Brand distinctiveness: a conversation between Richard Chapman & Stephen Cribbett

Stephen Cribbett and I first worked together at Conran Design Group in the early 2000s. He went on to build a consumer insight business working with Google, BBC, Netflix and P&G. I run a branding and web design studio in West London.

Recently we reconnected to talk about something we’d both noticed: in an era obsessed with AI which has a tendency to blandify, true brand distinctiveness has become ever harder to achieve. Yet standing out is more valuable than ever.

Creative freedom vs consistency

Richard: What’s changed about how brands think about distinctiveness since the early 2000s?

Stephen: If I look back at that particular era, I think since then there’s been a little bit more of an obsession with consistency at the expense of brands having a very distinct character. One of the brands I remember working on at Conran was Orange Telecom, which was a fantastic brand because as well as having some very clear guidance in terms of how the brand could be used, there was also a huge amount of creative freedom and licence to express that business in its quirky, very different character upon many, many different media.

That’s what the creatives and designers really enjoyed. I think now, moving away from that sort of creativity and openness, there seems to be a little bit more of an obsession towards asset management and just building up inventories of assets. I have some friends who’ve worked at Apple in more recent years and actually found it incredibly frustrating because there was very little room to go with that Apple brand. Of course it’s very consistently applied, but apart from some of the earlier advertising concepts, the ability to go a little bit outside of the confines is a bit restricted.

Richard: I really love the idea of the comparison between Orange and Apple because Orange was the most brilliant logo and brand. I am the ultimate sucker for a great piece of design… when I first got a mobile phone I remember being so clear it needed to be from Orange. I was so obsessed with the disruptive, minimal branding. Beyond just the logo, I remember everything you got from them like leaflets or things in the post, was always so considered. Of course that brand disappeared into O2, which I still think is a shame because an ‘O2 person’ isn’t an ‘Orange person’.

From a distinctiveness perspective, the same is true of Apple – so ubiquitous then and ubiquitous now. Yet somehow Apple have spent their time and money coming up with so many wonderful applications that continue to feel really fresh down to the invitations to their media events.

Stephen: What’s interesting about those two examples is that Orange was just a mobile phone network, which is really a commodity. So the brand had to work much harder to differentiate it. Everyone provided the same coverage, the price points were very much the same. Whereas Apple is a very different beast because the product is the brand, more so than what Orange could do. They didn’t really have a product, it was a network.

Maybe they’re two very different examples there, but a good demonstration of the different approach to creating a brand, which in this current era is as much focused on the products as well as the actual brand and the emotion that you feel around engaging with its products and services.

The emotional trigger

Richard: Mary Portas always talks about brand tribes and says that brands that have a tribe and have something special about them thrive. Staying on the Apple theme for simplicity, while the ubiquity of iPhones have made this harder to measure, if you’re an earpods and Macbook person, you’re a fully signed up member. Can you be a part of a telephone network tribe in 2025? I don’t think so.

Stephen: A brand really needs to promote or trigger an emotion. The Orange brand gave you that sense of confidence that they would deliver the service and provide the support you needed at the right price. Obviously the Apple brand is something of wonderment – it makes you feel very special being part of that tribe.

That emotional trigger hasn’t changed. If anything, it’s still consistent. A brand and subsequently the creative expression of it needs to make you think and feel a certain way. If you don’t trigger that emotional response, then your brand is probably failing and you’re going to have to work a little bit harder.

The founder’s dilemma

Richard: Beyond the logo question – I work with a lot of founders and managing partners who come to us saying “we need a rebrand,” but often what they really mean is “we need to look more credible.” What’s the gap between what clients think distinctiveness is and what it actually needs to be?

Stephen: There are different types of clients. There are founders of the business who have been involved from day one and it’s their baby and they’re very emotionally connected to the business. And then you have larger or more established organisations where there’s a marketing team and a marketing director leading the rebrand.

When it’s your business and you’re speaking to a creative agency about it, whilst they might come at it from a very grounded and strategic viewpoint, often it just comes down to what that person likes and what they don’t like from a stylistic point of view, rather than strategically what is right and what the identity and communication is conveying to the client.

Richard: That really reminds me of a rebrand job we worked on last year. We met the founder of the company – he’d been the founder for 30 years – and he’d hired a brilliant young marketing manager who was our first point of contact. It was a tricky process because the founder was saying goodbye to the identity he’d had for all that time. Meanwhile the marketing manager was pleased with the innovation and the fresh look that had been briefed in which was a significant evolution.

However when he saw the result of what we’d done, he was spooked for a while til it sort of dawned on him that he was asking us to go back to the beginning and give him the logo he’d had in the first place, and that wasn’t what anyone actually wanted at all.

Then what he did very cleverly was to say to his marketing manager, “I like this direction, you run the project and bring me the logo at near final stage and I’ll sign it off.” He took himself outside of the process which instantly freed up his new marketing manager to come up with a wonderful answer. Yes, some time was lost while this was all going on, but sometimes it is a psychological process to say goodbye to something that you founded.

The breakthrough moment

Richard: I was thinking about briefs we’ve had where a hard left turn was required by the brief, where the distinctiveness we were talking about was against everything that went before. One that really comes to mind is a client of ours who was carved out of another business – an incubator within a much larger computer games business that ended up being a highly specialist technology company.

As part of the agreement with the parent company, the new one had to be not only named differently, but the design had to be a total contrast. That was great for us because we thought, “Yes, let’s go, let’s do something really great and very fresh” And indeed, that’s what they briefed in, because they had no choice.

The only problem was that the total departure led to total discomfort. It didn’t matter how many words we’d written on boards or how many values we’d set out or how they knew what they’d asked for. When they saw it – and it was really like we brought them in at a very early stage of initial ideas – nothing looked like anything they’d seen before. It completely freaked them out.

However, what was great is that when they finally went, “Okay, we’ve got to be different. This feeling we have isn’t our design team’s problem. We’ve just got to get our heads into the game here; let’s just go with our values and not just who we are, who we want to be next.” – when they’d had that conversation, the whole project never really looked back.

That moment, this pivotal moment of realisation changed everything. Sometimes the design that you do helps people get there because they see their new brand and say, “wow, I didn’t know we were going to this place; I knew we’d briefed you to do it, but we just didn’t know how it would feel to end up in this space.”

Making it measurable

Stephen: Impact is measurable and quantifiable. Do you put forward the notion of measuring impact? Does that measurable impact ever come into the briefs that you get from your clients where they want to see a quantifiable impact and output to the work that you do for them – whether that’s growth in a category, market share, number of leads they get?

Richard: I try, though I often don’t get that. But I’m often asked by people, “Well, this is terribly expensive. Why are we doing this?” So there are two ways ahead. First of all, I can justify the cost by saying, “This is gonna make you look better. It’s going to sell significantly more units of the things that you’re selling.”
Many years ago, we did a website and branding for a plumbing company and the founder said to me, “Well, this is a lot of money.” And I said, “All it’s got to sell is six boilers, right?” The second that he assigned a mental value to what he was doing every day, to what we were doing, he really got it and went, “Right, I see. That’s terrific.”

Another really good example: we’re doing a piece of direct mail – a print piece that goes to the members of a high-end fitness and lifestyle club in central London. From the very beginning I’ve said this thing needs to wash its face and you need to be able to measure its success. It’s taken a little bit of time, but they finally got into this whole thing of adding QR codes next to the features about certain products. They now want to really physically measure and say, “Is this thing actually working?”

Stephen: Design effectiveness has moved on a lot since the 2000s, which is good. Back then, design was in danger of feeling a little bit like the domain of the rock star, where they didn’t have to prove their point. But since then you’ve got the Design Business Association who have design impact awards, and it’s very much about accountability for design in the business domain and the difference it makes and the quantifiable impact it has on businesses. I think it’s a good way for designers to behave and think. It is absolutely the way to sell design because when it’s done well, it will always have a commercial impact in one way or another.

Richard: I completely agree with that. The only problem is that a lot of design is to do with a feeling. We’ve done a rebrand and a client has said – I’ve got a great testimonial I once got which essentially said – you can measure the difference in assets under management from one moment to the next after that rebrand and new website. You can see where it was and where it went because our turnover suddenly changed at that point.

It was an amazing way of doing it because it was measurable change, which is rare. Sometimes you have to take what you’ve done to clients and say, “How did you feel about this? Did it change the way you feel?” Maybe they say yes, maybe they don’t. But at the end of the day, the bottom line doesn’t lie. I think that was a great example of a moment where we were able to say, “Wow, this logo and web design project actually really worked.” That was incredibly satisfying.

Conclusion

We’ve both spent years making the case to our clients, setting out why our ideas work and place a company in concurrently innovative and ‘home territory’ for them. But we’re ultimately accountable to the market. Our ideas are proven by whether the design drives action and delivers results.

Attention is fleeting. Distinctiveness is what turns a passing impression into a mental anchor. The brain remembers what is emotionally charged, consistently signposted and unmistakably yours. Without those ingredients, ideas dissolve into a blur.

For a business to stand apart, there’s a requirement for emotional clarity as well as a willingness to commit. Sometimes, as we’ve seen, that commitment means letting go of what came before, or embracing discomfort about where you’re headed. Ultimately success is unachievable without the vision (or bravery) to leap into the unknown.

Distinctive ideas make the world simpler. They help people know, quickly and unconsciously, who you are and what you stand for. They feel meaningful because they trigger emotion. They feel useful because they invite your customers to choose you.

About Stephen Cribbett

Stephen Cribbett is a former business founder turned marketing and business strategist. He’s a  thinker, and doer, a change-maker. A gatherer of people. Joiner of dots. A grower. A keeper.

He’s available as an advisor / coach / strategist / marketer / partner, working with business founders and leaders.

Visit his website here