Brands In Britain: Step Away from cosy to scramble and thrive

We thought 2020 was uncertain. Then we thought it would get better. Then 2024 seemed like a year from a Hollywood script. Then Hollywood caught fire. We've already seen the stock market crash in the first few weeks of the year, what else is going to happen? The idea of having any idea about what 2025 will bring seems bonkers. It is unfathomable that anyone's marketing plans that they so diligently and correctly put in place in Q3 or Q4 for the rest of the year are going to be certain, are not going to change. Trend reports may as well just be chucked in the bin.

The weird corporate world that likes to pretend that time exists in Quarters and everything is logical, procedural and measurable needs to take on board that the Universe fundamentally disagrees with that. Our timeline had a decision to make about which way to go and it chose VUCA. Volatile Uncertainty Complexity Ambiguity - we’re so VUCA’d up our For You Pages are spilling on to front pages. So much madness is happening so much of the time, our sense of time itself is distorted.

And that's so hard for a business to operate in and marketers to plan for and brands to built on. Because you can either try to be boring and steadfast and plan your marketing campaigns with comfortable time in advance but have absolutely no relevance to anything… or you can aspire to play a significant role in the market, culture and peoples lives - but that needs you to step out of cosy planning.

Leaving cosy behind means that brands need to stop thinking as much in pixel perfect frameworks with consultants constructing architecture that is absent of any cultural awareness but is wonderfully cascaded across complex multi-functional stakeholder groups so a carefully crafted campaign can be pushed out of the content factory in three years time. Breathe. There isn't time for that. There isn’t time for the comfort of conformity. What a risk. How do you, how does anyone, know what's going to happen between then, now and tomorrow. And that doesn’t mean not doing anything, because the one thing everyone needs right now is growth.

To survive and maybe even thrive, we need marketing plans and brands that can scramble alongside change. To do that, we need brands that can bounce. Brands that are elastic, malleable and deep. Where it's actually really easy to figure out how to respond to this dramatic geopolitical / technological / consumer behaviour change because you’re really certain how this brand would respond, and how to turn that into communication and brand behaviour, because your take on the world and your audience’s world is so clearly defined.

So. How can I help steward this bouncy brand and business through to tomorrow? How am I going to brief teams, partners and stakeholders on what a successful brand will be.

Less formality. More fiction. Bring brands more to life. Let brands become the characters they are in the fullest most licked up version of themselves. Brands as characters means that they have got a 1) personality, not values but a vibe, and 2) they've got a point of view on the world that isn’t a corporate mission statement. That also doesn't mean that they are super purpose-led and trying to save the world, they've just got a passionate point of view on what is right and what is wrong, they've got a view on what they care about, and most importantly how they want to say, share and act out that point of view.

What they can be is be really clear about that, and then when you're set as a character, then you can behave as a character. You've got some things you like, you've got some things you want to say, but you’re also are able to adapt to the mentalness that surrounds us all, you’re able to pick out the perfect superbowl ad from the maelstrom of hot house ideas that were thrown up on the wall, you’re able to commission the 700 tiktoks for next months shoot and say yes to the reactive post on whatever Trump tried to change next. You’re guaranteed to be able to get a real feel of making the right creative call, and the confidence for the Zoom call with the CM/F/EO that this is the right thing because its what your brand would say it does, and anything else would feel like a lie and people would see through it. That’s authenticity. Thats truth. That’s putting a middle finger up to VUCA, to those who treat the world as their plaything, and to the competition too scared to keep up.

That could be what happens this year. Or the drones could be aliens. Either way, let’s bring some character to tomorrow.

Ben Shaw is the chief strategy office for MullenLowe