Symbols & substance - great brands do both

Hello everyone,

This week some thoughts on how strong brands use symbols to great effect and how CMOs can lead the process to identify, nurture, and even invent them in a premium professional services firm or knowledge-intensive B2B business.

Symbols are one of the most powerful elements of a good brand strategy but are often overlooked by traditional management consultants because they lean as heavily on EQ as IQ.

That makes CMOs uniquely qualified to create and nurture strong symbols to help project what makes their firm distinctive in the market.

By helping develop brand symbols?CMOs can become more strategically influential ?within their firms because they involve much more than communications.

Stand for, to stand out?

What exactly is a brand symbol? They come in many shapes and sizes but whether big or small they punch above their weight in terms of their ability to cut through and communicate something about the brand strategy that might otherwise get lost in all the noise.

Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic has always worked hard to differentiate its customer experience from its much bigger flag carrier competitors. Not easy in a business where so much of the ‘product’ is literally commoditised – same airplanes, same airports, same security and immigration services.

One of the ways Virgin does this is with?its airport lounges ?– called Clubhouses – for its business class and most loyal customers. If you’ve ever stepped into one you’ll remember the experience. Everything from the lighting and interior design to the shoe-shine service and spa/hair salon creates a powerful symbol of what Virgin stands for.

Another example, from a brand that uses symbols masterfully, is Apple’s packaging. Apple understands the ritual and ceremony that goes along with unwrapping a new and relatively expensive product like a new iPhone or?even some new earphones .

The packaging is as well designed as the product inside, from the density of the card to the sophistication of the protective stickers that envelop the device.

They even go to the trouble of creating a small vacuum inside the box so that it feels better when you open it. Steve Jobs would have been proud of that one!

Brand symbols are everywhere when you look. When you think of any brand in your head that means something to you, you’ll probably land on something ’symbolic’ — something that symbolises a bigger more substantial idea about a brand.

Coming to the world of brand differentiation in professional services,?McKinsey’s ?— highly?valuable?—?brand is built on an intense belief in the power of rigorous analysis. As they say themselves, “Our work is founded on a rigorous understanding of every client’s institutional context, sector dynamics, and macroeconomic environment.”?It’s part of what makes them the?brand?leader in their field.

They hire the ‘brightest and best’ analysts and have more PHDs on the team than many universities, but still, it’s hard to get this across clearly. A brand symbol that McKinsey has created to help them project their difference is the?McKinsey Global Institute .

Everything from the name through to the topics it covers:?“How could Earth’s changing climate impact socioeconomic systems across the world in the next three decades?” sounds more like a university than a strategy consulting firm.

It’s not a university, it probably doesn’t even have a physical location — the?McKinsey people ?associated with it are dispersed around the world — but still, it successfully helps project and reinforce the idea that the brand stands for rigour. Academic rigour in this case.

Another iconic example of a brand symbol in premium legal services is Kirkland & Ellis’ branded client experience in litigation. No, of course, they don’t call it that but they do it as well as any super-luxury hotel chain.

Over the years Kirkland has landed on a ‘way’ of doing litigation – usually referred to by people inside and outside the firm?in militaristic terms such as ‘scorched-earth approach’ or ‘take no prisoners’ ?– and they’ve turned it into their signature client experience.

Brand symbols are a powerful way to communicate what you stand for because they cut through a saturated world of claims and propositions that inevitably sound very similar, to a prospective client or recruit.?

The propositions still have a key role to play but combined with strong symbols the propositions are more compelling.

Click here ?to read the rest of the article on how to go about creating and nurturing brand symbols in a premium professional services firm (3 mins read).

That's all for this week.

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