The Brand Book 2021 The Brand Book 2021
Brand Managers, CMO’s & Founders Guide To Building A Brilliant Brand in 2021 & Beyond
Danny Denhard - December 2020
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The Brand Book 2021 Introductions
2021
As we move towards 2021, we will see another shift in habits, a shift in expectations and a shift in how we see ourselves and see ourselves through brands. Gaining an experience through your brand of choice will be essential. fl
2020
has been a once in a lifetime experience. We have seen our worlds ipped upside down and businesses of all shapes and sizes impacted. We saw companies scrap, some just survive and others thrive in the most testing of times. The Brand Book 2021
2020 Has Been A Once In A Lifetime Experience
Help For 2021 Six Brand Leaders O ering Help For 2021
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The brand leads answer a number of important questions, with thought provoking points and a series of great directives for you to digest and take forward to implement with your brands and organisations.
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I reached out to a number of brand leaders from the charity space, startup ecosystem, pharmaceutical, gambling, FMCG, egaming and the agency space to quiz them across a number of important areas to provide Brand Leaders, CMO’s, founders and business leaders guidance for the future and o er actionable insights to leverage for the rest of 2020 and for 2021.Â
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The Questions 4
The Questions Q1 Q2 Q3 What does Brand mean to you?
Which brand do you think just gets it and delivers their brand every time?
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Why do you think Brand and Marketing is often misaligned? Or are the two misunderstood?
The Questions Q4 Q5
What is the best piece of (brand) marketing you have seen over the last twelve months?
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Q6
What is the best piece of advice you would give to struggling brand managers getting cut through currently?
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Brand Marketing is going to get harder with more brands ghting for our hard-earned money for the much desired short term results, what are two brand tactics that will get the best cut through?
The Questions Q7
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What are the three actions for brands looking to gain cut-through right now?
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The Brand Book 2021 Q&A
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The Answers - Click Name To Read Their Thoughts > Harry Lang - Buzz Bingo > Sophie Greig - JustGiving > Simon Swan - Pharmaceutical > Julia Rast - Xaxis > Pierre Dadd - Consultant The Brand Book 2021
> Anna Brook - Consultant > Danny Denhard - Focus 9
Harry Lang HARRY LANG MARKETING DIRECTOR - BUZZ BINGO Harry Lang is a strategic brand and digital marketing expert with over twenty years of experience, the last fteen of which have been in the online gambling industry. During that time he's been responsible for brand strategy and channel marketing delivery for some of the biggest gaming brands in sports betting, casino, poker, bingo and esports.
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https://www.linkedin.com/in/hclang/
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He's now the Marketing Director at Buzz Bingo, the UK's biggest bingo business.
Harry Lang - Brand Q&A 2. Why do you think Brand and Marketing is often misaligned? Or are the
1. What does Brand mean to you?
two misunderstood?
For me, ‘Brand’ is everything that gives a product meaning. These things usually include a brand’s personality, positioning, mission, vision and tone of voice.
In my own experience, the times brand and marketing have become seriously
I like to remember that branding refers to the stamp cattle men would burn into the hides of their herd – these stamps would identify the cattle and make theft easy to prove. This idea of ‘identity’ is central to how I perceive brands today – they aren’t physical attributes, functions or benefits – they’re the ethereal things that can take a boring product and make it fascinating to consumers.
objectives. Ideally, I’d always have the team responsible for brand
The wonderful thing about creating, developing and building brands is that it offers a tremendous freedom of expression – one electric car manufacturer can be safe, reliable, understated and even a little boring, like Toyota, while another can choose to be edgy, futuristic, kooky and obscenely fast like Tesla. Both manufacturers sell a shed load of cars, but their brands mean they appeal to drivers in wildly different ways.
marketing strategy were misunderstood. You can’t have a marketing strategy
misaligned were when there were separate teams responsible for them. That meant different leadership strategies with different personal and business guardianship (including architecture, guidelines, design style and brand building campaigns) as a part of the marketing team as a whole. The brand team execute a strategy that the entire marketing team, with input from the rest of the business up to and including CEO, has had a hand in defining. These scenarios have eventuated because the purposes of a brand and without a brand strategy so your brand architecture and design style must be in place before you start spending money on channel marketing. A relevant and motivating brand architecture plays a vital role in managing communications – both internal and external. Every time you communicate with customers, suppliers, employees, investors and journalists, it’s essential to reinforce a consistent, positive and differentiated perception of your brand. This consistency breeds efficiency, and this efficiency builds a more cohesive, believable perception of your
brand’s attributes.
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perceptions of your business and ensuring consistency across all
Harry Lang - Brand Q&A
Coming from the online gaming world, it’s hard for me to look beyond Paddy Power. In brand terms, they’re the dream client – an astute and respected part of the Flutter empire that’s a serious financial and commercial organisation from a business perspective and the opposite as a brand. Its positioning as ‘your witty Oirish mate down the pub who doesn’t give a shit’ gives it tremendous scope and they’ve historically stretched that scope to the Nth degree.
Paddy has the financial clout to come up with a reactive idea on a Monday, execute it with high production values in a matter of days and launch with a decent seeding budget at the weekend. Sailing close to the bone is a prerequisite of their positioning so they overstep the mark once in a while (‘The Last Supper’ OOH campaign being a memorable but fantastic example) but they usually know how to read the room, so get it right more than they get it wrong. Even their advertising F-ups pay dividends – with every banned campaign bagging a bunch of PR in the press thanks to the slothful attempts of the ASA to take them off air….
Paddy Power is the only online gaming brand for whom organic social is a mainstream acquisition channel with a reach in the millions. A team of genuinely funny writers pump out regular, highly sharable content which simply can’t be replicated by the competition – hundreds of identikit sports betting brands have neither the imagination nor the brand capacity to be funny. It’s the perfect example of a brand creating an impenetrable fort through its positioning from where it can watch its rivals fighting toothlessly over scraps outside the battlements.
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3. Which brand do you think just gets it and delivers their brand every time?
Harry Lang - Brand Q&A 4. What is the best piece of (brand) marketing you have seen over the last twelve months? As more than six of the past twelve months have been spent in Covidinduced lockdown, I’m going to pick a reactive campaign from a brand that rarely fails to impress. BrewDog’s tie up with ALDI was initiated by the supermarket’s efforts to ‘borrow’ some equity from the brewer’s well-liked Punk IPA beer. BrewDog’s founder and CEO James Watt Tweeted his intent to produce a complementary Yaldi (latterly Aldi) IPA and, with social media enjoying the light hearted counter rucking, soon enough the beer was in
5. Brand Marketing is going to get harder with more brands fighting for our hard-earned money for the much-desired short-term results, what are two brand tactics that will get the best cut through? Despite protestations to the contrary, TV and VOD remain hugely significant in building brand awareness and equity so despite the sometimes prohibitive cost, if you need to create a fan base then these are definitely channels that should be near the top of your shopping list.
production and on sale in ALDI supermarkets nationwide with a percentage of profits going towards the BrewDog sustainable forest initiative. While Watt has previous form in this kind of punkish innovation you have to give credit to ALDI’s social team (and their bosses who empower them to think on their feet). This was a good news story, start to finish, initiated through social media and ending up with a new beer and a few more CO2-gobbling trees. marketing, a product can go from conversation to production to distribution just because it sounds like a good idea. Both ALDI and BrewDog came out of the exchange looking like heroes and the costs involved were marginal. Good ideas, on-brand and well executed with a bit of blind faith and smattering of bravery – a brilliant, if accidental,
campaign.
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It’s lovely, it’s imaginative, and it’s wonderful that in an age of data defined
a constant risk. If your brand genuinely has something to add to society then
really question the areas that are generic (every set of brand guidelines
frame your objectives, position them at the heart of your strategy, invest in that
I’ve ever seen has this problem – words put in for the sake of it rather than
area, empower all team members to believe in what they’re doing and ensure
to progress the brand’s positioning, personality and tone of voice). Most
everyone collaborates to reach your shared goals. Only then will your purpose
importantly, question the brand’s positioning in your direct response
feel genuine and generate warm fuzzy feelings among current and future
media. Many (if not most) brands spend more on DR than they do on pure
customers. Get it wrong and you’ll look like you’re virtue signalling, trying to
brand marketing, however there’s no reason your DR campaigns can’t
piggyback on a cause to gain societal brownie points, which isn’t a good look...
better represent your brand values. Banners can be more engaging, call to
Marketing as an opportunity, not a cost centre. In tough times, such as
actions buttons can ping more brightly, landing pages can say things
recessions, brands that invest in marketing tend to win in the long term, and
better and more concisely, DRTV campaigns can amuse rather than just
yet the majority of businesses knee jerk towards budget cuts and team
sell, customer service teams can better represent the brand’s tone of
trimming. These short termers will find the cold of economic winter lasts far, far
voice – customers can be entertained.
longer.
I’ve always maintained that a great marketing and brand strategy isn’t
Be Different – look at any sector and you’ll see one enduring consistency –
about ballsy statements and single propositions (they look good in a
everything looks the same. Your job as a marketer is to elevate your brand
presentation but are frequently forgotten in the heat of battle) but more
above all others and give customers the best reasons to invest their hard-
about hundreds of micro optimisations – changing and improving
earned cash in you, not the other folks. As Bob Hoffman so succinctly stated in
EVERYTHING. The brand is the sum of the cumulative parts, working
his ‘8 Principles of Brand Marketing’:- “The most fundamental objective of
together seamlessly towards a common objective so it’s about working
brand marketing is to achieve fame. Fame is an unequalled business
longer and harder to implement these nuggets of change.
advantage”.
interesting, more engaging and more relatable. Look at your architecture,
Read the Room – brand purpose is trending but coming across as lip service is
Be Braver. Even the most unassuming brands have scope to be more
now?
managers getting cut through currently?
7. What are the three actions for brands looking to gain cut-through right
6. What is the best piece of advice you would give to struggling brand
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Harry Lang - Brand Q&A
Sophie Greig
SOPHIE GREIG HEAD OF BRAND - JUSTGIVING Sophie is Head of Brand at JustGiving, the most loved fundraising website - helping people raise money for the charities and people they care about. With a background in social media, content and product marketing, she’s passionate about taking a creative and user-focused approach to shaping brand strategy
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https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophie-greig-2ab513102/
Sophie Greig - Brand Q&A
A brand isn’t what you say it is. It’s what everyone else says it is.
To me, it’s the promises you make and the trust you earn by delivering on said promises. Both of which are rooted in human emotion.
2. Why do you think Brand and Marketing is often misaligned? Or are the two misunderstood? The purpose of brand and marketing respectively are often misunderstood. The truth is that whilst they’re both travelling in the same direction with the same mission of success, one (your marketing) is constantly adapting to a changing world, whilst the other (your brand) is staying the same - which is why it can sometimes seem as though they’re not aligned. I believe that the role of marketing is to grab a customer’s attention, but the role of your brand is to keep their attention and drive recognition and loyalty. In essence, whilst your marketing strategies change, like a moral compass your brand has to be consistent if you want to build trust, remain relevant and beat your competitors.
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1. What does Brand mean to you? Brands are about feelings - and as we all know too well, feelings are complicated. So, I think it’s easier not to define what brand is, but rather what it isn’t. My favourite definition is summed up by American author and speaker, Marty Neumeier, guru of all thing brand, design, innovation, and creativity, who said “A brand is not a logo. A brand is not an identity. A brand is not a product. A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or organisation.”
Sophie Greig - Brand Q&A
This one’s easy. Glossier has taken the beauty industry by storm, tearing up the marketing playbook and building a community of superfans with their authentic and down-toearth brand which is a huge hit amongst millennials. Their idea was simple – connecting with everyday people to develop beauty products that people actually want. Remaining laser focused on their community and listening to what they’re saying about skincare and make-up looks to identify gaps in the market. In short, they ask – and then most importantly, they deliver.
Their new GlossiWEAR collection shows you just how well they’ve cultivated their brand. If people are willing to part with their hardearned cash in order to walk around wearing a hoodie or tote bag with your brand logo on it, you’ve made it. Put simply, Glossier knows who they are, they know who they’re not and as such, they’re in it for the long run.
Just one of their incredibly smart moves was taking advantage of micro-influencers, relying on existing customers promoting Glossier products on their personal accounts in authentic ways - with no #ad to be seen. Whether they’ve got 50 or 500 followers, their recommendations are more likely to be trusted within their own social communities, so it’s a powerful and cheap advertising win for Glossier.
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Their content marketing is exemplary, by using genuine, authentic language, every one of their social media posts feels as though it’s come from a friend. No sales-y language in sight. They’ve got their visual identity nailed too. In fact, a colleague recently described the paint on her newly-decorated walls as ‘Glossier pink’. Proof that the Glossier brand is easily recognisable, and appeals to the Instagram obsessed generation who can be found queuing down the street to get into their limited stores and popups to take snaps of the aesthetic. That’s right, UGC (user generated content), free advertising and another win for Glossier.
3. Which brand do you think just gets it and delivers their brand every time?
*Enter stage - Innocent smoothies*. The creative folks in their marketing team must have a whole load of fun conjuring up such genius over in Fruit Towers. Their most recent ‘pre-lockdown’ campaign gave us all some much-needed light relief, reminding us of a simpler time - before the world went a bit nuts. It’s fun, witty, cheeky and everything I love about Innocent as a brand.
They’ve leveraged the power of human emotions to get a commercial advantage as all good brands do.
“Remember this? This is called a conversation. It’s like a Zoom call, but in 3D and you have to wear pants.” They approach marketing in a human, relatable and entirely accessible way, leaving you wondering how they could possibly top their last campaign with the next.
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4. What is the best piece of (brand) marketing you have seen over the last twelve months? There’s been a tonne of clever brand marketing in the last 12 months but my favourite are those brands that have stayed consistent despite the ‘unprecedented’ changes to our everyday lives, which have left many brands scrambling.
Sophie Greig - Brand Q&A
Simon Swan
SIMON SWAN HEAD ECOMMERCE Simon has worked in marketing for over 15 years working for start-ups, public sector and blue chip building out marketing strategies and building teams operating in FMCG, publishing & telecommunications sectors
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https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonjsw/
Simon Swan - Brand Q&A 1. What does Brand mean to you? To me brand is a set of consistent principles that relate to or engage a (specific) audience by answering their needs/wants through a product or service
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2. Why do you think Brand and Marketing is often misaligned? Or are the two misunderstood? Brand is built over time. And by it’s very nature it needs to build trust, awareness and consistently deliver over time to the audience it engages with. In other words it’s built for the long term. Where marketing becomes misaligned is when marketing is viewed in separation of what the brand is all about i.e. “marketing in silos”, not measured to the direction of the brand, short term efficiency goals. There will be a need to drive short term marketing activity for the here and now but it needs to be balanced with the long term too
Simon Swan - Brand Q&A
I’m also a big fan of numatic international and their Henry Hoover which has been around 1970. Devised with coming up with a simple “friendly face” its a great example of a distinctive asset that has stood the test of time...all done through word of mouth
4. What is the best piece of (brand) marketing you have seen over the last twelve months? During Covid, I’ve loved the IKEA advertising, how they’ve adapted their creative so quickly to align much closer to what we’ve all been feeling under their slogan: “Conquer the great indoors”
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3. Which brand do you think just gets it and delivers their brand every time? To not go with the more obvious but I’ve liked John Deere. It’s a brand that has stood the test of time since the 1800’s building a trusted brand with an audience within agriculture providing support to local farming communities through to multi-nationals (all operating in the same market).
Simon Swan - Brand Q&A
But now is the perfect time to diagnose and assess what marketing channels you’re currently investing in and which channels are supporting the business (depending on the business goals). Don’t be afraid to cut back on channels that are not delivering but look to invest and double down on the channels where you see the opportunity
6. What is the best piece of advice you would give to struggling brand managers getting cut through currently? Speak to your audience - a good thing to be doing is finding the time to speak to your customers and the general public to understand their own thoughts on “cut through” i.e. the view from the public on a more national/localised level as to what they’d like to see. Working from home/away from the office could be a great time to set up zoom calls with customers (working with your customer service dept!) and get permission to see if they would be willing to chat through their opinions e.g. what brands are standing out to them? What do they do differently? Which channels do you remember seeing the brand? The Brand Book 2021
5. Brand Marketing is going to get harder with more brands fighting for our hard-earned money for the much desired short term results, what are two brand tactics that will get the best cut through? 1) Don’t be afraid to invest in the brand and 2) Diagnose on marketing spend and what its achieving? The reaction for most businesses will be the need to cut back on advertising and promotions (and that’s understandable when it comes to keeping the business afloat).
7. What are the three actions for brands looking to gain cut-through right now? I recently listened to a great podcast called Call to Action by Giles Edwards where he interviews George Tennenbaum, a copywriter and creative director who summarised it really nicely: You need to focus on Impact, Communication, Persuasion if you don’t vault the first, the other 2 don’t matter so again focus on what impact you’re going to make and to do that, you need to be getting out into the field, speak with the public understand what good advertising means currently
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Simon Swan - Brand Q&A
Julia Rast JULIA RAST GLOBAL SOLUTIONS & INNOVATION MANAGER
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https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-rast-14b22458/
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Julia Rast is a digital and programmatic strategist with a passion for developing advanced, groundbreaking media solutions that elevate client business outcomes. She is leveraging the full suite of Xaxis’ services to demonstrate the impact that programmatic has on media investment and sales outcomes. With her extensive experience she identi es, incubates and deploys innovative solutions globally. As a manager on the Global Solutions and Innovation team at Xaxis, she uses her programmatic, data and analytics background across a range of cutting-edge solutions including Audio & Podcasts, Conversational Advertising, and In-Game Advertising. She is curious by nature, an explorer at heart, with a passion for driving diversity and inclusion across the business.
Julia Rast - Brand Q&A
2. Why do you think Brand and Marketing is often misaligned? Or are the two misunderstood? Having a deeper connection with a brand means it comes from personal experience. Marketers haven’t always understood what drives emotional motivation to purchase their brand. Without synergy between what makes a sale and the effort to extrapolate those sales, the output of marketing often misses its purpose. It’s often the lack- and expertise how to measure and capture these deeprooted principles and ideas individuals have about the brand that causes interference on the marketing- and brand relationship. Therefore, it’s essential for marketers to have a research- and analytics strategy to extract the fundamental and intrinsic values brands evoke with existing consumers. Subsequently that process serves as an explorative journey to stock your database with information about future prospects that could enable you to identify unexplored audiences you as a brand can interact with.
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1. What does Brand mean to you? The meaning of brand goes beyond its physical appearance or visual presence. A brand means a set of experiences and associations an individual has with a part of a company, a product, a service or with its employees. A brand evokes a type of feeling that drives desire to stay connected and being associated with its core values- and relates and identifies with those virtues as being an element of the individual itself. If done right and connotation with the brand is positive it feels as comfortable as wearing your favorite piece of clothing. Adopting a brand as part of your identity should give you comfort, confidence, feeling of belonging and act as an enhancement of who you are. The attachment to the brand, pride and loyalty we feel for it comes from a deep emotional connection that’s been established over unanticipated time.
Julia Rast - Brand Q&A
The most profound example is likely Heineken’s collaboration with the James Bond franchise. All though they’ve had a working relationship for over 10 years, never before did the character drink an actual Heineken on screen. In 2012, Daniel Craig who then portrayed Mr. Bond swapped his loved vodka martini ‘shaken not stirred’ for a casual green bottled beer. Despite core fans slamming the product placement, it helped positioning Heineken as a premium drink. Everywhere you travel nowadays, Heineken is on the menu and people drinking it are seen as wealthy.
Remarkably, before this worldwide partnership, Heineken was known for their local-and regional adaption to the global commercials, adhering to the local cultural values in each country. It’s decentralized marketing efforts allowed them to gain brand affinity- and loyalty. By converting their glocal marketing efforts into global strategies they adhered to the fast-changing behavior of their consumers, who due to further burgeoning of aviation and its expanding reach could travel everywhere and became global citizens. Concomitantly, Heineken now is really striking the right chord with it’s commercial ‘Connections’. With its simple message: 'It's not the best get-together, but it's the best way to get together' they set the example by using their media budgets to educate society how to still have a social live but be socially responsible to other individuals. They manage to stay true to their brand, while also be emotionally resonant for the end user.
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3. Which brand do you think just gets it and delivers their brand every time? Bit partial here, but I have to say Heineken which has incredible marketers that understand the history of the brand, its identity, their audience and most importantly listens to society to grow their brand.
Julia Rast - Brand Q&A
On a monthly basis nearly 40 million people in the U.S. flock to Twitch to consume content. Its audience almost entirely consists out of Gen Z’s watching Twitch celebrities in action. A demographic not only politicians, but also brands have a hard time connecting with, due to their extensive use of ad blockers and subscription eager behavior.
The appeal from the U.S. congresswoman showcases how forward thinking enabled the democratic party to work on building connections and creating brand affinity with a hard to reach audience. An audience that in last elections could have made the difference and is therefore crucial to have convinced to vote in Novembers election.
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4. What is the best piece of (brand) marketing you have seen over the last twelve months? Very recently US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called her 9.1 million followers on Twitter to join her playing the popular game Among Us. The multiplayer video game is an enormous hit among Twitch celebrities. Almost 700,000 people tuned in her livestream to watch her in action. Before she actually started playing, she urged her audience to vote in the upcoming presidential election on November 3rd 2020.


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A. Its automation nature allows you to manage your 5. Brand Marketing is going to get harder with impression frequency and cross-cap between more brands fighting for our hard-earned money channels, mitigating the audience overlap you for the much desired short term results, what might face while executing on direct basis with are two brand tactics that will get the best cut publishers. Additionally, it’s more cost-effective as through? the automation process cuts out irrelevant interfaces for you. A lot of marketers really want to make a difference and cut through advertising clutter. One way to do that is critically assess your omnichannel strategy B. Programmatic advertising enables brands to have and make sure everything is integrated properly. better targeting precision. It gives the ability to From a digital point of view, programmatic deliver brand messages at the right time, at the advertising facilitates centralized buying, easy right place and in the right context. This access to premium inventory from multiple empowers marketers to cut through advertising sources, all connected through a demand-side clutter and reach their audiences effectively. platform. Having your marketing efforts integrated creates a holistic view of campaign insights and the ability to optimize fluidly across device and channel in one central platform. Executing campaigns programmatically has two big advantages:


Julia Rast - Brand Q&A
Julia Rast - Brand Q&A
It is essential to apply audi alteram partem, meaning consumers won’t lose their willingness to buy products suddenly. They’ll only be more sensitive to brand messages that are more thoughtful to the situation they are in. Brands that succeed in establishing an emotional connection by providing supportive information about how their brand can help deal in these new situations will enjoy competitive advantage over those who stick to their everyday brand messaging.
But beyond everything, this new way of living and coping with forces of nature are a learning curve for everyone. Failure is part of success, because without failure there is no recovery, no improvement and no opportunity to optimize the situation and get better at the things you do.
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6. What is the best piece of advice you would give to struggling brand managers getting cut through currently? Although it might be inevitable to cut marketing budgets, it is pivotal for brands to keep investing in their share of voice in an economic slowdown. Losing your position in the mind of consumers can impact short- and long-term sales.
Julia Rast - Brand Q&A
It all comes back to creating an emotional connection between consumer and brand. For marketers that means creating strategies that grab people’s attention in a creative and prominent way:
1) Rethink your marketing strategies and identify new ways how to reach them. Many marketers have preconceived ideas about running brand messages through gaming supply, because they wrongfully think it’s not brand-safe, not measurable and not a premium environment, with only young boys playing games in their bedrooms. All of which is not true. Globally, there are 2.7 billion people gaming, two third of moms are gamers, while mobile is surpassing tv consumption making it the preferred source of entertainment and in-app advertisement is brand-safe and 100% measurable. In other words, gaming is a great marketing vehicle to connect emotionally with a large audience that is exposed to your brand while they are having fun.
2) Understand what consumers moves to act. If there is one thing that’s being missed the most, it’s the social aspects of life. As a brand you’re there to add value to people’s experience. By facilitating a dialog between consumer and brand you hit two birds in one stone. Conversational ads are scalable rich media formats that allow a twoway conversation between consumer- and brand. The user-generated format will provide a personalized experience, where the brand can produce tailored advice based on the input from the consumer. Consumers interact with the brand based on their own terms, while marketers will get to learn and gather data what drives consumers motivation in order to provide added value. 3) Sound is an extremely effective strategy to influence consumers. It is through sound that we can give meaning to what we see. It generates an emotional response that can increase ad effectiveness at moments where visual ads can’t reach consumers. Digital audio- and podcast ads facilitate 100% share of voice between consumer and brand. All though audio advertising is not new, many brands miss out on the opportunity because they know to little about how this form of advertising works. Digital audio ads are a unique opportunity for brands to connect with their audience while they don’t have to compete for their attention.
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7. What are the three actions for brands looking to gain cutthrough right now?
Pierre Dadd PIERRE DADD MARKETING CONSULTANT Pierre is an experienced brand and marketing director with over 20 years of experience working for brands such as LEGO, Disney, Auto Trader, BBC, and Checkatrade. Passionate about building purposeful brands with powerful stories, in 2018 Pierre founded DBMC Brand Consultants where he strives to build brands that mean more to both internal and external audiences.
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His work was instrumental in transforming Auto Trader from a functional to emotive brand, shedding its perception as an online car dealership to a modern and relevant digital brand that continues to sit comfortably within the FTSE 100. His clients come from a number of sectors including Ed-Tech, Ride-hailing, Food and Beverage, Entertainment, and Automotive.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pierredadd/
Pierre Dadd - Brand Q&A Brand is the emotional connection you have with your audiences. It’s the image you project in their minds (both internal and external). Brand is not about the functionality of your product or service - but the emotion you create by standing for something more. Steve Jobs (sorry to quote Apple) said it best when he said (when re-launching Apple in the ’80s) that Apple is about ‘more than just making boxes’ and that Apple will never succeed if they go to market and talk about ‘bits, feeds, and speeds’. The now infamous ‘Think Different’ campaign was instrumental in changing the way we think about brands. Building your brand starts with defining a distinctive, emotive, authentic, and future-facing positioning. Everything should then hang off this.
The benefits of brand are well documented but it's worth remembering that this emotional connection is so important because statistics show that 90% of purchasing decisions are based on emotion and that businesses with a clear purpose over profit grow 6x that of their purely profit-driven rivals.
There’s a channel of thought that ‘purpose’ is purely a fashion at the moment - save the world, getting behind a movement i.e. Black Lives Matter etc. Purpose isn’t about saving the world and brands that jump onto that bandwagon do themselves a disservice by looking very inauthentic and doing damage to their brand health. Think about all the brands that started suddenly telling us that they were ‘here for us’ at the start of the pandemic! For Lloyds bank and their ‘by your side’ campaign, this was fine as this is how they have positioned themselves long-term. For Vodafone and [insert any telecoms business], it didn’t feel authentic. For me, saving the world or getting behind a movement is and should be an articulation of your purpose. SKY is a great example of this. ‘Believe in Better’ started as a purpose to mean believe in better programming, better quality service, and THEN manifested itself into CSR programmes such as ‘pass on plastic’. If it’s relevant to your purpose, then getting behind a movement can be extremely beneficial and powerful. If it’s not, then it can do more harm than good. Purpose isn’t a gimmick, purpose is drawing a line in the sand, it’s throwing down the gauntlet and stating ‘this is why we’re here, this is who we are’.
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1. What does Brand mean to you?
3. Which brand do you think just gets it and delivers their brand every time? I have previously mentioned SKY - and I always think of them as a great example of delivering on-brand with their ‘believe in better’ positioning. What I believe it means; TV - bringing you the best programming/content Mobile - innovative products such as the data ‘rollover’ Betting - Betting Better, with innovative betting products CSR - pass on plastic There are no doubt more examples. But you can see their purpose come through in everything they do. They don’t just say it, they strive to do it. I am also led to believe that it is also an internal mantra for them. It's consistent, aspirational, authentic, and emotive.
2. Why do you think Brand and Marketing is often misaligned? Or are the two misunderstood? I don’t think Brand and Marketing is misaligned, I think Brand is often confused as marketing, or in many cases, that Brand is design, a logo, a campaign etc. Design, communications are articulations of the brand (just as a CSR programme is) - but brand is something that everyone in the organisation needs to deliver day in day out. I think it’s interesting that Brand is seen as a specialism within marketing when in reality I think it could be led by anyone in the business (within reason). Brand marketing is itself a misnomer as every piece of communications and audience touchpoint should in one way or another be an articulation of the brand.
The Brand Book 2021
Pierre Dadd - Brand Q&A
Pierre Dadd - Brand Q&A
The Brand Book 2021
As lockdown ended and the re-opened, they played off their core audiences who had been trying to make their own KFC...and failed...with a new campaign titled ‘Were back. We’ll take it from here.’
My advice would be to follow the 60:40 rule - 60% of the budget on brand building, 40% on short-term tactics. But always staying true to your purpose!
5. Brand Marketing is going to get harder with more brands fighting for our hard-earned money for the much desired short term results, what are two brand tactics that will get the best cut through? I think this is very dependent on the brand in question. Long and short-term tactics are proven to be somewhat symbiotic i.e. you can’t have one without the other. You need to build brand awareness and consideration for the long-term, but you also need to drive immediate performance.
4. What is the best piece of (brand) marketing you have seen over the last twelve months? I love what KFC has been doing. They stay relevant, humble, and play on their brand codes. Who can forget the chicken shortage they had when they had literally no stock - their ads that came out with the ‘FCK’ headline. Then, as we were in lockdown and all very quickly tired of the ‘we’re there to support you’ mobile phone ads...they did something different.
Pierre Dadd - Brand Q&A
From a creative perspective, it very much depends on your objectives i.e. short-term direct response advertising through to pure brand advertising. Above all - be consistent and stay true to your brand - but be very clear on your objectives otherwise you will feel somewhat rudderless.
The Brand Book 2021
6. What is the best piece of advice you would give to struggling brand managers getting cut through currently? My advice would be to go back to your purpose and ensure this is robust and has support from senior stakeholders from the top down. With this in place your brand look, sound, and feel will flow more naturally, and you will have a lens to guide your decision-making.
Anna Brook ANNA BROOK BRAND MARKETING CONSULTANT Anna Brook is an experienced startup brand builder. She has led brand marketing inhouse for companies including peer-to-peer parking app JustPark, online estate agency Yopa, and pet food retailer Paws.com. As a consultant, she now works hand-in-hand with startup teams to develop their brand into their killer strategic advantage.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-brook/
The Brand Book 2021
Her clients range from idea stage all the way up to global household names, like Deliveroo.
Anna Brook - Brand Q&A 1. What does Brand mean to you? I can’t be the first person to suggest that ‘brand’ needs a rebrand. The default assumption tends to be that your brand is akin to your logo. ‘Fluffy’. A nice to have. Actually, brand is a core strategic tool. It’s who people think you are. As brand people, it’s our job to define who we want to be as a company, then help the business execute on this strategy.
- Give you clarity, direction and inspiration to make good business decisions, quickly. - Speak precisely and consistently to your target customer, attracting them and keeping them close. - Help you spend efficiently on projects that nail your objectives and marketing that performs.
- Unite and galvanise your team, making it easy to hire and keep the right people.
The Brand Book 2021
Done right, your brand should:
Brand and Marketing are often seen as synonymous. The risk here is that the all-important Brand Strategy process gets skipped, and the team launches straight into executing campaigns without having laid the strategic foundations first. Nailing your Brand Strategy means getting your marketing fundamentals in order, so that you can control your brand as much as possible. It supports your business strategy as a whole and flows into everything - from your visual brand and tone of voice, to your campaign executions, sales pitches and product roadmap.
As Dolly Parton said: “Find out who you are, then do it on purpose”!
2. Why do you think Brand and Marketing is often misaligned? Or are the two misunderstood?
3. Which brand do you think just gets it and delivers their brand every time?
4. What is the best piece of (brand) marketing you have seen over the last twelve months?
I’m seeing great brand work from Dutch chocolate makers, Tony’s Chocolonely. They have a strong purpose: to end slavery in the chocolate supply chain. And they deliver this message in a quirky, characterful way. They’ve really grasped the idea that your brand should exist everywhere - across every single touchpoint, not just on your homepage and packaging.
I’m a big fan of brand campaigns that you can see are based on deep customer insight. They’re the campaigns that grab hold of their target customer - and stay with them.
So - their chocolate bars themselves are unevenly shaped to make a point about inequality in the chocolate supply chain. They take out full page ads that focus solely on their purpose. And even their employment contract is the most incredibly on brand, colourful, jargon-free thing you’ll ever see.
Having never heard of it a year ago, I now see Tony’s everywhere, have a thorough understanding of what they’re about thanks to how consistent and bold they are with their brand via every touchpoint, and buy it regularly!
For me, Squarespace aced this when they told small businesses and freelancers everywhere: "A website makes it real". It's such a powerful idea - simple but multilayered, and undeniably true. Building your first website does make your business “real” to the outside world but, even more fundamentally, it “makes it real” for you. It's that big, tangible and often scary moment when you put your offering into words and send it out into the world. I thought about "making it real" recently as I launched the first version of my consultancy business website, and I built it with Squarespace.
The Brand Book 2021
Anna Brook - Brand Q&A
Anna Brook - Brand Q&A 6. What is the best piece of advice you would give to struggling brand managers getting cut through currently?
5. Brand Marketing is going to get harder with more brands fighting for our hard-earned money for the much desired short term results, what are two brand tactics that will get the best cut through?
If you’ve found that your operations have slowed because of disruption in the wider world, could there be an opportunity to focus on revisiting your strategy? I’ve noticed a few startups that are usually running a thousand miles a minute using this unexpected downtime to get to know their customer better, challenge long-held internal assumptions, and generally focus on answering important strategic questions.
As always, this depends massively on the individual brand, its target customer, market context and available resource. But I do think that, when times are tough, a channel like Referral becomes all the more interesting.
1) Think you’ll like it, based on their personal knowledge of you and
Could you take the opportunity to interview your customers one-onone? Ask them open questions, give them permission to speak freely, and listen closely to the language they use to talk about their experiences.
2) Rate it themselves - they wouldn’t risk their social standing by recommending their friend something crap. These trust factors and elements of personalisation become all the more powerful in a tough, competitive climate.
This kind of in-depth, qualitative research is solid gold for anyone looking to build a brand that’s relevant, resonant, and based on insights - not assumptions.
The Brand Book 2021
It’s so easy to assume that we know our audience intuitively (“they’re just like me!”). Or to think our customers behave in rational, predictable ways all the time. Reality is, people are messy and often contradictory.
If someone you trust sends you a recommendation, you know they
Danny Denhard DANNY DENHARD FOUNDER - FOCUS Danny has two decades of experience in the business world, working across all business shapes and sizes, including tiny start ups, agency side, ran his own consultancy, went through a successful IPO, working both sides of mergers and acquisitions and most recently working in and for listed businesses. Danny was responsible for Europe's largest Crowdfunding platform between 2016 and 2020. Transacting over ÂŁ220m from 7 million people across the world. Danny was a key part of the leadership team that oversaw strategy, transacting ÂŁ1.7b in four years.
Danny is known for his personal and operational approach to business and business leadership, having been a leader across Product, Growth and Marketing Departments.
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https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannydenhard/
The Brand Book 2021
Danny has vast experience in Marketing and Growth leadership roles, including running multi million pound budgets, maturing agencies and developing dedicated Product o ering, to being on senior leadership teams.
Danny Denhard - Brand Q&A Brand is the layer outside of business.
2. Why do you think Brand and Marketing is often misaligned? Or are the two misunderstood?
It is the extra layer that adds more than the product can, it build affinity, connection, and guidance where the product can struggle to.
Brand is typically seen a policing function, you can do this, you can say that.Â
Brand is the difference between buying a item to buying a product to investing into a cognitive relationship.
Marketing is typically the act of attracting as many customers to the product suite as possible.Â
Without that cognitive connection you are likely just another product or item competing in an ultra competitive space.
The two can be at odds and can misalign quickly, the brand should be a coaching function and help Marketing have clear messaging and clear identity for potential customers, users and fans of the product. Both functions can forget to internally market themselves and the work they have undertaken and delivered.
Being aligned and formally agree the steps you are both are going to take is essential for Brand and Marketing success.
The Brand Book 2021
1. What does Brand mean to you?
Danny Denhard - Brand Q&A 3. Which brand do you think just gets it and delivers their brand every time?
4. What is the best piece of (brand) marketing you have seen over the last twelve months?
There are many brands who get their space and delivers brilliance, I would say most recently you cannot look to much further than Adidas, particularly their recent advertising in football.
This would be between Apple and Adidas.
Proving that you know the unspoken connection is what large brands do that smaller brands can only dream of.
Apple’s addiction to quality and highest quality of advertising is part of the fandom around Apple and the deepest level of connection to a brand. Adidas’ most recent advertising campaign with Arsenal turned an advert into what felt like a movie.
The connection that Adidas built instantly is exactly what brand and brand marketing has to be.
The Brand Book 2021
Adidas’ Arsenal adverts and campaigns have really shown they understand the connection with the fans, the love of nostalgia and what fans missed, their second family.
Apple’s ability to make even the most expensive products seem game-changing via their advertising, their marketing and to leverage FOMO is someone very few other brands get close to, especially in the luxury space with a challenging 2020.
Danny Denhard - Brand Q&A
Building a deeper connection with existing customers and enabling the customer to truly know the connection and a nity to you as the brand. Many brands will struggle to prioritise in this way however, brands will have to known for very speci c items or products alongside going that extra mile.
Spend dedicated time with the retention marketers and Growth team this will enable you to help coach and build out your brand messaging into your existing audience and an ability to appear in front of audiences who are not quite sure on the product but will be tipped over the edge by the brand and that emotional connection where possible. Show the deeper connection, show the times you are added onto a shopping list and how you have to be the brand on that shopping list vs others.
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Being able to turn a customer into a fan is powerful, turning a fan into an advocate is something only a few brands truly can do, if you can control the brain and the heart of your customers they will invest into your brand time and time again.
6. What is the best piece of advice you would give to struggling brand managers getting cut through currently? Find your foundation, rediscover your voice, test and iterate, being more connected with your fellow team members, Product team and tech team will enable you to increase internal trust and cut through and you can build out a deeper connection with your potential customers.
The Brand Book 2021
5. Brand Marketing is going to get harder with more brands fighting for our hard-earned money for the much desired short term results, what are two brand tactics that will get the best cut through?
Danny Denhard - Brand Q&A 7. What are the three actions for brands looking to gain cut-through right now? The rst is to build deeper connections with existing customers, build on the products they have brought into and build out layers of trust, connection and a nity into the brand, tell more stories, connect their story with other customer stories and why it is important. Â
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Lastly bring happiness, at any time humans look for hope, a hero and happiness, if you want to gain cut-through appeal to our human cravings and create connections to hope, happiness or a hero.
The Brand Book 2021
The second is to build a hero moment for the customer, once the customer is built as the hero, they will know it is their product, their brand.Â
The Brand Book 2021
The Important Questions For You To Answer In 2021
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The Questions For You To Answer Do you have Brand respect? Is your brand respected so much so they will buy you again based on your brand and trust you have build?




If you had a product or advertising mistake will customers stay with you or will they leave you?
The Brand Book 2021
Do you own the cognitive brand space? Do you own the relevant brand space for your customers?
The Questions For You To Answer Does your brand deserve loyalty? Does the brand beat the product expectation and di erentiate you vs your numerous competitors?
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Growth is always at the forefront of every businesses eyes, is your brand an unfair advantage and can you leverage brand over product marketing?
The Brand Book 2021
Are you a brand that other brands will want to partner with and work with in 2021 and beyond?
The Questions For You To Answer Do you regularly make it onto customers lists? Will you be listed on the next shop? Next Birthday Present list? Next payday?
Is your brand high or low frequency? Are you being thought about and used regularly enough to be considered?
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Are you going to be a brand that is as relevant in a Hybrid o ce as you were in an o ce rst environment?
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Is your brand part of your ywheel? Does your brand add more traction to your Marketing or Growth ywheel?
The Brand Book 2021
The Brand Book 2021 Recap
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• Give your product meaning, be more than a set of products. • Give your brand and internal teams freedom don't be overly restrictive. • Connect with your customers, go deeper than the transaction, be human. • Build a message and a theme you stand for, to connect the dots through your brand and product lines. • Be trustworthy, be familiar, make global feel local. • Bring happiness. • Offer a chance to celebrate or look back • Know what is short term and what is long term. Plan for short, medium and long to build layers of connections. • Create great experiences and enable technology to empower your customers • Create the hero. • Enable Marketing and Brand to be connected and within the same department. Align the goals. • Offer more be memorable, be different, stand out, be brave and bold. • Offer hope
The Brand Book 2021
The Brand Book 2021 Recap
Thanks for reading.
The Brand Book 2021
Danny Denhard // danny@dannydenhard.com // @dannydenhard December 2020.
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