Digital and Brand

Why? When we say that digital lives at the heart of how we work with brands, we start to confuse people. Are we just a digital agency? Are we a brand consultancy that plays at digital? What kind of crazy hybrid are we?

At Good, we live, love and breathe brand. Over the past ten years though we have had to have the same digital chops as any specialised digital agency. Partly because we have to be able to report back on how the brand campaigns work and the vast majority of that work is in the digital space.

Secondly, our brand work has to help modernise brands to talk to digital-first customers. That goes beyond how the logo looks on Twitter. It covers a digital approach that comes from within an organisation and starts at looking at how digitally mature a business is and ends at the reporting framework.

This is seen usually seen in the domain of big management consultancies, and at times we’ve had push-back given that we’re a brand consultancy. But for digital to work with brand at its most effective, digital has to be taken seriously within the business, doing digital isn’t the same as being digital. In the last ten years, we’ve been able to combine big thinking and smart execution to help businesses make the most of their digital channels.

This is sometimes called “digital transformation”. I’m not a big fan of this phrase for two reasons. The first is that “digital transformation” is a phrase so overused and abused that it has lost its meaning. It can mean anything.

Secondly, we find that any big “transformations” tend not to stick within a business. When a fantastic new ordering tool is introduced into a business, it has to compete with a legacy system that may be inefficient but is totally understood. That solution needs to be introduced in a deliberate and thoughtful manner or that paper and pen system of old will trump a million-dollar investment every time.

We like to start with understanding the digital maturity of an organisation. Maturity suggests changes over time as opposed to a transformation. Understanding this is one step in the journey, usually the first one. In our experience, helping modernise brands to communicate with digital-first customers takes time. Too often we’ve seen digital strategies get stuck in a drawer rather been implemented, and expensive digital tools abandoned rather than taken on company-wide. Time and stakeholder management is key to making these investments pay off.

This is why, over the course of the past ten years, we’ve developed nine key services that our clients have used to get the most from their digital investments.

• Digital Maturity
• Business Goals
• Digital Strategy
• Customer Journey
• Stakeholder Management
• Content Strategy
• Activation
• Measurement and Analysis
• Reporting

We’re creating articles for each of these, and we’re adding them in over time. Have a look and if you'd like to be notified of when the next article goes live, sign up to our email newsletter.

Again, the question around how brand fits in here. It always depends on the client’s particular need. Armed with business goals and strong brand values, your digital output will provide a stronger tactical and strategic competitive advantage. At times, we’ve seen one but not the other. That approach can work but combined, you have something remarkably strong.

Take a look at the articles above and let me know if you’d like a chat about your own digital activity and how we can help improve it.