Who wants a sustainable marriage?

If I described my marriage as "sustainable" you’d probably feel sorry for me, because after all it doesn't sound like much fun. A long lasting marriage does not always signal a happy marriage. If the best you can say about your work and marriage is that they don't actively deplete you -- it might be time for some kind of change.

Herein lies the problem with brands successfully getting on board with sustainability. Brand people are big thinkers. They are people who want to entertain and change the world. Their motto is: It's gotta be big! it's gotta be bold! So far The Green agenda has been characterised by fear rather than positivity. The call to action has been less about change and more about making sure things remain the way they are. On the surface they appear to be two very different ideologies.

We work with many businesses who've come to us excited by the potential for their sustainability plan to change their category or business. Most already have the perfect strategy in place to achieve the change. The difficulty doesn't lie in having the perfect strategy. It's in realising the strategy, and to achieve that they must get brand teams on board. This calls for a very different approach.

One solution is to eradicate the word "sustainability" altogether. Sustainability is a bit of an uninspiring-status-quo-maintaining kind of word. It's not the sort of word that drives marketeers, or indeed consumers wild with possibility. Let's face it it's no "social media" folks.

Why not use different words to convey the idea? Words that capture the meaning but are less sustainable sounding. Less sack cloth and ashes, and more "hell yeah I want some of that". The words we use are important. They set the tone and signal our intent. You can be bold. This is a vision of where you want the brand to get to - the difference you want to make to the world. It's big news. Instead of simply preserving the status quo aspire to something far more positive. Use words like, "thrive" or "flourish"? The brands that have adopted this approach to sustainability, brands such as, TOMS shoes or Chipolte, are the ones that have succeeded in capturing the consumer imagination.

Sustainability has the potential to unlock the goodness in a category and a brand in a very real way. It's the good news that people want to hear about from the brands they love. But until we find ways articulate that in language that marketeers and consumers understand we'll never make it happen.

Meetings: 15 useful minutes and lots of fluff.

How often do we hear colleagues say with a burdened sigh, "I spend my life in meetings". It's an all too common lament, but it's not the meetings themselves, it's how we run them that's the problem.

We are big believers that there is no substitute for a face-to-face meeting. They are great for relationship building and if managed properly they can achieve a great deal. We always insist on a meeting for all major decisions, even if we're in and out in half an hour and have travelled by plane, train and automobile to get there. It always saves time in the long run and more importantly you can truly read people, which just isn't possible by email.

So I was intrigued to see a new meeting strategy courtesy of the television show Mr Selfridge. Instead of one or two mammoth meetings a day, Mr Selfridge favoured a series of shorter meetings.  Each meeting lasts no longer than 15 minutes, because according to him, "Everything is said, that needs to be said in a quarter of an hour, after that it’s hot wind."

We tend to agree with this no nonsense approach. Here's a little introduction to our black and white approach to meetings:

1. Be clear on the purpose and get someone to lead. A pre-meeting about a nebulous meeting is just about the most depressing entry in a corporate diary.

2. Meetings: you can't beat them, but you shouldn't always join them. Make sure that your presence is absolutely necessary.

3. Set a time and stick to it. A standing meeting is an interesting way to make this happen but don't get too comfy; don't serve continental coffees or biscuits.

4. Make decisions quickly and unanimously and move on. Topics in meetings tend to be like Watford roundabout. If you don't break off at some point you'll keep on going round in circles forever.

5. Make someone responsible for follow ups and give action points a deadline. 

Marketing jargon: let's just talk sense

Not too long ago I attended a naming session. People struggled to come up with ideas - suggestions were hard won and unremarkable. Then lunch arrived and we were asked to “align on lunch orders”. How on earth does one align on a ham sandwich?

It struck me then that this kind of business speak is having an insidious effect on the way we express ourselves creatively. For me, it goes to reinforce the importance of language.

If you work in marketing the chances are at some point you’ll have attempted to ‘crystallise your vision’. It sounds like a reason to visit to the eye doctor, but all it really means is that you’ve formed a plan of where you want your brand to get too. Similarly, where once we gave something a "thorough looking over" now we "drill down". The boring analogy is unintentionally appropriate in this case.

So why not just say what we mean? Because using jargon has become synonymous with sounding professional. Because when you're precise it's easier to spot when you're wrong. Because we've begun to place value on verbosity rather than talking sense. How often do we hear in meetings, "That sounds good." Far more often than we hear, "That makes sense." We’ve all adopted this kind of unintelligible business speak at some point at the expense of
precision and lucidity.

Take creative briefs for example. They should be just that, brief not a dumping ground for strategy. Ask yourself, what's the minimum information I can pass on and still ensure they do the job well. Make them interesting. They are the gateway to a project and a working relationship. They're also the place designers look to be inspired. The words we use are incredibly important. How we choose to describe the task matters because it signals our intent. Words have the power to inspire, engage and persuade.

Five things to bear in mind when you're writing a creative brief:

1. Read and re-read everything you write. If you stumble on a sentence that sounds verbose ask yourself what you really mean - then write exactly that. It will be appreciated.

2. Remember the 1980's slogan written by Fay Weldon: Go to work on an egg. It's simple and brilliant. Even if you know that legal will eventually step in and write ten words for your every one, don't start out with anything less than a precise statement of intent. Otherwise your brief will sound like this, “An egg whilst being a very good source of protein (and we offer no guarantee of that) for breakfast cannot be expected to transport you to your place of work." Precision shouldn't take any prisoners.

3. Avoid redundant words or phrases. When you write about your company and what you excel at always ask yourself a question, "As opposed to what"? There are so many well-worn phrases out there and some things are the price of entry into a category. Every industry has its own phrases. Be aware of them. "We have a dedicated team of expert consultants", as opposed to what? An uninterested load of amateurs? If it is true then prove it. Facts are more believable and more inspiring.

4. Every client has their own internal terminology, with a set of acronyms that Jack Bauer would be proud of. But when you're writing briefs or presentations ask yourself if you really need them. Will everyone know what you mean? As an agency it's important to clarify the meaning. Ask questions or the result will be compromised.

5. Try to find an unexpected analogy or a creative phrase for what you want to say. Analogies are a great way to explain something complex. They're a creative springboard from which designers can dive into the project.

Naming: What do we call ourselves?

We know what we’re about, but what do we call ourselves? A common enough problem.

Here’s how we went about it:

First we asked ourselves a few honest questions up front about who we are, what we do and why people would want to come to us rather than any of our competitors. Our name had to reflect our black and white approach to life, and be descriptive but still personable – oh and ideally three short words (because things always look better in threes and there are three founding partners).Then we developed a simple checklist to judge our prospective names against. We did this up front so that in the grip of creative fever we wouldn't become overly attached to a name that wasn't right for us - like Brandmazing - good as it might sound.

So, in no particular order, here's our naming checklist:

Our name must:

• Not be obscure. No Egg, Goldfish or Apple for us - it shouldn’t need explaining
• Mustn't sound pretentious. We're not The Brand People, The Brand Onion, or even The Brand Bunion
• Ideally nod to our collaborative approach
• Convey a sense of honesty and straightforwardness
• Not contain our surnames- it's not all about us
• Have simple SEO built in
• Be a grower - better second time around
• Sound good when we answer the phone

So, Our Design Agency it is. That simple.

Got a problem? Try black and white thinking.

People thought we were mad attempting to get a design business off the ground during the deepest UK recession since records began. There's certainly no shortage of competition: a simple Google search of the phrase ‘design agency UK’ throws up 194,000,000 results. It looked as if the world didn't need another design or branding consultancy, yet it was clear to us that such challenging economic conditions called for an alternative approach to design and brand building - one where we cut out the hubris and get back to basics.

We live in an age where we’re swamped with information. But information and technology don't always make life simpler. From confusing charts and models, to uninterruptible jargon and wordy propositions, modern marketing has become a highly complicated and frustrating business. It’s little wonder that so much of what it delivers misses the mark and leaves consumers baffled and boards nonplussed.

What’s needed in today’s complex business environment is some good old fashioned simplicity, or as we call it - black and white thinking. We focus on what good design has always done well: creative problem solving. Black and white thinking is important for problem solving. It's a skill, like carpentry, but somehow we lost it along the way in the hubbub about branding.

This desire for simplicity isn’t just talk. It has required us to fundamentally shift the way that we work:

1. We've seen so much marketing effort and design time go to waste in answering the wrong problem. But when you’re forced to be simple you’ll quickly discover that you’re forced to face the real problem. We put emphasis on defining the problem up front, because the old adage remains true today: a problem well defined is a problem half solved.

2.  Most marketing problems these days are confronted by the creation of a lengthy presentation. There is a tendency to mistake simplicity for naïvety. It's assumed that the longer and more verbose the ‘slide deck’ the more credibility it will have. We've always found that a jazzy fifty plus slide presentations, as impressive as they might look, often mask a lack of real understanding of the problem. We prefer to hash things out around our table, and instead of heading to Getty Images we hand-draw our slides for each client. This process forces us to be sure we really know what we’re talking about.

3.  One of the most challenging aspects of black and white thinking is that there's nowhere to hide. When you can't deliver decoration, you have to deliver substance. Our ideas begin as black and white sketches. This way we can all agree on the power of an idea in its simplest form.

This new - old - approach to black and white thinking also streamlines the process - shortening the time it takes to agree on a great idea. Simplicity reduces our clients' stress levels rather than adding to it, but most importantly it helps them to make better decisions. And sound decision making is what's needed to succeed in this challenging economic climate.