Branding on the world stage.

Branding is interesting because it is complex. It is complex because everyone at any company will have an opinion about the company they work in. It is complex because branding remembers the past and imagines the future. It is complex because it crosses product, service, experience and innovation. The best people i’ve worked with are extraordinarily athletic right-left brain thinkers. It is complex because brands are global, and globally we as human beings are varied and different.

Speaking with Bruno Maag (of Dalton Maag) he highlighted some interesting statistics. Of the largest 20 cities around the world, only three are in North America, and only one in Europe (Moscow since you asked). This means the urban demographic of most brands are growing up in Shanghai, Karachi, Lagos. It means the average age of people living in cities isn’t the 45–49 that we see in Europe, its 25–29 in China and an astonishing 0–4 in India.

It is complex because of the physical and digital relationship brands strive to construct. This complexity is amplified when brands like Airbnb (a recent DesignStudio rebrand) promise you’ll Belong Anywhere, with little control over where that might be.

This means building global brands will involve some form of backlash.

Our recent launch of the Premier League underlines how complicated it can get.

It started with a leak that some brand work was happening. The unfounded up-roar (excuse the pun) that we had killed the lion was linked (by certain tabloids and twitter voices) with the hunting fascination of a Minnesota dentist and the dispatching of Cecil.

Seeing this pre-emptive reaction highlighted that backlash was inevitable. Because of the trademarking process, the leak meant we had to share the logo early. The work was judged at a surface level, “do we like the new logo”. And this is an oversimplification of a complicated problem. People backlash against a ‘brand’ by judging a ‘logo’.

So in a complex world, it’s really important you explain why you’ve done what you’ve done. It is really important that both agency and client are committed and focussed on the why and the what. People are resistant to change (ask a friend if they’d mind you renaming their baby and see how you get on!)

So let’s give brands time. Have a moratorium on knee jerk reactions to logos on day one. Give space to critical discussion once a brand (the logo + changes in product, service, experience) have rolled out. Tell human stories that make the complexity human, simple and delightful.

Don’t judge the brand by what it looks like, but by what it does.

(originally written for Computer Arts Magazine, June 2016 Edition)