Comment from Grant Simmons
Time: October 31, 2008, 3:03 pm

“Should the goal of branding work be that it appeal to everyone? Excluding no one?”

No. Branding work should appeal to those to whom you wish to connect (with the brand).

To that end it necessitates a branding agency that may not be attracted to it’s own branding work, namely because they may not be the intended audience.

Branding effectiveness should be measured on ROI, whether ‘real’ dollars or ownership of mind (the latter more difficult to measure).

Brand work can be “appreciated”, but one would expect a ‘one size fits all’ approach to branding work anymore than expect *everyone* to like Tofu.

Comment from rjulian
Time: November 3, 2008, 1:09 pm

Hello Grant,

Whether one’s target is in the thousands or millions, I believe there is a great degree of variability among those people, so diluting work to the point that it *appeals to all* is, in our opinion: a) not a practical reality and b) inadvisable.

Of course we want our branding work to affect the greatest percentage of our target audience, but interestingly I believe this occurs most when one focuses on simply creating great and resonant work one strongly believes will affect an archetypal consumer(s). We’ve found trying to imagine the perceptions of millions of people can paralyze or cripple the pursuit of great ideas. More often it’s helpful to think about the audience as a handful of friends with certain sets of general attributes, believing if we’re able to connect well with them, we’ll have a better chance of connecting with the larger population.

Regarding an agency not being attracted to its own work, here’s how we discuss it with our creative teams: “If you want the person who sees this work to laugh, it needs to make *you* laugh. Really, truly, laugh–not some ‘I think people will find this funny’ but rather, ‘this cracks us up, and we believe it will crack others up’.” Ditto all other emotional responses we expect our work to provoke: inspiration, happiness, reflection. . . Our ability to successfully connect with our clients’ audiences is directly proportional to our ability to make the work to connect with us first. That being said, if we felt we were unable to effectively make that connection, we would either partner with someone who could, or simply pass on the engagement. Emotional responses aren’t abstract. They are real, and the only way one can verify them is to feel them.

Of course, we’re big on creating emotional connections with our client’s audiences–it’s a core philosophy of our branding practice.

Thanks for your comments,

Rick