The dying art of being predictable | Mumbrella360 video
In this session from the Mumbrella360 conference, senior marketers discuss why consistency is a dying art, and what marketers can do to ensure their brands remain instantly recognisable.
Jon McKie kicks off the session by showing a video featuring members of the public attempting to guess brands from their strap lines. As you’d expect, the brands with the most consistent lines across the decades were the most easily guessed by the public. But does this mean that consistency is always the best policy?
BMF co-founder Warren Brown says marketers looking for new creative work can often mistakenly believe they should discard everything and start again from the beginning: “It’s so easy to change your execution but people tend to throw the baby out with the bath water,” Brown says. “They go ‘Oh, I’m not sure this is working, we need to change everything’. No you don’t.
“You can get the execution wrong, that is easily done, but why walk away from everything after spending so much time and energy trying to find a clear and unique and distinctive strategy? You just need to explore a different execution of your creative strategy, not walk away from it all.”
Derry Simpson, managing director of strategy and innovation at 303 MullenLowe and a former VB brand manager, agrees.
She says: “They feel there is a need to throw out the old strategy and start again. There is a lot of ‘We need a new idea, let’s go out and pitch for an agency and see who comes up with the best idea’.
“There is less acceptance that brand is a long journey. There is a lot more pitching and project work for agencies so there is less of the long relationship, trusted advisor role.”
Derry Simpson and Jon McKie
Asked about Budget Direct’s creative changes over the years, which have seen the “boojay, boojay” jingle replaced with aliens who were then dropped for Captain Risky, the firm’s director of marketing and digital, Jonathan Kerr, says what has been consistent is Budget’s “DNA”.
“We have never moved away from being the best value, that is our DNA and everyone understands that,” he says. “Although we have been through some creative changes over the years we have always been number one in Australia for best value.”
