JKR

There is a general suspicion in life that ‘the creative industries’ are populated by charlatans who are only too keen to fleece the client with some silken words, produce flash in the pan work, then move on to the next victim. Private Eye’s Ad Nauseum regularly offers up evidence to support this view, and we have all seen those cartoons of black polo neck wearing show-boaters heaping marketing gobbledygook upon poor unsuspecting clients. Tom Fishburne shows we can even laugh at this image ourselves. I have pinched some New Yorker cartoons for this post to illustrate the ‘type’ in question. Generally, branding seems to be perceived as a dark art that is more smoke and mirrors than something of true substance.

The reported (potential) fate of Orange and T-Mobile (in The Times newspaper on Tuesday) can only add fuel to the fire. As both brands are now owned by Everything Everywhere, having them compete is a self-defeating strategy. And having one wing of the company adopting the branding of the other appears to be untenable. So both will probably go, to be replaced by something literally brand new. ‘EE’ anyone? No? Just the Yorkshiremen?

So almost twenty years of branding turn out to be relatively disposable. According to The Times, Fallon’s 2008 ‘I Am’ campaign for Orange alone cost £90million. Personally, I don’t even remember it and in terms of cost and creative, it’s just a drop in the ocean of all the work produced. Perhaps of longer term value was the Wolf Olins coined line – ‘The future’s bright, the future’s Orange’. This was used to introduce the brand’s identity (which daringly for the time made no reference to what the company did). It seeped into everyday language and was perhaps the most memorable thing the brand ever said.

So anyway, hundreds of million pounds of investment into work from folk like me later, it turns out the brands are likely to be sacrificed for the better good, and replaced by something freshly minted. In a way this is exciting – death allowing for rebirth. But it’s also quite bracing. Did none of that time and talent ever amount to creating something of lasting value? Are the sensibilities of the two brands’ staff, both presumably hesitant about taking the other’s name in a marriage of convenience, really of more importance than the equities being killed off? If so, it’s one in the eye for all those pundits who opine on the invisible but massively important ‘brand value’ which advertising and design supposedly adds to share prices. Were all those involved true to the ‘ad nauseum’ caricature, spinning a meaningless line to ensure healthy billing?

Coming from someone who works in this field it won’t surprise you to hear that I think not. Some good work was done on both brands. Arguably some really great work was done for Orange. If market mergers and business strategy have chucked it in the bin perhaps it’s more a reflection of the fickle role, fickle fate market forces and new owners play in the worth of the brand than in the actual value of the work that was done. It takes some ego, arguably, to believe the last twenty years created nothing of lasting relevance from these two multinational brands.

There are other ways one might play out this particular hand. The two brands are not necessarily like for like competitors. They are as different as they are similar. If you were Coke and could buy one other brand, might it not be Pepsi? Then you can fight with similar products on two distinct fronts. By converging Orange and T-Mobile into one thing in the middle, arguably you are left with a less nimble and dimensional beast with which to fight the competition. It will be big and bland. Having two decent brands to play with would be considered by many to be a bit of a gift.

But that Everything Everywhere beg to differ offers a refreshing cold shower to anyone who thinks our collective creative input is the thing really driving the business.

As we are on the topic, I thought I might share a favourite anecdote from the early days of mobile branding. We worked on the launch of Mercury One2One, which became One2One, which became T-Mobile. Soon after the launch in 1993 I asked the client how things were going. “Awful” came the reply. The tariffs on which profit depended were all aimed at the envisaged businessman market (in the early posters, women were shown to need a phone if their car broke down at night. Otherwise it was salaryman on the go in every scenario). The tariff was costly calls in business hours, but free calls at night, with the presumption being that few businessmen wanted to make social calls. Trouble was the phones all got bought by teenagers, who then creamed the free calls and left their phones switched off during business hours. The client continued “there’s no money in teenagers – if that’s our market, we’re doomed”. Ahh, the benefit of hindsight…