What is Brandproofing and how should I accomplish it?

 What is Brandproofing?

Well, if soundproofing is the process of keeping sound in and not letting any escape, I figured Brandproofing would be the right term for the art of keeping the components of a brand contained securely as its vehicle (the business) rumbles on. 

Why does a brand need to be contained and what causes it to escape?

A brand is the sum of interactions between a business and its stakeholders. A business can control and influence the nature of those interactions through branding, but control is liable to slip as the busyness of business gets underway. 

A tremendous amount of effort goes into the ideation and planning of a brand. Founders, marketing teams and agencies spend months deliberating over the details, wrapping up the perfect formula to achieve set goals, only to find it unravelling with passing years as performance takes priority over perception and positioning. This is particularly true of small companies where owners get bogged down with working in the business rather than on it. 

The consequence is inconsistency. Tone, design, messaging, feel, sound, approach, attitude - all these things become scattered, perhaps subtly at first but as the great lexicographer, Samuel Johnson once said in different words: The diminutive chains of habit are seldom felt until they are too strong to be broken. A brand can seep from a business like air from tyres. The car rolls on until the driver and its passengers realise there’s nothing left. All of a sudden other cars pass them by and they’re stuck in a lay-by disillusioned, signalling for expensive help. 

Employees may jump ship, competitors can get ahead, and your market’s loyalty perches precariously on your raw performance, without the soft padding of strong branding for security. 

How to Brandproof a business

• Create a brand strategy that’s built for the long-term by leaning on data, insight and creative intelligence. Devise a tone of voice strategy to define the company’s voice too. 

• Such strategies can be clunky. It’s important that there are what David Ogilvy would call big ideas that capture the gist of things in a single, memorable phrase. I once summarised a 40-page strategy for the rebrand of a 5-star heritage hotel with the line ‘Luxury, Loosened’. It’s a phrase I helpfully referred to throughout the presentation to keep my audience on the right path, preventing them from getting lost in the granular detail of stratagem. 

• Simplification via taglines and big ideas helps the company’s team to retain the strategy and keep it front of mind during decision making. I’d also recommend having beautifully designed infographics and charts that they can transfer to office walls, desktop backgrounds, and elsewhere. 

• Whether it’s brand strategy, tone of voice strategy or any other blueprint, it’s essential that all levels of management are absolutely convinced and confident in it. They need to be able to retell this to the rest of the team, who need to remember the main nuggets, and perform in an on-brand manner everyday. Therefore, the way in which the initial strategies are presented to management is crucial - it needs to be delivered with passion and conviction, and there needs to be space for amendments and feedback so there is solidarity across the board. 

• If management cares about the brand, the rest of the company follows, and all external stakeholders will too. There ought to be weekly or monthly check-ins where the brand strategy is reiterated in inventive ways, and there should be innovative initiatives which drive home the brand’s values without preaching or lecturing. 

• Finally, recognise when the car is too big for the tyres it started with. In plainer words, identify early when it’s time to rebrand or refine the branding. You can predict this moment as you notice significant milestones being surpassed and the company’s objectives have changed. Maybe the market has shifted, and perhaps the business is now 100x the size it once was - these are all signs to go back to the original strategies and see what doesn’t make sense any more. It’s better to make adjustments than to procrastinate until you need a wholesale replacement. 

And that’s that. If you’ve made it this far into my article, please do let me know (it means a lot) and seek counselling immediately - you may be socially deprived. 

Tapping Arabia's Other Liquid Gold

 Arabia’s Other Liquid Gold

Coffee is a multi-billion dollar business in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia but it’s more than just business. The humble bean, once some magic has been administered to it, becomes a symbol of hospitality, and the means by which happiness is obtained and shared. It’s the lubricant that keeps chatting mouths moving at midday or midnight.

KSA’s ‘branded coffee shop market’ grew by 18.5% in 2022. That’s a lot - it was 10% in the USA for the same period. At Klinical, we contributed to that statistic through a brand we created called Sipside. We started working on this project just as the Saudi government had announced Vision 2030 - an ambitious state-wide commercial and societal development project that aimed to help solidify the country’s position on the global stage. Sure, there’s the other liquid gold underground that could sustain them for a millennia but they want to win the hearts and minds of the average Joe and Joanne around the world. Our contribution of Sipside (among a plethora of other Saudi brands we’ve created) is one more solid brick in the foundations of KSA’s future.

So, rhetoric and posturing aside, what have I got to share with you? Well, it’s been a 3-year adventure into the Saudi coffee sector and here’s what I’ve picked up:

• If you want to launch a consumer brand in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is a great starting point because of its initiatives that flood down from the top. There’s a real entrepreneurial spirit in the country and the wheels of change are turning in favour of commercialism.
  
  

• Saudi Arabia has a remarkably young population (over 70% are under 30 years old last time I checked) and they are highly socially active. If you’ve got a vibrant brand with a quality product that’s marketed well, it’ll launch and spread successfully.
  
  

• Things happen at a gentler pace so you can expect Saudi entrepreneurs and founders to be more amicable, leisurely and appreciative than their European counterparts. Calls and meetings always involve warm, friendly intros and outros with compliments of a professional and personal nature exchanged like
  
  

• You’ll need a strong creative team designing and strategising social posts because photography will be lacking. Photos of Sipside are deceiving because they often show an empty albeit beautiful cafe. However, this is because taking pictures of customers is generally a no-go, which is a shame from a marketing point of view but something we certainly compensate for with our creative, designed posts.
  
  

• A winning formula lasts long. So, in other markets, it’s common to refresh marketing strategies and head back to the drawing board on a regular basis to keep your customers engaged and interested. The lifecycle of a campaign, a theme or a style is much longer in Saudi Arabia but this might change as commercialism rises, possibly turning contentedness into
  
  

• Saudis are not loyal to a particular coffee shop so there’s no point banging that ‘we’re the best, forget the rest’ drum. However, due to the amount of coffee they consume, you can expect your shop to be in their daily visit so it’s still worth introducing reward schemes and creating a community vibe around your brand.
  
  

• PR opportunities are extremely limited so word of mouth is an integral driver of growth. This puts extra scrutiny on the in-store experience and the brand positioning of digital assets (website and socials). It’s paramount to have clear, easy-to-follow but well-thought-out strategies and blueprints in place covering tone of voice, content, styling, uniforms, merchandise and more. Everything needs to be absolutely on-point because every in-store and online interaction is worth 10x more than it would be in a European coffee shop, for example.
  
  
  
  
  
  

How Hotels Are Changing: Big Brands vs Independents

 Why Big Brand Hotels Need To Act Like Independents

Contrary to popular belief, independent hotels tend to outperform big brands during times of crisis, and this sentiment spills over into peacetime too. Here is an excellent resource for some figures on this - https://preferrednet.net/media/1296303/independent-vs-brand-hotel-performance-whitepaper.pdf 

IHG CEO Keith Barr said this when asked about post-Covid travel:

Customers are going to want to stay in the biggest branded hotels—this will put headwinds on home-sharing. We will also see weaker brands and independent hotels convert over to the big brands.

It’s easy to see how Keith arrived at that assertion, but it’s not so simple to understand why he was wrong.

At Klinical, we work closely with hospitality brands all over the world from luxury resorts in Ghana to 5-star heritage hotels in London. As we consult, strategise, create and develop, we pick up various insights that help us to stay on the crest of hospitality’s next wave.

Here are just a few things I’ve noticed:

1. Agility
   
   Big brand hotels like JW Marriott tend to have strict regulations over what their properties can and can’t do from a branding and marketing perspective. This may provide some upside via consistency and simplicity but our experience in the field and the latest data demonstrate that travelers are increasingly looking for interesting stays with points of difference. It’s extremely difficult for properties to cater to this change if all of the decision-making power is housed at HQ. 

As well as not adapting to changing demands, the creative assets and marketing materials of big brand hotels can quickly fall way behind their boutique and independent rivals. Again, this is because the chain of command to make changes stretches long and high up to HQ. This creative stagnation shows itself best (or worst) in things like wedding brochures and sales presentations which nobody at the property has been able to update or tweak for fear of contravening the corporate guidelines. 

Indie hotels, on the other hand, can keep a close eye and a poised hand on their brochures, presentations, social media templates, and more. This provides them with a significant competitive advantage. 

2. Authenticity
   
   Often, big brands have a single, universal website for all their hotels, and the individual properties are unable to have their own tailored online presence. Staying at the Marriott in Goa, India is obviously going to be different from staying at the Marriott in Grosvenor Square, London yet they occupy the same website with the same UX, the same tone, the same styling, and more. The varying characteristics and personalities of these locations are stifled, and their stories are left untold.
   
   A counter-argument may be that uniformity provides a customer who knows what he or she wants with the confidence to make a swift booking decision wherever they’re traveling to. It’s like being in a strange country and suddenly seeing the McDonald’s golden arches in the distance - you know you can trust that location to provide sanctity, familiarity, and an antidote to anxiety.
   
   Is that really what people want from their travel experience? A safe bet? The data suggests that people are more experimental than ever, and the desire for difference increases by generation.
   
   This Forbes article about Deflagging is a great read: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2021/06/07/what-does-the-increase-in-hotel-deflagging-mean-for-the-hospitality-industry/ 

My view is that the phrase ‘A Stay With a Story’ will come to characterise the next decade of successful hotel stewardship. The Story in this sense refers to the character and personality of the brand but also the idea that guests will leave with an interesting story to share with their friends and family. Independent hotels are better positioned to accomplish this because of their dexterity, and big brand hotels will need to flatten their structure in order to compete in the same way.

Journalism is not PR

Complaints about language are increasingly common sights on social media. The sensitivity around word choices reaches dizzy new heights every day, and there was one particular outcry that pushed me to dust off this old blog and scribe my thoughts. 

Here's a link - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/laurenpaton_ok-yes-theyve-changed-it-now-but-no-one-activity-7022154355017412608-UVX9?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop 

Yesterday I saw dozens of posts that were bursting with incandescence and demanded the BBC change a headline because it was so offensive. The comments inevitably bleated support, condemning the writer, and riling up other onlookers to contact the BBC to instigate an edit. 

For those of you who haven't clicked the link, the headline reads:

'Jacinda Ardern resigns: Can women really have it all?' 

Now, I could use this post to discuss whether these words are hateful and sexist or not, but that's a bit too obvious and that drum has been banged too many times, to too many deaf ears. Instead, I'd like to focus on the notion that principally, journalists ought to be left alone to write as they wish without fear of a mob forcing a change. 

I'm not opposing criticism of journalistic work nor am I opposing public debate on published materials. I am, however, worried about the idea that readers are able to exert such power over the writer as to edit his or her work so that it suits their taste. Incidentally, the writer of this piece was in fact a 'her' but this is something that slipped the mob's otherwise astute radar, and to those who did notice it didn't seem to make a difference - a crime had been committed as far as they were concerned, and the ecstasy of collective condemnation was far too intoxicating to dilute. 

The biggest problem, of course, as with all of these sensitivity cases is that the publisher (in this case the BBC) buckles to the baying of the crowd. The BBC gave in and immediately edited the piece as per the conditions of the faint-hearted yet frenzied plaintiffs. Apologising, appeasing, pandering - these are the usual response tactics and they only serve to exacerbate the problem which puts more power into the hands of the mob.

Does this mean journalists at the BBC will be frightened to express themselves, and instead write as softly as they can, ensuring they don't step on any delicate toes?

Probably. 

So, you see, with one outcry and one surrender, the quality and value of journalism are decreased.  I have argued recently, mostly with myself, that journalism has become PR because the media is so hyper-aware of political correctness and there's so much fear around being 'cancelled', the content they produce is done not to inform or express, but to please the audience, tick sensitivity boxes, and sell themselves as 'good' per the ever-changing standards, like a quivering peasant at the feet of an administrative overlord. 

We need tougher platforms and publishers who won't just give in and more importantly, won't dilute their content in anticipation of an angry mob - this is crying before you've been hit, it's the capitulation of integrity, like a bully's victim who suffers defeat before a blow has even been struck. 

This is one particular example I've highlighted, but I promise you there have been dozens of these cases on a daily basis for at least the last 5 years. There is much more at stake than most people realise - the entire foundation of western civilisation rests precariously on things like this but that's another topic for another blogpost. We've lost a lot of ground to thugs who don't know how to process thought in a reasonable, rational way but wield massive power and influence over what people are allowed to say and write - even enforcing edits and erasures without the speaker, writer or publisher putting up a fight. Journalism is not PR, it must not soothe the insatiable irritation of these people, instead it must inform at all costs, and inflame if it so chooses.