Off Kilter.

Room 101: The Bruce Willis of pharma.
Searching for the signal in the noise of brand marketing and design.

1. The Bruce Willis of pharma.

tl;dr: The last refuge of lazy strategy.

Once upon a time, Die Hard was the world’s biggest movie franchise, and Bruce Willis was the biggest movie star. Famously, this led to a slew of “Die Hard” themed pitches to movie studios - “Die Hard with trains,” “Die Hard with snakes,” “Die Hard with planes,” “Die Hard with snakes on a plane,” “Die Hard with puppies,” you know the drill.

This became famous for two reasons. First, for making the pitch instantly understandable, and second for making it so lazy and cliched the movie studio execs just tuned it out.

Now, don’t for a second think that scriptwriters are the only lazy purveyors of cliche. We in the branding business have been doing it for years. How many times have you heard that a company is going to be the “Uber of air travel” or the “Amazon of logistics,” or the “Google of waffle fries,” or whatever. (I just wish someone in the airline industry would front up and say they’re the Die Hard of air travel, but I think that’s all of them).

Anyway, this brings me neatly to the recent rebrand of pharma company GSK by Wolff Olins. Since I used to work at WO, my LinkedIn feed is currently wall-to-wall orange as a slew of former colleagues proclaim variously their pride/humbleness/excitement/inspiration/dedication/obsequiousness at having worked with GSK. My primary reaction after throwing up in my mouth a little was, “oh, this client must’ve paid you a lot of money.” Why else prostrate yourself like that on behalf of some fairly average identity work. (granted, pharma isn’t exactly an easy field to be super creative in, so don’t take that as too much of a criticism). But, what really struck me was the lead statement in the GSK PR that this is about being “The Tesla of pharma.” Oh God, shoot me now.

What’s awful about this, just like the folks pitching movie studios, is that it’s the last refuge of lazy strategy. Don’t focus at all on what you’re bringing to the table; just compare yourself to something else that’s modern and successful and job done. Sheesh.

And in truth, I’m pretty sure GSK doesn’t actually want to be the Tesla of Pharma. I’m guessing they aren’t planning on having a carnival barker shitposter as CEO, or a product that spontaneously combusts, or software that disengages 1 second before impact to prevent liability (although, this is a pharma company we’re talking about, so maybe they do want that), or appalling quality control, or racial discrimination lawsuits, or hiding workplace safety incidents, or announcing products that are never likely to get made, or declining market share, or halving in value in a matter of months.

Clearly, they don’t want to be that Tesla of pharma. They want to be the other Tesla. Which Tesla is that you might ask? Oh, the innovative one that dodges paying tax. Oh, why didn’t you just say so?

Anyway, as I looked through the work and watched the utterly vapid launch video, I realized that lazy strategy seems to be a theme across this job because outside of a desire to be the “Tesla of pharma,” there doesn’t seem to be much at play here.

As a side-note, please branding consultancies, have an actual creative idea for your logo launch videos. I promise it’ll make a universally shitty genre where all you do is animate your guidelines to music so much better. And please don’t feel you have to tell us the new identity is “in motion.” It’s a video. We can see that it’s moving, thanks.

2. Unconscious minimalism.

tl;dr: AKA the desire to be as inoffensive as possible.

Last week, I stumbled across this brilliant little thread on Twitter. And while the author was focused on minimalism in our built environment, I can honestly say it struck a chord with me relative to our penchant for minimalist branding. (There’s so much out there that this link just sends you to a Google search page. Take your pick).

What particularly resonated were two things. First is the idea of “unconscious minimalism.” That it’s something that just happens rather than being actively thought through. And second, what defines unconscious minimalism is the removal of detail. And the reason we remove detail is that some people don’t like it. This means that when we follow this path, it isn’t about doing something that some people will love; it’s about doing something that nobody will complain about because most people won’t even notice it. (because, by definition, if we neither love it nor hate it, and it has nothing to characterize it, we’re most likely not noticing it at all).

And, well, it got me thinking. When we work with brands, we’re always talking about how it matters to mean something to somebody rather than nothing to anyone, but that isn’t what we’re actually doing. Well, rarely in identity design these days anyway. Instead, we’re busy removing detail, and whether consciously or not, rendering the work not just less offensive (some people don’t like detail, remember), but largely unnoticeable.

And that’s a problem. You see, the whole point of this stuff is to be noticed, and ideally, remembered, and sometimes offending some people is a good thing. God knows it’s hard enough to catch anyone’s attention these days, so why make it harder through an exercise in unconsciously removing the stuff that matters just because some people might not like it?

Now, we shouldn’t expect our clients to understand this. They’re not branding professionals. That’s why they hired us, which means we need to explain, and then demonstrate, why standing out and being memorable matters. It’s a part of the value they’re paying for.

This is why having a client look at the work and say, “I like it. Clean and modern,” is actually a sign of failure rather than success. It’s not the feedback we should be looking for. Instead, the conversation should be around how the work makes this particular brand stand out, why it’s different from the competition, how it stands aside from the category, how it uniquely builds from the idea of the brand, and, importantly, what makes it memorable. If the work also happens to be clean and modern, then great. But that’s a side benefit, not the main event.

Of course, the work itself must be memorable before we can have that conversation. And different. And stand out. And not be unconsciously boring AF.

3. The £30m answer to the meaning of…something.

tl;dr: Econometricians work through some whizzy optimal numbers.

Right now, somewhere in the South of France, there’s an advertising event happening that I never, ever want to be anywhere near. It’s rather grandly named the “Cannes Festival of Creativity,” although the incomparable Bob Hoffman has rather more accurately labeled it the “Cannes Festival of Sickening Self-Importance,” where:

“Wankmasters from across the globe will gather in Cannes to gulp putrid rosé, snort coke, and be fellated by the adtech industry.”

However, in addition to the putrid rosé and coke and self-importance and mutual back-stabbing/fellating, there’s the occasional nugget of gold to be found off in a dusty corner somewhere.

This year, that nugget came from a gaggle of econometricians who’ve been squirreling away trying to figure out the optimal amount of money to spend on advertising to maximize ROI. Now, while I really wanted this to be £42m, for obvious reasons, it’s actually a relative bargain at £30m

Now, a caveat before I get into this. The data is UK-specific, so if you aren’t in the UK, please take the numbers with a pinch of salt. However, I’d be willing to bet money that the pattern is replicable across markets.

Anyway, what they found after crunching many numbers is this. The optimal UK spend is £30m. This is the number at which you maximize ROI. Below this, your return will be lower than optimal because not enough people see your ads. Above this, ROI drops as you’re hitting the same people repeatedly and/or reaching people who aren’t going to buy from you anyway. The second thing they found is that more channels work better than less. This makes sense as you’re increasing the surface area across which you’ll be noticed.

Now, this is pretty timely data, as we’re maybe/certainly entering a recession (depending on whom you ask), and whole sections of the economy are currently cutting back, especially those in startup-land.

But, here’s the thing. The reason startups, in particular, are cutting back might have less to do with their business trajectory, and more to do with the trickle-down effects of VC panic at the end of free money and the halving of the value of their portfolios.

As I see it, the problem with this wild swing of the pendulum from VCs who’ve shifted from “grow at all costs” to “save every penny” in a matter of weeks is its complete lack of balance.

According to that merry band of Australian marketing scientists at the Ehrenberg Bass Institute, we already know that while cutting advertising for a big brand is harmful, for a small one, it can be terminal.

This suggests that every startup needs to look at this through its own specific lens. Plenty of VC-backed startups will go down in flames in the next year or two, not because of a recession, but because they were daft investments in the first place that were only funded because money was free and VCs had a tonne of it to throw around.

If that isn’t you, then you need to take a more balanced view of how you move forwards. For example, what’s going on in your market, what opportunities open up when others cut back, which counter-cyclical moves can be made, and how can you more cheaply grow your share of voice and ultimately share of the market?

Because, yes, all the press will be about the startups that run out of money and fail. But if you’re a good business with a clear runway and a solid cash position, then not spending and not doubling down on growing when the opportunity presents itself might kill you just the same. It’ll just take longer and be a lot more painful.

Thank you for reading all the way through. If this email was forwarded to you and you like it, you can subscribe here.

If you’d like to talk about anything brand related, or even just to have a chat, that would be awesome. Please reach out. I particularly enjoy helping people solve tricky brand problems.

Cheers for now.

Paul
President, Invencion

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