Scott Watts: Mission, Vision, Values Is The Brand Mantra for Today’s Marketers
The COO of Tank Design spotlights the three pillars at the core of great brands and how they help address the common tension between brand positioning and demand efficiency.
“Marketers must ask themselves with every effort, ‘Does this represent who we’re saying we are?’”
For Tank Design, an independent firm that specializes in brand and experience design for blue-chip clients like FedEx, Aetna, Facebook, and Citizens Bank, the recommendation is that clients embrace awareness as well as performance marketing in articulating a brand across every touch point. While it’s essential these days to convey a brand’s mission and values, there’s also pressure to show results in challenging sales times. As COO Scott Watts explained in a recent conversation with The Continuum, that can be a friction point. He shares how Tank has advised clients and how the agency found its own True North by pairing brand and demand.
What do you think is most important for brands today?
This is certainly an unprecedented time in history. The convergence of the pandemic, the divisiveness of the country on a number of issues, and the social changes that have happened due to the Black Lives Matter movement, and even back to Me Too, have led to a true inflection point for brands. Consumers want to understand not just the product or service but what the brand stands for, what’s their purpose, what’s the value they deliver, what’s their role in culture, and how they treat their employees. How the brand is articulated in every way is critically important today. And that goes from the overarching branding we see in product marketing and advertising down to every actual interaction a brand has with consumers and society.
In terms of brand and demand, or as you say, the overarching brand positioning right down to individual brand interactions, what is the Tank POV?
There’s always this tension between overall brand positioning and demand tactics—the long-term approach vs. short-term gains. If, as a brand, you look only at the big picture or long-term strategies, then you might not be doing what is right for your brand in the short term and missing the sales you need in order to meet immediate revenue goals. On the other hand, if you become too focused on short-term goals and objectives, and the tactics necessary to achieve them, your efforts may—while successful in achieving immediate goals—contradict and/or deviate from your long-term brand strategy.
So, how do you balance both sides of the coin? Do you focus on winning the weekly/monthly/quarterly metrics battle? Or do you look at the long-term brand war, knowing that you might have to lose some battles to win the war? But we have found that clients are often very much one side of the fence or the other.
“One of the biggest barriers is the pressure that is put on CMOs to show that their marketing is working. they need immediate results and don’t feel they have the luxury of time to really allow their brand positioning to drive the value.”
Why do you think clients are resistant?
It’s interesting because, about five years ago, we began offering performance marketing services at the demand, so to speak, of our clients. We understood the value of both brand and demand and assumed our clients would too. In actuality, we found that many of our clients were heavily focused on immediate returns and willing to compromise on their stated brand mandates in order to hit targets.
As a 25-plus-year-old brand strategy and design firm, this conflict proved very difficult for us to navigate in many cases. We eventually decided that partnering with specialty firms focused on performance marketing was a better approach for us, but we still counsel our clients that you can be driven by big brand positioning while employing very strategic analytics and tactics. Finding smart ways to balance the two is really the Holy Grail.
Sample of Tank’s brand design work to support the launch of Re:wild, a global environmental organization’s movement to protect what’s still wild and restore the rest.”
How have you seen this play out?
One of the biggest barriers is the pressure that is put on marketers—and particularly CMOs--to show that their marketing is working. CMOs must answer to their board members and, in some cases, private equity investors. Often, they need immediate results and don’t feel they have the luxury of time to really allow their brand positioning to drive the value.
What do you suggest to your clients to balance this?
I think it is very much a situation of doing what is right and needed for the customer, while staying true to one’s brand ideals. Or as we say, their mission, vision, values, which is pretty much our mantra. Everything you do as a brand must ladder up to these brand pillars. Otherwise, you run the risk of doing something that is brand-damaging, even while achieving short-term successes.
“How the brand is articulated in every way is critically important today.”
Are there some companies that you think are doing things right?
Absolutely. Look at a company like the online gallery, Saatchi Art. They have a very personalized service and beautiful art at a range of price points and the opportunity to work with curators. Incidentally, they send customers emails for a percentage off. But they do it in a very specific, refined way that allows them to stay true to their brand while enticing customers.
Ultimately, it all boils down to this: Marketers must ask themselves with every effort, “Does this represent who we’re saying we are and stay consistent with all of our messaging?” They must look at their digital properties and understand how these play into brand imperatives, ensuring that they’re creating a positive user experience, one that satisfies and delights customers, while adhering to FCC rules and regulations and aligning to their business objectives, mission, vision, and values.
November 2, 2021
