With branding as with all elements of the creative industry, there are no rules, no scientific principles you can adhere to that will ensure the brand you build is a sure-fire success. We should be clear that Branding isn’t a science - don’t be fooled by any bearded professors from Munich who say it is. So that’s why this isn’t called ‘steps to’ or ‘the rules of’ a successful cross border brand’ - instead it’s called a rough guide. But don’t be scared, you’re not about to visit a completely lawless land - there are basic guides that you can follow that’ll mean you’ll not only enjoy the trip but end up with the best chance of success at the end of it.
General information on travel partners:Creativity and relevance; Like your toothbrush, take them with you all the time. Creativity is the city equivalent of an enthralling tour guide - very hard to find, but if you do it’ll bring everything alive. Knowledge of the city isn’t good enough, no matter how much they know - it takes a creative storyteller to make it compelling.
Relevance is the itinerary. It’s not as easy as just asking the audience what they want to see. After all, they’ve never visited the city so don’t know what’s on offer. Relevance takes insight, based on information. Travel packing creativity and relevance as travel partners, and you’ll give the brand the very best chance of success.
A local joke.There’s a German, Dutchman and Englishman discussing the merits of transcreating the tag-line. The German wants it translated but needs one and a half times more space for the tagline, the Dutchman isn’t worried as long as it’s in one of the twelve languages they speak. And the Englishman wants it in English and thinks they should repeat it twice. I said MAYBE REPEAT IT TWICE?... and then apologises for his lack of ability to speak the home language.
A useful phrase:“Can you tell me if there’s a marketing department in the town?”
As with all global or trans European businesses, they’ll have the HQ in the home country, factory in one and main marketing department in another. Whilst it should be stated that the marketing department doesn’t ‘own’ the brand, it will always be the department in charge of co-ordinating its creation. If you deal solely with the marketing department in your own town and don’t get real involvement from the HQ country, Sales HQ country and Factory country for one it won’t work, and for two it won’t last. If the HQ country hasn’t bought into the process you can guarantee they’ll be re-doing all your hard work and creating a new brand of their own making within a year.
Experience the culture down on the floor.Pretty much all of the time you’ll be pulling together a fragmented pan-European bunch of businesses - all operating under the same name but in their own different way. There is no clean sheet. Your job is to find a common and uniting factor that works across all cultures. If you develop your preferred route in splendid English isolation you will have so much invested in it, that despite your best intentions at the outset, you’ll end up bulldozing over the considerations from what you see as less significant countries. The only way is an open and ongoing sense check. This will be very difficult to do through the contacts in the client company as you risk them all getting attached to different and half cooked ideas. You need a source in every country whose objectivity and cultural knowledge you can trust. In short your chosen agency really needs to be part of a European network. It really is that essential.
Experience the wonderful aerial view.From up here you can’t see people, departments or borders. This is the benefit of a creative idea that’s out of this world. With a brave belief driven company (as opposed to an ‘I want to be rich’ driven company) you have the potential to create a brand so wonderful that it really and truly creates its own culture, separate and regardless of the home country culture. Employees ‘belong’; virtual unifying cultures exist high above the real and dirty streets and companies buzz with belief in their common purpose. This has always got to be your aim. Just about every business will deliver you a line about how their differentiator is about their people. And some of them build a brand primarily for them. After-all the internal buy-in represents the energy that drives some of the best brands forward.
An ongoing relationship.Everybody enjoys the conception; the birth is satisfyingly painful... and now comes the difficult bit, making it work. A b2b brand is like a child: you can’t just give it one power-point presentation on how it should live and walk away, only to be surprised when you re-visit it in five years time that it’s forgotten what you said and found its own way of existing. If you love and are committed to the brand you’ve created you’ll build in regular maintenance visits to guide, re-invigorate and sometimes spank it!
One person’s fish is another person’s poison.It seems too obvious to state but it still happens again and again: new company or product names that always seem to mean something rude in another language. Strike feigned surprise pose; ‘it means WHAT in Romanian?!’ The truth has to be that they were aware a long time before they were publicly informed; the question is how long before did they know? Well, not long enough to be able to do anything about it. Remember ‘Experience the culture down on the floor’ and the importance of a trusted impartial sounding board in order to be able to catch these ‘bloopers’ before Dennis Norden does.
Don’t judge a country by its flag.And don’t judge a brand by its logo. It’s so much more. For me, the mark of a successful brand presentation is where the logo reveal slide just gets a nod... and on to the next slide please. Beware of big visual identity build-ups - the focus should always be on the idea.
David Thomas is creative director of Base One - a member of www.e3network.com
Comment on this Article
