(Disclaimer: Even though I say it somewhere else on this site, the opinions here are always my own)

While working on an article about brand ecosystems, I came across an interview Diageo CMO Andy Fennell recently gave to Marketing magazine.

Here are some choice quotes:

– Given your marketing challenges, what type of agency do you need today?

There’s one thing that we will always need from our agencies – brilliant creative ideas. That’s what we are buying – big ideas, full of flair to surprise our consumers. At Diageo, when we work with an agency it is the number one priority. Sure, account servicing and all that stuff is relevant. But the reason we buy an agency’s service is because of its creative flair.

That said, we can no longer segment the different aspects of an idea in the way that we used to. We need agencies that can see the totality of our engagement with the consumer, whether that is blogger outreach, social networking conversations, long-form content or more traditional advertising. Almost always, we need agencies collaborating with each other around what we end up showing to the consumer.

There are very few, if any, agencies that are able to do everything. So, we need our lead agencies to be able to see the whole idea and collaborate with partners in order to deliver to the consumer something that joins together and makes sense. We talked about integrated marketing for years. It’s been a buzzword in agency land. Now it is absolutely required. If it’s not integrated, the consumer rejects it.

– If it’s all about getting consumers to participate, do you still need big campaigns?

Not big advertising campaigns, but we need big brand ideas. When you have more and more people collaborating, you need a big idea to hold it together. The difference now is that you don’t start with an ad campaign. You start with an idea that allows people to participate – so we talk about ‘participating platforms’.

***

You can read the rest here.

No big surprises for brand agencies there, you might say, but here is a thought…

When the entire marketing world becomes hyper-integrated and idea-driven, two of the core elements that used to set apart Brand(/ing) Agencies in the past become hygienic to the entire creative industry.

The concept of having a “Brand agency” in such a world, makes as much sense as having a “Positioning Agency” or a “Differentiation Agency”. Branding is just too important as a mode of thinking in marketing to be fenced off and left only for one type of agency. Continue reading →

I have named my pain. At least one frequently reoccurring pain. It’s time I’ve put it in writing.
Here is the world’s most common strategic planning error. It is simply this:

Confusing a goal with a strategy.

One can call it an error, but the error, if to be honest, is seeing strategy where there is none.
In the philosophical study of logic, there is a logical flaw called "The bare assertion fallacy". This is the fallacy behind playground sentences like "I am right because I am.". The end/means fallacy works in a similar way.

It is obviously clear to the reader, that the sentence "I will become rich by making a lot of money."  does not cut it as a strategy for becoming rich, yet so many so-called strategies I comes across, especially brand strategies, and specifically "strategic" creative briefs, will have elements of Bare Assertion naively woven into them.

You wouldn’t expect big corporates to fall into such a simple logical pit, but here are some examples of bare assertion coming out of the woodwork, or at least telling sympthoms:

"to become the world’s top/best/ best known/most loved/leader…".
Mission/Vision/Positioning statements that are completely wishful thinking:  Don’t get me wrong, having a goal is important, but having an ambition does not solve the question of how to achieve said ambition. And I’m sorry, even if you’re one of the gullible many who believe in "the law of attraction", we cannot develop creative according to that.

"This brand will be cool, young, fun and fashionable. "
Maybe it will, maybe it won’t, but if we want to have a strategy to make that happen, then no number of result-orientated aspirations, masquerading as brand values, drivers or attributes, will tell us what makes a brand all those things.

"Our strategy is to become customer centric / human touch champions / design driven / insight driven."
As opposed to all the brands out there who try to achieve the opposite?

"This is about encouraging brand love and speaking with an authentic voice."
"Love marks", is nothing more than branding rebranded, "be yourself" is useful only if you know yourself.

"Our goal in this project is to redefine the brand and maximise value to increase return on investment."
In other words, we want to succeed and get our money’s worth. Thanks for that valuable insight.

Building a brand is a long, trying, quest. Dreaming of the grail feels nice, and, yes, it might be useful to remember why we’re on the road in the first place, but seeing only the grail instead of keeping our senses open to the road  – that’s deadly. We have promises to keep.

P.S.
Don’t be confused by the lack of insight in the examples to think that’s the solution. Insights alone do not make a strategy either, but that’s another story.