A new agency construct is bringing brand development and design together, with technology at its core
From the moment you woke up this morning to the time you reached your desk, it's estimated that you'll have been exposed to over 100,000 forms of technology and over 200 interactions with brands, business and offers. That's baffling – try to list them.
A focus group was recently asked to do just that and the result was two distinct lists. The first was technology based – Oyster cards, alarm clocks, iPads, digital displays on the tube and so on. The other was a list of brand names – Kellogg's, TFL, Colgate, Cannondale etc. Not a single participant connected the dots and created a list that included both technologies and brands.
The challenge for brand owners is in uniting these two elements in consumers' minds, converting standalone encounters into meaningful experiences of the brands they represent. There needs to be a move away from the passive, isolated interactions that we see all around us, towards immersive experiences that resonate throughout our everyday lives. Very few brands have embraced this shift; they have failed to recognise that brands today are not built by directing singular messages 'at' consumers. Brands exist as experiences, and consumers themselves decide how and when to engage with the brands that appeal to them.
Multiple obstacles create a set of false blinkers that prevent brand owners reaching this realisation. It's easy to say that marketers are failing to embrace the diversity of contemporary media and technology, but we should also recognise complacency, laziness and legacy. Even major brands and their owners can sometimes be guilty of the "but that's the way we've always done it" mindset.
When Bart Becht, the previous CEO of Reckitt Benckiser and one of the great business leaders of the last decade, collected the UK Marketing Society's Leader of the Year award at the end of 2011, he told the audience – senior marketers from some of the world's biggest advertisers – that it had been easy. Most of them, he said, "are still spending half your marketing budget on TV, and your consumers aren't watching".
Businesses like ours need to help clients rather than perpetuate legacy thinking about the ways in which brands today and tomorrow can succeed. Media fragmentation and progress in technology means that no global brand consultancy has established the real cross-channel competency that would enable a helpful extension to the advisory and creative skillsets that historically defined our work. Many simply have not been able to escape the research-strategy-identity-guidelines-maintenance treadmill for long enough to keep pace with technology and innovation.
Equally, 'digital' agencies – another lazy descriptor – have only been able to grow globally by becoming communications or productions businesses. This has meant the gap between brands and consumers' everyday interactions has been impossible to plug – until now.
A new agency construct is emerging that brings together, with integrity and consistency, the worlds of strategic brand development and design with technology at the core. The Brand Union and Digit are examples of this (disclaimer: I'm the CEO of The Brand Union), where agencies are combining strategic and global brand expertise with world–class capabilities in technology and innovation. This marriage of disciplines helps to define and create experiences for brands that align with consumer lifestyles and enhance, rather than interrupt or, worse, fail to engage with their everyday lives.
This new construct is particularly attractive in the current economic environment. Clients are increasingly looking to their agencies to keep them competitive, especially when brands that embrace the channels their consumers engage with steal the march – and the profile – on those who are returning to John Wanamaker's famous quote: "half the money I spend on advertising is wasted… trouble is I don't know which half." Back to Mr Becht, who absolutely knew the difference.
Toby Southgate is CEO, UK & Ireland of The Brand Union – follow it on Twitter @thebrandunion
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