Getting kicked out of bed for farting.

Getting kicked out of bed for farting, or getting laughed out of the boardroom.

We’re (maybe) coming out of a global pandemic. All brands, big and small, have felt the impact of the crisis of the past two years.

So what do the bigwig CEO's of many brands decide to do? 'Right, Ken. Let's do a Flash Mob'.

In their panic mode, they make snap decisions. They throw everything at it and hope something sticks. They’re competing against – well, everyone – ergh, it's got to be exhausting.

But this isn’t the time to make snap decisions. Now is the time to put your thinking cap on and work out how stand out from the crowd, and not be a flash in the pan.

Data, because everyone loves hard facts

BrandZ data shows brands that continued their investment in marketing during the financial crisis of 2008 recovered a huge nine (yes nine) times faster. It'll be the same for this crisis, and the next one, and the next.

So what does this tell us? Big cheese and Global Head at BrandZ, Doreen Wang, says that marketing is ‘a critical investment, and not a cost that can be easily cut’.

Yes, yes, I know that some, in mad hysteria turned off those marketing taps momentarily and you’re probably now wondering if you can scrape it together again. Yes you can – so accept a slap on those wrists and don’t do it again. Pinky promise, right?

So if you turned the taps off in 2020 & 2021, there's still a plan for you.

The good news is that there is no better time than during or after a recession (or global pandemic) to grab market share from failing or slow competitors.?

The IPA recently released its Bellwether report, stating UK marketing budgets expanded for the first time in a year and a half.

Lovely jubbly. But obviously that means your arch enemy is also investing back in their marketing. Oh dear.

Posh had it right

People far smarter than me recognised a long time ago the value of creating famous brands. The greater the stature and infamy of your brand, the better chance you have of driving that company’s profitability skyhigh. Crikey, even Victoria Beckham knows how important brand building is to be successful, as she famously said 'I want to be more famous than Persil Automatic'.

Fame works for brands.

But something's stopping the marketers, the great, talented, clever marketing teams from launching that long-term strategy, that killer idea, the campaign that’ll send that revenue higher than William Shatner’s hairpiece on his 30-second space flight.

So what’s stopping them?

More often than not it's the C-Suite, that’s who. The C-Bomb of grey suits who want a quick outcome, a quick fix and the ones that've spent the past forty years sorting the revenue setbacks with the same old solutions.?

Gerald in finance, 'we’ll just get rid of those hipster-marketing wankers. Or just cut their soy latte budget.'

When the boardroom meets with things going awry and revenue up the swanny, you can bet your bottom dollar that the c-suite doesn't include the marketing team.

No wonder CMOs often keep their heads down, going along the quick-fix ideas and hanging onto their jobs by the skin of their teeth. Lest we forget the median-average CMO tenure is getting ever shorter, just 25 months at the last count.

Excel makes them hard

But fame should be the number one thing on every CEO or CFO's list. Famous brands sell more stuff, to more people, more often and for more margin. So it’s recession-proof, increases market share, allows premium pricing, attracts chuffin' loads more customers and helps keep the current customers schweet.

It makes all the lines on the graph go up, which gives every CFO a hard on. ??

But it’s not the obvious lever they pull in that moment of panic. And thats the problem. They feel much more comfortable squeezing suppliers for cheaper costs, wrestling with retailers for higher margins or just being a dick by putting their staff on wage freezes.

They need to listen to the CMO. And the CMO needs to learn to fight back, to fight their corner for recognition. Showing them fame is the name of the game.

But becoming famous ain’t just a flash-mob away, an appearance on I’m a Celebrity or a streak across the T20 at Lords. Building fame for brands is a marathon, not a sprint.

Binet’s the balls

Let’s talk short-term Vs long-term brand building.

Les Binet said that “Brand building is more important in a digital world that it is in the old economy. Of course, most marketers have learned completely the wrong lesson. They’ve seen the efficiency of short-term activation and they put all their money in there. But, in fact, what they actually should be doing is making digital activation work efficiently by supporting it with broad-reach, emotional brand building.”

Lest we forget, Binet knows his onions. He's looked at more research than you've had hot dinners.

Fame takes focus and discipline. So that's not a fancy new idea every week, a creative DM, a cheeky Instagram story, an audacious LinkedIn poll. The secret to building a brand for the long term is to come up with a compelling single-minded proposition and then bring it to life with a sizzlingly good idea over and over again.

Have a singular focus on just one objective, and stick to it. Have the discipline to never deviate. The Single Minded Proposition works for one big reason –it’s the epitome of your brand, the overarching reason why your consumers want your product, and an idea that no-one can forget.

'Woah, how can something be that good?' I hear you say.

Ronseal

Well if your neighbour, sleazy Ken, says he needs to stain his fence, which brand springs to mind? Ronseal. Does exactly what it says on the tin.

An average man points at his tin of woodstain and says that infamous line hasn’t changed. It is so well-known that the line has become a common colloquial phrase – that the name accurately describes its qualities.

No changes, no deviation, new ideas and sticking with that single-minded proposition.

Red Bull

Red Bull gives you wings. They don't deviate. Independent agency Kastner helped build the brand from scratch in 1985. Starting with the design of the can, they then introduced their cheeky, witty cartoon commercials.?

Now cult classics, the distinctive illustration style is not only timeless but has been part of a multi-channel approach and made the brand the biggest in energy drinks – and the first anyone thinks when ordering one.

Their ads have been banned from tube stations, they’ve received complaints from the ASA and they’ve even been taken to court for misleading advertising as Red Bull was found to ‘not actually give you wings’. Jesus. Even that didn’t stop them.

Levi’s

The undoubtedly biggest brand of jeans worldwide.?So well known that you can recognise that people are talking about their particular jeans from three recognisable numbers – 501.

The ubiquitous name Levi’s has been at the forefront of any movement, any popular culture in every stylised moment of modern America. From dressing Cowboys in 1950s Hollywood and protestors of the Vietnam war to summer Olympic athletes and now social media influencers, they know how to cut against the grain, to attract the most attention and to STICK TO their guns.

Family values

But the most powerful propositions haven’t always come from mega brands with deep pockets and Saatchi on speed dial. Nope. Because often it takes a family-run business (where the staff turnover is small) to actually have the discipline to not deviate.

Specsavers

Still owned by the original founders husband and wife team Doug and Mary Perkins, appointed Creative Director Graham Daldry in 1999. After 15 years of business, his team changed the game when they introduced; Should’ve gone to Specsavers.

One of the most recognised and successful advertising campaigns in Britain, to this day the high street opticians hasn’t deviated from the light-hearted emotional brand building.?

Warburtons

Chairman Jonathan Warburton is the fifth generation of the family clan – and as the UK’s biggest bread brand in front of rivals Kingsmill and Hovis, they’ve been pretty clever with their strategy. They picked their biggest strength and stuck by it – their family values. Big hitters Bobby De Niro and George Clooney may star in their TV ads, but the company sticks to their thing – so much so that their own Chairman cameos in the adverts with the A listers.

And Warburtons have still come out on top. The public relates to the brand, with real-life family man Mr Warburton at its helm – yet is star-struck by their celebrity adverts. Combine that with that with some other points of difference, and hell – it sells by the bakers dozen in Tesco. And if a loaf of bread can make you feel warm and fuzzy inside, then the brand is getting it right.

Now then, you haven’t all got Warburton’s millions.

So what can marketers do right now for their brand??

• Take action. Learn to debate the C-suite and fight the marketing corner – even if shirt sleeves need to be rolled up and it gets dirty.
• Pick ONE objective, stick to it and never fooking deviate. It must contain time, value and the competition for an objective, to be an objective.
• Land on that secret weapon, the Single-Minded Proposition once again NEVER DEVIATE. Oh, if it's longer than one sentence, then it's not single-minded enough.
• Choose the most daring path, choose risk, choose shocking and choose life.
• And those MBA smarmy faces in the boardroom? Punch ‘em in the face with your one last unfair legal advantage... creativity.

As the great Henry Ford once said: “A man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time”. And I bet my last dollar, good ol' Henry never kicked anybody out of bed for farting.

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Peace ??