“We build images of brands like birds build nests, out of the scraps and straws they chance upon.”
– J. Bullmore
Rich in imagery and an accurate reflection of the harsh and wild marketplace environment, this is one of my favourite branding quotations.
The soaring structures defined in a brand’s positioning documents are distilled into delicate nests. The bricks and timber of the guidelines are broken and scattered in a much bigger and more dynamic world.
The nest is precious; it’s the brand’s image in the consumer’s consciousness, made up from the words, images, actions and experiences that the brand has delivered over a period of time. An accumulation of the brand’s output, spotted by our busy bird as she goes on nest-building missions, or sometimes catching her attention as she searches for worms.
The most attractive and distinctive words and images are collected; actions are noticed and woven together with direct experiences.
A few sticks in our bird’s nest are old, collected in seasons gone by. Words and images remain lodged in the memory, perceptions and reputation stubbornly remaining, despite the best efforts of the marketeer to force a reconsideration. Some sticks are stickier than others!
The actions that a brand makes all add up. The decision to change a price or service standard, or to launch a new product line. The choice to sponsor a tennis tournament or a charity. All of these actions are spread across the environment, for the consumer to pick up on – or to ignore. The direct experiences a consumer has had of the brand product or service are the strongest sticks, the truth of the brand experience being the ultimate proof point.
The overwhelming impression of the metaphor is that the process of brand-building is, to some extent, random for our busy bird consumer. It happens whilst they are going about their daily business. Distracted and reactive in a chaotic and challenging landscape.
And for the brand builder, the marketeer, it’s vital that we drop the right materials – those scraps and straws – into the landscape, in the right places, at the right time.
There are roughly one million English words in existence. There are likely over 10 trillion images currently in existence.
So what does your brand’s nest look like? How do you begin to understand and examine these bundles of consumer thinking? To give a snapshot, our process starts by looking at the words that your brand is using. Of the 4 basic materials – words, images, actions and experiences – words are the easiest to manage, to measure and analyse. Thanks to AI, it’s now fairly straightforward to pick up all the words that a brand uses, to cluster and quantify these. A thematic analysis will reveal an outline of the shape of your nest. It’s a rough sketch, an impression – but it’s a great read on how your brand is showing up to your consumers. With a little intuition and a lot of experience, it’s a simple process to compare your outline, or in mapping terms, your contour, to those of your competitors.
This is often the start of a positioning conversation with our clients. “This is the contour of your brand in consumers heads. How does this compare to your desired positioning?” “Which words are most effective and on point? Which are distracting, or diluting your desired positioning?” “What if we make the contour richer by adding the impact of your images, actions and experiences?”
This Brand Contour is an AI powered start of the conversation, an outline of the scraps and straws from which your brand is built. If you want to see yours – give us a call and we will fly, hop and flap over.
Written by Hugh Roberts with no AI assistance
