Doing It Together

I asked myself a few years back, how can branding be more collaborative, more co-creation and less on the dark arts side of things?

For a long time a relationship with a brand designer or brand agency and a client was well, oppositional. In the same way that a lot of brands are oppositional to their customers.?

It is you vs us.

Often a battle to the death ensued and the relationship suffered rather than grew.

And if not oppositional it certainly was like black magic. The ‘creative’ went away, came back, did the big reveal and you liked it or you didn’t but either way you had no handle on what was going on.

That was the dark realm of brand design. Don’t look too closely at it or it might evaporate.

What happens if we open up the mystical process of creativity and join forces with the wisdom and knowledge of the client and their insights?

What happens if we get on the same side both in the way we work with our clients and the way those brands work with their customers?

Many years ago I began to test this idea out. The results were...better!

We have seen the rise and rise of the word partner. But are we?

We have seen the rise and rise of the word partner. But are we?

Partner says ‘we are in this together’, ‘we are united in our goal’. But if it is just a way to duck under the radar and ultimately do the same old thing which was oppositional in nature, then it is just window dressing.

Same with brands.

Customer expectations are changing.

Customer expectations are changing.

It is more about ‘us' and less about ‘you’.

We saw lots of ‘me’ kind of dialogue over recent years in brands but mercifully I think we are seeing a drop in that positioning. But that is for another time.

So what does it look like to collaborate and co-create with a brand designer or brand strategist?

I get asked this a lot. In short, more questions and less answers!

Over many years designing, teaching some pretty clever folk and some research thrown in we discovered the right questions lead to better, more enduring, more meaningful answers - and then you have the questions for life.

Giving away trade secrets? Yes we do. Because it is co-creation not dark arts remember.

It is a careful process that we have developed over many years that brings out the best in each member of the, dare I say, partnership.

It is permission to get it wrong, it is the skills and support to let go of conventional pathways and develop new more resilient and relevant pathways to connect, you and your customers.

You see moving into new more adaptable brand positioning means courage and patience.

Is it worth it?

Here is what someone recently said after test driving their new brand story with their customer; ‘It was blissful!’ ‘It was a shared, deeply felt understanding.’

They used to talk about KPIs and products and battle away to convince or ‘win over’ their customers.?

They now entered into the journey of their customer, together, as, ah, partners.

Better right?