No I’m not just ranting about my dislike of buzz words—though I do loath buzz words, especially when I catch myself using them all the time—this is more on the concept of branding, its uselessness in certain instances and what to do about it.
In particular, I will deal with an idea that has been talked about a lot in my city: the need to brand the City of London, Ontario. I am always reading benedictions from marketing experts telling me to brand my company or be doomed to failure. Now I do think those are quite important with regards to companies, but I think there is an inherent problem if one tries to brand a city.
To an extent, branding a city is good because it gives focus and shows you your priorities. But there in lies the problem, it shows you ‘your’ priorities, the Brander’s priorities. Are my priorities omnipotent in a city of 492,200 people, what about the other 491,199 people, they are apart of London are they not? The solution would be to find out “what London is” to the remaining 491,199 Londoners, right?
Wrong, since of course someone from the peanut gallery would point out—and be correct—that “you can’t canvas 492,200 people about ‘what London is to them’ because there would be no agreement.”
Holy banana pancakes, really?! That’s the very point I’m trying to make. There is no agreement, so why insist on having one agreed upon brand. Why can’t a city be many different things to many different people.
The need to focus on one brand leads to what I am now coining as Ross’ Brand Uselessness Relationship. (Nobel ceremony to follow this blog post, my house, BYOB). The relationship is as follows: the uselessness and disconnected-from-reality-ness of a specific and singular brand is directly proportional to the number of people that brand tries to grasp in its’ scope.
The tension is between trying to create a realistic brand that is connected to the reality of the participants it claims to represent, and the impossibility of having only one brand represent all the unique opinions, interests and functions of every member of London. So a balance is needed. In hopes of ending this abstract deconstruction of a post with something practical, the best one can do is allow London to have many brands to many different people. Don’t look for a single brand you can communicate with mass media—which isn’t communication at all but instead impersonal broadcasting—instead look at the many different niche brands in London and communicate those to the people who would actually care.
By the way, what I’m saying is not new. It has been said again and again in new marketing and leadership literature over the past many decades. Think Stephen Covey in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, telling companies to have a mission statement for every person, then every department and finally the whole organization; as opposed to single mission statements using disconnected words and empty promises. Then think decades latter to Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson in Rework deconstructing mission statements and mass media advertising. It’s the wisdom that comes back again and again: bring it back to reality, out of abstraction and find a balance between the two.
However, this need for a balanced brand will then lead to my next problem which will likely be one of my next blog posts: the issue that broadcasting a brand does not mean what you’re branding actually is what is broadcasted. The problem that advertising your brand, is not advertising your brand. That Marketing Zen Koan will be dealt with in a future post.
