Does your brand need a therapist?

Welcome to Spark, a newsletter from Vivace. We curate and publish the most interesting thinking and ideas from our community on themes ranging from business and finance to culture and creativity. Send pitches and feedback to [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you.

Hello Spark readers,

We love to hear that Spark is sparking conversations and ideas in our community – and wonderfully, Rob Sartain’s ode to authenticity from a few weeks ago continues to inspire. This week, our longtime colleague and collaborator Mark Lulsens picks up where Rob left off and answers the question: how do we make the shift from bland to bold?

Or, how can we become a truly authentic brand?

Mark is an independent consultant, creative director, and rebrand veteran. As an expert and partner of Vivace’s on bringing brands to life, we’re lucky to have him share his perspective and secret sauce on doing just that. This includes practical steps and principles to bring some humanity back to your brand because, let’s face it, a little therapy can go a long way. Speaking from personal experience!

We hope Spark is helping to connect the dots for you too, and whether you agree or you don’t — especially if you don’t — we always want to hear your take.

If you’re looking for something new to add to your podcast queue, consider checking out our podcast, Connection Request. We just launched Season 3 featuring a fascinating conversation with emerging media mogul Alex Lieberman, executive chairman and co-founder of Morning Brew and storyarb (Spotify / Apple / YouTube).

Best wishes to you, and thank you for spending some time with us today. ✌️

-joel

Taking your brand to therapy

Guest essay by Mark Lulsens

Rob Sartain's post in a previous edition of Spark got me thinking. He persuasively laid out the argument for not conforming, being authentic, and making the right noise at the right time to the right audience. But how do you do that? You can start with humanising your brand.

Heard that before? Well, not like this…

I have always struggled with the complexities and academia around branding. Philosophising too much can paralyse us into inaction – it can all feel too scientific, too complex with too many layers to tackle. The more we simplify and humanise all the things we have in our toolkit – from founder stories, to purpose, voice, visual identity and even sound – the simpler and more accessible it is to implement those things in an authentic way.

Brand therapy

Personal therapy, if we are willing to lean into this humanisation of brands, can teach us a lot about how to listen and emote as a business.

If we keep stories (both positive and negative) bottled up and unused, if we loop on thoughts or keep ideas suppressed, if we focus too much on what's not working and don't celebrate enough what is; brands can become insecure and muted just like people can. They can become afraid to fail, to feel certain emotions, to break conventions, and to express their full, unique selves unapologetically.

By seeking brand therapy with a professional (agency help) or simply talking to a friend or a loved one (customers and employees), your business can start to fan those embers that are still glowing into something worth paying attention to once again.

Bit heavy for a vibrant publication called Spark? I'll pick it up, promise.

A visit to the therapy room…

Indulge me for a moment: imagine your brand in a dimly lit therapist’s room, a giant logo sitting in a chair. It sighs and looks uncomfortable – it doesn’t really want to be here, but growth is slow and customers are moving to newer or more expressive competitors, all of which has forced a corporate intervention. 

The therapist is the collective voice of your audience, a big human shaped figure sat in the chair opposite, making a perceptible humming sound that your brand can't decipher. Look and listen closer: the therapist is made up of millions of people from all over the world, their voices all murmuring at once. Finally, you hear the therapist clearly:

Therapist: Well?

Brand: We have said it all – no-one is listening.

T: You are still loved; you are just not being your true self.

B: We can't! How can we be honest and bold, while staying safe and recognisable?

T: Being safe will ensure you are not being true and won’t ever stand out – tell me what you really want to say?

B: We are special and relevant! We have amazing people and an exciting vision…

And then the moment finally arrives when what's in is let out–magic! No matter how old your business, or how familiar your audience is with what you do, you will find a way to break through and create magic. This could be anything from an ad campaign (personality expression through images and words), to a new website, proprietary event, annual report or a podcast.

The re-authentication process

Don’t worry – we’re finally moving from the abstract to the actionable. Here are five culture principles that provide a way of observing your brand, coaxing it out of the shadows and creating standout work. 

Find your story

Whether you look at the business proposition as a whole or a product within a business line, what does your audience need and value and how can you fulfil that? Here, you need to (1) value cognitive diversity: don’t rely on the same people for ideas, and invite new perspectives. Start writing down the fundamentals – this will become your value proposition. It’s okay if it’s dry; it just needs to be true. Keep refining and boil it down to a line or two.

Bring your proposition to life

(2) Be playful and search widely for inspiration; step outside of your sector and start gathering references to how other industries and products create stopping power through words, images, and experiences. This is called recombinant creativity, reaching across the problem space. Don't even think about brand voice or visual identity – this is where brands limit themselves before they even start. Be provocative, bold, silly, and just have fun! You don’t have to be serious to solve serious problems.

Generously explore ideas

Take that inspiration and the agreed-upon value proposition, and share it with the team, and get the team to share back. (3) Be generous with giving and receiving ideas – nearly all ideas have something worth exploring. Too many companies have a piñata culture where people rubbish ideas in an instant, 'that will be too expensive', 'that won't work', 'seen that before' etc. Allow ideas to breathe.  

This is the stage where you can easily end up putting out what you always have, so this principle is the most important: (4) be brave enough to fail (or you won’t create anything new). Don't dismiss ideas because they make you feel uncomfortable, do the opposite and welcome them with open arms. Lean into gut feel (we too have billions of data points) – ok, executives might not like the idea, but if it feels right pursue and fight for it.

So now you have:

1. A clear and concise line backed up by a story clearly identifying that what you do has value

2. Been inspired from outside of your sector and been brave enough to welcome and explore ideas that make you feel uncomfortable

3. Found that new, unique concept or big idea and worked with a design and copy team to sharpen it into an ad or even a journey and experience

Then what? No matter how good the idea is, it won’t sell itself.

(5) Effectively share your vision

Anyone in the creative/ideas/imagination space must be able to share those ideas evocatively. We are all salespeople – we all need to communicate and stand up for our work whilst listening and, where necessary, acting on feedback. Take the audience you are pitching to on a journey: this is where we have been, this is our competitor landscape and this is where we believe we need to go in order to create stopping power and evoke action.

Trust me, this works…

These five principles are key to fostering a healthy creative culture, defining who you are, and waking you up from a slump. Whether you are doing the work in-house, hiring an agency, or a combination, you must hit every one of these to produce great work. 

Looking back at my career, every time I have failed to create something unique, not bring the right people with me, or fail to get something past senior leadership, it’s because these principles were not met. In all the projects and campaigns that were authentic, expressive and effective, all five were adopted.

…but you still need to do the work

This process is simplified for effect: it can take days, weeks, or many months. There is no quick fix to shaping exciting brands or creating great work; it’s bloody hard but also incredibly rewarding. Any business that isn't brave enough to take their brand to therapy or thinks they don’t need to be brave or break from conformity will very likely lose market share and eventually be forgotten.

So take a seat in the brand therapy chair, listen to the therapist (your people and customers), and give your brand permission to be different. Then, follow these principles to express that difference, bringing your people and customers on the journey.

Mark Lulsens is an independent brand strategist and creative director who believes creative culture is the least talked about but most critical factor to brand survival. With a varied career and little formal education, Mark brings a simpler, more emotive approach to brand expression. He recently penned a book on Refinitiv, the $6bn start-up where he was Creative Director, and he is currently working with Vivace on evolving CDP’s (formally the Carbon Disclosure Project), which is his tenth such project. 

Thanks for joining us this week. Anything we missed? Something we should include next week? Send us your shout-outs and strong opinions to include in next week’s edition at [email protected]. 

Spark is a production of Vivace, a global b2b creative studio and consultancy that helps businesses drive meaningful brand and commercial impact. Get in touch if you’d like to chat with any of the team. Have a great week ahead.