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.

It happens every time. You finally get a brand identity approved then someone comes back, pale as sheet and says "Well we just showed the new logo to [ anything from CEO to wife to janitor], and s/he said ‘don’t you think it looks a little like an X’"?

Some points regarding the concern that people may have irrelevant (obscene or other) associations for the new mark:

1. Graphical marks always appear in context. There is no situation in which the mark appears totally alone and without any context. When the mark is given in context the chances of such associations prevailing are practically none-existent.
Any graphic brand in the world, when taken out of context can be read in some negative way.

2. The human brain is always happy to give significance, even when there isn’t any context. When abstract shapes are seen, people will always find imagery in them. They will do that even if these are random: ink blots, cracks in paint or mould stains on the ceiling. The difference is that some people are aware of doing that, and others can see only their own interpretation. In reality – it doesn’t happen thanks to context. And even if a couple of times it does, it doesn’t "stick".

3. The only acceptable type of design research is a "disaster check", you present it to people of different age groups and backgrounds who are asked to free associate about it, unless the same negative connotation keeps coming time and time again – you’re safe. The question is not "Is it possible for a person to see THAT in the mark?" but "WILL people likely see THAT?".

The answer is usually – They absolutely will not.

(Oh, and people will make parodies on the net anyway…)

(Originally Published in Hub Magazine, this article led Landor’s Perspectives anthology in 2011 and was highly commended at the same year’s Atticus prize)

They say time flies when you’re having fun. Perhaps it flies even faster when you’re confused. Even though the first commercial website, O’Reilly Media’s GNN, launched nearly two decades ago, in August 1993, the marketing community’s attitude toward the Internet is still split between two mutually exclusive attitudes, which eye each other suspiciously.

On one side we have the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed evangelical digital radicals, declaring digital to be the end of marketing as we know it, if not the end of marketing, period. On the other side, glaring at them with contempt are the traditional conservatives who declare “people are people,” gripe that it’s all hype, and say: “Okay, okay–maybe we’ll give the ad agency a tiny sliver of the budget to experiment with this ‘online.’”

In their heart of hearts (as it is no longer acceptable to admit this out loud) the conservatives simply do not understand the excitement. The radicals say that the conservatives have not seen the–no doubt, electric blue–digital light.

While digital marketers’ fascination with the latest and greatest does make them susceptible to hype, the old-school camp’s resistance holds back progress. Dare we say that even when “markets are conversations,” it doesn’t mean “branding is dead?” Maybe it’s just branding as we know it that should die.

Surprisingly, if one examines the three fundamental tensions that make the Internet such a challenging medium for marketing, the seemingly conflicting agendas of the old and new schools of marketing are reconciled. Within these three tensions lie valuable insights into the future of marketing. Continue reading →