Developing brands? The 7 most important lessons I learned.

My career in brand development lasted over 50 years. I was fortunate to have had one client, IDV/Diageo, for 36 of them. There were successes and failures. Here are the most important lessons I learned.

And these are not opinions or hypotheses. They are based on what actually happened.

1. "If you have more than one solution to a problem, you don't have any."

Once we had a success under our belts I came to realise that if you really believed in what you were doing, there could only be one answer to a brief.

Multiple solutions are easy. And they're a great way to get rich. All those options and alternatives to research. But working closely with intelligent clients who really understood the problems we were trying to solve, the single solution was the only game in town.

2. "The business of ideas is not a democracy."

Democracy destroys good ideas. If you canvass the opinion of intelligent colleagues, they are bound to make suggestions. And asking consumers what they think of new ideas is the most democratic act of all.

The best clients were complete autocrats. They knew exactly what they wanted. Down to every detail.

I could never understand why a company can spend $100,000 on a new pack design and then goes out and asks people who know absolutely nothing about design to critique it. Crazy!

3. "Don't ask consumers what they want. Tell them what you have."

We learned early on that asking consumers to comment on new brand ideas was a waste of time and money.

Our approach was to make an idea as realistic as possible and tell people that it was out there and others were buying it. We didn't want them to change it. We wanted to see if they'd buy it.

And their decision was only a guide-line. If we didn't agree with it, we went ahead anyway.

4. "Cut your research budget in half and then halve it again."

Companies spend far too much money on consumer research. They are looking for arse-covering certainty. There is no such thing.

We never did more than 4 focus groups on anything. And invariably it was more than we needed. Ideas worked because smart people made good decisions. Because they understood the business they were in.

5. "The person at the head of the table."

We never had a successful brand commissioned by middle management. Never. All our successful brands were created for top management.

Middle managers were, understandably, afraid of failing. They needed research reassurance to protect against it. That took time and cost money. An appetite for risk was a luxury not normally available to middle management.

Top management knew that it was always possible to fail. The secret was to make failure quick, and cheap.

6. "Marketing and over-think."

We never had a successful brand that was developed for a marketing department.

Marketing people tended to 'over-think' ideas. Why this product? Why that brand name? Are we sure about this design?

They are in possession of a 'marketing science' toolbox there to help eliminate risk. It doesn't.

7. "Floreat emptor. Let the buyer flourish."

I worked with hundreds of clients in my time. But if I encountered half a dozen who were good at buying ideas, it was a lot.

When you think about it, you can have the best idea in the world. You might argue it brilliantly. But if the person on the other side of the table doesn't like it, it's no idea at all. Think of what happened in the US Senate last week.

There were two types of good buyers. Top people who weren't interested in "how?" but in "how soon?" They simply trusted us to do what we were paid for.

And the best clients of all were the people who were as steeped in the problem as we were. They really understood the single solution when it emerged.

That's it. These were the things I learned in my time. And, as I said above, they are not observations or hypotheses. They are what actually happened.

You can read the full story in my book, "That s*it will never sell!"

Last time I looked, Amazon were selling at 30% off.