The Veneer Corner
A comfortable place, that's also the most dangerous place to be.
Meet the 85% is just over 6 months old.
What a journey it’s been so far - read more here.)
One of the learnings we’ve taken in those 6 months is a profound one, and one we wanted to share.
It’s the reason Meet the 85% - and other similar offerings - exist, because there is a need in the market.
The Veneer Corner
The Veneer Corner: The aspirational view of their audiences that brands have painted themselves into. It’s a misleadingly safe place because confronting the true reality of their customers lives is too uncomfortable to face up to.
It’s an epidemic that spans the marketing industry reminiscent of The Emperor’s New Clothes. And only a few trailblazers are willing to be the little boy at the end who exposes the truth.
The Client Angle
Across the industry it has become commonplace to seek safety and comfort in data. Data and ‘insight’ that is quantifiable, robust and accepted. In wider culture and in the communications and brand worlds this behaviour is all-pervasive.
And there is nothing wrong with that. Who doesn’t want safety and comfort in their lives?
But in order to deliver that safety and comfort, we can sometimes strip out interesting and unique elements. We can find something incredibly interesting that causes discussion, debate and reappraisal and in trying to quantify it, reduce it to something average, beige and uninspiring.
And also, because lots of brands start their thinking ‘brand out’, they miss a whole bunch of factors that swirl around the lives of their audiences. Factors that their audiences actually think are more important than the brand in question, a lot of the time. But for the brands, they deem these other factors and areas not to be important to their objectives. (An example might be the fact that 2.4 million people are coming to the end of fixed rate mortgages in the next 18 months - and that will have huge impacts across pretty much every brand and category.)
Which means the picture brands build up of their audiences lives are incomplete. They’re intentionally curated around their brand and category. Which, as difficult as it is to face up to, is not how people live their lives.
People’s lives are multi-faceted, messy and contradictory. They’re not clean, linear, mutually-exclusive ‘personas’ on a page, as appealing as that may be to a marketer.
In our experience, lots of clients know this. They know the picture they have built up of their audiences are at best incomplete, and at worst intentionally painted in a positive light because that’s the way the business wants to see it.
And for self-preservation, the vast majority of clients may be wary of rocking the boat internally to expose the veneer that has been applied to their audiences. It’s an understandable position to take.
Yet the ones who are willing to challenge this are the ones taking the higher strategic ground. They’re the ones acknowledging more needs to be done to understand the true reality of their audiences and the role (if any) their brand plays in their lives.
These are the clients that are tending to approach us - clients who know the veneer needs to wiped away and the (potentially coarser) reality unearthed and represented accurately.
In that regard our business is a self-selective offering. Most clients don’t feel the need, or are uncomfortable acknowledging the need. We see no point in trying to push on a closed door.
The first step in solving a problem is admitting there is a problem to be solved.
There are a minority of brands and individuals within them who recognise they have a problem. They’re the ones moving forward to deliver the progress their brands and businesses really need.
The Agency Angle
Similar can be said of their partner agencies too.
There are many agencies happy to maintain the veneer because it suits them. They don’t want to rock the boat. They don’t want to challenge their clients too much.
With an overabundance of creative agencies fighting over the same clients, it’s the minority that are truly brave and willing to really share reality with their clients.
And internally, behaviour trickles down.
If the agency mandate is to be ‘client pleasers’ (no agency ever says that, but it’s how a lot of agencies operate), then that affects how Planners work with their clients. They’re more inclined to tell the clients what they want to hear, and not play the truly objective strategic consigliere role they should be playing.
The best agencies are the ones who are willing to share uncomfortable and inconvenient truths with their clients, that in turn helps to power extremely effective work because it resonates with the reality their audiences are living.
We see it as no coincidence that the work we partnered with Saatchi & Saatchi on has contributed to a rich and rewarding year or so of results for them and us. The work wasn’t veneered in any way, and indeed had its reality questioned by the industry itself.
Rosie Hanley - the Head of Brand and Marketing at JLP stated the “What the fuck is going on?” research was her “bedtime reading” during the pitch process, that Saatchi & Saatchi ultimately won.
What needs to happen
We believe there needs to be a Jerry Maguire moment across the offices of many brands and agencies.
A moment where someone, or some people, acknowledge the veneer corner they are in, and develop an appetite to get out of it. For their good of their business, their clients and ultimately their own careers.
Here are three suggestions on how to do that.
1 - Embrace a ‘reality first, brand second’ approach to research
When we have conversations with participants, we never tell them what we’re there to talk about (unless there is a specific need). And when we visit them, we never start a conversation close to the category we’re there to discuss. We chat about them, their lives, their behaviours, their beliefs, their week so far. It matters not to us whether we’re there to talk about baked beans, home energy or fashion. We start with their reality, not our brand objectives. Yes we end up in the category and brand eventually, but when the conversation meanders in that direction naturally.
This way you build up a good understanding about how much of a role (if any) the category or brand plays in their lives relative to all the other stuff in their lives they really care about. Some marketers would call this a ‘waste’ of time with participants, but the best ones see this as essential context.
2 - Use research for the interesting as well as the irrefutable
Research is typically used to prove something is irrefutable. Occasionally it’s used to unearth something interesting.
We’ve become infatuated by data certainty. Insecure about making decisions unless the data or ‘insight’ backs it up. Which means brands are spending huge portions of their budgets on trying to find irrefutable evidence to back up their decision making. Again, that’s understandable.
But we believe a significant part of a brand’s research budget should also be put aside for creating interesting new areas of investigation. It may only be one or two of your audience saying something interesting, but that one thing they’re saying could power your entire communications platform, your entire brand purpose or your annual strategy.
Research can be used to identify interesting questions, and irrefutable answers.
And, if you blend the interesting with the irrefutable, different methodologies that become more than the sum of their parts, you have a potent mix to power progress.
3 - Think like journalists and documentary makers
We talk about ‘being more Theroux and less Paxman’ when it comes to our conversations. And whilst we apply a minor colour-grading to our photography, everything else is as raw and natural as the reality we encounter when we meet people.
We don’t really have a consistent visual ‘style’ - because reality is inconsistent, and the situations, homes and conversations we we encounter are all personal and unique.
And that’s the reality and thats what we are obligated to share.
(That’s also the reality we train people to capture via our ‘From Slides to Sofas’ training. Drop us a line if you’d like to know more about how it can benefit your agency or brand team.)
So, are you the Jerry Maguire in your business forging a better path forward?
“The things we think, and do not say” was the title of his mission statement. If you wrote that document about the brands you work on, what would be inside it?..
