Brand as brief

Brand projects aren’t mirrors. You don’t point them at organisation and say ‘tell us who we are’. Crystallise, understand, capture.

Brands are compasses. A way of aligning with strategy to plot a course for the future, and to inform decisions: not to mention innovation, culture, evolution, new product development.

Take this visitor marketing campaign for my home city. I love the expression of difference, displayed loud and proud on one of our ugliest 1970s monstrosities. It’ll be read by some as summing up the spirit of the place.

But it will work so much harder if it’s also seen as a brief for the future. A brief to reject the increasing homogeneity of UK towns and cities: the coffee chains, the shopping centres. To weigh every decision on its scales. Does this make us more normal, or less normal?

So it’s great to see that the same spirit has informed the council’s COVID advertising.

Imagine if the same creative bravery now went into every decision, on communications, on town planning, on bus tickets and wayfinding and lighting. Terrifying? Or exciting, exhilarating, liberating?

Brand projects can make everyone at the organisation feel comfortable. Ah, yes. We feel seen. Understood. Now everyone will know how great we are.

Or uncomfortable. Change is in the air. Excitement is coming. New things are possible.

Here’s a thought. Do you want to spend a load of money on a project that tells you how great you are? Or one one that tells you how great you could be?