competitors?
What wakes Google up at 4am?
Why does Wimbledon sweat the small stuff?

Wild Thinking will provide readers with the confidence to run their business differently, through unique access to thinking from the most original organizations in business today.

The most successful businesses in the world are singular in their goals, yet they express them in many different and creative ways, allowing them to own a space that's distinctly theirs. This book provides access to previously untold stories of how brand leaders at some of the most interesting global businesses solve their biggest challenges.

Including interviews with Google, Ocado, McLaren, Comic Relief, V&A, National Trust, Dropbox and more, each chapter of Wild Thinking explores a different question about life and work, ending with a single-minded point of view to help you consider your business from a new perspective.

It's hard to keep up and stand out in constantly growing and changing markets. To succeed you need absolute clarity about what your brand and business offers; it's time to break the rules.

1

Who or what is your brand’s nemesis?

A conversation with John Allert

Chief Marketing Officer

McLaren

Marty Neumeier is a big fan of picking fights. Zag is his recipe book for making brands radically different and in it he encourages his reader to ‘take on the biggest, most successful competitor you can find’. It’s not about kicking sand in the big guy’s face – it’s about clarifying who you are by defining who you hate. As Neumeier puts it, ‘David was nothing without Goliath.’¹

We love an underdog story: Virgin outmanoeuvring British Airways; Ben & Jerry’s eating into Häagen Dazs’ market share; Netflix busting Blockbuster. But as compelling as these stories are, there’s a big problem with the underdog narrative in business: every David ultimately wants to become a Goliath, and every Goliath started life as a David. Virgin, Amazon, Ben & Jerry’s and Netflix were all underdogs within recent memory. Now they are the overlords of their categories. They may retain the challenger spirit of their youth, but they carry bazookas instead of slingshots.

Apple is the epitome of the underdog-turned-overlord. No matter how big it gets, the spirit of Steve Jobs seems to have instilled in the business a challenger mentality that inspires the people who work at Apple to ever greater heights of innovation and profitability. This mentality is most visible in the bitter corporate feuds Apple has engaged in over the years. In 2010, Steve Jobs promised a ‘thermonuclear’ response to perceived intellectual property infringement by Google’s Android operating system.² Its competition with Nokia has been punctuated by legal disputes, which have reportedly cost Apple hundreds of millions of dollars in costs and settlements.^{3, 4} Apple has also been locked in a bitter and long-running lawsuit with Samsung over which company owns the concept of smartphones with rounded corners (yes!) – hundreds of millions of dollars are also at stake here.⁵ It seems that at every point in its evolution, Apple has had a nemesis of some sort to rail against. The now-iconic 1984 Super Bowl commercial was clearly aimed at annoying IBM, as was Apple’s ‘Think Different’ mantra – IBM had been using the ‘Think’ slogan since 1911 and filed the word as a trademark in 1935 (14 years before registering IBM as a trademark). As IBM moved into consulting and B2B applications, Apple shifted its attention to taking on Microsoft and ran a series of ‘Mac v PC’ campaigns. Google is the latest business worthy of Apple’s unique brand of thermonuclear fire and fury.

Every hero needs a villain

In these rivalries, Apple has clearly positioned itself in the role of hero. And every hero needs a villain. There is a gathering weight of evidence that suggests picking the right villain can make a business more compelling to its customers. A 2012 study of Apple Mac users found that the more Apple users identify with the brand, the greater the joy they feel at reports of Microsoft’s misfortunes.⁶ This isn’t always a positive thing. A 2007 study into Apple demonstrated that Mac users who identify with the brand don’t just take delight in a rival brand’s misfortunes – they see themselves as different from and superior to users of that rival brand.⁷ Rivalry and conflict clearly have the potential to thrill customers, but these rivalries can also be divisive and dehumanizing.

What about the impact of rivalry within a business? Academic research suggests that finding a villain to vanquish is a potentially powerful motivational tool for managers. A 2010 study into the psychology of competition concluded that rivalries between firms means they are less likely to fall prey to complacency.⁸ However, the authors of the study also point out there’s a downside to this type of motivation: it can lead management to prioritize harming competitors over creating shareholder or customer value, discourage management from engaging in cross-sector cooperation in areas such as sustainability and corporate responsibility, and it can encourage a win-at-all-costs mentality that results in unethical behaviour or excessive risk taking.

Uber is a case study in excessive competition, having spent much of the past year dealing with the fallout from its history of engaging in precisely these types of behaviours. In January 2017, the company paid $20 million to settle a US federal inquiry into allegations that it misled drivers over how much they would earn. A month later, Susan Fowler published a blog post detailing the toxic, misogynistic atmosphere she was subjected to during her time as an Uber engineer. In the same month, Google’s autonomous vehicle spin-off Waymo sued Uber for ‘misappropriating’ its technology. Uber’s president quit in March, citing ‘inconsistency’ between the company’s values and his own. In April, Uber was exposed for developing a program called ‘Hell’ to spy on arch-rival Lyft and in September the company lost its licence to operate in London due to a lack of corporate responsibility.⁹

Taking on a nemesis can be a risky business. It has the power to inspire colleagues, as well as establish a different and desirable brand in the eyes of your customers. But with power comes responsibility: it’s important to choose your nemesis wisely to avoid the ‘dark’ consequences of an adversarial approach to work.

So how do you choose the right nemesis?

McLaren

Focusing on the right enemy

Few environments are more intensely competitive than Formula One and few rivalries are as deep and enduring as McLaren’s with Ferrari. Enzo Ferrari invested every ounce of his passion and knowledge to build a team capable of dominating a sport created to test physical, mental and technical limits. Ferrari is Formula One royalty – the only team on the current grid to have participated in the competition’s inaugural race in 1950 – and with 16 Constructors’ titles and 15 Drivers’ titles, it is the most decorated team in history.

McLaren entered Formula One in 1966 with one simple objective: to challenge Ferrari’s dominance. Marty Neumeier would have approved of their approach. McLaren is the zag to Ferrari’s zig. Where Ferrari is extrovert, flamboyant and expressive, McLaren is studied, measured and exacting. Ferrari prances, while McLaren simply performs. Within two years of its launch, McLaren finished second behind Ferrari in the Constructors’ championship. Two years later, Bruce McLaren tragically died during testing. And four years after that, the team honoured his memory with its first Constructor’s title, beating Ferrari into second place. The teams have fought for ascendancy ever since, competing for history’s most talented drivers and engineers, as well as Drivers’ and Constructors’ titles.

We visited McLaren’s Technology Centre to meet John Allert, McLaren’s Chief Marketing Officer, to gain an insider’s insight into how a business can use its nemesis to drive performance in such a competitive field. Ferrari is an obvious place to start the conversation:

JOHN ALLERT If you ask people the question ‘Who is McLaren’s brand nemesis?’ probably most will say Ferrari. The two principal industries that we operate in, Formula One and supercars, rely on a strength of narrative. That narrative is at its best when Ferrari and McLaren are slugging it out against each other. Star Wars is nowhere near as interesting if you’ve just got Luke Skywalker; you need both Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. In both of those industries you could argue that we’re the Darth Vader. We’re not the popular champion. We’re slightly darker, but Darth Vader’s one of the most popular characters in Star Wars.

I think the other role that the tussle between those brands plays is as a signposting mechanism for people of different values or personality types to identify themselves with one brand or the other. You either like Luke Skywalker or you like Darth Vader. Different brands resonate with different mindsets, and that’s a healthy thing.

While few CMOs would welcome a comparison with Darth Vader, it’s a badge John Allert feels entirely comfortable with. The McLaren Technology Centre is as close to a Bond villain’s lair as you’ll find in real life. Designed by starchitects Foster and Partners, it is the quintessence of cold engineering precision. It’s sweeping and cavernous, but unbelievably clever sound design means noise levels barely exceed a hushed whisper. There’s no glitz or gimmickry, but the understatement is overwhelmingly impressive. In the words of the Architects’ Journal, ‘It’s put together like a Swiss watch. It’s not just that the joints line up, it’s that the joints between materials are all exactly the same width.’ As the physical embodiment of the brand, the McLaren Technology Centre’s design speaks volumes about the organization’s true nemesis, and it’s not Ferrari:

Most people would say our greatest adversary is Ferrari. But our nemesis to me is a bigger force – and I think that’s mediocrity.

We have traditional foes: Ferrari, other Formula One teams, Aston Martin, road cars, other technology firms. But our nemesis – the thing that worries us most – is letting down ourselves and the premise of our brand through mediocre performances, errors, faults, or even just doing something that’s seen as being average. We’re effectively allergic to mediocrity, and there are all sorts of checks and balances to try to mitigate against that ever happening. The thing that could undo us the most is not Ferrari – it’s mediocrity.

This allergy to mediocrity is the real motivating force behind the brand and its success. It explains the immense care and control with which the McLaren Technology Centre is designed. And it is the arch quality that McLaren seeks in its people:

Fastidious attention to detail. Structure and articulation of thought. An innate sense of ambition. A restlessness to try to better oneself, or the team or the organization that one exists within.

It’s clear that these qualities are hard-wired into the culture of McLaren. And not everybody thrives or fits in to such a strong and certain working environment. Glassdoor reviews from current and ex-employees reveal a Marmite culture – people love it or they hate it and many seem to hold both views at the same time. It’s described as ‘awesome’ and ‘exciting’ and ‘cutting-edge’ but is also described as ‘stressful’, ‘aggressive’ and ‘a total nightmare’. Love it or hate it, what’s clear from our conversations that the working culture at McLaren is a direct consequence of the characteristics of its founder:

It came from Bruce McLaren, who was a visionary but also, by all accounts, pedantic, hyperactive, highly motivated, and extraordinarily determined. Even in the early days, as owner, boss, chief designer, driver, funder of the team, he would personally sweep the floors every morning before anyone was allowed to start work, and would personally sweep them again at the end of the evening when everyone went home. When Ron Dennis then became involved, in 1980, he exhibited pretty much those same kinds of traits. He added to Bruce’s early vision a whole new layer of innovation and a desire to surpass tomorrow anything that had been done today.

That necessitated a certain mindset and a certain team dynamic that became very self-selecting. Some people were attracted to that kind of culture, in an era before organizational culture or brand culture was ever even known about, let alone discussed or celebrated – or they were not. People who fitted did so for the long term, and...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftile Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Who or what is your brand’s nemesis?
• 2 What wakes your brand up at 4am?
• 3 Is your role to make people want things or make things people want?
• 5 What role does kindness play in your work?
• 6 What’s the most offensive word in the world in relationto your brand?
• 7 What kind of higher human need is your brand responding to? Friendship? Belonging? Calm? Confidence? Love?
• 8 Outside the world of business, where do you look for inspiration?
• 9 What could you eliminate from your business today that you suspect no one would miss?
• 10 Is it more important for your business to be reliable or innovative?
• 11 What would be worse: customers not taking your brand seriously, or finding you boring?
• 12 Do your colleagues see your brand the same way as your customers?
• 13 Which of your brand’s flaws have you learned to ignore?
• 14 Should parents give children what they need or what they want?
• 15 If your brand took a lie detector test, the most nerve-racking question would be …
• 16 What does the word ‘quality’ mean in the context of your brand?
• 17 You are called in to perform a pre-mortem on your brand. You predict the cause of death will come from …
• 18 How often do you embark on projects where you feel real anxiety and uncertainty about the outcome?
• 19 What disappoints you most about your competitors?
• 20 What do customers mistakenly believe about your industry? What can you do to change that?
• 21 Which other businesses are you secretly a little bit jealous of?
• 22 Does your team operate like an orchestra or an improvisational jazz band?
• 23 You are at a party and overhear someone denigrating marketing as no better than exploitation. How do you feel?
• 24 What’s the smallest detail you can think of that makes the biggest difference to how your brand is perceived?
• 25 Do you have enough fun at work?
• Acknowledgements
• Index
• Backcover