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The contribution any brand makes – whether it’s business or consumer focused – in society and culture, is undoubtedly playing an increasingly important role in the decision, or otherwise, of customers and prospects to engage with it. This challenge often goes beyond the remit of the marketing department and can even lead to a complete rethink of the relationship between a brand and its target audience.

In his new book ‘Screw Business As Usual, And Make Your [Huge Piles Of] Money By Doing Good’, that well known, lime-light-loving, bearded billionaire, Richard Branson, contends that as long as entrepreneurs can make profits, or even indeed ‘huge piles of money’, while helping others, why would you do business any other way? He argues that a business with a social conscience will save resources, drive higher profits, be more satisfying than even the material wealth it creates and attract and retain employees who – motivated by their love of the company’s social mission – will work harder.

“Fuel is nearly 30% of our costs,” says Branson of his Virgin Airlines business, noting that waste is enormously expensive and reducing resources is both good for the environment and for keeping down costs. He seems to be ‘walking the talk’ by claiming that the airline will be using 100% clean-burning fuels by 2020. “The airline industry could become one of the cleanest industries, rather than one of the dirtiest industries in the world.” Branson also suggests that “…most successful people in life do not start with the money-motive whatsoever.” Whilst you could argue ‘that’s easy for him to say’ having made his billions, he points to new businesses such as Google which started out to “make a difference in people’s lives” and their financial success is a happy by-product.

Branson’s sentiments echo those in the “Creating Shared Value” paper, published in the Harvard Business Reviewby Professor Michael E. Porter, which proposes a redefinition of capitalism in order to create a value model where benefits are both financial and to society as a whole.

In order for brands to come to terms with this shift, they need to understand the changing drivers of the decision makers within their target audience, and with it, rethink the role their brand plays in society; To think about what the brand really stands for across all touchpoints; And to make sure the brand strategy delivers real and genuine tangible benefits which demonstrate a commitment for mutual benefit – whether that’s also helping the environment, donating a portion of profits, or supporting a causes.

A collaborative approach also allows brands to engage with, and enable, their staff, customers and network to produce new platforms that benefit the shared ideals of the business and society. People are usually more supportive of ideas and change that they have contributed towards themselves. By leveraging new technologies, companies are able to engender brand buy-in not only from their clients, but equally as importantly, from their staff as well.Collaborative initiatives, now readily enabled by new social media channels, focus on driving engagement by gaining support and adoption by the most motivated and influential users and providing them with a platform to develop their own ideas by enlisting the broader support of their own social groups.

It takes a lot of effort, and usually expense, to get a new customer to buy into your brand, to try your product or service. Evidently, otherwise the advertising and marketing industries wouldn’t exist. Then, having done so, making them repeat customers requires basic delivery on your brand promise – ‘it’s as good as I thought it would be, so I’ll try it again.’ Keeping repeat customers, so the old adage goes, costs a tenth of creating a new one, so looking after them makes sound commercial sense. Then, transforming them into adopters requires consistent delivery on that promise – ‘I always buy this product or service, because it’s good.’ Mission accomplished.

But, there is another level of customer; the brand advocate. Someone so enthused by the product or service, they tell everyone else about it. Brand advocates are created when expectations aren’t just exceeded, they’re smashed through. And brand advocates are extremely valuable from a marketing perspective because they evangelise to a wider audience and they don’t charge for it because they’re so enthused. In order to build brand advocates you need to be able to understand what their expectations are, which can only be done by identifying and understanding their motivation. Evidently, otherwise the market research industry wouldn’t exist. This is both the internal motivation of needs, expectations and idealised self-image, and the external ones such as our concerns over others’ perceptions of us and what’s socially acceptable and aspirational. This external motivation is key, as what really matters is what the cool kids think. We all are influenced by our own various style leaders such as celebrities or style gurus – people like Jeremy Clarkson when it comes to deciding which cars are cool, for example. It’s worth noting that these key influencers affect a much wider circle, as long as their credibility is maintained; it’s why fashion houses give away clothes to celebs or brands spend millions on product placement in films. And the external motivation of aspiration underpins the very concept of brand, otherwise we’d all wear unbranded clothes, shop at Lidl and drive Skodas.

Strong emotional bonds are built when a product or service enriches the user at every stage of interaction – ‘it’s better than I thought it would be; I enjoy it; I feel cool because of it; and everyone [I’m sure] thinks I’m cool because of it’. The brand that this instantly brings to my mind, perhaps inevitably for a designer, is Apple. The desire to own one, be it iphone, ipod or ipad, makes people queue for hours and hours, even overnight and pay top prices just to get one because it excels at every level of interaction. And Apple has created millions of advocates, users who will tell and show you, almost endlessly, how fabulous their ithing is. Generally, people like to share good things because they feel appreciated, knowledgeable and well connected – in whatever order relates to the brand or service, from mega consumer brands down to personal recommendations. Conversely of course, where a brand or service disappoints or fails in the extreme, negative advocates can be created. Users who are so hacked off they want to complain to everyone about it.

The key drivers for turning adopters into advocates, people who will go out of their way to recommend a brand or experience typically to people they care about so it often holds greater influence, is strong emotional engagement and by seeing their own identities, real or more probably perceived, strongly represented in its use and ownership. It’s worth noting too, that the significance of brand advocates from a marketing perspective is rising through the exponential growth of social media as it massively extends their reach and influence. From the seriously followed Tweeters and bloggers, to an individual’s comments on their Facebook walls, brand experiences are now so easily, and often, communicated to a wider audience.

BP’s brand identity is a much referred to example – not least by us – of the effective use of rebranding to reposition a company and communicate a new strategy. Their original brand from the 1920s was a, occasionally tweaked, shield reflecting the rather colonial feel of ‘British Petroleum’. This was ditched in favour of softer, lower case bp initials to now represent ‘beyond petroleum’ and a new, almost floral and definitely ‘greener’ logo:

“BP is progressive, responsible, innovative and performance driven. Our logo – the Helios – symbolizes these values. Named after the Greek sun god, the Helios represents energy in its many forms. Of all the forms of energy that make up BP and its services, perhaps the most vital is the human energy our people bring to everything we do. This is what fuels our brand.” A brand consistently applied and brilliantly effective as a tool to reflect the transition away from an ugly oil company to a progressive energy business.

One of our other favourite references is a quote from brand guru Wally Olins “In everything the organisation does, owns and produces it should project a clear idea of what it is. This is achieved by consistency in purpose, performance and appearance.” It seems BP forgot the very first part of this basic principle of delivering on the brand promise.

BP are looking more and more culpable by the day with this weekend’s Sunday Times reporting that over zealous cost-cutting “Four successive accidents in America in 2005 and 2006 had shredded BP’s reputation” these included the Texas City oil refinery explosion that killed 15. Now the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, which also claimed 11 lives, may well drag the BP brand into the same kind of murky and deadly waters the pelicans and dolphins are trying to avoid.

However beautiful your logo, if your organisation does ugly things, if it doesn’t ‘walk the talk’ and if it doesn’t deliver on its promises then it will become a symbol tarred by those failings and will ultimately come to represent them.

Whilst we’ve always contested that a brand is much more than a logo – an approach perhaps best encapsulated by branding guru Wally Olins: “In everything an organisation does, owns and produces it should project a clear idea of what it is. This is achieved by consistency in purpose, performance and appearance.” – we use logos within branding programmes as the signifier, or flag, that an organisation ‘fights’ under, a hark back to the heraldic origins of branding. However, an interesting article in the current issue of Design Week by Simon Manchipp, gives pause for thought; as well as questioning the value of logos altogether, which is debatable, he does make a valid point that ‘brand worlds’ are of growing significance “They add depth to the brand name. They are the Adidas stripes down the side of the shoe or the leg of the tracksuit, at the entrance to the store and on the endframe of the TV ad. They are the O2 bubbles rising from the press ad, the decor inside the stadium, the animation on the mobile phone.” As we do, he stresses consistency and coherence in application and to gain cumulative impact based on use of colour, photography/imagery and typography to create an individual identity “Brand worlds are coherent [not just consistent] universal branding systems…They distinguish a product or service more completely, more deeply than any one-dimensional logo could ever hope to. They are varied, rechargeable, developing tools for brands.”

www.designweek.co.uk