- 15-11-2001

Auteur: Hans P Brandt and Jurjen Bürgel

Year in year out, large and smaller companies spend hundreds of millions of euros on communications: printed matter, visual material, logos and banners, corporate images, campaigns and radio/television commercials. Clients and professionals work on the basis of familiar conventions, reflexes and methodologies: they ask what we can offer them and we give them what they ask for; quantifiable products at established prices with a result calculated beforehand. Everyone’s happy, or so it seems. But underneath the uneasiness grows.

Year in year out, large and smaller companies spend hundreds of millions of euros on communications: printed matter, visual material, logos and banners, corporate images, campaigns and radio/television commercials. Clients and professionals work on the basis of familiar conventions, reflexes and methodologies: they ask what we can offer them and we give them what they ask for; quantifiable products at established prices with a result calculated beforehand. Everyone’s happy, or so it seems. But underneath the uneasiness grows.

Over the last three decades, the Netherlands has formed an interesting breeding ground for the development of high-principled design. This was mainly possible through a unique combination of factors. A look at several specific Dutch conditions:

• relatively weak national identity, based on a strong individual awareness
• heterogeneous society, aimed at consensus between widely varied social and religious fields of influence
• liberal market environment, that is flanked by a strong welfare state
• non-critical and mostly ideological inspired vision on public institutions and companies
• complex fabric of rural and urban character, with the need of bridging many economic and planning contrasts on a small scale
• pragmatic governing culture, primarily geared towards consensus, that avoids extremes and cherishes subtlety
• abstract and fairly traditional straightforward conception of aesthetics
• great appreciation for traditional professionalism, often with anti-authoritarian characteristics.

With such a socio-cultural mixture, the Netherlands was able to develop in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s to an ideal laboratory for designers, architects, fashion designers, graphic designers and advertising strategists. After a flourishing period, however, this leading position turned into a mental lag. Instead of individual artistic interpretation of the message, brand thinking was launched from the UK and the US. The lag certainly showed when design, brand expressions and mass communication under influence of brand thinking had to be as appealing as they were successful. It turned out that this short-term thinking had pushed aside the consideration of essences and of underlying communication problems.

Fundamental shifts in our culture, the social economy and the associated communication patters have drastically changed the conditions for corporate communication and design. We will confine ourselves to several consequences of these shifts, which have been described before:

• globalisation of the markets
• melting together of sectors and product characteristics
• synthetisation of goods and services
• intermediation in distribution
• community formation
• increasing regionalisation of consumption patterns and interpretations.

Under the influence of the shifts mentioned, numerous instruments, which professional service providers in advertising, design and corporate communications use to support companies, lose the effectiveness they once had. They seem to have become blunt, and they lack the desired effect. Any impact they do have is short lived. No matter how perfect and refined their development is within the various metiers, the conventional methods and techniques no longer lead to the envisioned result. It is sensible to critically analyse our approaches and working methods before clients start to wonder whether they are getting value for money. Because there is reason enough for scepticism, particularly about the way in which major brands are presented and maintained.

Besides the economic changes mentioned above, there are also cultural changes that have a far-reaching effect on the way in which information is received, rated and processed. Objectivity as a measure of the level of truth has disappeared; each customer is his own king, inspector, executioner and victim all at once. Quality and honesty have become completely subjectified to empty claims, which are only supported by the perception of individual observers. Whereas people used to preach about the transparency of the market, now the individual perception of clients and associates dominates. We designate the sum of their judgements – for want of anything better – as the corporate image. The plinth has crumbled, the self-image is wobbling. Adapted from Descartes, today’s adage reads: I am perceived, therefore I am. But am I still when my communicative expressions are not registered, or are not convincing enough? You guessed it: there is no existence there.

With this thesis, the emphasis shifts from corporate identity to the observer’s perception. It is not the brand, the design or the message that determines the effectiveness of the communication. It is the most individual possible emotion of the receiver – clients and associates, the company’s own staff and investors – that determines the authenticity of the message. Attitude, involvement and recognition are the new key concepts for the appreciation and acceptance of companies and public organisations. And for those who are not recognised: keine Existenz. The identity scenario in the diagram shows this.

In order to understand the far-reaching implications of this paradigm shift, we have to make a clear distinction between methods and their effect, and between the instruments used and the intended effect. With our traditional knowledge and perfected tools we are generally strongly oriented towards methods and techniques. This is where our strength lies, and where we can read the impact of our statements, campaigns and products. It is in this limited approach that ideas are confused. For the sake of convenience we confuse presence with attention, we register reach as impact, we talk about response when we mean unrest and we bring up acceptance when there is no resistance. As a sector and a professional group we maintain a decorum of corporate communication, there is not much more than monologues.

Nevertheless, it won’t be long until companies consider the return on their investments of millions. And particularly the durability of their expenditure on corporate campaigns and brand expressions. It can’t be any other way, or the focus of leading clients will shift considerably following naturally from such a reorientation. Two important tendencies are inevitable: the traditional self-profiling (the brand scenario) is making room for identification (the identity scenario). The spreading of information is making room for involvement. A company no longer distinguishes itself by providing information on products and services provided. After all, sending expressions does not automatically lead to any impressions for the receiver. Knowledge and information are commodities, which are taken for granted. They add little to the experience of the relationship between the supplier and the client and between the brand owner and the person who experiences the brand.

Each purchase decision is the result of identification. Real communication requires far more than just a medium or a channel. Communication that makes a lasting impression requires a relationship between the messages and the receiver. What is needed is a form of solidarity, and even a certain level of identification. He who wants to be noticed, must be perceptible. He who wants to be heard, must first be able to convince. It seems to be a paradox: a significant level of trust is needed before one can even start to develop a relationship between a supplier and a consumer or between a sender and an observer. The messenger must arrive before he leaves, and his message must be understood before it is explained. This Umwertung of professional axioms can only be understood when we gain insight into important changes in culture, economy and the collective awareness.

It is not the sender who plays the central role in the new approach, but the values that are shared with consumers and associates.

Examples of such values are:

• attention for the durability of products and processes
• identification with experiences of customers and their culture of values
• respect for the individual character of individuals and minorities
• an eye for the human standard in both the process and distribution.

In a thematic positioning aimed at experience, it is not only the accents in the communication that shift. It is about fundamentally different parameters. The translation of values can be described with the following concepts:

• from information to emotion
• from images to experience
• from attractive to affective
• from impressing to identifying
• from moments of momentum to relationship development
• from profiling to commitment
• from a service-oriented relationship to an interactive relationship
• from completeness to credibility
• from convincing to transparent.

This completely different approach to communication between companies and their customers and/or associates has far-reaching consequences. It requires the sender – the organisation that wants to communicate – to have a different mental approach. Namely, to listen on all levels, to place itself in the position of its associates, to pick up signals and to translate them into an adapted attitude and product at any given time. It is an empathic approach, which is at odds with the paternalistic, pedantic posture we are accustomed to from large organisations. There is much more to an association with consumers and stakeholders that fits in with our times than just adapting the communication strategy; it also requires a completely different internal approach to people and processes. It is all about a change in attitude, which must also be echoed in the area of human resources, customer approach, product development and knowledge management. The whole company gets other senses as it were and has to acquire new reflexes. Without this change in culture, (marketing) communication according to the identity scenario is a cosmetic adjustment that will only increase the implausibility.

Example

To illustrate the far-reaching meaning of this paradigm shift, we make a comparison between contemporary urban development and architecture. Until recently, the planners, project developers and housing associations determined together which types of homes were suitable to live in and how cities and districts were to be laid out. In many countries, in any case in the Netherlands, this monolithic approach to the market led to a mismatch between consumer demand and the supply of new houses. As a result of a supply that was unilaterally aimed at middle-incomes, at average family size, average demand for green space and shopping facilities, ghost towns were built in the past where nobody really felt at home. The ideal type of house – marginally styled within the legal framework that prescribes the minimum requirements with regard to safety, incidence of light and insulation – was imposed on the market, positioned from the top.
Fortunately, there are recent examples in urban expansion areas that show that there is a very different way of doing things: a modular layout of houses and districts, a flexible mixture of functions, plots for individual building designs (the ‘wild living’ of architect Weeber) and housing units for other forms of cohabitation than just the average family.

It is an example that makes the absolute concepts of the past irrelevant and inspires the specialists of Total Identity. Together with the client, they recover the room for attention, relevance, appreciation and commitment that leads to a renewed way of communicating.

Summary

Communication between senders and receivers is becoming the essence, instead of just being an instrument. It is becoming an essential condition for product innovation and growth of the organisation. The market is no longer the outlet at the end of the pipeline, but is instead a laboratory for new developments. The absolute concepts of and surrounding the brand – such as awareness, market penetration and customer loyalty – are becoming irrelevant. They are making room for the identity scenario and for concepts such as attention, relevance, appreciation and commitment. Only companies that can position themselves in the awareness of buyers can achieve a durable position. This is expressed in terms of respect and identification. Product recognition and profit margin follow naturally. This more profound relationship between the sender and the receiver is characterised by equality and acceptance. There is constant dialogue and the expressions are authentic and recognisable from a shared pattern of values. Clearly the introduction of new products and services in such a climate will be easier than in the traditional approach, whereby the superiority of the product is in effect ‘hammered into’ the consumers with massive campaigns and pedantic methods.

About the authors

Hans P Brandt (1959) studied Visual Communication at the Berlin Hochschule der Künste. Even before completing his course, he was appointed a teacher there. In 1984, he started working at the Institut für visuelle Kommunikation und Design (Berlin). Following a visiting lectureship at the Kunstgewerbe Schule Zürich, in 1988 he came to Total Design (now called Total Identity), where he is managing director/shareholder. Under his leadership Total Design has changed course from an agency that was mainly involved in design, to an agency that works on corporate brands. Strategic investigations in the area of identity, image and positioning and the visual-communicative implications of this are at the foundation of Total Identity’s activities.

Jurjen Bügel (1958) is a financial journalist and has been published in various economic trade journals. He specialises in the area of accounting, regulation of the financial markets, financial reporting and corporate communications. In co-operation with Total Identity, Jurjen Bügel has advised listed companies in drawing up attractive annual reports and articulating consistent investor relations. Previously, Bügel worked for Het Financieel Dagblad (financial newspaper) and Elsevier (magazine). He studied political science, international law and journalism.