Where Commerce and Culture Meet

I spoke at some seminars recently[i] about creating an ‘integrated brand strategy’. I didn’t want to dwell on too many specific arts issues, but rather provide some provocative food-for-thought and spark a few new ideas.

Here’s part one of a summary, part two to come soon, partially informed by questions asked at the sessions, and by spirited conversations afterwards. (NB: There was barely any mention of fonts and pantones, and hardly any audience participation.)

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I want to look at three things today:

1. how a creative and integrated brand connects your organisation internally between teams, and externally with wider stakeholders,

2. how your commercial colleagues can play some of the most important and creative roles in brand integration,

3. and how, more than ever, your ARTS CHARITIES need to make a stand (even if it means getting angry) –

It’s a time of rapid and constant change. Nobody knows anything.

Think of all the jobs that simply didn’t exist barely a decade or so ago: Uber drivers, podcast producers, driverless car mechanics … And brands we knew nothing about that we can’t live without today: AirBNB, Whatsapp, Spotify…[ii]

A 2013 Oxford University study stated 47% of jobs will be automated in 20 years especially where roles are routine, repetitive or predictable. How can we keep up in education and training? How can we ensure we don’t fall behind as individuals, as charities, and as businesses?

In this context (and setting aside the B-word, and our dying planet…) the challenges faced by arts charities right now are extensive:

· funding cuts deepen as fundraising gets more competitive and complex, and opportunities for leisure spend increase,

· reduced investment in state education means the arts are less understood by children and young people, and perhaps deemed less valuable by society,

· on top of balancing the books and achieving charitable objects, arts charities are feeling the pressure to address sustainability and resilience, the living wage and the gender pay-gap, to be experts on data driven decision-making, to ensure strategic plans are digital first, to evaluate everything that moves, to be more commercial and to maximise earnings….

· …to stop working in silos… to sort out GDPR… understand the Modern Slavery Act …you name it.

Many of us get lost in the technology. We worry endlessly about our ageing audiences, about building new diverse audiences, about being accessible (without alienating the valuable ageing audiences…). We worry about growing our loyalty schemes and connecting with all those ‘hard to reach’ communities, when in truth many of us risk being the ones who are increasingly hard to reach[iii].

So when we’re surrounded by so much jeopardy so much change, is it any surprise that many of us stick to the knitting, avoid risk, consolidate, hunker down? With the result that quite often we lurch as a sector, as an industry, from season to season and from crisis to crisis.

In fact, some arts organisations are like the drunk in this pretty good joke[iv]:

A policeman sees a drunk searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he has lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies no. The policemen asks why he is searching here, and the drunk replies, “this is where the light is”.

So is it time for some R’n’R?
[ie. relevant and remarkable — not random and repetitive].

I’ve blogged about this brand-driven line which I kept repeating while I was Marketing Director at Birmingham Hippodrome to get planners in the Artistic, Learning and Community teams to think hard about the beneficiaries as the programme grew and changed for wider and deeper impact. It started as a purpose-driver for fundraising planning but can be integrated across the mission.

Because being remarkable requires creativity. From every link in the value chain — not just the artists.

Creativity is increasingly recognised as a powerful and potentially abundant brand fuel. The culture of any business depends on the creativity of its people, their capacity for and openness to innovation, their attitude to risk and their focus on making a lasting difference.

We actually live at a very good time for creativity, and there are closer emerging overlaps between the arts, the charity sector, and the commercial world, as evidenced in this piece for Campaign, the advertising industry magazine:

“Creativity and innovation are …the most important drivers of business success… at all points of the business compass. Work that gifts something to the recipient produces better outcomes: commercially, socially, politically, culturally, environmentally.”
Tim Lindsay, D&AD[v]

It’s not the only way the commercial advertising world is aligning its perspective and approach with charities and the arts. This Campaign extract is from March this year and is part of a wider movement within the branding world which focuses on contrarian thinking, taking advantage of our biases through behavioural science.

But is there a danger that commercial business could be stealing our clothes?

Here’s evidence from two more commercial business leaders:

Some of this language could be from any of our Artistic Directors; but they’re selling ketchup and deodorant. They know it resonates with their buyers. Their recognition of the value of ‘purpose’ for what we might call our Charitable Objects (essentially, making a difference) is underpinning the core of ever more commercial brands.

Jigsaw’s window displays celebrate the shared positive value of immigration. Whilst HSBC deny their ‘WE ARE NOT AN ISLAND’ campaign has anything to do with Brexit, the timing works pretty well. Allbirds are creating the coolest sustainable shoes and trainers using castor oil for eyelets and recycled plastic bottles for laces. Cadbury’s have donated the words of their Dairy Milk packaging to Age UK’s loneliness awareness campaign.

And the advertising guys are actually putting their own money where their mouths are. Nils Leonard (of the agency Uncommon) has created Halo with its compostable coffee pods to take on the Nespresso recycling scandal. And David Hieatt (formerly of Saatchis, now of the Do Lectures) returned to his native West Wales to save 400 jobs at the local jeans factory, creating hyper-cool must-have denim for the studios of Soho, Fitzrovia and Brum’s Jewellery Quarter (boosted by some Meghan Markle sparkle[vi].)

The Uncommon link continues with their arresting work released this week for The Guardian. Admittedly newspapers have been campaigning politicised vehicles for ever, but even though it’s owned by The Scott Trust Ltd and GMG, The Guardian is now behaving even more actively like a charitable or political movement with the ‘Support us’ and ‘Since you’re here…’ messaging to gather ‘contributions’ and ‘memberships’ (note, they don’t use ‘donations’ in their language).

These brands are quite literally making it their business to offer ‘values for money’.[vii]

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So, where does all this leave the arts?

Perhaps predictably given the title of Darren Henley’s little pink book, the Arts Council’s own 10 Year Strategy focuses far more on creativity and makes a strong case for moving away from the old and intimidating language of ‘the arts’. In this ‘note on language’ from the inside front cover of the ACE consultation guide it states:

“…we refer repeatedly to ‘culture’ and ‘creativity’ rather than ‘art’, ‘the arts’… as the public’s understanding of what is meant is significantly narrower than our own.”

And that’s important. Because if it’s a language thing, it must be a tone of voice thing. So it’s a storytelling thing. Which makes it a brand thing — which has to be integrated across our industry.

This is a good moment to reflect on what I mean by brand. It can get needlessly complicated or confusing, and often becomes one of those issues that everyone secretly hopes is being covered by another colleague.

Why don’t we start here — just for fun?

(end of Part 1)

I’ll publish part two of this summary shortly. It looks at the origins of commercial branding and its changing application, with a nod to the work I did at Birmingham Hippodrome. There’s also an intro to some of the core pillars you could use to structure a strategic and integrated brand review at your own organisation.

[i] At a couple of Yesplan seminars touring round the UK, with Mr Patrick Morsman.

[ii] https://www.masterstudies.com/article/eight-jobs-that-didnt-exist-ten-years-ago/

[iii] this is from a speech from Steve Ball of Culture Central — a very good observation.

[iv] From Richard Shotton’s excellent book The Choice Factory about behavioural biases.

[v] Campaign (magazine) 2/3/19

[vi] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/indyventure/meghan-markle-hiut-jeans-denim-makers-hieatt-a8281311.html

[vii] I think I first read this nice turn of phrase in an unrelated report into ethical food sourcing.