Unspun

It is telling that Unspun‘s posting on the new branding in Bali elicited very interesting comments (for other comments see here, here and here). Unspun thinks this is because the whole business of branding and corporate identity is populated hugely by scam artists.

They do what could be done for a moderate fee and a short period of time for huge fees and month. They take the unsuspecting client through The Process of dicovery of who they are, what their brand should promise, brand attributes, associations blah, blah blah. The results could be mind boggling.

Unspun was called in recently to speak to an ingenuous would-be client originating from a neighboring country. Their company had done well franchising some fast food and they had received a news round of fundin. One of the conditions of this funding is that they needed to expand regionally.

So they thought it would be a good opportunity to rebrand themselves to achieve a higher profile. They engaged an Indonesian marketing consultancy whose owner is an icon in the Indonesian marketing scene. After months of vigorous research, discussion grous and what not they came up with the new branding strategy for this company. Then they said they don’t do the PR to roll out the strategy so they shudl talk to some PR hacks to do the stuff. Enter Unspun.

The marketing consultancy sent a Mr Bean lookalike to explain to Unspun the marketing strategy. As Mr Ban went along Unspun became more and more incensed. Here, right before us, was so much horsehit and pabulum that Unspun had not seen since he last visited a stable in Chinon, or sat down for brainstorming with advertising types.

The climax came when they unveiled bfore Unspun‘s glazed eyes the vision and values statement they came up with for the company. The vision: “To be an icon in our industry, from what we do.” The values? “Love, Peace, Tolerance.” (Unspun swears he is not making this up).

But the pièce de résistance of the presentation was yet to come. Below each “Value” was attached three photos: John Lennon under Love. mahatma Ghandi (who was a vegetarian and therefore would have frowned on their meat-based fast food) under Peace, and Martin Luther King under Tolerance.

Unspun was not sure whether to laugh or cry. Laugh at the ingenuousness of the client on branding and marketing or to cry for them for being taken on a long and expensive ride. Unspun is sure there are other horror branding stories out there that people might want to share. It’s about time that these branding charlattans are exposed.