Bad news brands

If there is one theme that emerges from the marketing stories of 2013 it is ‘trust’. Unfortunately, this is not a concept that tends to make news in its positive form. The steady maintenance of a virtue that is supposed to reside at the heart of every brand is hardly a matter to promote excited comment. It is the breach that captures headlines.

And what headlines. “Horse in school dinners”. “Taxpayers face £500m bill for Libor fraud.” “£25m payoff to BBC bosses.” “Archbishop declares war on Wonga.” “Fat-cat energy firms give two fingers to us all.” Over the past twelve months, they have barely stopped coming: breaking news, broken brands.

The question, as we head towards 2014 is what can marketers do about it? How can we all ensure that our brands, and the categories they represent, earn back that most fundamental and valuable of assets from our customers?

Well that’s simple. We can keep our promises. We can ensure that our brands are exactly the things they purport to be, and do precisely the things they claim to do.

There are only two basic ways to achieve this. One is tough, bordering on impossible: it is to work tirelessly within our Byzantine organisations, muscling in on disciplines over which we exert no control, policing supply chains that span the globe, to honour the breathless brand claims we currently make: “Looking after your world”, “On your side”, “Love every mouthful”, “Power to you”.

The other is to make smaller promises.

This is the more realistic way to go, but it will not come naturally to marketers reared on hyperbole and grandeur. Look what happens now, as brand teams gather alongside their agencies to devise marketing themes. It’s a kind of arms race, as routine concepts are tolerated only as ‘starters’ to be ‘pushed’, ‘differentiated’ or ‘taken to the next level’.

It scarcely matters what humble task the product performs, the aim is always to evoke life’s big themes. These days, we don’t just ladder up, we take the elevator, hoisting our brand to the pinnacle of Maslow’s pyramid in the matter of a moment.

There we stay, our heads in the clouds of ‘self-actualisation’, failing to see the ‘out of order’ notice that has been hung on the ground floor, down at the level of serving basic human needs.

To keep our promises, we must break these habits. We have to be humbler, simpler and more realistic in how we depict the role of our brands in people’s lives, matching our claims to what we can control.

Many marketers, and most agencies, will argue that this will blunt their ability to inspire consumers and gain emotional appeal. I’m not so sure. In a single recent edition of The Times, I noticed two ads that could point the way, utterly refreshing in their candour and simplicity.

The first was for Sainsbury’s, which took a page to inform us that its basic mineral water is, indeed, water that has passed through mineral-rich rocks. With its chaste art-direction, and straightforward prose, it proffered this tautology in order to draw distinction between its product and the same-priced Tesco Everyday Value water, which ‘starts at the mains’.

The second ad, in a much smaller space, was for the upmarket wine-merchant Berry Bros & Rudd, showing a bottle of its Good Ordinary Claret. The headline was “Not the greatest wine ever made“, leaving the copy to point out that it is, nevertheless, something good to drink for £9.

If we’re honest, most of us are custodians of good, ordinary brands, which we attempt to sell for prices somewhere in the region of reasonable. We could do worse than find charming ways to say just that, keeping our promises in line with our powers to deliver, earning a bit more trust, and somewhat fewer headlines.

As 2014 approaches, I’ll drink to that.