A shot in the arm for branding

It’s vaccination season. Hidden amongst the celebratory news of multiple flavours of vaccines, countries fighting over what is actually a glut in supply and doctors’ surgeries turning into call centres (press 1 for a medical emergency), is the breakthrough behind a modern miracle of human development.

In a single year we have created and distributed a vaccine at scale for a virus that crossed over from a wet market only a year ago. If only we could achieve the same thing for women’s rights in the same amount of time.

Like any overnight success story, the seeds of this breakthrough were sown long ago and are associated more with where our species is going than where it has been. In my relatively short life-time we have already gone a long way from relying on natural resource extraction for our riches to finding our primary source of wealth in data. Our vaccine to a natural pathogen was created using the most unique of human capabilities: technology. Specifically, genetic modification and data mining are at the heart of the great leap of 2021. 

Genetic modification

There is a genetic editing tool called CRISPR that targets DNA, and has the unfortunate side effect of sometimes causing permanent change that then drives our body’s immune system to attack it. In contrast, what we’ve done to address COVID-19 is focus on editing our RNA. RNA has allowed scientists to temporarily tweak our protein to fix the virus. It is weirdly safe as the body simply washes out any error made. It can and will fight off COVID-19 and unfortunately the many more viruses to come as we push our planet beyond its 1.0 designed state. The reason it works is it’s like a genetic hard drive, rewritable. Depending upon the message you want to deliver to the body you can recode it over time to do the job at hand. Nature still has a bigger incentive to survive but science is closing the gap.

Data mining

The other breakthrough in our response to nature is data mining. Like anything, success is guided mostly by ingenuity rather than pure innovation. The guile on show from Boris’s Barmy Army has been driven by dropping a mining software (with supporting developers) called Foundry on top of existing data to drive better logistical decisions on what and who needs to go where to get the right shot in the right arm. The team behind Foundry is Palantir, Peter Thiel’s latest unicorn. They say they are the ones responsible for finding Osama bin Laden holed up in Pakistan; but the bigger achievement is likely finding hidden nurses to deliver jabs in Manchester. 

Going beyond the new normal

Rather than celebrate a return to a new normal perhaps we are better to frame it as an opportunity to define the next frontier of our evolution as a species. We have the technology to understand the patterns in our world but need to move beyond our consumption of our natural world writ large. Arguably the destroy the natural world business model has run its course anyway. The returns in the digital age are better regardless so here’s hoping our actions catch up with the investment curve before it is all too late. 

Is branding like bitcoin? Moving from brand DNA to brand RNA

Branding is not distinct from the broader world around it and faces the exact same challenge in balancing our natural science history with the digitally driven future. Where anthropology and psychology are based on empirical theory, work at a population wide level, analytics and data science are imperial, exacting and individualised. What to do, what to do? We need to also think like our friendly geneticists and adjust our RNA, not our DNA. 

The job is the same, create and maintain positive differentiation. So maybe it is that the sources of value are changing. It feels like our source of insight is shifting from the mysteries and myths of the human condition and the themes that emerge, to something more concrete but less magical. 

Foundations are always mythical, now you have to prove them

Show me a man who says what he will do next, and I will show you a liar. Show me a man’s credit card bill and I will tell you their truth. Or so the saying goes. Our digital footprint is laying bare what is implicitly there in our behaviour versus what we say we do in the focus group of life. 

The foundation myth of a company is probably the closest thing to truth in the branding world. The founder of any organisation often stands for a human ideal but unlike most they took the next step of behaving in line with it. Louis Vuitton walked to Paris to achieve his dream, now his luggage travels the world helping others reach for theirs. Or so we are told to support paying a 400% margin. To be fair, Louis was obsessed with detail, but he didn’t walk the whole way. Today Google maps would have done him in, and he would probably be viewed more like we view tech founders, as a flawed genius. As they say at LVMH, it’s better when a founder is dead so you can recast their story. Just ask Apple what is easier to manage, the myth of Jobs or the real man. 

Broad themes are becoming specific capabilities

As we become ever more informed by data it is eroding the ability for brands to hold multiple positions, based on only one actual expertise. Every brand should be clearly positioned but today the brand footprint is more likely to reduce over time rather than grow. Just think of your average bank. They grew as far as regulation allowed with generic brands based on themes like enablement and support. Today they are under threat on all sides from superior products, to payments, to investments. The smarter ones are pivoting towards specific core capabilities like savings and loans and narrowing their positioning to suit a future where they will be smaller and more reliant on Fintech. It’s easier to partner with an expert when you have a clearly defined position yourself. 

Static brand codes are changing to dynamic visual systems

The digital world delivers you to a better decision point with different choices to make depending on who you are. Do the test with a friend of googling the same brand and see what ads gets served back to each of you. The challenge becomes one of brand consistency in a further individualised world. This is forcing brands to also adapt to how they think about brand codes and focus more on dynamic systems. This will only continue to grow as AI allows for stronger links between the back end of a business and the front end of what a customer sees. 

It’s folly to play CRISPR and change completely an organisation’s DNA – the codes that anchor our associations to a brand. What can and should change is a brand’s RNA, to create dynamic and adaptive businesses.

—
Be better to each other.