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Long-term brand and nation building

In an increasingly globalised and homogenised environment, how does the nation sell itself on the world stage? John Fanning, who lectures on branding and marketing communications at UCD’s Smurfit and Quinn Business Schools, explains all to dentsu chief strategy Dave Winterlich

There is an opportunity for Irish companies to again exploit their Irishness.
There is an opportunity for Irish companies to again exploit their Irishness.
Fri Sept 22 2023 - 00:00

In the ad industry confidence is key. You have to have faith in your idea, be bold in your execution, and determined in your bid for more budget.

It’s why confidence and the role it plays in everything from economic development to brand building is a theme exercising John Fanning.

One of the most respected figures in Irish advertising, Fanning is former managing director and chairman of McConnell’s Advertising, author of The Importance of Being Branded: an Irish Perspective and a lecturer in both UCD’s Smurfit and Quinn Business Schools.

He believes Ireland’s marketing communications industry is doing “remarkably well”, but faces several challenges.

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Most enduring is proximity to its nearest neighbour.

“Our geographic position means we are in a continuous battle with a much more powerful competitive marketing communications sector and, to be fair, the British industry is probably the most professional and creative in the world,” he told listeners to Inside Marketing, the industry podcast.

That can undermine confidence. However, the fact that so many Irish clients who have the option of choosing a UK agency but don’t is, in fact, a serious vote of confidence and bears testament to the strength of the industry here, he says.

Among the universal challenges facing the industry here is the risk of being “drowned in data”. “It’s very difficult for anyone in this day and age to be able to cope with the flow of information and the amount of data that’s coming through,” he says

“It has resulted in a lot of businesses taking a much more short-term view, particularly in the development of their brands.”

While it is easier to measure a short-term promotion, if you concentrate on them, “you are weakening the brand all the time”, he warns.

Value of knowing your worth

Part of what is required to reverse the trend is for the industry to confidently spell out its worth.

“We still haven’t succeeded in convincing senior management that marketing communications should be regarded as an investment and not a cost,” says Fanning.

The root of the problem is the failure of too many businesses to appreciate the long-term profitability of strong brands. Ironically, it’s a failing that can extend to the marketing department itself, he says.

A lack of confidence in their own ability to make a sufficiently powerful case at board level too often means that the case for bigger marketing communications budgets is never even made, points out Fanning.

The good news is that he sees early indicators that the current “obsession” with short-term promotions may be in decline.

This year’s Cannes Lions Festival included several presentations on the subject. Under the heading of the third age of effectiveness these suggested that the industry is finally getting to grips with how to maximise the use of digital channels.

“The first age, immediately after the new digital platforms started to appear, was one of unbounded optimism when it was assumed that the new channels would do the divil and all,” explains Fanning.

“When that didn’t transpire, in the early twenty-teens, there was widespread frustration.”

Since then, evidence from Les Binet, head of effectiveness at UK agency Adam & Eve DDB, and others suggest things are getting back on track, Fanning says.

As a result, the recommended ratio of 60 per cent of budget being devoted to long-term brand building and 40 per cent to more direct activation campaigns is increasingly being applied.

Equally positive are early indicators of a creative renaissance among agencies here.

“There are more signs of brands telling their stories rather than indulging in crude simplistic exhortations to ‘buy me now’,” says Fanning.

“Also encouraging is that the long forgotten and sadly neglected advertising art form, the jingle, is making a little comeback.”

Powering purpose

At least part of the reason for a return to more long-term brand building is that more businesses are beginning to reflect more seriously about why they are in business in the first place, he says.

“The simplistic assumption that the sole raison d’être of a business is to make money, or to maximise shareholder returns, is too narrow and uninspiring for the majority of staff,” says Fanning.

Humans are meaning-seeking creatures and require a more uplifting purpose if we are to commit ourselves to the workplace, he explains.

The growing emphasis on sustainability has also forced businesses to lift their heads from an exclusive concentration on the bottom line.

“Some are borrowing from the Japanese philosophy of ikigai — the reason to exist. The marketing function should be the most qualified to define a business’s ikigai and communicate it to a business’s customers and potential customers,” he says.

Success will take confidence however, a theme Fanning returns to in his latest book, The Mandarin, The Musician and the Mage.

In it, he looks at the ways in which creative and innovative individuals helped bring about a revival in Ireland’s fortunes in the 1950s and 1960s namechecking TK Whitaker, considered the most influential senior civil servant in the history of the State, composer Seán O’Riada and poet Thomas Kinsella.

It also celebrates the pioneering work that semistate bodies launched at the time, including the IDA, CCT — now Enterprise Ireland — Shannon Development and Bord Fáilte.

Growing confidence

The changes that took place during this period helped lift generations out of poverty and the cycle of emigration, injecting self-confidence into a small, new country overshadowed by a large and powerful neighbour.

“We had a huge lack of self-confidence. In fact, I go so far as to say we suffered for a long, long time from what is now called impostor syndrome, the sense that you don’t think you deserve to get where you were. It wasn’t really until the 1970s that we started getting over that,” says Fanning.

Irish businesses went from being inward-looking to globally conquering. That confidence was reflected in the IDA’s 1980s Young European campaigns, which in turn helped attract foreign direct investment.

Advertising played a role too on the day Ireland joined the then EEC, now EU. “McConnell’s were commissioned by the IDA and the Government to organise the placement of more than 30 ads, many of them full page and half pages, from 30 different Irish businesses and government agencies in the Wall Street Journal on January 2nd, 1973, to demonstrate our ambition to make Ireland the primary location for US businesses to access the European market.

“It was a huge national effort; creative, innovative and inspirational; no other country had ever done that,” explains Fanning.

There is an opportunity for Irish companies to again lean into their Irishness. In a globalised and increasingly homogenised world highlighting Irish points of difference is valuable. He points to Aer Lingus’s new tagline, “You’re very welcome”, as an example.

Ireland’s facility for storytelling ensures the industry is well poised to gain from the move back to more long-term, brand building.

That is if it can communicate one key message with greater confidence. That is, says Fanning, “that it takes a while to build a brand, that the immediate effects are not going to be as dramatic as a short-term promotion, but that in the long run, you will have a much more valuable business”.