I know I don’t blog or write as often as I should, but there is a reoccurring theme I see within my clients and when I have looked back, I’ve seen it in my career. As you guys must know by now, I think I’ve held pretty much most of the seats in marketing and had my chances at a high level, which in turn led to Father of 4. During that time period I was frustrated with businesses I worked in not seeing the change, not understanding why a rebrand was needed and unfortunately, falling by the wayside as a result.
So, let’s talk about the difference between a larger PLC with a board and an owner-based business. The larger PLC will have shifted its marketing to a larger team or agency, given them autonomy and pay the bucks to make sure it’s right, relevant and rigid. Things like digital campaigns, brand development or multi-channel campaigns are executed with minimal if any interference from board level. There may be a marketing director on board, but beyond that only the bigger projects get looked into.
Owner-based businesses, SME style businesses are usually all pinned around one person, and whatever they say goes. All spend, campaigns or branding ideas will need to be run through that person. Most of my experience lives here in SME land, only once going above that to see the PLC way of marketing. In that SME land I was always struck by how precious owners were with their brand or website. The hardest brand to change is the one the owner designed. Whether that is right or wrong is down to the individual company, but from an agency or internal marketing team perspective it’s very frustrating.
There are a few things in play, one is the huge underestimation of business about their brand, because they only see it as a logo, not a promise. Not a way to behave. Not a bible or the rest of the business to rely on. Branding done correctly can make huge differences to a company and it isn’t just changing the logo, you can use brand to challenge the status quo, give the customer an expectation that the rest of the business need to uphold.
The second part is investment, words like branding, or phrases like digital campaigns sound expensive to an owner. SME owners can be averse to spending money on marketing as they see the whole operation as expense, vans, staff, buildings etc. They deem it to be unnecessary expenditure or worse they’ve spent money here before and it never worked. The answer is systems, accountability and reading my book, 30 days of CEO marketing tips!
But sometimes, well, quite a lot I’ve seen a pattern of owner shaped business that didn’t always make sense. I won’t name names, but I came from the shopfloor of a retailer and saw and heard a particular brand not being chosen as customers “didn’t want that logo in their home”. The biggest selling product was a niche and anything they tried to compete with household names didn’t always stick unless people wanted a package and then price was king. But, I couldn’t get the message through from day 1. They simply wouldn’t change and I knew they were losing money out in the retailers.
I went through a lot to change, we did get some change, not a lot but enough to be a little classier and look a little more modern. The logo was designed by the owner. The brand colours were the owner’s choice. Everything was based on an industry they weren’t competing in.
Let’s fast forward a little bit, to this year. I have a client who will remain anonymous. They wanted to change their website and found themselves in this situation I was in. Owner designed it with an agency, it was their work. Fonts and colours looked a little outdated, especially the font! People weren’t sticking to their site as well as they should be. The website looked OK maybe 5 years ago, but it looked tired. So, they went to task without me… like seriously, dudes it’s literally our bag. But anyway, they turned to AI. Fed everything in and got… well an AI looking site. I even said which AI had designed it pointed out the similarities and flaws that producing a website in AI has. But they weren’t budging. They loved it. Sometimes AI doesn’t have that sense, that gut feel and understanding that years of experience brings.
It made me stop and think. What was happening here? So I took a little look into it. Was it the IKEA effect? A study from Norton, Mochon and Ariely in 2012. People who built an IKEA storage box would pay 63% more for it than people offered the same box already built? Not sure. Maybe it’s just a DIY enthusiast thing? I don’t mind standing proud looking at freshly painted wall I did, I don’t even look at the finish if we pay someone to do it. I don’t think it’s that, then I stumbled on the origami result. I just needed to keep reading Norton, Mochon and Ariely and they found that people rated their own amateur origami five times higher than other people did. They also valued it as good as the experts and expected people to agree.
What does that tell us, if you make your own brand, choose your own fonts etc.. maybe just maybe you have fallen into the trap of thinking it’s better than you think, compared to everyone else’s feelings for your creation.
So, why did I fast forward? Because the same effect is happening within AI, now interestingly users of AI find that it lowers their sense of control, I took that into my thought process, so why was it different with my client? I needed to know and it’s interesting, because I asked for the chat between the client and the AI. I wanted to see, and the effort was huge. The individual had put so much effort to get an AI looking website. The origami result was in full swing. People, if you create something, not everyone else is going to like it! Brand, website, adverts, PPC campaigns, SEO content.. whatever happens in marketing it needs a process to ensure A, it’s within brand and behaviour of the company. B, it meets the needs of the other people judging it. C, it stops you from being stubborn because you created it.
So how do we change the thought process, frustrated marketing managers I hear you… Well, let’s talk about a little thing called MAYA, a concept from Loewy. MAYA is most advanced yet acceptable and it can help you shift away from the origami result. How did we move the brand on? How did I get my client back on board with me? It’s to accept that wholesale change isn’t going to always work. Sometimes you need to create something that feels like them, feels like their vibe and slowly push to something new and better.
In my first instance, we reduced the font weight, we reduced the strength of the colours, pulled in some new colours based on factual ideas around the products. All accepted, all tested on products and most importantly all agreed. The next development of the brand was ready once this one had gone through, waiting.
With my client, I took their AI work, used it as a basis and asked if we could look at improvements. I even used their AI chat to show them how it works. I made sure they were aware I was going into Photoshop and redesigning parts from scratch. The parts AI can’t see. But we made everything grander, made it more imaginative than they could see, but kept the same vibe, same principle of what the client liked. Made it MAYA.
We are now developing that website in our design and moving forward with a combination of the clients AI generated site and my human input. As for the company I used to work for, if MAYA isn’t a constant theme it doesn’t hold. The brand hasn’t changed and no one seems to be owning it anymore.
What can we take as a lesson from this? Well first of all, it will be a challenge to make owner-based business to change. “We’ve always done it like this” is the hardest barrier to get over, they are so proud of where they are and what they have created, they can’t always see the holes. But with persuasion, without trashing their ideas and creations, we can move companies on and forward to look and be better whatever the marketing discipline is.
Do you see yourself or the company you work for in here, just drop us a line on 01509440103 or email tired@fatherof4.co.uk, we’ll grab a coffee and chat it through.
