Brand New World

You can’t pick up a newspaper, turn on the radio or watch the television today without branding being a topic. In a shortened version of his speech at the Brand Management Forum from March 2004, John Williamson, board director at Wolff Olins considers how brands should re-invent to face an uncertain future.

Whatever British Airways thinks about itself, it still represents ‘port out, starboard home’. It’s a national brand that has, in the past, inspired trust. Nationality is a key component in most of the brands we know today and so is experience. We used to live in a world where people respected experience. Brands that had some value, that could be trusted, were looked up to. We felt secure in a world that looked backwards.

But past glories are no longer important. What is significant today is the future. Corporations that want consumers, investors and employees to participate in their brands have to be able to tell those people not where they have been, but where their brands are going. The old certainties have disappeared and that, of course, has implications for branding.

Looking forward
Community is now the defining characteristic of a brand in the market, and as institutions, brands and even countries increasingly discover, you can’t rely on your inheritance or your origins in a global market. The big challenge is to think about the future and the brand in a different way. Some corporations are doing that already. In our multi-cultural world, historical muscle has become subordinate to speed. Unlike British Airways, for example, easyJet doesn’t want to be British, or German – it just wants to be easy. Ikea may still use Swedish colours, but around the world it talks to its consumers in a very different way.

The strength of such brands is that they cross market segments and appeal to a global market. And it is not just corporations that are changing; even countries are quite dramatically altering their brand and profile. Australia used to be a colonial outpost, but now it is actually a very different kind of brand and institution, renowned for its fusion food, culture and for playing a completely different role in Asia.

People who demonstrated against institutions used to burn national flags. These days, flag burning plays a lesser role. They have, in some respects, lost their significance. Demonstrators now attack Nike Town or McDonald’s, because these brands are the symbols of the kind of world in which we live today. In this context, a brand is not a logo.

Of course, you have to protect logos, but in my view, a brand is what you stand for; it is what you are prepared to sacrifice for; it is not about the nice things you want; it is the glue that binds a product together; the DNA of a corporation or an institution. In a world where access to labour, capital and technology is free, then a brand is essentially a corporation’s only long-term sustainable competitive advantage.

A brand is what you stand for. It is the glue that binds a product together; the DNA of a corporation or an institution.

The challenge to re-invent
Take Sony. Sony is perhaps one of the most powerful brands we can think of today. But I’d like to challenge that notion. The company started off as the Tokyo Tape Recording Company, and changed its name to Sony in the early 1950s, after it decided it wasn’t going to be just a Tokyo company but a global company. And then it developed the Walkman. People at Sony today define the Walkman as the iconic product of Sony the institution. Of course, they have got lots of other products today, but where is Sony’s future? The problem is that Sony hasn’t invented a product as iconic as the Walkman for a long time. For example, they now produce DVDs in server boxes like everybody else. And what is more, Sony makes those server boxes in mainland China, just like Samsung. If you consider the attitudes of consumers, you will see there is very little difference between the server boxes of Samsung and Sony.

The challenge for Sony isn’t just to produce, but to re-invent itself in terms of what it stands for. The company can’t continue to define itself by a product, which was at its best 15 years ago.

Marks & Spencer is another interesting example. It used to represent middle-class Britain but who wants to be middle class anymore? None of us. We all want to be estuary, ethnic or some other category. What Marks & Spencer lost was the notion of middle class and it needs to replace it with an equally compelling idea to become more attractive.

Where does the responsibility lie?
One of the biggest challenges facing brands is where the issuer of social corporate responsibility lies. This issue is certainly one of the toughest ones ever faced by McDonald’s and other food companies, supermarkets and retailers.

What is the role and responsibility of the individual in making purchase decisions against the role and responsibility of the brand and the corporation? Is McDonald’s responsible for obesity? Or, in a society where the government doesn’t tell you what you should eat, but Dr Atkins sells his own view of nutrition, is it up to the individual?

I believe the raw issue for brands is to focus on the role of the consumer. It’s not only that brands have become interactive, it’s about how consumers are going to behave: are they going to take responsibility for their decisions? Considered this way, branding becomes much more a political issue. Contrary to what Naomi Klein says, I do think that brands give people choice.

I think it is fortuitous that brands actually represent profit and growth and a sustainable competitive future for institutions. Brands do that if they aren’t about crosses, ticks and smiles, but about hearts. People take them into their world and use them to define who they are. In my view, brands that are in consumer hearts, and brands that are about the future and not the past, will succeed. The future is brand and the future for brand is bright.

John Williamson is a board director at Wolff Olins, and a brand expert with more than 25 years experience. He has advised some of the world's largest corporations, including Audi, Lufthansa, Shell, Sony and Unilever

This article first appeared in IP Review, issue 7