Brandalism

Building brands by vandalising the status quo

Mike Sharman

• Publisher: Tracey McDonald Publishers
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781990931642
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Imprenditoria

In BRANDALISM, the follow-up to his bestselling, award-winning debut book The Best Dick, Mike Sharman delves into the (start)ups and downs associated with brand building and the need for business to dismantle, and vandalise its perceived, public-facing, persona.

The future of PR and influence, when (or if) to launch a new business as opposed to a division, raising capital, the impact of presentations, startup school fees, and emphasis on a manifesto rather than purpose, are the aspects Mike obsesses over in this insightful read, wrapped in his trademark, comedic, copy.

Mike Sharman, the co-founder of the creative, digital agency Retroviral that has made more brands 'go viral', globally, than any other agency in Africa, uses his unique storytelling proposition to provide insight into 12 years of building a business from scratch, while elevating his clients to emotional, (commercial) cult status.

"Mike Sharman delivers the well needed wake-up call that your brand needs (and your customers deserve)." – Richard Mulholland

Building brands by vandalising the status quo

First published by Tracey McDonald Publishers, 2022

Suite No. 53, Private Bag X903, Bryanston, South Africa, 2021

www.traceymcdonaldpublishers.com

Copyright © Mike Sharman, 2022

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-990931-63-5

e-ISBN (ePUB) 978-1-990931-64-2

Text design and typesetting by Patricia Crain, Empressa

Cover design by Duncan Blackhurst

Front cover artwork by Jaime Sanchez (@JaimeSanchezArt)

Cover compilation by Tomangopawpadilla

Back cover photograph by Marc Gregory

Digital conversion by Wouter Reinders

CONTENTS

Title page

Imprint page

Also by Mike Sharman

Dedication

Foreword – Bruce Whitfield

Preface

i Personal Relations

ii Toilet Humour

iii Capital Getters

iv School Fees

v Manifesto not Purpose

vi Second Child Syndrome

vii Scale Shmale

viii Unfluencer MarketIng

ix Short Stories

x Perfect Imperfect 10

Acknowledgements

Stay in touch with Mike Sharman

ALSO BY MIKE SHARMAN

The Best Dick – A Candid Account of Building a $1m Business

To Tazzle, Eli, India, Kingsley and Zel

Mom and Dad, Judy, Jeanette, Teneale and Luke

And all of my inspiring nieces and nephew:

S-J, Kelly Jelly, Courtney, Shannon, Hudson and Frankie

FOREWORD

The only decent thing to come out of the 1980s was the 1990s. And Mike Sharman. And Cardies. Cardies rocked. By 1980s standards anyway. It sold those dreadful motivational rigid plastic desktop ‘quote-tents’ with messages printed on them. One of them read: ‘You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps.’

If Mike doesn’t have that emblazoned on a wall somewhere, he should.

Before I became aware of his involvement in the delightful spoof of the surprise Netflix hit of 2020: ‘My Octopus Teacher’, I watched the two-and-a-bit-minute video done for Kreepy Krauly delivered in the same somnambulant tone of filmmaker Craig Foster whose year-long video diary had captured the attention of a fearful world locked down against Covid-19.

‘… and then I just had this crazy idea, what if I went every … day …’ had me in hysterics … ‘the waaay it moves … its pipe never gets tangled …’ It was bonkers. But it was also sheer genius. It tapped into the enormous positivity of Foster’s messaging with a sweet, clever, parody.

I watched it a few times and tweeted: ‘Everyone involved in this is quite deliciously mad. Brilliant.’

Then I learned Retroviral was involved and it all made sense.

Much of what happens in the world nowadays is so carefully filtered, stage-managed and sanitised to ensure that it passes the focus group test, that we are losing cutting-edge creativity. When last did you see an ad that made you guffaw with your hand over your mouth because you can’t actually believe ‘they just did that’?

When Nando’s had a guide-dog lead a blind person into a pole because it could not resist the aroma wafting into the street it caused outrage, but it also differentiated the chain, which today is one of South Africa’s most successful franchise exports.

How often do you see a piece of advertising or branding that is worth talking about?

Not often enough.

If, as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, once said: ‘Your brand is what others say about you when you are not in the room’ then B R A N D A L I S M has ripped off the roof, knocked down the walls and taken a dump in the pot plant.

Nobody meets in rooms anymore and conversations about your brand are happening everywhere all the time. Unless they aren’t, in which case your business – in the third decade of the 21st century – is probably dead.

Once your brand is in the public domain, it is no longer yours. If you don’t live up to your promise, you will be ‘brandalised’ because your customers will very soon tell you what they think.

This book will not help you guard your brand from the renegade attentions of people like Mike Sharman, but will position you to capitalise on the opportunity it presents.

BRUCE WHITFIELD

Radio, TV and print journalist. Business speaker. Author.

PREFACE

‘To the extreme I rock a mic like a vandal …’

– Vanilla Ice

Every brand has its genesis as a challenger. It’s created to compete with an existing offering, or borne out of innovation to provide a new solution or product to its target market.

Forbes details how a business lifecycle evolves from startup, to growth; it then progresses to its maturity phase, and finally, is faced with the crossroads labelled ‘renewal’ or ‘decline’.

Maturity is synonymous with comfort. Mature businesses take fewer risks because they’ve hustled their way to meaningful market share. Mature businesses tick boxes, as opposed to thinking outside of them. However, in this modern age of fickle, hyper consumerism, they also expire quicker than ever before.

Credit Suisse has shown that the average age of a company listed on the S&P 500 fell from almost 60 years in the 1950s to less than 18 years today.

Brands are constantly required to reinvent, or die. 2021 has had its fair share of corporate decimation and death.

BRANDALISM is a phrase that was first coined in 2012 where street artists – led by an unknown Scotsman, Robert Montgomery – hijacked billboards in the black of night by plastering B&W typographic poetry over your standard ‘buy-buy-buy-call-to-action’ outdoor media.

‘Brandalism: Street artists hijack billboards for “subvertising campaign” ’ – The Independent

These actions tapped into the authority-versus-anarchy zeitgeist; it became a call to arms for street artists, graffiti craftsmen, and vandals alike, and established a cult – albeit illegal – following across the UK, US and Australia.

Twenty-six ‘artists’, including Montgomery, brandalised 35 outdoor locations across Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and London as an opposition statement to advertising and its ‘destructive impact’ on issues such as body image, consumerism and debt.

One of the participants, Bill Posters (every part of me wants this to be his real name and not his street artist ‘personal brand’), was quoted as saying: ‘We’re lab rats for ad execs who exploit our fears and insecurities through consumerism. I’m a human being, not a consumer. So by taking [on] these billboards, we are taking these spaces back. If Sao Paolo in Brazil can ban all outdoor advertising, so can we.’

At the start of 2020, Bushfire Brandalism was executed at the bus shelters of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane suburbs, ...