THE VISIBILITY OF THINGS

Why brands need to be Very Present & Very
There

 

 

There’s
irony in the way branding has borrowed from the language of utility companies.

Utility
companies?

After
the picture, that’s maybe not the opening sentence you were expecting - but I
assure you, everything will link up. I am though going to have to ask that you stop
thinking about that picture for a moment.

Great.
Thanks. And yes, utilities, as in gas, water and electricity, the ‘Very Very
Useful Stuff’ we can’t really live without.

Brand-builders
would figure “utility” to be a rather useful word to borrow, given it reminds everyone
that brands must make themselves useful to people - given there are few better
examples of those daily essentials than the stuff the utility companies
provide.

Only,
I think we’ve just fished out a herring of the very red kind. (No, it wasn’t
hiding in that cleavage.) Because how do you feel about your utility providers?
When did you last give your electricity a moments thought? And that’s because this
is the 21st Century, where utilities are meant to work - and so, we
don’t actually give two hoots (arguably not even one) about our gas, water or
electricity, because it’s “always there”, almost never “suddenly turned off”.
Gas, water and electricity might be essential to our daily lives, but they are
givens, they are “invisible essentials”. And the moment something becomes truly
assumed and taken for granted, it becomes invisible… and forgotten.

And
for brands, Invisible & Forgotten is the equivalent of Arsenic &
Cyanide. 

 

VERY PRESENT & VERY THERE

Decent
broadband, an always-in-range wifi connection, will inevitably become another
“invisible given”, once it’s become truly ubiquitous. But we’re not quite there
yet. We can still lose signal a little too often. And consequently, we’re still
grateful of our broadband, still offer the odd silent thanks to a Virgin or a
Sky, because it can still occasionally
be taken from us, a 5-bar signal or fibre optic suddenly at the whim of a
capricious God or mischievous gremlin. Take something away, and its very
disappearance creates fresh and potentially urgent wanting.

But
I’m not right now suggesting brands be built by occasionally making themselves
scarce, the figurative equivalent of turning off the tap or lights.

I
am however suggesting brands can be
built be being ‘Very Present’ and ‘Very There’ in the right kind of way.

Now
the fact our appreciation (of a thing) is born of things making themselves
present and visible – well, that’s why we have brands in the first place. Because
branding makes products conspicuous. It gives them profile. Apple. Nike. These
are not shrinking violets. Their advertising positions them as social peacocks;
life-and-soul-and-look-at-me of the party types. Apple’s “products”, Nike’s
“products”: they try and make themselves front-and-centre in our everyday. We can’t
help but be aware of that which makes itself clear and highly visible to us. Apple
and Nike are but two examples of brands that shoulder-barge the competition in
order to get right in front of us. And it’s from that awareness that our potential
understanding and consequent appreciation for them may then grow.

Now, Derida (1930-2004) would have argued that “nothing is ever present”,
because everything can be so deconstructed to a point where any sense of
meaning is stripped away. If you follow that line of logic too far, everything
starts to unravel and the world becomes horribly confusing, awfully quickly. So
let’s not. But if we play (carefully) with Derida’s proposition, we can also
take it somewhere cheerful. It’s reasonable to suggest that things can be
present (and understood) to varying degrees. Some a lot more so. Some a lot
less.  As a brand builder, I’m interested
in making things, objects, products, present in ways that people find urgent
and profound. Enter, stage left or right: Branding. Branding grafts meaning on
to things. It can make something present.

The French sociologist Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) suggested
companies don’t manufacture objects, but rather signs - a running shoe is not actually
a running shoe, but the semiotic suggestion of a running shoe. A bra is not…
you get the idea. However you want to look at things, whether as objects or signs,
I say it’s a helluva lot easier to “look” on anything if it’s up close and
personal and staring you in the face. Which, yes, I guess takes us back to that
opening photo.

So
you bet, a brand needs to be useful, and better still essential, like the water
and the gas, but never invisibly so. “Out of sight” is not only out of mind,
but also out of heart, and too quickly an after-thought. Absence doesn’t equate
to increasing fondness. Successful brands make themselves frequent and “Visibly
Essential”. There are times when “in your face” can be a very good thing.

SP.

Article as also appears in: The Huffington Post and Emerging Spaces.