Influx

Consistency is the mantra that many marketing people believe in. In a time of massively fragmented media, there is increasing pressure on driving this consistency through the line. However, according to brand strategy guru, John Grant, consistency might be the last thing that brands need these days. His latest blog post contains some really nice thinking that he is openly encouraging all planners to steal from him.

Here are some examples of John’s insight.

“Nike works to similar principles. Russell Davies the global planning director told me recently that there is deliberately no central idea, no brand essence statement or any such nonsense. They don’t believe one great big idea can be all things to all people. They believe in lots of good ideas which cumulatively keep the brand fresh and work for the businesses in myriad ways.”

“If you believe that most of the effectiveness of marketing today comes from contagion, then consistency – and the impulse behind it of wanting to rigidly control the expressions of the brand – is just a plain bad idea. Contagion is a process of Chinese whispers and people adding their own creative ideas. Red Bull in its heyday had all sorts of random ideas in the mix.”

“Yet another beer brand, Carling has made itself unpopular with music fans (or at least the ones in my recent research groups) by staging a takeover of alternative music venues in the UK. This devalues the experience of discovery; like getting to the top of Everest and finding a vending machine. The last straw according to these punters was Carling sponsoring the buskers on London Underground.”

In a world where people are looking for brands to be more human and authentic, perhaps behaving predictably has issues. The things we like and are attracted to are often imperfect and have flaws. The future is about developing deep and rich brand character and communicating it in as many diverse and interesting ways as possible. As Influx’s last post on seasonality suggests, consumers are looking for the unpredictable, so why should your brand be?