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Start with your brand idea – what you stand for – and create new things that deliver that idea. Other ways of innovating – technology-led, finance-led or user-led – are risky and wasteful, because they generate ideas that may not be doable by you, or credible from you. Brand-led innovation works better, costs less – and helps build the long-term value of your brand. Using their brand idea as inspiration, we’ve created new travel and entertainment experiences at Heathrow Express, Historic Royal Palaces and Odeon. New shopping experiences at Manor, Orange and WaMu. New online services with Macmillan Cancer Support and Opodo. New products at PepsiCo and Unilever. And new business services at Chiswick Park, Powwow and Royal Mail.
Step back from what you do now, and find a bigger picture, a broader purpose. Think about what a changing world needs, and about what you uniquely do well. We extended Egg from a quirky credit card to ‘brilliant ideas made simple’. We extended Tate from art gallery to a set of visitor destinations where people could ‘look again, think again’. We extended Manpower from temporary jobs to the wider world of ‘contemporary work’. And we’ve done similar things with Amnesty International, BOC, Bovis, Fyffes, Kerry Group, Kingfisher, Macmillan Cancer Support, Standard Life, UNICEF, Wacom, World Vision.
Build a theme brand – one with a strong core theme that encourages a multitude of local variations. We’ve done this with Telenor, enabling this Norway-based telecoms business to grow successfully in sophisticated markets like Denmark, Sweden and Hungary, and in fast developing markets such as Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Create a platform brand – something that people want to be part of, to contribute to, to feel is theirs. Create a visual expression of the brand that people can adopt, adapt and make their own. In an increasingly post-consumer world, where people want to take part not just partake, this could be the future of branding. We’ve created pioneering, and sometimes controversial, platform brands with London 2012, and New York City. And through the platform brand approach, we’ve helped Macmillan Cancer Support and Samaritans become powerful movements for change.
Use brand to get noticed. Think big and do different. Identify what’s special about you, then find something that’s wrong with the world that only you can put right. Chiswick Park, for instance, promised to help people enjoy work. Goldfish was a credit card that offered useful benefits rather than gimmicky rewards. Heathrow Express brought airline standards to the tawdry world of railways. Orange made mobile phones accessible to everyone. We’ve given a similarly spectacular start to (RED), Alfa-Bank Express, Apple Records, Athens 2004 Olympics, Cegetel, Channel 5, First Direct, Frito-Lay TrueNorth, Go, Lagardère Active, London 2012, National Power, Oi, Opodo, Øresund, Our Lucaya, Portugal ICEP, Qatar Financial Centre, Repsol, Schaulager, Scoot and Sen.
Through brand, make the merger not a marriage but a birth. Research shows that most mergers fail – usually, because they never manage to get two very different cultures to co-exist. Instead, use the DNA of the two parents to create something excitingly new. Employees then leave behind the culture of the parents, and adopt the brand of the new child: they look forward not back. We’ve made mergers work for Accor, Camden, Diageo, E.ON, Fortis, Lloyds TSB, Merita, Portugal Telecom, Q8 and Vivo.
Businesses that grow by acquisition, or that open up in new cities, frequently find that their components start falling apart. Ideas and customers aren’t shared. Standards vary from one place to another. The whole becomes worth less than the sum of its parts. The answer is to use brand as a unifier. Create a shared sense of purpose. Bring people together behind a single idea. Show how the parts contribute to the whole. Abolish ‘not invented here’. And build a solid, single-minded business with a much higher value to investors. We’ve helped unify Affinity, Akzo, Alliance & Leicester, Amersham, Carter’s, Chargeurs, Credit Suisse, Fine Arts Museums, GM Vauxhall, Historic Royal Palaces, Italcementi Group, Linklaters, Manor, McDonald’s, Movistar, National Trust, Pilkington, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sistema Telecom, Smith & Nephew, Société Générale, Southbank Centre, Spring, Target and VAG.
Brand is the most powerful way to change minds. And turning round an underperforming organisation means big change – first, in how the organisation thinks of itself, then in how the world thinks of it. We helped pharmaceuticals giant Boehringer Ingelheim revitalise a slow-moving culture. We helped change BT from a hated institution to a privatisation success story. We helped GE become a powerhouse of innovation. We got cinema audiences flooding back to Odeon. We’re helping Unilever change from an FMCG conglomerate to a vitality business. And we’ve helped transform performance at Abbey, DTI, Hull, Liechtenstein, Lisbon Metro, Lundbeck, New York City, Norwich Union, PepsiCo SmartSpot, Prudential, Social Security, The Prince’s Trust, V&A and World Gold Council.
Take a radical approach to your portfolio. You may have too many product categories, too many sub-brands. You may want your customers to try more of what you offer. You may need to attract new customers through premium and economy lines. You may want to point different customers to different parts of your business. Create a brand architecture that makes it all clear to customers – that helps them navigate their way to what they want, and removes the barriers to maximising your sales. We’ve radically reorganised brand portfolios, and created sales growth, for Forte, Midland Group, Renault, Target, Tata, Tesco and Royal Mail.
One place to start is your brand. To get your share price up, or to prepare for a flotation, make it crystal clear what you stand for. Don’t be one of many, be one of one. We’ve dramatically increased the market value of Odeon, Orange, Sonae, SUEZ and Tokyo Metro.
Amplify your brand. Look deeply into what makes you special. Make sure that you’re doing something that the world needs. Build on this to sharpen your value proposition, and rethink the trade-offs between different stakeholders. We’ve created sharper differentiation for 3i, AIB, Aral, Beeline, Dairy Crest, GM Cadillac, IESE, Indesit, Irish Life, Millipore, New Museum, OshKosh, P&O, Powwow, Sky, Sony Ericsson, Staples, Starbucks, Sunglass Hut, Tesco, Vip and WaMu.
Create a multiplier brand, one that embraces other brands to enhance the meaning of both. For example, (RED) has embraced Amex, Apple, Gap and many others to create new (RED) products which have brought new income to (RED) and new customers to the partner brands. In each partnership, (RED) multiplies the meaning of its partner brand. And vice versa. London 2012 is a brand that embraces sponsor brands like Adidas, EDF Energy and Lloyds TSB to bring new meaning to both the event and its sponsors.