In our efforts to create distinctive, consistent brands we are missing a huge opportunity.

Andrew Smart (left) & Paul Tyler (right)

By ANDREW SMART, CREATIVE DIRECTOR, MENSCH and PAUL TYLER, STORY CONSULTANT, HANDLING IDEAS

Andrew and Paul know each other socially. A recent conversation revealed a shared belief that drives their two jobs; Andrew building commercial brands, Paul helping fiction writers develop scripts for TV series and film. This article captures this overlap, paving the way for a more meaningful way for products and services to engage with consumers.  

Andrew on brand-building

We’re constantly banging on about consistency when building strong brands. I’ve done it myself, in countless meetings. But after a conversation over a beer with my good friend Paul, about how he approaches his work, I began to question whether in our efforts to create distinctive, self-assured brands we are missing a huge opportunity.

Many brands strive for a kind of perfection - a single-minded, chisel-jawed, point of view about themselves and the world around them, propelling them forwards, confident stride after confident stride towards a distant utopian future. But in a world full of complexity and ambiguity, perfection is not trustworthy. In fact, this approach to branding could be counter productive.

A distinction starts to emerge. Consistency has its place. The goals we set ourselves, the values we embrace while pursuing those goals. The visual frameworks we work within - the tone of voice and visual expression of our brand. When defining all these important markers, consistency is key. But I would argue that there’s one place we shouldn’t be consistent. And that’s when it comes to the storytelling. Good storytelling doesn’t point us to some notion of certainty, but rather exposes us to uncertainty, to ambiguity. To places where opposite concepts can be equally true. The type of good storytelling that comes through our Netflix or HBO account. The type of good storytelling that really engages us with the messiness of the world. And this is where the overlap between our two jobs began.

All stakeholders all have one thing in common. They’re just people. And people are flawed. Whether you’re a shareholder on the board of a multi-national company, an employee or a customer, you have worries. And doubts. You make mistakes and U-turns. You have off-days. You change your mind. You have contradictory views.

And all of these people are constantly being met by super-slick, super-confident power-brands that want their attention - that want them to identify with their values. And there’s the mismatch. We don’t identify with perfection. None of us.

Brands that do well are those that understand the true nature of storytelling.

Nike has always been one example of a brand that seems to embrace the uncertain. They cleverly place themselves between success and failure - the battle between our physical and psychological limitations and reaching our goals. Their latest offering asks us the question - Am I bad person? challenges us directly to explore a paradox that lies at the very heart of sport - it’s hard to be a nice person and also a winner. If our attempt at winning everything succeeds in losing something, then what did we achieve?

Dove, with their campaign for real beauty, place themselves in the space between inner-beauty and external beauty. They ask us, what’s more important, looking good to feel good or the opposite, feeling good to look good? Their latest work poses the question - What kind of beauty do we want AI to learn? Again, it’s a great example of a brand that’s not scared of exposing us to the dilemmas they face, in this case, as part of the beauty industry.

These brands all share something in common. They recognise that the stories that truly engage and stay with us aren’t carriers of sharply defined messaging, rather they open up the space that lies between two forces and asks, what if?

And while we’re on the subject, as AI starts to influence the content we create as marketers, there’s even a greater need to remind ourselves what we humans do best - and where good stories exist, in the fuzzy spot between two places, rather than what computers do, to use data and algorithms to sharpen everything down to some arithmetic mean.

Paul on storytelling

Dogs don’t do stories. They’re either happy, hungry or randy. Humans do stories because we need them. Our greatest weakness, possibly also our greatest strength, is our ability to hold two completely opposing views in our head at the same time. We live in a state of paradox. Good story writing exploits this paradox and helps us navigate the muddle. Stories are then simulations, fictionalized scenarios that play out within the space between a rock and a hard place. By plonking us right there in the mêlée, within the heart of this tension, we identify with the characters’ conflict ‘should I go this way or that?’. It triggers a risk analysis in both us and the characters, that builds as we follow them down the messy rabbit hole, a world that grows ever more complex, ever more paradoxical, ever more like our own.

We identify with the predicament even when our suburban townhouse bears no resemblance to the design of the characters’ world. I’ve never put on a helmet and blown up a death star and yet I do struggle between doing things because they promise certainty rather than following my sense of faith. I’ve never cooked meth to leave a legacy for my family, but I do struggle between choosing between those things that make me a good but dissatisfied person, and those that make me destructive yet fulfilled*? A character’s world might be a million miles from my own, but their inner struggle, their quandary, dilemma, conflict resonates with me. This is why I watch and continue to watch. I want answers to their inner world because there’s the hope that the way the simulation handles it may well help alleviate my own.

So a good story doesn’t land us on an answer, some arithmetic mean but instead keeps us within the simulation, binding to an ever shifting tension, a rich complex middle (and muddle) that builds between two or possibly more seemingly irreconcilable forces. The better it gets, the harder it gets. This caught-in-the middle sensation is what keeps good TV series going. Create the infinite game of ping-pong, with characters running to-and-fro and you’ll lure an audience through episodes and seasons, despite the illusion of a resolve in the next episode.

Netflix’s The Crown is a perfect example. Everyone from the Queen down is wrestling, in their own way between two centers of gravity. Duty to the crown or duty to oneself? A perfect world would offer a solution, but the reason why the Crown works and why it is so identifiable is that it places itself in an imperfect world. Our world. Our very messy world.

Watch the trailer for season one and try calling out between each cut, whether the characters are turning towards a duty to the crown or to their own humanity. Within seconds of the clip playing, the ping-pong effect is blindlingly obvious and thereby the theme; how do you retain yourself when you’re expected to devote yourself 100% to something else? It’s relentless and compelling.

Andrew on branding, continued.

We don’t always need a dragon to sell a knight.

So, that’s it then? We just need to find some sort of conflict and apply it to brand x or y? It might be tempting to simply find the polar opposite of what we stand for and create an argument against it. When working on brand campaigns as a creative, we often look for an ‘enemy’. Some opposing force that might help us create tension in our stories. And this is often a negative opposite to what we might refer to as the brand or product’s value proposition. But do the two counter-points necessarily need to be a positive and a negative? I would argue not.

This model is a little too linear. Simply pitching all that your business stands for against its polar opposite leaves you and your potential customers with no real conflict to identify with and by nature, banal and uninteresting. Really good story telling works because we identify with a genuine tension, a not-so-easy-to-resolve conflict. It’s what engages us.

If brand storytellers were to take a page out of the screenwriters’ book, the story would need to come from a place that allows you to explore ambiguity and nuance. A more useful mental model would be to think of the brand in the middle, between those two centres of gravity, where there’s good and bad in each direction, which might even increase the more we go one way – the ‘better it gets the harder it gets’ paradox.

Another thing I often encounter is that it is problematic selling this kind of work to clients. And I get it. It can be daunting as a brand, grappling with climate change and resource depletion to begin to admit that you are part of the problem and the solution. And it can be difficult to stand up in a board room and say, “hey, I’m the person who wants to weave some ambiguity into our communication.” That’s just not what they teach you at business school.

So, I’m left with the conviction that the most powerful, memorable and engaging brands are less obsessed with defining and then pushing their own values and more interested in helping us explore and define our own. And perhaps, in this age of every increasing complexity, where the knee-jerk reaction might be to simplify, create order and provide answers, brands need to lean the other way and be more open to paradox, where truth can be found in multiple places.

Consumers bombarded with perfection will constantly feel the jolt as they try to go about their day today if brands only really make sense in a perfect world. What we need are brands to help us navigate our imperfect one.

*Credit to Tatjana Samopjan for the Breaking Bad’s theme.