The route to audience, their community of relationships and the purity of our crystal clear, brainstormed messages is under threat. We are midst a revolution, a chance to throw it all in the air and start again. This is a Darwinian moment; those that are adapting fastest will top-trump the dinosaurs. Our ability to do new stuff is now a competitive advantage not a dangerous countercultural diversion. It’s the Wild West all over again, except with worse shoes.

Why idea?

The point of having an idea in communication is straightforward. Ideas are bread and butter to marketers. They seek to be different, striving to connect a product with a defined audience. Find a point of difference, make it come to life and get it delivered to an audience that stands some chance of impacting your bottom line.

Secret ad men

In the days of old, lunches lasted until way past 2.30pm, golf was cool, procurement focused on toilet rolls and agencies had loads of sex. This approach was fine. Ads were king. They ruled. Despite the environment changing the ad as first port of call for ideation has proved a tough, tenacious little sucker to bump off. Despite this tactic proving incredible restricting when looking for broader ideas.

It’s a shame to say that secret ad men still surround us. We still see ‘the ad as the primary brand communication’ touted all over the place. For some it’s an attitude that’s retarding our progress as communicators and as plan makers. We have moved on. Those consumer-focusing guys who piled into healthcare a while ago seem to have ignored the changes that have occurred to their old manor. TV is midst decline and that poster off the M4 has been augmented by permission based and experiential disciplines; by a channel mix that looks nothing like it did 10 years ago.

Not dead just suffering

I don’t want to consider this the death of the ad. I think it’s in manageable decline rather than on the floor choking. History tells us media don’t die, they just become increasingly unloved. After all, we do still carve words into stone, 1000 years after it was our dominant media. But as soon as we considered the requirements of the marketing mix more than the double page spread the end started. Those early days, when marketers, sought integrated campaigns and assessed them by whether all shapes and sizes of tactics spread out on a meeting room table matched or not, make us smile now. Was it all really about 4 key messages and a frequency calculation?

The beginning of the end

The beginning of the end saw agencies strive to find new terminology to cope with the changes. The birth of the horrific word; adcept, summed it up. A sticking plaster over the cracks in the idea generation landscape, a way of getting ad focused teams to come up with bigger ideas than the media booked was capable of holding. Without spilling the beans that their ‘precious’ is looking a bit sickly as the dominant tactic.

Stretch required

Perhaps our world doesn’t need another tweeting digital bore. But the proliferation of channels have done their bit to jump start evolution. One could argue that the evolution of direct mail, or sales forces could have contributed as much to this decline as digital. The ad man didn’t really grasp the requirement for the brand to be pushed into these spaces in a way that it could really work.  Why? Because what makes a great ad – doesn’t often make a good media neutral idea. The interaction that these channels require and the opportunity that they have is vastly different to a 4 second A4 connection required in the BMJ. So why use your lowest common denominator tactic to develop you idea?

It strikes me that to accuse digital of being the cause of this evolution is a bit naïve. Selling has continued to evolve at a startling pace taking in its stride the bicycle, penny post and TV. Digital although arguably more intangible, and certainly fast is not going to change the fundamental way people connect with brands. Humanity is the rate-limiting step. The need and ability to form relationships is cultural and hardwired. The way audiences assimilate attributes, experience and value remains. You could argue that brand strategy has finally caught up with humanity?

The rise of experience transparency

What digital has changed is the control we have as marketers over our messages. We are no longer the only ringmasters. Every customer we have has a platform to communicate their experience, they, are closer and more vocal to other prospective customers.  Consequently we better get our brands anchored in something more than abstract positioning. Ideally anchored in a defined idea, encompassing a need that can be supported and championed by the audience. If our views on the product and the audiences don’t match then it’s going to die. Regardless of the cunning uniqueness of the positioning.

They’re for the journey

To thrive we need to be bothered about our customers not just at point of decision but across a broader space. This means our idea has to work beyond the moment of customer acquisition. It’s not just about a tipping point. We need to make sure that the wider customer experience is known to us. If additional needs exist, we need to see them as service opportunities. Consider them part of our product offer lest they become the low point of our customer’s product experience.

Change the people, or change the people

Thankfully, most of the adcept touters have fallen by the wayside. A new type of creative has emerged – the integrated conceptualiser. Not just an ad award hungry beast but also someone who is as passionate about every opportunity along the customer’s journey. One that knows the ins and outs of channels, how each works and what elements of the story is best delivered in each. These guys are dead easy to spot. They don’t need to draw an A4 box on their pad before conceptualising. The idea is conceptual, not confined to a given media space.

Idea planning

To cope with this change, new forms of idea planning have sprung up. New models force us to consider ideas as an adhesive wrapper for our uniqueness and supporting messages. With this have come some of the most exciting aspects of strategic development. The onus has been placed on marketers to consider their product story, the channels available to them, and deliver it. For products with a package of differentiation rather than one clear superiority this is a huge advantage. We can tell more complex stories and as long as they are based on real need not conceptual space available all is well. Models that look at splitting the story, and delivering it the audience in chunks across the channels are exciting us hugely. And its getting to the stage where you can quite easily see a time where the complete brand story exists only in two places; in marketing and in the mind of the customer. In between it’s fragmented and efficiently distributed by the best channels available. The level of planning is adding a further dimension to brand strategy where implementation and strategy are blending. Creating real challenges for those that consider 4 key messages delivered 4 times to be the best guarantee of behavioural change and early adoption, and really messing up a world where ads come first then your tactical plan.

How we cope with the changes is the next big question.  If you want to embrace these exciting times, like any moment midst change, it’s best to find a partner who is comfortable to tell you that all the answers are out there, but not yet in our grasp. Work towards a real connecting story, ways of delivering it efficiently and be comfortable with informed risk.

Tim is one of the founding partners of Elf, a group of innovative healthcare agencies. Including Hive, Ebee and Pollen that launches in September. Tim blogs regularly at hivehealth.com spend most of his time at Hive partnering a pretty awesomely progressive set of client’s. Any enthusiasm for this article or offers of work should be sent to tim.scorer@hivehealth.com, corrections or points of difference can be made direct by email to ian.busby@hivehealth.com or in person to Jas Hummel.

These are fascinating sessions that we all get loads from. Delving into Findwine.co.uk’s price/style simplification concept, built on insights gained during the time Mike spent in the retail wine trade. Their plans to grow and expand into new areas through strategic partnerships, and international ventures proved a great opportunity for us to discuss, brands, ideas, and growth.

We were joined by more of the agency, when Mike stayed on for an evening helping us choose the wine for Hive over the next 12 months. We covering 3 styles of sparkling, white and red. The naive intention was to have a civilised evening, but what resulted was about 18 glasses of wine each and 10 of us seeing the night off in Hix for Oyster Ale galore. Our blurred choices for 2011 are;

• For mid day effervescence - NV Giacoma Montresor Rose Royal Spumante Brut Pinot noir (Rich toasty aromas of bread, mingle with flower blossom, ripe apples and luscious cherries. Elegant and balanced palate, with some complexity. Jas; “tastes like Sherbet dip dabs”)
• For more celebratory events that require Krug like refined bubbles - Zuccardi Alma 4 Chardonnay (Golden, rich well rounded & yeasty with citrus & biscuity notes & a lovely creamy finish. Jas; “tastes like custard”)
• For white with attitude – 2009, Some Young Punks Monsters Attacked Riesling  (An absolutely sublime Clare Riesling, crisp and limey with a dollop of residule sugar for easy drinking. Anna; “tastes like something I used to drink in the park – in a good way”)
• For late night red – 2008 Cervoles from Costers Del Segre in Spain (a velvety, rich delight, filling the mouth with berries and summer fruits. Morgaine; ” I don’t really like alcohol”)

A lovely evening and huge thanks to Mike for opening up his mind for the entrepreneurs in the flesh session and for opening up the bottles and guiding us so amusingly for the remainder of the evening.

Needless to say we could recommend Mike and Findwines enough if you fancy brilliant, delicious and interesting wines, delivered with simplicity.

I started my research by ogling Goggle, then tired of this and rang around a bit, doing what we know here as fixing; finding experts, asking dumb questions and squeezing them of opinion. I kicked off lucky with a particularly assertive Prof. telling me that “benefit selling is history and a 1970s hangover”, and that “marketing departments should grow up if we think this is going to continue”. I ended with a very friendly man in Halfords HQ explaining to me the difference Wefit has made to them both culturally and as a business.

If you agree that differentiation is competitive advantage, and you probably should do (unless you are a member of a swarming species). You should know that the world of how we differentiate is one that is on the move. Academia is leading marketing is some instances, and those commoditised product marketeers are providing us with loads of practices we can learn from.

The decline of product-based differentiation can be attributed to a couple of factors that both have some relevance to the brands we work with.  Firstly, new levels of transparency are coming back to haunt us, the massive amounts of competitor intelligence is making us all morph into the same. We no longer can claim, be or propose product advantages without our competitors seeing them. Advantages that are now seen to be successful can be emulated, approved and broadcast in breakneck speed. I see claims and message data across a disease area, that tells me what’s working, what’s not, what’s hitting home and what is being discarded all the time. Those days of studying materials to try to figure out a competitors marketing strategy are long gone. The research guys, are pushing us towards what Mike my old economic teacher would call a perfect market – all of us seeing all. No geographical or physical divides to hide behind. We are all faster to react and as a result its simply much more competitive.

Alongside this it’s taking us a shorter time to develop products. The ability to shorten the product development cycle means that product based differentiation declines further, in essence we develop products that’s are at least as good as our competitors faster. In this environment,  yesterdays prescription winner is today’s prescription qualifiers or whats we now relegate to ‘hygiene factor’ status.  Our environment is pushing us towards a saturated state where product differences are homogenizing. So where does that lead us as  marketeers?

In the commodised consumer world they have been investigating new concepts and techniques of differentiation for ages. And the results are challenging the character, substance and stability what we know as marketing. It’s forcing marketeers to look to new models, to look beyond the clichéd  set of rational and emotional benefits to a brave new world where we look for other ‘stuff’ to bolt close to our offering. In this world many consider product benefits (those hygiene factors)  and seek differentiation in the strange world of utilising service components within their offer. Giving us a new equation of marketing Product benefits + service components = differentiation.

In healthcare we are no strangers to service offerings. Having spent a few hours last week in a room of clients discussing this evolution, ,the over arching feeling was one of frustration. Service offerings have been used ad infinitum to little effect in our world. From nurse training, to patient materials, to service redesign packs. The view was one of  anti-ROI and the massive need was how to wrap service offerings in something beyond corporate social responsibility. Tie them closer to marketing and kick the CSR approach, which tends to hope for some halo effect on relationship improvement into touch.

I dug out a couple of old masters. Levitt and Quinn. Both shouted this stuff all the time. 1972 saw Levitt giving us choruses of “There are no such things as service industries. There are only industries whose service components are greater or less than those of other industries. Everybody is in service”. And Quinn this time in 1990 who came over all Harvard with a “Management must break out of the mindset that considers manufacturing as separate from the service activities that make such products possible and effective” cry. Perhaps it’s time we took a good look at service, and saw what it could offer those of us who rather desperately need differentiation. Me too products queue up this might be the answer.

With this in mind, I thought here we should come to some consensus about service offerings, their development, how they interact, how to tie them into ROI. Actually make it ownable. More than just a composite of the competitors activities or a scavenger hunt of what’s good and glossy but actually a process to derive and develop a service offer that’s worthwhile, ownable, and evolving.

It’s been interesting stuff, and for those of you who haven’t fallen asleep by now. I think we have found a few sensible principles. This world of service differentiation requires us to evolve our approach from adding added value services to integrating service offerings. Rather than consider them as tactical activities, designed to bolt on alongside branded promotion, filling gaps, brought to us by reps, and advisory boards, we need to consider them NPD. Treat them like a product in the making. Give them the largess they deserve, they are after all going to be the big shifter in terms of sales. So we need to shift them upwards and alter our strategic development process to facilitate and develop them. There a whole process behind this – but it’s all seems to still make sense even when I give this the overnight test.

Additionally to this, service offerings need longevity, need to be active and genuinely fulfilled. Lessons from first Direct show us that it’s enough to get the delivery of a call centre experience bang on to make a tangible difference to the product experience.

The term experience dangles and interesting carrot here. I have been wanting to write a biggie on the role of experiences for some time I am not sure that this is the place. But it’s a interesting place where service offerings meet a planned user experience – it’s progressive planning and for me really sexy.  Moving from the transactional world of benefits, requires us to assess and evaluate the experience around our products, and see whether elements of this experience can be influenced, improved and owned. It’s daunting to realise that what we must know is the sum of all experiences our customer has with a supplier of goods or services, over the duration of their relationship with that supplier. From awareness, discovery, attraction, interaction, purchase, use, cultivation and advocacy. Mapping consumer journeys is a tough task for us, and it rare that we are provided with a idea topographically of what’s around for us to get involved in. But it’s one that for the time being at least can provide us with the lead on the competition. An unrealised insight found here can lead to the all together important objective connection that the benefit game has failed to deliver.

Anyone who chomps through business books is bound to have read at least the first half of either  Permission Marketing, Tribes, All Marketers Are Liars, and Purple Cow. He is healthily intolerant of widgets, NPD, and patents, and lends a good deal of confidence to marketeers striving to achieve the ‘remarkable’.

It’s a vast concert space, open for anyone with no pressure from security or the like to move on – it’s like an urban village green (with free chunky Wi-Fi).  The expectation of architect and owners are that the building is ‘community useful’ not just for concert goers or customers. But the likes of us!? Bloody marvellous.

It’s a place that we got settled into pretty quickly once you have got through the weirdness of having a big meeting out in the open. Adam (Creative Director), Kate (Ebee Managing director), Sapna (Financial Guru) and the three of us directors, (Wyndham’s in Dorset) move around tables and chairs to form our boardroom for the day.  We sat there surrounded by digital nomads, elicit liaisons, disciplinary meetings and during lunch time balloon carrying kids, kids, kids.

Our management meetings are a big day for us. Sometimes we do an activity, more often than not just knuckle down and get through the agenda.  This follows a set format, with us taking about 2 hours discussing each of the individuals within our 28 person strong group. We cover each individual, making sure that each is OK, where we are with development, workload and how each of us can contribute to any aspects of the discussion. It’s our bread and butter.

Following this most important part comes coffee and culture. Always focusing on who we started out to be, the importance of ‘beapart’, where we stand against this and how we steer ourselves in the right direction.  Although we have always pretty good at turning away from things that aren’t us, it’s the grey areas that give us the most discussions, definitions of patient centricity and innovation being yesterday’s chat.

The most rapid sections of these meetings is new business.  July’s pitch reviews, new sources of revenues, organic growth expectations, and linked resource planning all being much more ‘quant’ that the other softer agenda elements.

As you can imagine for an agency that’s growing as steadily as we are, the operational discussions are always exciting ones. Departmentalisation, workflow, the ongoing recruitment of writers and the increased involvement of clients in creativity all form the post lunch hour.

Finally what has been a biggie in the past ‘Group direction and integration’ capped our day. Group business strategy tends to be ourlast agenda item – how do we work together, how do we make sure the group companies are catalytic and where to next all form regular conversations.

It was a great day – one that resulted in a late night text from one of us – saying how “solid it was looking”. It’s made more symbolic by the simple connection with the space we were in. this particular space is very close to our hearts.

Prior to us having an office,  the three of us sat in Festival Hall all the time as the central place for all 3 of us. Jas coming from down river, and Ian and I from the West and North respectively. Festival Hall was our first workspace, where our lay lines met.  Each of us sat at two side by side tables, planning Hive’s point of difference, operational plan, and other early day foundations. Midst operational planning I couldn’t help smile at Ian and Jas – it all seems a long while ago we jostling for our one laptop.

It’s finding me panicking loads, trying to figure out whether we should cover a case study or revisit some old ground with a real life business. Alongside this – I am trying to get hold of an entrepreneur to come and present their business for discussion live by the troops.

As I was sifting through a pile of interesting (but academic) notes on previous sessions and I came across this – a Powerpoint written by a Mark Sniukas a consultant I really like. It’s strategy simplified (well almost) and well worth a quick glance. Kicks off with Costas Markides, Professor London Business School and his frank views on the state of modern strategic discipline.

Visit Presentation

I thought that I had run the course of this weeks of boxes, arrows and discussions when a great pitch rocked in, and kicked it all off again. Tough problem, great brand and a brief that requires us to “challenge, challenge, challenge”. Problems to solve always seem to be like London buses. Nothing for ages, then dozens of 139s all in a row.

For me next week sees implementation kick off across a number of projects  proposed. Getting beyond the thinking and getting to the nitty gritty of getting it done, tested and out there.

On the way into the office this morning I was sat opposite a  tube ad that seemed to speak to me. Cheers Engels – clearly an agency man through and through.

This amphetamine paced tour of senseless consumption spans Viking cookers to custom high-tops.  And along the way  walk I been introduced to a diverse cast of characters like Red bull entrepreneur Dietrich Mateschitz, and an assortment of white guys without any discernable urban credibility who’ve managed to build clothing empires around hip-hop and street culture, and even viral marketers who pretend to be customers, proselytizing to others about the merits of products (and apparently not always disclosing their affiliations).

By presenting both uber-consumers and the professionals who deal with trying to sell us the stuff to fill our endless appetites, or the holes in our souls, Walker indirectly addresses what he coins the “pretty good” problem: What distinguishes a product when assembly lines or underpaid third-world workers can make even the cheapest products “pretty good?” Since quality really isn’t much of a criterion any more, there must be other signifiers, and that’s where our subconscious steps in.

Walker’s key point echoes many in the intangible brand benefit camp often written about in the planning world. Most of us have been inundated with advertising for our whole lives, so on some level we know that we’re being sold … which is why some hipster crowds gathered around PBR (a cheap red neck beer – cheers Google) precisely because they weren’t being given the hard sell. So if somebody cracks open a can now, knowing that the trend is played out, what does that act of consumer disobedience say about them? Now that PBR is so “yesterday,” shouldn’t that make it cool again? If a hipster cracks open a can in the forest and there’s no one around to hear it, are they still being cool?” It all gets pretty meta.

And that’s Walkers thesis. He coins his own portmanteau for the way that advertisers can take advantage of that and calls it “murketing.” Murketing, then is that nexus between murkiness and marketing where buyers can project their own desires or aspirations on to the products that they buy. In examining the psychological motivations that drive this rampant consumerism, Walker references some of the best psychologists and researchers on the subject, including Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who’s Flow should be required reading for anyone with an interest in being happy and who’s The Meaning of Things happens to be a little more topical.

The conclusion is that objects are only as totemic as we let them be. Walker even begins to hint at what might be a really interesting corollary, but it is left largely unexplored. For us, as product and communications guys, if we’re pondering the future, one must wonder what sort of value we can add to society.

In a potential post-consumer future, where we’ve harnessed algae to transform sunlight into electricity and where every home has a rapid prototype machine that uses organic compounds, how will we define wealth? Suddenly when everyone has access to flawless and pristine stuff, it’s that scuffed up and worn armchair that has real value. Because even though I may love my sleek modernist furniture in ways that might not quite be healthy, if my house was burning down I’d rescue the painting I found in a junk shop.

Case in point is the numerous phrases that describe essentially the same thing — brand essence. Some networks have gone so far as to trademark their terms and the processes they use for determination. End result = terminology galore and as much process explanation as strategic clarification.

Spending some time on holiday last week – I revisited Kotler (it was this or be left with a book about a girl in love with a complex man she couldn’t love in the world within which she had to live and her struggle to make do with an empty life with a simple but good man who provided everything he could but not enough for her to be happy) – a comparitively magnificent book on marketing that I first brought to enlighten me when I first came into the industry. It’s a dry read and although wanders into the theoretical it’s pretty refreshing in its lack of terms.

I like Kotler’s steadfast use of the term Unique Selling Proposition (in my mind a potential forerunner of brand essence), a concept developed and named by Rosser Reeves of Ted Bates & Company. A 50 year old term that has stood the test of time and been universally adopted. Some argue that with the advent of product parity it has evolved into the Emotional Selling Proposition. ESP is certainly a concept much closer to our common understanding of “brand essence,” as its focus is on the brand’s intangible differentiator. Although I find it hard to believe that me-too products are a recent phenomenon I think that the ‘U’ still stands up whether that be a feature led ‘portability’ or due to some emotional unmet need like ‘popularity’. Either way to be unique emotionally or functionally is still to be different.

This book seems to either have been penned prior to or has ignored the multitude of copyrighted verbs describing the logical processes for develop brands by agencies needing with some irony, you guessed it – a USP. I would love to see each agencies model worked through with their own brand – please someone in procurement construct this legend! Two birds (process understanding & agency offer) with 1 stone. Please, please, discounted please.

Reviewing the alternatives to Rosser’s, here is a collection of words and phrases used to describe what is unique about a brand:  Brand Essence, Brand Soul, Brand Heart, Brand Mantra, Brand Promise, Signature Strength, Core Strength, Core Attribute, Brand Description, Brand Differentiator, Brand Uniqueness, Brand Individuality, Brand Meaning, Brand’s Central Nature, Brand Proposition…

Any more?

 As usual Tom Fishburne’s nailed the process here.

Ps. A note to purists: I admit that there may be shades of difference between some of these terms. You could make a case that brand personality and brand promise, for example, mean two completely different things. My point is that the differences are largely semantical and do little to advance the clarity of the branding process.