Registrations are currently open (I’m klan if you want to follow me), so get in there while the iron is hot. There is also a free iPad/iPhone app as well, so you can browse lovely, pretty stuff on the move.

I’m particularly looking forwards to this year’s grand prix season and I can’t wait to see how the McLaren boys do out on the track. Check out the video blow from the launch event and some more pics of the stunning car.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But that’s almost always the wrong question. In Starbuck’s case, as with GAP in 2010, as with almost every major re-branding exercise that I can think of through my career, there is a strong strategic case for re-branding that links directly to the organisation’s achievement of its commercial goals. Sometimes the case is made on rational grounds (perhaps related to a change in the business proposition, brand architecture, or its application to digital media) and sometimes on emotional grounds (maybe it just looks dated). In any case, we know enough about the nature of human decision-making these days to know for sure that brand identity is an important business tool that can deliver significant commercial advantage.

The real question that should be asked of these re-brands is, “why didn’t they do it better?” It is my opinion that the reason these re-brands are generating so much discussion is that haven’t been executed with the degree of intelligence and craft that they deserve. A re-brand should always create something significantly, and obviously, better than the existing identity. It should be ambitious and bold. It should bring a smile, if not to the face, then to the mind. Re-brands that achieve this are not debated endlessly in the media and do not provoke the “why” question. They are quickly accepted, often celebrated, and the business moves ahead. But when they fail to achieve that, as is the case with Starbucks and GAP, it is an opportunity missed and the focus should be around why such significant business are prepared to invest in such mediocrity (at best) when the potential was there to create something far better instead.

The Partners 2003 (top), Paul Rand 1966 (lower)

It was cool to see a discussion about the Ford Oval in the NY Times last week. We were lucky enough to have the chance to update the Ford Oval in 2003 for the centenary of the company. The mark has become symbolic for Ford, with a lot of pride invested in it – they have a saying in Dearborn that true Ford people ‘bleed Ford blue’! It wasn’t an option to do anything as radical as Paul Rand’s job back in the sixties, especially as Ford were struggling financially at the time. We also found that there were hundreds of versions of the oval all around the world (we lost count at 400), so our task was to create one that could be used everywhere. Needless to say the debates about every slight tweak were prolonged, but we were very careful to preserve the character of the ‘original’. The new Oval revealed on top of ford HQ in June 2003 was the first new standard since 1967. That made us proud too.

But in this case, no such conversations need take place.  That’s because the drawing has been produced not by a well-remunerated corporation, but by a child. It is the work of nine-year-old Florence Jackson, from Bristol, who was one of 17,000 children who entered a BBC Blue Peter competition to design the new coin. The media, the public, most (not all) designers, when they know that it is designed by a child, will soften their eyes and celebrate, rather than criticise its flaws. And, even if they missed the press release, no one’s going to be in any doubt about its youthful provenance because the design is so obviously juvenile. Crude, puerile and naïve her art may be, but in the context of such a competition these are exactly the criteria that the competition judges would have desired. Indeed, I am confident to assume that many more accomplished submissions will have been rejected for being too good; not childlike enough. This competition was never about the quality of the design but what it is that the design represents.

This highlights a crucial aspect of human judgment that applies to design and much more widely beyond. It’s the reason why brand consultancy is not only the most important discipline in the marketing mix but a critical component of modern business strategy. It might even help us to define what “brand” means. Yep, I’m making a big deal of this one, because I think Florence has hit on something important here.

To up the ante a little from 50p, let me ask you a question about another piece of art. If the Madonna of the Pinks that hangs in The National Gallery turns out, as some suspect, not to be by Raphael but a fake, is it worth less than the £22M it cost to buy? Philosophically, the painting could be said to exist in two parallel universes. One, where it marks a brave and progressive watershed in the history of religious portraiture that inspired not just art but generations of social history. Another, where it is simply a derivative work by a talented, yet insignificant forger. Physically, the two universes of the paintings collapse into one – its tangible attributes are the same. Intellectually, they are forever apart.

Old Masters may be an extreme example but the point is this: we judge things not for what they are but for what we think they mean. To truly understand something we need to look beyond its tangible qualities and consider its intangible attributes too. We seek to explain what we see (hear, touch, taste, or smell) by giving it a back-story – a meaning beyond the physical experience it provides. The Madonna of the Pinks is not just a well-executed painting of the Madonna and child but a landmark moment in art history. Florence’s coin is more than a badly drawn picture, it represents the hope, potential, and the carefree joy that only a child would have the courage to see, yet to which all adult human beings aspire.

Don’t just take my word for it. This aspect of human intellect is a fundamental philosophical concept. In the 4^th Century BC, Aristotle defined hypokeimenon, literally meaning the “underlying thing”, as the quality that sits behind a thing’s physicality and persists through any change. In the 13^th Century John Duns Scotus described haecceity, literally “thisness”, as the quality of a thing that differentiates it from another with identical form (where its form expressed in generic terms is called quiddity, or “thatness”). Neuroscientists have explored these concepts in their analyses of how the human brain makes decisions, examining the complexity of the relationship between rational and emotional processing. Some, like Chris Frith, even suggest that rational decision-making is an illusion created by our own brain to defend us from the incomprehensible reality of our truly irrational selves. The scientific and philosophical facts are clear: things are not as simple as they seem.

And this helps us explain what a brand is. A brand is the complete set of criteria upon which the human brain decides. (Note that lower order mammals don’t use ‘brands’, just sub-conscious instincts; they don’t ‘decide’.) Brands are a complex interdependency between rational and emotional propositions where each works to shape and explain the other. They are about hypokeimenon (essence), haecceity (differentiation) and quiddity (experience) and touch not just logos and marketing but every aspect of what an organisation thinks and does. It follows then, that managing a brand requires profound and holistic consideration, with the intellect and imagination of a deeply enquiring mind. If we are to believe Chris Frith, then it’s the most important thing that any business should consider, overriding all the rational considerations that businesses typically prioritise in their plans.

Of course some philosophers (the empiricists and phenomenalists) disagree with this point of view. For them, a thing is no more than its tangible self: The Madonna of the Pinks is just paint on canvas, worth no more than, say, 50p. They would consider a conversation about brands to be an exercise in vanity and a waste of money and time. Such people should be introduced to Florence. Sometimes it takes the perspective of a nine-year-old to help you open your eyes.

Save and Prosper ©The Partners 2001

Scour across the interweb and you’ll read lots of comments on blogs about the new design for massive super-global brand Pepsi: people love it, people hate it, but what ever you think, they’ve probably spent long and hard coming up with a design solution and spent many squillions of dollars to make it memorable and distinctive.

So memorable in fact that a pdf has managed to leak out onto the web that details the enormous science and almost insane detail that has gone into developing such a mark. It’s right up there with anything that Leonardo Da Vinci had ever come up with. Check it out here. 

Real of Fake?

But there can be no such excuse for ITV’s (cough) new name and identity for their online playback facility, now called ITV iPlayer… ITV operate in the same country in the same sector, offering a very similar service and now look like BBC’s iPlayer identity we designed a while back… maybe someone pressed the big red ‘record button’?

New identity

Original (and market leader)