The Ten Commandments of a Brand Reset >

In 1631, someone made a printing error. This wouldn’t have been a problem, but the book they were printing was The Bible, and their error was to omit the word “NOT” from the 7th commandment, which ordinarily reads “Thou shalt not commit adultery”.

From this we learn two things: 1. You should never neglect small details; 2. Mistakes are more fun to learn from than successes.

Which is why I find it odd that in the marketing and advertising world, we spend so much time talking about perceived success, and so little time talking about objective failures.

So if we’re going to talk about Brand Resets, let’s try and correct that survivor bias, and instead look at what we can learn from others’ misfortune and poor judgement:

The 10 Commandments of a Brand Reset:

1. THOU SHALT PUT THE BRAND FIRST

Do you remember Qwikster? Probably not, it wasn’t for you, it was for Wall St. and it nearly killed Netflix.

Because after a decade of posting DVDs, someone with their eyes on the horizon was thinking about a pivot to streaming. The only problem: what to do about the thing customers were already loyal to and already paying for?

Enter “Qwikster”, a new Brand for the old business. It made sense on paper – and nowhere else – and it helped 800,000 customers leave in one quarter as Netflix lost over 50% of its share price in one thrilling go. The decision was quickly reversed and the Netflix brand was saved, but recovery was two painful years in coming.

2. THOU SHALT NOT EQUATE BRAND AND IMAGE

GAP, Pepsi, Consignia, what do these three have in common? The answer is Logos.

Specifically, each tried to use a Logo as an alternative to fixing an underlying problem which was far greater:

In the case of GAP, it was over-extension of the retail footprint while under-investing in marketing. Pepsi had lost relevance by failing to keep up with changing consumer demands (largely a result of selling off its own bottling businesses). And Consignia was a futile attempt to smoosh three brands that had no business being one.

In every case, the brand was conflated with the logo and the reality of the business was left aside as an inconvenient distraction

3. THOU SHALT NOT USE THE NAME OF YOUR BRAND IN VAIN

Did you ever enjoy the Cosmopolitan range of low-fat dairy products, including spreads and yogurts? Or did you ever tune into the BrewDog TV channel? What about downing a cool bottle of the Coors sparkling water? Of course not.

The museum of failures is littered with brand extensions that no one asked for – products of brands failing to understand what they really represent to consumers and where their positioning gives them strength.

If it’s not obviously the right thing to do for your brand, it’s probably the wrong thing.

4. THOU SHALT NOT TRY TO JUMP ON “TODAY”

Some brands live and die by their relevance, but identifying a trend is not the same as discovering an opportunity. Jumping on a bandwagon is harder than it looks -- get it wrong and you’re going to be trampled under the wheels of that same bandwagon.

Remember when Kendall Jenner solved racism? Maybe it’s unfair to pick on Pepsi a second time (side note, if you haven’t tried a blind taste test – you should. Odds are you’ll prefer Pepsi).

Good brands shape culture, but you do that by being ahead of the curve and making people want to catch up, or by standing for something solid amidst chaos. Try to capture “today” and you’ll upset the people who hate change, all for the sake of showing up late for the party thrown by people who don’t want you.

5. THOU SHALT HONOUR THY ROOTS

Jaguar. It’s a complete sentence at this point. The brand needed a reset, but what it got was a total identity crisis; like a 65-year-old divorcé who joins a cult and changes his name to “tree-blossom” instead of just going to therapy and getting a personal trainer.

Every brand that goes the distance will at some point need to throw out the old to make way for the new. But unless you can identify and keep the few precious parts of history which spark joy in consumers – old and new – then why keep the brand alive at all?

Looking in the shop window today, the heritage is inching its way back in; hopefully we’ll see Jaguar back on the road soon.

6. THOU SHALT NOT KILL YOUR OWN BRAND

Does Mark Zuckerberg hate Facebook? You’d be forgiven for thinking so, given how aggressively he neglects the core brand. Never mind the money spent on his personal attempts to recreate Ready Player One, he spent years taking the Facebook name for granted before subsuming it beneath the now dubiously credible “Meta”. Careless People documents an apathy not just for people, but for the reputation of Facebook itself. It didn’t have to be this way.

It’s a cheap shot to deploy Apple in cases like this, so let’s zag and drop in a comparison to Microsoft, which has, despite the slings and arrows of outrageous slander from their more fashionable rivals, stuck resolutely to their core even while extending into myriad new territories. No one ever stood on stage in Seattle and said that Xbox meant that Windows was history, or that the Zune was the start of a pivot away from the Office. Building your brand first requires that you love your brand.

7. THOU SHALT NOT CHEAT ON YOUR CONSUMER

There aren’t many people who feel sorry for Bud Light, but there’s no denying they were unlucky with the timing of the cultural moment when they partnered with a trans influencer and trod on the most explosive landmine in culture at the time. The scale of the partnership – an influencer post with a budget smaller than a rounding error on the AB InBev balance sheet – was not reflected in the scale of the backlash from furious fans who felt their core identity was existentially threatened. Billions were lost, and it has been a long road to forgiveness for a brand that once defined the default American Male.

Sometimes, it’s good to be boring, and loyal to those who are loyal to you. It limits your options, but hell hath no fury like a fan scorned, and whether you like it or not – you are married to your consumer.

8. THOU SHALT NOT STEAL YOUR IDENTITY FROM SOMEONE MORE FAMOUS

What do Hertz, Subway, and Jell-O have in common? The unfortunate answer is that they all allowed their brands to be defined by someone else’s identity, and those someones got very seriously embroiled in criminal scandals of the very worst sort. Hertz may have since recovered from their association with OJ Simpson, but the shadows of Jared and Mr Cosby are still visible on the sandwich and flavoured gelatine brands.

The counterpoint to this is Old Spice, which - instead of sticking with the unquestionably charismatic Isaiah Mustafa as the “Man your man could smell like” - cast a hyperactive Terry Crews to represent the Power of Old Spice body-wash. They came back to Isaiah time and again after, but always with a mind that the brand remain bigger than the man.

9. THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS (TO THYSELF, AT LEAST)

In the post-truth world this may be a uniquely challenging hill to defend, and I can imagine better hills to die on, but if this must be my last stand then so be it. Because while there’s no claiming that a bit of puffery doesn’t go a long way and we all appreciate that creative license is necessary for a good story… it’s very difficult to build a brand for the long term if you don’t know internally who you really are and what you are really about. In other words, don’t do a WeWork and drown in your own bullshit. Not least of all, it makes it harder to see why anyone wouldn’t buy your story, which makes you less able to grow into previously unconvinced markets.

Instead, take a leaf out of the Travelodge playbook. They’re not the fanciest or the swankiest hotel on the market, and they know that. They know the consumer knows that. But there’s a reason people stay in Travelodge hotels, and that’s because they’re the best place to go and do other stuff; they’re the “Brilliant Basecamp”. It’s true, and it’s the opposite of what everyone else in the category says about themselves, which happily also helps with cut-through and standout.

10. THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOUR’S BLAND ASSETS

A lot of people have great taste. Particularly people in marketing, design, and advertising. People with great taste often tend to agree with each other about what’s good and what’s not good. And they’re very sensitive to the subtle differences between the various iterations of “Good” that exist. The unfortunate counterpoint is that the general public does not share this sense of “Good Taste”, and does not see the subtle difference in kerning between the new ortholinear sans serif brandtype logo which looks exactly like all the others. They just read the clearer signal, which is that the brand isn’t what it once was, and is now much the same as everything else – i.e. not special, not interesting, and certainly not worth going out of their way to spend any additional time or money on.

This is why I love ugly brands. The Cybertruck was a bad product, but there was no chance of you missing it in a crowded carpark. B&M alone must be to blame for a hundred graphic designers gouging out their eyes every week when their clashing blue and orange radiation emblazons itself on their unconsenting retinas. But there’s no missing it, and there’s no mistaking it. And when being ignorable and forgettable is the real sin, being uniquely ugly is real sainthood.

Conclusion: In 1631, the printers of "The Wicked Bible" were heavily fined and stripped of their livelihoods. We live in more forgiving times; today, a Chief Marketing Officer can incinerate half a brand's equity on a vanity project and simply slide into a non-executive directorship elsewhere, even though shareholders may curse them for eternity.

Perhaps if the punishment for sinning were greater, we would see fewer. Every error listed above is a product of carelessness, either towards the world, towards the brand, or towards the consumer’s reality.

But the greatest form of carelessness, and the greatest sin, is inaction. Even a perfect brand will need to reset eventually as culture moves around it and years of presence in the market causes a buildup of redundant baggage. But as you prepare to cross that terrifying strategic rubicon, remember the poor printers of 1631. Change the layout, refresh the binding, and modernize the type - just check the small details, pay attention to reality, and for heaven's sake, leave the foundations alone.