Invisible Brand

Lucian Camp takes a light-hearted look at brand behaviour as articulated by the corporate biscuit selection.

On that grim day in the summer of 2002 when the FTSE 100 Index passed 4000 heading rapidly southwards, the chief executive of a large City investment house took a painful and difficult decision.The instruction went out: “From now until the day that the FTSE climbs back to 5000, there’ll be no biscuits in our meeting rooms.”And since that day, there haven’t been.

The way the markets look just now, it seems possible that biscuits might just make a reappearance on those meeting room tables some time later this year. If so, it’ll be interesting to see what kind of biscuits they are. Back in the good old days, they were very fancy ones – mainly little plain chocolate Florentines, pleasantly crunchy and just a bit chewy, studded with almonds and glacé cherries. It would be disappointing if, after a two-year absence, what came back was just bourbons and custard creams. But can anyone except the most gluttonous gourmand really pay serious attention to such issues? Does the presence – or absence – of biscuits in meeting rooms deserve more than a moment’s thought?

The short and possibly slightly pompous answer is that yes, if you care about brands, it does. If CCHM stands for one key idea about brands in people businesses, that idea is that brand is behaviour – and putting out biscuits in the meeting rooms is a behaviour that everyone closely engaged with the business is likely to notice.

At the margin, the investment house’s top man might have been saving a bit of money. But his real aim was to send out a message.The withdrawal of biscuits told everyone that times were hard.And when they return, the message will be that normal service has been resumed.

At CCHM, we’ve given an absurd amount of thought to the language of biscuits over the years.

Some years ago – we admit with shame – we went through our own bourbons and custard creams phase.Then, after extensive tasting, sampling and trialling periods, we moved on to the extremely chocolatey Fox’s Connoisseur Selection.Then we worried that good as these are, they’re a bit too popular and lack differentiation, so we went on to some very obscure toffee-covered digestives.Then we worried that though these were delicious, they looked a bit samey and dull on the plate, so now we’re back to the Fox’s again. But, you know, they are a bit too popular and lacking in differentiation…

But there’s more to a biscuit policy than just the choice of biscuits. For one thing, when are biscuits provided? In all meetings? In all external meetings? Only in client meetings? Only when the meeting organiser requests them? And then there’s the question of how many biscuits should be served. Is it better to provide a small plate with biscuits piled high, or a big plate with biscuits artfully laid out? How many people do you need in the meeting to move up from one plate to two? Are left-over biscuits at the end of meetings liberated for consumption by the staff, or put back in the tin?

Honestly, with so many issues to consider, maintaining a biscuit policy is virtually a full-time job. So much so, in fact, that we’ve decided to appoint a Biscuits Czar (one suspects Downing Street may have had one for some years).You may feel this is an extreme move for a subject so apparently trivial, but far from it.There was a time when we all laughed at the idea of Brand Police, but not any more.When you care as much about the detail of brand behaviour as we do, this is an entirely logical development. So don’t cross our biscuits Czar.

Whilst I’m at it, what does our choice of tea bags say about us – and who can I put in charge of that?