by Herman Manson (@marklives) Brand Union’s South African agency is reframing its positioning, moving from a brand design agency to what its MD, Mathew Weiss, refers to as a consumer experience design agency.
The WPP-owned Brand Union has a long history in South Africa, explains Weiss, but isn’t as well-known as it should be because of various name changes over the years having diluted its reputation. Throughout its various guises, the agency has been known for its ambition to be a premium agency doing the very best strategy and design work — an aspiration Weiss says he seeks to recapture.
Context
Brand Union was launched in 1979 by Joe Kieser as Pentagraph, and was responsible for the creation of brands such as Absa and OutSurance. It became KSDP, then BrownKSDP, then Enterprise IG and, in 2006, Brand Union. In 2016, the client context has changed, says Weiss, and his agency needs to change alongside it.
Many industries, eg hospitality, have been transformed by technology. Where once you would book your accommodation based upon the ads you saw, today you book accommodation based upon consumer reviews and ratings found, often via your mobile phone. The consumer experience is now a defining factor in success in this sector — designing that experience is where Brand Union wants to be positioned.
“We are still providing brand-strategy advisory services and we are still advising clients on their visual identity but we are also being asked about how clients should design and think about the experience they deliver to customers,” says Weiss. “This could be about looking at the customer journey across the brand or specifically looking at the customer experience in a branch.”
Core focus for 2017
He admits that the agency came late to acknowledging the ways in which technology transforms the customer experience but says it will be a core focus for 2017.
“Ultimately, we aim to be an agency that can help clients design outstanding brand-led customer experiences that are brilliantly designed and beautifully connected so that they win in this experience economy,” he says. “We have evolved our talent profile to reflect this. Strategists with a customer-experience consulting background, retail strategists, creatives who are comfortable working in physical and digital environments, more people with a communications background.”
The agency takes a strategic, integrated approach, partnering with other agencies on execution while remaining the single point of contact on client projects.
Brand and customer vision
Weiss wants to bring the brand vision and customer vision within companies closer together: “I think this is a big opportunity within many companies – to have marketing more geared towards the operational aspects of retaining and looking after customers and vice versa — this is something we want to help with.”
He says the South African agency will be introducing Brand Union’s global measurement tool for measuring brand experiences locally. He also argues for the establishment of customer-experience departments or appointing customer-service champions within organisations. Client acquisition and client retention should be more closely linked; currently, they often sit in different departments.
The agency works with a number of well-known brands, including SABMiller, Standard Bank, Pernod Ricard and Metropolitan. It employs 40 people in its offices in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Weiss says he is focused upon building its creative culture and acquiring talent who fit the agency’s new strategy and approach.
Not a repositioning
Brand Union isn’t repositioning, Weiss reiterates, but is undergoing a process in which it redefines what it does, and how it does it, in a bid to become relevant to changed client needs.
Herman Manson (@marklives) is the founder and editor of MarkLives.com. He was the founding editor of media.toolbox (1998–2006) and Mobile.Works, and the co-founder of Brand magazine. He has served on the editorial boards of The Journal for Convergence, as well as of Fast Company South Africa. Winner of the 2011 Vodacom Social Media Journalist of the Year award, he was also a finalist twice in the Highway Africa Award for the Innovative Use of New Media in Africa (2003 and 2004). Over his 20-year-plus career, Herman has contributed to numerous journals and websites in South Africa and abroad, including the Mail & Guardian, .net, Intelligence, AdVantage, Men’s Health, Computer World and African Communications. He has consulted on web architecture to several financial institutions.
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