Truly Deeply/Madly

The Big Brand Idea
Brand com­mu­ni­ca­tions is a com­plex world. The role of the brand strate­gist and brand designer is to take the mul­ti­tude of nuances of brand propo­si­tion, brand strat­egy, brand per­son­al­ity, mar­ket posi­tion­ing and key brand mes­sages and trans­late them into a sim­ple piece of brand com­mu­ni­ca­tion. And the key to doing this is a bril­liant brand idea — sim­ple. A beau­ti­ful recent exam­ple of a brand har­ness­ing the power of a cre­ative idea is the Cannes Lions Grand Prix-winning “Cam­paign for Real Beauty” for Dove, which has dis­tin­guished Unilever in the dig­i­tal space.

Dove’s Cam­paign for Real Beauty seam­lessly weaves Dove’s brand propo­si­tion and brand per­son­al­ity into a cre­ative brand plat­form with all the ingre­di­ents to build an inte­grated cam­paign link­ing prod­ucts like Inten­sive Firm­ing Cream and Exfo­li­at­ing Body Wash while encour­ag­ing women to define their own beauty and reject big media’s unre­al­is­tic and unhealthy def­i­n­i­tion of attrac­tive­ness. A brand’s cre­ative plat­form is based on the essence of an idea that peo­ple — in this case the women of the world — feel pas­sion­ate about.

“It goes back to the essence of what Dove is about… it’s about redefin­ing beauty stereo­types. And what we’ve learned on a global basis is women feel pas­sion­ate about that sub­ject. When women feel strongly about some­thing and you give them a plat­form to speak-out or to cre­ate some­thing or to engage with one another, they’ll jump on it. The whole Dove idea really res­onates emo­tion­ally with women.”
Laura Klauberg, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent of Global Media at Unilever

Cre­at­ing an Effec­tive Brand Plat­form
It may sound sim­ple, but arriv­ing at the essence of the idea is the result of much dis­cus­sion, con­sul­ta­tion, con­sid­er­a­tion, and strate­gic think­ing. Typ­i­cally we work with clients over a period of one to two days, lead­ing them through our strate­gic brand def­i­n­i­tion process in a col­lab­o­ra­tive man­ner to draw-out all of the key influ­encers of the brand direc­tion and ensure the brand strat­egy is best serv­ing the goals of the busi­ness. At the con­clu­sion of the work­shop process we find the seed of this sim­ple idea has been sown, and awaits the cre­ative process to ger­mi­nate it into a cre­ative cam­paign plat­form. There’s a real skill to fun­nel­ing the com­plex­ity into a sim­ple, engag­ing idea.

A Word of Warn­ing.
Multi-platform, inte­grated cam­paigns pro­vide a range of chan­nels with which to con­nect inti­mately with dif­fer­ent mar­kets at dif­fer­ent points in their lives, but each of these chan­nels needs to be care­fully man­aged. The Dove cam­paign is an exam­ple of a well exe­cuted, inte­grated brand com­mu­ni­ca­tions exer­cise,  but even the experts can take their eye off the ball. Vis­it­ing the Dove Self Esteem Fund Face­book page, I was dis­ap­pointed to find an ele­ment of the cam­paign that had unrav­eled. The mes­sage wall on the cam­paign Face­book page is filled with adver­tise­ments and sales pitches for a num­ber of the lat­est diet fads. In fact the entire con­tent for this crit­i­cal aspect of the Dove Self Esteem com­mu­nity has been hijacked, and I fear the peo­ple who most mat­ter to the Dove brand have long since been fright­ened away from the very place built for them. A reminder that every aspect of your inte­grated cam­paign needs to be well man­aged, but none more than the social acti­va­tions which are a live and on-going expres­sion of the brand.

So, if you’re look­ing for the right peo­ple to help turn your com­plex brand ecosys­tem into an engag­ing, sim­ple brand idea, or if you need some help inte­grat­ing your mar­ket­ing through the world of social, give us a call, we’d love to show you the way.

Dave Ansett, Bran­da­men­tal­ist
For monthly updates of our think­ing, click here to receive our free Brand Newslet­ter
Brand Designer and admirer of beauty whichever way it comes.

Tags: Brand Agency, brand campaign, Brand Communication, Brand Design, brand designer, brand designer Melbourne, brand designers, Brand Experience, Brand Personality, Brand Strategy, Brand Voice, brand-designers-Melbourne, brand-gesture, Brand-Storytelling, brandamentalist, Corporate Image, creative brand platform, Creative Ideas, Dave Ansett, David Ansett, Dove, Graphic Design Melbourne, integrated campaing, Melbourne Brand Strategy, Real Beauty Campaign, socila media campaign

This entry was posted on Monday, November 15th, 2010 at 7:00 am and is filed under Brand Agency, Brand Strategy, Brand-Storytelling, Corporate Image, Graphic Design Melbourne. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.