How to damage a brand
A couple of days ago I spent the morning talking, reminiscing, postulating about the future – oh, and presenting work. The work was naturally fabulous but it was the conversations that really kept us talking on the journey home.I don’t know about you but a meeting that develops into a brainstorm is a great experience and a great sign. It’s the difference between leaving a meeting wondering and leaving it knowing your ideas have been understood entirely.
That morning was one of those great events. The ideas were well received and then the talk widened to take in a history of video games. The client made a comment that left the rest of us discussing how or whether it is possible to damage a brand.
Let’s put you out of your misery by revealing that comment. The client was talking about marketing back in the C64 and Spectrum days. He said that in those days you could pretty much do as you liked with huge franchises. Want to slap a Batman logo on a box? Well as long as you had that initial loose agreement with Warners then you just went ahead and did it. There were no brand guardians watching your every move. There were few or no approval processes to go through. You’d paid your money and you took your game to market the way you felt was appropriate. The client then made that comment – he just said that he didn’t think they did any harm to the brand.
Amazing? Simple? Wrong?
Increasingly it seems to be perceived wisdom amongst designers and creatives that brands do need to be protected against misuse. Style guides run into hundreds of pages, dedicated personnel stand in the way of each proposed element of creative and the process of working with licensed product can often be long and difficult. But looking at it from the heady days of the 1980′s – what if no harm was done to the licences? Did they kill any back then? No. Did Maria Whittaker live to star on another game cover – ok, maybe not. But not because the video game played fast and loose with her brand image.
Take it this way. If Superman’s brand image was jealously guarded back then how would that affect the many diverse styles and stories that have made him the icon he is today? Everything, from the famous “S” to the entire costume and even his backstory have been reinvented, reinvigorated, so many times and yet he is still an icon. Would the camp Batman of the 1960′s have made it through a post-Nolan world? It seems doubtful.
In a world that puts more and more value on spreading brand messages virally, on encouraging social ownership of your brand and on riding the whole networking vibe, isn’t it time to relax the rules a little?