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BRAND+Building a next generation brandDigital Shoreditch 2015@verityelinkedin.com/in/verityevans

Hi my name is Verity EvansI’m a strategist and partner at a brand agency called venturethreeI’m going to spend the next 10 minutes talking to you about how the business of building brands has changed and why that’s a good thing.

Here’s a snapshot of the brands we work with at venturethree. We do everything from partnering with startups like Zume, GoGoBot and Transferwise to launch new brands or help their brands come of age. Through to working with major players like Sky, King and Penguin to make their brands relevant, meaningful and inspiring to millions of people. I’m going to share some of the principles we’ve learnt about making brands that connect with people and spark progress for the world.

01.

STAND FOR SOMETHINGTHAT MATTERSTO PEOPLE

So first of all, you need to stand for something that really matters to people. When I started working in branding years ago, it was pretty standard issue for companies to talk about what they wanted to achieve in the world in a purely results-driven way. We want to be number one in entertainment. Or we want to be the world’s premier consumer products company. Now people are demanding more. And companies that put a strong purpose at their heart are winning. Brands that stand for something that matters to people have the potential to inspire everyone they touch, from the people who buy them, to the colleagues who run them, to the shareholders who invest in them. For anyone building a brand today, your purpose should transcend your growth targets, your proposition and your user experience. It should be big enough to inspire positive change in every sphere.

This wouldn’t be a brand presentation without a shout out to Nike. So here it is. Nike’s purpose is to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. And they say if you have a body, you are an athlete. This vision took them into technology. Into the public runs that turn our cities into training grounds. Into personalised products. It makes Nike more than just a shoe company. And inspires a million little contributions to improve people’s lives through sport. It will inspire many more innovations in the future.

Whole foods don’t have one ambition but four. Four big ambitions they could never possibly hope to achieve by themselves. These ideas have a profound impact on the way Whole Foods sources its products and conducts its business. And they give consumers strong reasons to believe in the brand, to love it and to keep coming back.

It may sound crazy, but we wanted to build

the closest thing to teleportation

And your brand purpose doesn’t have to be a lofty ideal. When Periscope launched the team said they wanted to create something that was as close to teleportation as possible. If they really hold this to their hearts, it’s easy to see how Periscope’s ambition could push the company into new innovations as technology opens up new possibilities. 3D TV, holograms, real teleportation?

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02.

MAKE PRINCIPLES NOT RULES

Make principles not rules. In the past, when a team like mine reinvented a major multinational brand, we’d go through an intense period of creative invention culminating in a new expression for the brand. Then the boring part would begin. All that creativity would be poured into an epic 200-page manual, outlining every way in which the brand could be used. The goal was ultimate consistency across the widest array of touchpoints. Ultimate control over the brand image for the brand owner. Today, it’s just not enough. Brands have to be responsive and relevant in fast-moving situations that are anything but textbook. Responding to situations that haven’t been imagined and documented by the team that wrote the guidelines. We’re moving from the age of control where visual consistency was king to the age of meaning, where it’s more important for brands to deliver meaningful and joined-up experiences across the entire customer journey.

INSPIRING NOT POLICINGENABLING AND EMPOWERINGBOTTOM UP, NOT TOP-DOWN

In this new world a purpose that unites everyone in an organization behind a shared goal matters. So do shared principles that shape everyone’s way of working. They show people the right thing to do in the absence of a clear guideline or precedent. And they empower everyone to make good decisions.

A new management system for a rapidly changing world.Gets rid of bosses & gives individuals more autonomy to make an impact.

Aligns each person to the purpose of the organisation.

Some forward-thinking companies are going even further and implementing alternative management systems – like Holocracy. Instead of concentrating power at the top it empowers groups of colleagues to act. And in this absence of top-down hierarchy, purpose becomes the ultimate driver that sets the tone for all decision-making. Here purpose couldn’t be more critical.

300+ organisations, including...

Zappos and Medium are among the highest profile brands to be adopting this exciting new approach and there are hundreds more across the world.

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03.

MAKE BRAND YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM

But you don’t have to go as far as adopting Holocracy to do this. You could simply do this. Make brand your operating system, not a sub-set of your marketing department. Make brand something everyone can own, across every business function.

Purpose + Principles

People & culture Marketing & communications

Products & services Customer experience

Here’s how you do it. Your purpose sets the direction. Your principles shape your culture and ways of working. Together they provide a framework for the way you do business. An engine that powers focus, innovation, growth and creativity. You hire people who share the same values. You develop new products and services and a joined-up customer experience that delivers on the purpose at every touchpoint. And you create outstanding communications to share it all with the world.

EVERYTHING ADDS UP TO A BIGGER IDEA OF WHO YOU ARE

AND WHAT YOU WANT TO DO FOR THE WORLD

This way everything adds up to a bigger idea of who you are and what you want to achieve in the world.

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04.

PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS

But you can’t just pay lip service to it. You have to put your money where your mouth is. Be prepared to take risks and reinvent the way things are done. If your business model is at odds with what you claim to stand for, people will smoke you out.

2000

This is probably the most obvious recent example I can think of, of a company publicly claiming something that’s just not true and is not going to be true in the future.

3.2 million barrels of oil produced per day

“Our goal is to be a focused oil and gas company...”

2000 2014

14 years after the Beyond petroleum rebrand, BP was producing 3.2 million barrels of oil a day, with a focus on oil as a key part of its energy mix. At the time of the rebrand, they got criticism from journalists and environmental groups. But nothing like the social media flaming they would have got today. That is meted out to other brands for much smaller misdemeanours.

Tidal is a good example of this. It launched with a toe-curling and hyperbolic 20 minute press conference. Alisha Keys quoted Niezche and promised us a brave new era. It sounded like something truly revolutionary was coming next.

Madonna cocked her leg on a table as fellow artists signed a declaration of freedom. They promised a new experience for music fans. They promised a better livelihood for artists. But they didn’t offer anything big to back it up.

#tidalforall

Even worse, Tidal used the kind of marketing tactics charity campaigns use. With the hashtag #tidalforall completely at odds with a subscription-only service that’s more expensive than its rivals.

So everyone concluded that it’s just about making its millionaire artist owners even richer. If Tidal is really about a new way, they should have delivered a new model. Using unknown artists to launch the service. Creating a space for unsigned acts to publish their music and own 100% of the royalties. Offering a freemium service to open this new music up to the widest possible fan base. Since launch, they’ve added new features for unsigned artists and clarified that artists earn 25% more royalties with Tidal.

US app store download chart, April ’15

No. 3 PandoraNo. 4 Spotify

Out of top 700 Tidal

But the world has moved on, no-one’s listening and the results speak for themselves. Tidal has just crashed out of the top 700 US app store downloads. Their business model and their product simply didn’t match up to their grandiose promise.

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05.

PROVE IT WITH YOUR ACTIONS

And it’s not just about the big stuff. You have to prove it with your actions across every step of the customer journey. Every interaction a customer has with your brand is an opportunity to demonstrate what you really stand for. To prove it with your actions. And lots of small things can add up to a really big deal.

TRANSFORMATIVE IDEAS + TRANSFORMATIVE ACTIONS

= TRANSFORMATION

Transformative ideas backed up by transformative actions is where things begin to get really interesting.

Uber talks about evolving the way the world moves. And bringing people and cities closer.

cashless

instant

pricing

driver reviews

global

It’s not one big thing but several small but crucial things that make that true. The fact that you don’t have to have cash. That it’s almost instant. That the flexible pricing model makes it such good value off peak. That you can read reviews about your driver so you know what and who to expect. You can listen to your own music on Spotify. And catch a cab in the same way with all these perks in any major foreign capital. All of those things together make it a radical new way.

That also looks set to transform the way you order anything for delivery.

Tom’s is a very different brand again. One for one is their promise. Buy a pair of shoes for yourself and a child in the developing world receives a pair, free.

Or buy a pair of sunglasses to restore one person’s sight. Tom’s enables customers to take the transformative actions. And wear the badge of honour themselves. What could be more powerful than that?

It’s important to remember how critical context is. Brands have to act within their remit to create an impact. Starbucks’s RaceTogether campaign didn’t create a ground-swell of debate in their cafes. Because it was out of step with the way people behave. Brands have to be respectful of what they can and can’t ask of their publics. No matter how good their intentions are.

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06.

CO-CREATEWITH CUSTOMERS

Co-create with customers. Brand reputations are already built and destroyed by ordinary people swapping stories so it’s a bit of a cliché to say this. It’s incredibly important to bring your customers in, to listen to them, to respond to what they want and to co-create with them.

I’ll show you an example of a brand you may not have seen before.This is Micromax, they’re an Indian mobile phone manufacturer.They crowd-sourced their brand identity.

And they ended up with this which is pretty unlike anything they would have got, had they gone to a traditional brand or advertising agency. The line doesn’t sound that meaningful, but it makes sense once you know what they do.

This is how they sell their feature phones – phones that are dumber than a smart phone but way more intelligent than the pre-smart phone models we remember here. They sell them in a pouch for 699 rupees, or about seven pounds fifty. The packaging and the price point completely inspired by the wants and needs of their customers. It really is nothing like anything and it’s brands like this that change everything.

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07.

EVOLVE EVERY DAY

Finally, evolve every day. Ten years ago, brands used to have a major rebrand every five years or so, refreshing their look for another half-decade. Those days are gone too. Brands have to constantly evolve and reinvent themselves to stay relevant and stay loved in a fast-changing world where the competition is fierce.

Here’s one we’ve been working with for the last 10 years at venturethree - Sky.

Title venturethree

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Sky Fibre. Frighteningly fast and amazingly unlimited broadband.

Believe in better

© D

isne

y/Pi

xar

Selected Fibre areas only. Speeds vary by location. Availability subject to survey. Up to 38 Mb download speed. No traffic management policy or usage cap. External factors such as internet congestion can affect speed. Sky Talk required. Toy Story of Terror is showing on Sky Movies Disney which requires Sky TV and the Movies Pack. Further terms apply. Correct at 15/08/13.

sky.com/demandmore

Constantly reinventing to take the brand into 3D TV, music, video-on demand, broadband, live spaces, countless advertising campaigns and beyond. Because once you have defined your brand, you can never stand still.

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BRAND+

PURPOSE AND PRINCIPLES POWER EVERYTHING

01.02.03.04.05.06.07.

STAND FOR SOMETHINGCREATE PRINCIPLES NOT RULESMAKE BRAND YOUR OPERATING SYSTEMMONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH ISPROVE IT WITH ACTIONSCO-CREATE WITH CUSTOMERSEVOLVE EVERY DAY

So to recap… brands that connect with people and spark progress for the world let purpose and principles power everything. Stand for something that matters to people. Create principles, not rules to empower everyone in your team. Make brand your operating system, not a sub-set of the marketing department. Put your money where your mouth is and develop a business model that delivers on your purpose. Prove it with every interaction across the customer journey. Co-create with your customers, involving them as much as possible. And evolve every day to stay fresh and relevant.

Thank you very much.