Living next door to a brand

Brands all strive to know the customer better: what they want, why they want it, and how it can be delivered.

The assumption in response is that they want to know the company to a reciprocal level. Brand transparency is the term used to suggest that, at all levels of connectivity, open and honest dialogue can take place and the inner workings are on show. Brands strive to be like the friendly next-door neighbour, only a stone’s throw away at all times, and keen to provide a mutually fulfilling relationship of warm feelings.

That relationship with our neighbours, as it would be with anyone who gets too close to our personal space, can be a troublesome one. Take Frigo underwear. One of its main investors and spokespeople is Curtis James Jackson III, also known as rapper 50 Cent. In an interview with Forbes magazine he described the benefits of his new product in close and personal detail; well, maybe that’s unavoidable, given the nature of the brand. What’s less appealing to the consumer is the information he reveals about why the product is priced so high, and why he decided to previously get involved with Vitaminwater (which was sold from Glaceau to Coca-Cola, making 50 Cent a very rich man in the process). “I walked in to a grocery store and I saw a bottle of water for 59c and another right next to it priced at $2.59. I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference if you’d poured them in to two separate glasses!” he told readers.

There can be few traits as annoying in a neighbour as coming over to tell you exactly how much more than you they’re earning, and even hinting that they’re being overpaid.

As a juxtaposition, Newman’s Own food products were co-founded by actor Paul Newman and author AE Hotchner in 1982. The labels bore the simple slogan ‘All Profits to Charity’ and, as good as its advertising, the brand has raised more than $430 million dollars and given it away to nonprofit organisations. Newman was typically understated about the finances: “My profits will be divided between a number of tax-deductible charities and causes, some church-related, others for conservation and ecology and things like that.” If you want further details, you can look at the website, but you won’t find anyone pushing the financial comings and goings in your face. The understated nature of the brand works heavily in its favour; it feels relaxed and easy to get along with, much like the image Newman projected so well himself.

When does noise start to become an annoyance?

It’s not just a question of spokespeople. Maintaining a decent sense of personal space in branding is not dissimilar to maintaining a good neighbourly relationship in lots of ways. For instance, one of the major complaints in this area is noise pollution. A neighbour who is shouting, singing, and turning up their television to deafening levels is never going to be popular. It’s just too intrusive.

Intrusive advertising is a difficult concept to quantify; how much is too much? When does noise start to become an annoyance? Recent research shows that loud, energetic commercials may actually be less memorable to consumers, particularly if they are watching emotionally sad or low-energy programmes. Perhaps this is simply common sense, when we think about it — if we’ve been watching Beth suffer from scarlet fever in a TV adaptation of Little Women then possibly the flashing lights of Nike’s latest football shoe advert isn’t really going to stick with us in a positive way. But surely this is one of the basic lessons of running a successful brand (or, for that matter, being a good neighbour) — if you’re going to intrude on people’s space, pick your moment carefully.

Perhaps the best example of a brand that everybody can find charmingly polite and yet not overly familiar is Jack Daniels. Writing services provider The First Word lists a number of reasons on their website as to how Jack Daniels manages to establish and stick with a formal yet accessible tone of voice. It’s not the expected approach when it comes to advertising, but it works.

One of the most impressive aspects of this is the way Jack Daniels maintains that approach across its business. In 2012 they sent a cease and desist letter to an author whose latest book cover resembled the label on bottles of JD. It was absolutely in keeping with the tone of voice we’ve come to expect from the brand, and fosters only good feeling when you read about it. That’s quite an achievement for a legal infringement issue.

We all have an idea of what constitutes the best kind of neighbourly behaviour, and the best kind of brand behaviour: respecting space, maintaining politeness, and minding your own business are great guidelines to help brands sense when they might be stepping over the mark. In the eagerness to get to know exactly what the customer wants, the realisation that they might not want to be intimately involved can often get overlooked. But the truth is that — much like with any neighbour — we mainly think most fondly of them when they’re nicely in the background, and only waving politely from their side of the fence. Not ours.