Benedict Johnson on Digital Age Brand Planning

Then

When I first started out over a decade ago, brand planning was the most sought after of all planning roles. It was the definitive role majoring on pure conceptual, blank-canvas thinking.

Consequently, it was the most self-consciously intellectual (either a good or a bad thing depending on your perspective). And it carried the most clout and influence relative to other planning roles sitting as it did at the top of the planning hierarchy. Put plainly, it was the bee’s knees.

Now

The question is whether there is still a role for it in the digital age. Aside from a few notable exceptions, are brand planners still getting the big, juicy, business-defining (if not business-changing) briefs?

In the brutal wake of the Great Recession, is it commercially sensible to spend months defining your brand in a world that actively tries to avoid you and your message? And as the digital revolution matures, does it make sense to centre brand development purely on what your brand says to its customers?

In essence, has the world left brand planning – with its propositions, onions and the like – behind?

The digitisation of everything

In the context of information overload, disruption and the digitisation of everything, it’s clear the debate has moved on and our industry and discipline can no longer afford to ignore it. Digital has changed consumers’ lives so profoundly by acting as both a layer and an enabler that crucially alters – among other things – the power dynamics between consumer and brand.

In this context, it’s no longer enough for any brand to endlessly, self-regardingly shout about itself and its values. It will be ignored. To cut through the overwhelming daily deluge of information, it’s what you do for people and wider society and, crucially, why that matters. As the Cannes-winning Like A Girl campaign and others reveal, purpose and the brand behaviour it informs has never been more important for gaining attention and customers.

Now, purpose is on everyone lips (see the number one TED talk for planners here). Leaving aside whether purpose is too worthy or lofty a term for some brands, as some have suggested (though if a soap brand or fizzy drink brand can do it, why not?), surely something that guides and contextualises why you’re doing something – whether a brilliantly entertaining piece of content, life hacking utility, or even social purpose becoming core to your reason to be – will deliver more than merely being another amplified voice shouting into the abyss?

Even discounting the deafening noise that is your consumer’s everyday existence, behaviour begets behaviour – whether expressed either in reciprocity, ‘value exchange’ or simple give and take. Brands that give back, receive.

The implication for brand planning

It’s tempting to suggest that in this context of flux that brand planning will be, or perhaps already is, defunct. This is wrong. In this age of data ubiquity, low trust and heightened consumer expectations of brands and their conduct, defining what your brand says and does is more important than ever.

It stands to reason that, if engagement is the objective (as many briefs are these days), interacting with a brand you like and emotionally connect with – one that doesn't interrupt or shout or denigrate but which makes you feel valued and special – is first priority. And this doesn’t just mean marketing and comms but, as Drucker pointed out years ago, it’s every way that your consumer can engage with your brand. This brings challenge and opportunity.

The implication for brands

Purpose or belief must be seamlessly linked with implementation. It must go deeper than merely informing what your brand says (i.e. comms) – it must guide why your brand does it (i.e. services, products that add to the consumer-brand relationship).

Defining your brand purpose or belief and using that to inform everything from business strategy, product and service to experience development is the sensible route to helping your brand stand out, get noticed and recommended in a congested and commoditised marketplace.

The implication for brand planners

This means brand planners can no longer retreat to the ivory tower of vision documents, strategy decks or manifestos. The planners who are really changing their clients’ businesses are the ones getting their hands dirty – working together with business consultants, user experience, developers, analysts and creatives to ensure their strategic product is fit to implement.

The balance of power has shifted from top-down hierarchy to a more collaborative, iterative approach and those planners and strategists unprepared for this challenge need to wake up and note.