By Anjan Purandare
A lot of audiences will look askance at this question, but the fact remains, agencies doing truly stellar work are capable of pitch forking their brands into the limelight, and they are able to achieve this by aligning their brand’s ‘left-field’ (also referred to as ‘weird’) with their agency’s most creative talent.
Take the spectacular Apple / Tim Cook – Octavia Spencer, advert on climate change, that blew the socks off the advertising landscape late last year. It was an excellent instance of a creative push, ticking every imaginable check-box, while retaining an under tone of humour.
While the above falls under the purview of an outstanding ‘brand’, with unmatched brand recall, we must not lose sight of the fact that many more regular brands, also need to find their ‘weird’, and that is exactly where a good quality creative agency comes in the picture. USP’s are a thing of the past on the creative landscape, utilising the USP with a solid creative ‘hook’ (the more left field, the better), is what matters. This, is exactly where branding takes center stage.
One of the ways in which strong branding (therefore, brand recognition) drives an organisation forward is its strong correlation with increased revenue. Good branding gives an opportunity to slightly alter pricing upwards, thereby increasing revenues significantly, as opposed to a strong sales strategy based on discounts, which has been shown to increase revenue too, but not in the same proportion. This is especially relevant in the B2B space where buyers are willing to spend a premium, if so dictated by a strong brand.
Needless to mention, a cracking suite of branding will include the standard set of identity mapping, logo and color palette design and at least, a fleek brand book to boot, however, the ‘weird’ gets woven in with a compelling brand story. This is where the primary stake holders from the brand get to bounce off their ideas with the creative agency mavens, to arrive at the ‘hook’. It is the creativity of this hook which can decide the short- and long-term future of the brand in question.
This brings me to a very critical follow up point – consistency in brand communication. It’s all hunky-dory coming up with a radically innovative ‘hook’, the agency (and the brand in question) though, must know fully well if the messaging is consistent with what the brand wants to communicate via its offerings. This is one of the most important factors driving long term customer acquisition and thus, revenue. Let’s take another example, this time, closer home. CRED absolutely hit it out of the ballpark with their hyper-contrarian adverts with Rahul Dravid, losing his cool, (something which was unheard in his glorious chapter as India’s cricketing wall.) Yes, they got it bang-on on multiple parameters. Was it ‘weird’ enough to take notice? Absolutely! Was it meme-worthy? Yes. Was it capable of going viral on social. Totally. Could it start a conversation on platforms? Of-course. Yet, when the dust settled, most pundits were divided in its end use and efficacy. The reason? It was not really clear what the brand offered. Case in point worth mulling over. Be ‘weird’, but communicate consistently.
Finally, an agile creative agency can help B2B brands re-orient themselves in a milieu that is getting increasingly indistinguishable and crowded. This is an essential function that helps B2B firms keep in touch with their customers’ varying needs, and keep evolving to meet with the stiff challenges in the market place. Thus, smart creative agencies will seldom lose out on the opportunity to suggest ‘re-branding strategies’ to their set of clients.
The author is the founder and CEO of WeInvert