How does your brand make people happy?

Nobody likes bad news. It's a downer. We like to hear good news. It's how we're programmed.

So far most talk of sustainability has usually been
framed in terms of apocalyptic outcomes rather than creative possibilities. But it doesn't have to be that way. Brands like Tom's create happiness in spades.

Now take a look at your category through a happiness lens. 

What makes people miserable about it? Can your brand could turn that around?

Our Breakfast Club: the 'S' Words

Our Breakfast Club is an idea we've had to share and debate brand challenges and opportunities before work, and with coffee and croissant in hand. Each small session will offer simple straightforward advice on some of marketings sometimes complex topics, and we'll hear from people who've been there and done it. Our inaugural club is happening on 7th June with special thanks to our experts Alex Cole and Robyn Pearce and our client friends who are participating.

We agree with David Jones (Who Cares Wins) when he says, "Two of the biggest issues and opportunities facing business today are how to cope with the dramatic rise of social media and how to be more socially responsible."Social media and social mission are not two different things, but very much interlinked as I hope this first session will go to show.

We'll be posting content after the event and sharing the ideas discussed and soundbites.

If you are interested in attending or speaking at subsequent events please get in touch.

Is your brand improving quality of life?

There's a shift of focus happening in our society. From standard of living - a financial measure - to quality of life - based on our sense of wellbeing. But a study of 50,000 people in 14 countries, the Havas Media's Meaningful Brands study, showed that in the UK only five per cent of respondents believe that brands have a positive impact on their health, fitness, happiness or social relationships. 

The New Economics Foundation (NEF) has a shortlist of 5 ways to safeguard wellbeing in our everyday life. Which one is right for your category or your brand?

1. To connect with people
2. Be active
3. Take notice
4. Keep learning
5. Give

What's the best way for your brand to champion your consumers' wellbeing?

Goodness can give you oomph!

If you're in branding and in Western world you want to be top right quadrant - right? Top right is the place to be. Brands that occupy that space are generally game changers. They've got energy and they're differentiated.

There's now a new axis that can help you get there: the 'goodness' access. Brands that are moving in the market with purpose as the ones that've got oomph! These brands have social energy. They've got great purpose and they know how to be a true social brand. Ideas with social energy are the ones we remember, the forward looking ones, and the ones most likely to be shared by consumers.

In a Havas global study(Social Buisness Study 2010) 86% of consumers want to buy from and do business with brands that share their values and beliefs.

Could a great social idea get your brand moving in the right direction? A great social brand idea is where your brand's goodness and purpose meets it's creativity and energy.

Our philosophy? Simple, do what we do best.

We live in an age where we’re swamped with information. But information and technology don't always make life simpler. Last night, for example, overwhelmed with the number of take-away-options I could order on line, I reverted to a boiled egg and it was quite lovely.

From confusing charts and models, to uninterpretable jargon and wordy propositions, modern marketing has become a highly complicated and frustrating business.

As agencies we might feel we're not doing our job, or haven't earned our fees, if we haven't made things seem complex. But in doing so we are undermining our value to clients. 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 need to have confidence in our own thinking. Fewer slides and simpler language should be celebrated. We need to go back to basics and remember that creativity is our currency.

We focus on what good design and design strategy has always done well: creative problem solving. The pencil is mightier than the mac, so we sketch all ideas and insights, share them with our clients so and build them together. Let's face it brilliantly simple ideas are always the ones that we all remember.

Brands need social energy

It's getting tougher and tougher for brands to standout, so standing for something is the the new way to make an impact. A few years ago I helped to make this little video about brands that were differentiating themselves with what we then referred to as 'social energy'.

They were moving in the marketplace with purpose. I came across this today and it made me smile, and realise why I do what I do all over again. I hope you enjoy it.

Less logic and more magic

Is it a Birdseye? Is it a Virgin Atlantic plane? Well, yes it could be, because brands such as those are on course to become heroes. Brand purpose is the new frontier for brand building, and brands with a social mission at their core are winning hearts and minds of consumers everywhere.

It represents a swing towards what Marc Mathieu, Senior Vice-President, Marketing at Unilever refers to as "less logic and more magic".

What could your brand stand for, or against? How could it help to progress and make the lives of real people better?

Having a social mission is not just the domain of the few, entirely "good" entrepreneurial brands. It's possible for many brands to identify their social mission. It just has to be founded on a truth and a passion that is unique to your brand and business. It's possible even for one brand within a business of many.

After all, where there's a will there's a way.

The brand purpose mindset

Get into a different groove. Reframe your role as a marketeer.
Once you start thinking about what your brand is doing to make the lives of real people better everything else slots into place.

Want to innovate? Look in new places.

It's the beginning of a project. You're excited. There's a sense of optimism in the air. The possibilities seem endless. Could this brand be re-invented? Could it become meaningful to a whole new target audience? Where could it go in the future? But before long you're seeing the same familiar old concepts trotted out again - updated versions of boards that already languish in the depths of the marketing department cupboard.

Why the disappointment? To quote Henry Ford, "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got."

We have to start looking in new places.

We have to broader the current myopic focus on brand, immediate competition or consumer. We have to look much further out - to company assets and value chain assets. We need to look at the lives of real people (citizen consumers) and what they really need, rather than defining people solely by their consumption habits.

We have to ask new questions. What it is that's unique about how a brand thinks or behaves that could change the business' and category’s role in society? What does the consumer - and importantly wider society - gain from this brand. How does this brand improve quality of life?

There are many opportunities for brands to innovate. We just need to look in places that go well beyond the fixture.

Purpose: Go backwards to go forwards

How many marketeers today know the purpose of their brand, or the difference it makes in
peoples' lives? Marketing has become about selling stuff to consumers rather than improving quality of life.

But there was a golden era when marketing belonged to the Henry Fords, and William Levers of the world. Brands like Cadbury, Danone, and Sainsbury are all household names, but originally they were the names of people with great vision to bring to market products that could create progress and improve lives.

We begin our work by looking at a brand in the context of the current or original founders of the company. People like and are drawn towards brands with purpose. In our work we begin by looking to the past and this helps us to go forward with more clarity. In the past we often discover clues, such as the motivations of the founders, or the original role of the category. Often there was a social impetus that inspired these brands. This information not only motivates us but helps us make a brand relevant and meaningful today.

Can you identify these famous brands with purpose?

1. Appalled by the number of children suffering from intestinal disorders at the end of the First World War and encouraged by the research of Elie Metchnikoff, Isaac Carasso started manufacturing yogurts, using ferments from the Pasteur Institute and selling his products on prescription in Barcelona pharmacies.

2. In the 1890s this pioneer wrote down his ideas for Sunlight Soap – his revolutionary new product that helped popularise cleanliness and hygiene in Victorian England. It was 'to make cleanliness commonplace; to lessen work for women; to foster health and contribute to personal attractiveness, that life may be more enjoyable and rewarding for the people who use our products'.

3. In 1893, this business man bought 120 acres (49 ha) of land close to his factory works and planned, at his own expense, a model village which would 'alleviate the evils of modern more cramped living conditions'. By 1900 the estate included 314 cottages and houses set on 330 acres (130 ha) of land.

Identifying the purpose of your brand has the power to re-energise it both internally and with consumers. Purpose is not myopic. It's not only about your point of difference to competitors. It's about the difference you can make in peoples’ lives. It’s where your strengths as an organisation and brand, and your passions intersect with the needs of your audience.

Brand excavation and my bathroom tiles

Here's a little brand parable for a Wednesday afternoon. When I moved into my first flat I decided to re-tile my Excavation bathroom. The bathroom was very small and cramped and the tiles were ugly.

When I removed the top set of tiles I noticed there was another set underneath, and under them were more sets of tiles. When I had removed them all the way back to the concrete the original tiles were still there. Not only that but they were 1930's (then trendy again) and a thing of beauty. And without all the clutter the bathroom also looked a whole lot more spacious.

When we start looking at where a brand can go in the future we often need to strip back many many years of various different marketing ideas or veneers. Most of the time if you keep digging into a brand's past there are many many gems from original logos, to original purpose, imagery or even advertising ideas. You've just got to know where to look and how to use it in a future focused way. To fully understand a brand, enough to change it, we all need to become brand archeologists - without the beards.