ISSUE 45 /

A BULLETIN FOR
BIG IDEAS AND
BETTER BUSINESS.

OPINION / BRANDS 

Re-defining your
brand is dangerous,
but essential

💬 Sir John Hegarty 

People don’t care about brands. This is the summation of numerous studies that reckon audiences wouldn’t mind if most household names disappeared tomorrow. Survey respondents might claim indifference, but this jars slightly with the level of outcry that ensues when a much-loved company unveils a change in direction. Rebrands can draw astonishing levels of ire from the public. Coca-Cola’s unveiling of New Coke in 1985 resulted in the company receiving 8,000 angry phone calls per day. Vanishing might be fine, switching things up is verboten.

The re-definition is a perilous moment in the life of a business. Staying in the cultural conversation is fundamentally important. As society changes, your brand must evolve and refresh itself so as not to be left behind. But driving too audacious a re-think comes with hazards too. If your brand has a history, this is something to be leveraged rather than discarded. Consider how Old Spice reclaimed its link with youth and masculinity in the late 2000s. Or how Apple re-discovered its emphasis on innovation in the 1990s. Then there’s Crocs, the determinedly ugly shoe has departed from its functional roots and made in-roads into high fashion. If you are in possession of a storied company, a guide to the future can be found by re-examining the past.

Beyond this, great brands don’t try to reflect who their followers are. Instead, they focus on inspiring. There is huge value tied up in acknowledging history, the biggest challenge is turning it into something that captures the public imagination. Re-defining is dangerous. Doing nothing is fatal.

THE AGENDA

✏️ Pencil it in: your agenda for the coming week

1.
This week sees the retail spending surge of Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving). Things might not run as smoothly as usual at Amazon. Workers in over twenty countries are threatening to strike, calling for better workers’ rights and action on climate.
29th November

2.
The dictionaries teams at Oxford University Press in the UK and the US are due to announce the Word (or Phrase) of the Year 2024. Recent years have drawn heavily from TikTok culture. Last year was about ‘rizz’, and 2022 was about ‘goblin mode’, apparently.
2nd December

3.
Creativity is the answer to our most intractable problems. An overlooked area is the innovation applied to waste management. The National Recycling Awards celebrates pioneers who are about less refuse and more re-use.
26th November

4.
Teachers are underpaid and under-valued. Especially in the UK. The 2024 Pearson National Teaching Awards Gold Award provides a spot of national gratitude. Winners will be announced on BBC's The One Show, then celebrated at a ceremony later on.
30th November

5.
The Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women listing is anticipated this week. Topping the chart last year was Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission.
2nd December

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US / TECH

Bluesky
offers respite
from rancour

Social media once offered the potential to make us more informed, connected, and enlightened. Today platforms feel optimised to stoke extreme opinions. In recent weeks, a more temperate alternative has been quietly flourishing. Bluesky has increased to 20 million users and encourages measured, respectful debate rather than bilious exchanges. This is thanks – in part – to its design. The new social network isn’t built to maximise engagement, so posting outrageous content doesn’t reward attention-seekers with a boost in likes. People can customise the algorithm to better curate the sort of thing they’d wish to see (or not see). The company appears keen to propagate a simpler time for social, when it was about expanding one’s own thinking, experimenting, and having fun. We predict a mass X-odus of thoughtful individuals from the app formerly known as Twitter.

ON CREATIVITY /

GLOBAL / MEDIA

Music industry
is on song

Two titles created a sudden box office boom this week. Wicked, a film version of the renowned musical, and Gladiator II, the long-anticipated sequel to Ridley Scott’s 2000 masterpiece. These generated $270 million in ticket sales, according to AP News. But research shows that audiences’ love for the big screen is paling in comparison to the popularity of music streaming. Omdia, a media consultancy, reports that revenues from copyrighted music hit $45.5 billion last year, an increase of a quarter on 2021. Box office sales were $33.2bn in 2023 – some way off cinema’s peak of $41.9bn back in 2019. People have a voracious appetite for music in the steaming age, the International Federation of the Phonographic Society (IFPI) reckons we listen to 20.7 hours of it on average per week. Remember to lose the headphones once in a while. Ambient sound inspires as much as your UK grime playlist.

GLOBAL / VISUALS

Design of
the times

Does the socio-political environment have an impact on what templates people choose on Canva? Research by the graphic design software suite would suggest so. The company has just released Design Trends, a yearly report into the aesthetic leanings of its users. Given that it has some 170m users, the findings carry some weight. Analysts have identified an emphasis on whimsy. Searches for ‘silly’ are up 92% according to a report in Fast Company, ‘funny’ and humour’ are also on the rise too. One could conclude that users are pursuing levity in the face of troubling global events. Canva also identifies a yearning for humanity in the face of a greater leaning on tech tools. As ever – we create as we think.

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