Invisible Brand

The fight to sit at the King’s right hand side

CLIENTS WHO FOLLOW THE DESIGN AND advertising trade press must feel bemused to observe the turf wars that break out from time to time over the vexed issue of whether ad agencies, design agencies or brand consultancies should rightfully be the leaders of their brand strategy agendas. Of late, these wars have intensified and new, hybrid business models claiming to represent the ‘brand communications agency of the future’ are emerging. What are the issues and, in particular, what are the implications, for service brands?

As we were…
Ad agencies used to have a presumptive role in the area of branding. But that was at a time when brands were almost entirely within the fmcg sector and ‘the brand’ had already been devised, manufactured and delivered by the client before the agencies ever got their hands on it. Their ‘branding’ role was to use communications to make the brand more famous or desirable and, as competition developed, to find some differentiation or competitive edge. Design agencies were expected to finesse the packaging or label every few years to keep it up to date, and not much else. As it always does, life moved on. By the 1980s design groups were moving into space neglected by ad agencies and making a strong and effective case for the role of identity in establishing new consumer brands, especially in the rapidly growing service sector. They perceived that ‘invisible’ products were far more dependent on well designed and consistently orchestrated identities for profile and they set about creating rules for their use. Ad agencies hated this: advertising was about creativity and blue-sky thinking, they argued; not about being strait-jacketed by an insistence that the headline was set in18pt Helvetica, ranged left. Up to this point, the debate still tended to focus on issues of ownership of the visual identity but, by the nineties, brand strategy was upon us with a vengeance. The big ad agencies were still slow to pick up on this, but progressive smaller agencies and design groups soon enhanced their offerings and, of course, specialist brand development agencies began to take centre stage.

Coming of age
For a long time, branding was seen as principally an issue of identity and communications; and for the majority of clients it was a matter that solely concerned the marketing department. All that has changed. In the service sector there is now widespread understanding of the importance of reputation, signature behaviour, culture and values in the definition and maintenance of a brand. Ad agencies, design groups and consultancies are all eager to collect fees from clients for strategic branding advice on such matters. Not least because some also believe – rightly or wrongly – that this ‘upstream’ position will give them privileged access to ‘downstream’ communications projects. Many of them do have a credible offering and most will assert that they, by virtue of their distinctive processes, skills and experience, are better qualified to do the job than their rivals. But to ask who is best equipped may be to overlook a more fundamental consideration.

An outmoded model
In their heyday, ad agencies thrived on a wonderful diet of 15% media commissions, solid print and production margins, and generous mark-ups on almost everything from research fees to client lunches. Although nobody was prepared to admit it, their business model was not so much that of an ideas factory, simply a factory. Agencies gave their ideas away in exchange for the opportunity to harvest fat revenues for implementation. Two things have served to undermine all this. The first is that major areas of business such as media were hived off and subjected to intense competition, drastically reducing margins. The second is the advent of the digital production age. This enabled any client to create and produce communications of their own for little more than the cost of an Apple Mac; it also short-circuited huge elements of the pre-print process that once generated significant revenues. Against this background it is only too obvious that nobody starting from here would invent the surprisingly still-prevalent model of the traditional advertising agency. If branding and communication is so inseparably intertwined, why would you create an advertising-driven business when you could establish one in which big branding ideas could be created and implementation made available across all forms of communication from identity, through literature, to communications? If ad agencies have fallen short in this respect then it must also be acknowledged that few (if any) design agencies have taken the trouble to develop the hands-on advertising and DM planning, creative and executional skills required to complement the work they do in brand and identity. Where does all this leave the client? Most of the foregoing could leave the uncomfortable impression that the marketing communications industry has got itself thoroughly out of step with modern client needs and, as a result, clients will increasingly have to rely on their own resourcefulness if they want a holistic brand/ communications approach. In fact, the situation is a good deal better than that. For one thing, the more enlightened in the industry recognised these issues some time ago. They understand that they are now in the business of selling strategy and ideas rather than implementation; and that they need to offer co-ordinated creative capability across a spectrum of applications including identity and design, advertising and direct marketing. Business models are evolving and a number of ‘brand strategy led, portfolio service’ agencies such as CCHM are already making a success of it. The second consideration – who is best to lead the brand strategy? – is, for clients in the service sector, a non-issue. Only you, the client, can own brand strategy. You might develop it with the benefit of external expertise, but you know all too well that identity and positioning, design and marketing communications are only part of a much larger story. Agencies of all types are naturally keen to take credit for the success of a respected brand, but 90% of the spadework for that success takes place internally – something agencies of all types would do well to remember.