Standing your GROUND

If you want your book on brands to stick around, you better have a point of view.

And if you want the book to get noticed in the first place, it better be upfront in the title.

‘Rebrand Right.’ by Rachel Fairley & Sarah Robb and ‘Feral Strategy’ by Richard Huntington both pull that off with élan.

But titles say more than why a book is worth a read. They also hint at where the authors' standpoint on brands came from.

I often find that the more interesting story.

Rachel and Sarah’s backgrounds are in brand identity, client-side marketing and strategy coaching.

Their book is a ‘how-to-do-it’, a step-by-step guide to refreshing brands with particular emphasis on avoiding jargon, following Ehrenberg-Bass and managing stakeholders. It’s about clarity, cohesion and control.

The first clue to all this in the title is in the word ‘Rebrand’. That always sounds to me like you’re heading towards a new visual identity.

So no surprise it leads to lots of talk about distinctive brand assets and a whole chapter on identity development.

The other clue is the other word, ‘Right’. The implication is there is a way to get it right and the authors have the experience of 100 rebrands to back that up.

You sense they also have the scars to prove this, particularly as the guide to getting internal buy-in becomes ever more complex. More than once, the reader is beseeched not to feel overwhelmed or daunted.

But the book’s a good read, textbook in style and full of sound advice.

And there’s a big yellow full stop on the cover after ‘Right’. End of argument.

Richard Huntington’s ‘Feral Strategy’ is a wild old ride, easily read in a single sitting if you can hang on.

There are any number of provocative thoughts, developed over his 30 year career in advertising agencies like AMV, HHCL and Saatchi & Saatchi.

The theme he builds up to is when it comes to brand strategy, it’s more important to be interesting than right.

The quote that stands out is “if you have ever said ‘Distinctive Brand Assets’ or any other bit of flat-packed marketing twaddle out loud, you have fallen prey, if only momentarily, to the forces of orthodoxy”.

And why ‘Feral’? For that matter, why no inclusion of the word ‘brand’ before ‘Strategy’? Are we just meant to know?

The answer is because this is Richard’s positioning in the ad world. The enemy for him is mediocrity, born of orthodoxies, frameworks and processes. His solution is freedom with a dose of independence.

So the two books are polar opposites: one argues for doing things the right way, the other for doing things your own way.

Each one leaves us in no doubt where the authors take their stand on the marketing battlefield, shaped by their own deeper motivations, sharpened by the need to stand out, to raise a flag.

All of which is yet another example of why brand strategy so often turns tribal. It’s a turf war where positions are fiercely defended and no one dares say “it depends”, because that won’t win you the pitch.

It’s not just disagreement, it’s survival.

I’ve gradually come to realise this too.

My ‘Brandstand’ is baked into the name of my company, Closer to Brands.

It reflects my belief that brands have to make emotional connections and the desire to help clients move people closer to their brands.

But thinking about it, that’s not quite what I stand for. People should be the subject, brands the object. Active versus passive agency.

So what I actually stand for is people moving closer to brands.

God, that’s taken a long time to work out.