Not every brand becomes a successful business, but every successful business is a brand. And it is the understanding of one’s own “identity” that leads most companies to their goals.
After all, it is much easier to build a marketing strategy, having solid ground under your feet in the form of a creative and capacious name, as well as your own values and mission. However, even this explanation of the usefulness of branding can be called “water”. To understand the issue in more detail, the editors of the Web promo blog took the opportunity and talked with the creators of the Patsy creative solutions agency – strategist Evgeny Zingerman and creative Dmitry Yatsyna.
Guys, hello! When compiling questions for you, we, of course, looked at your social networks. In Evgeny’s Instagram profile, the first word is “brand”. This is very interesting because in the media you can often find a discussion on the topic that we live in the era of brands. Do you agree with this?
Evgeny Zingerman: Hello! I would say that we live in an era of meanings and ideologies, and brands are already derivative in the business world, which helps companies and people who profess the same values to find each other. I see regular confirmation of this both in the business world and, for example, in politics.
What do you think should be behind a strong brand that sells? Or selling is not the main task? Then what’s the point?
Evgeny Zingerman: If we talk about sales, then yes, the presence of a brand helps to sell more and more expensive. The constant communication of brands with customers across all channels means that businesses need to learn not only to capture the short-term attention of customers but also to keep them interested in long-term interaction. People need an argument, if only for themselves, about why they spend time on-brand content and money on brand products that are likely not the best on the market. Ideology just allows you to achieve this.
So I would call the integrity of the image, the systematic nature of actions and communications and, as a result, the overall clarity and interest for the audience as common features of a strong brand. At the heart of this is always the question: “Why does our company exist besides making money?”
What is the main mistake of brands that leave the market in the early years of their existence? And there are, by the way, 9 out of 10 of them. Why do they fail to find their consumer or why does the consumer not understand the brand?
Evgeny Zingerman: I think that in most of these 9 cases, it is not so much the marketing system that fails, but the very idea and business model. People often try to make a business out of their hobby, without the knowledge and ability to entrepreneur, ignoring mathematics, market demands, and audiences. Although, of course, it also happens that he did all the research, and calculated everything, the hypothesis still did not work. Here it is important to try to find the cause of the failure after the fact, draw conclusions, and start testing new hypotheses.
Branding is not a magic pill that is sure to make a business successful. Branding gives a business an ideological and semantic basis, helps to develop and communicate, but, unfortunately, businesses do not grow solely on ideology.
The other day you talked about launching your own creative agency. What is this project? How did it appear and how will it be useful for business? Can brands come to you to solve the problems we just listed?
Evgeny Zingerman: Patsy is a creative solutions agency. It was founded last year by Dima, my partner and creative director of the agency. I joined this spring as a partner and director of strategy. After the merger, each of us brought our key competencies to the agency. I am responsible for the brand and communication strategies and based on them, Dima comes up with creative ideas from naming to full-fledged advertising campaigns. These products won’t fix business mismanagement or a bad product, but they can help established companies grow faster and introduce more people to their products.
Also, each of us, in addition to experience in large advertising agencies, also has experience in non-advertising entrepreneurship. Dima has a network of gaming zones in Kharkiv, there was printing and a number of projects before that. I’m the co-owner of a children’s book store where I’m responsible for business development and marketing. This allows us to better understand the problems of customers and solve their problems more comprehensively. We know what it means to test hypotheses with your own money and how much it costs to fail.
Does the agency have an unspoken mission?
Evgeny Zingerman: Yes, in a simple version it sounds like “Surprise”, but for ourselves, we form it like “Wow! Not “What the fuck?” In our work, especially in creative work, we try not to cross the fine line between evoking emotions in the audience due to the elegance of the solution and provocation for the sake of provocation itself.
Who is your target audience? Only nascent companies without a brand or old market players who have lost their former recognition and need to be rebranded?
Evgeny Zingerman: We spent the time from April to November understanding the demand and testing our products. Large Ukrainian and foreign companies mainly apply for advertising campaigns. New companies or smaller existing businesses with good products and a loyal audience are more likely to apply for semantic branding, which gives them a new impetus and development vector. In such projects, we also work through the entire customer journey and give recommendations on how to improve the customer experience. For very small businesses, we offer a strategy session service, where we work out the basics of their brand and help shape products.
There’s a product for every Boy
Why did you decide to give the project a second wind in the form of a merger right now during the crisis? Are you not afraid of the situation on the market or are you adherents of the idea that the crisis is the best time to do business?
Evgeny Zingerman: We decided that if you wait for the very right moment, then this is the surest way to never start anything. Yes, many small and medium-sized businesses have suffered from the crisis, but there are those who continue to invest in their development, launch new products, and grow exponentially. Large companies still remove ads and do not stop marketing. Yes, now customers need solutions that may be less innovative, but more reliable in terms of results, and this is absolutely justified.
Naming is one of the directions of a creative agency. How did you come up with your own name? Why Patsy? Is this some kind of youthful dream, or did you want to demonstrate in this way all the “boyish return” with which you do your work?
Dmitry Yatsyna: I wanted to make an association with something of my own, native, understandable, honest, correct, reliable. The main thing is that the name is well remembered and will be an excellent basis for our other projects. It also sounds good on any PR occasion. “The boys tamed the Cannes lion”, for example.
We cannot but ask, otherwise, the readers will be offended by us. How did you decide on such a “kid” name in the modern pro-feminist world? Those who do not know you as cool and progressive guys may be wary.
Evgeny Zingerman: We are often asked about this by friends and acquaintances, but, what is most interesting, I have never heard such a question from clients
When we decide to expand, we will definitely have girls on our team. And it’s not a matter of quotas or diversity, it’s just that in marketing there are many more cool girls who are professionals in design, copywriting, strategy, and other things than guys. And for this case, we already have a mock-up of a branded hoodie for a real tomboy
Dmitry Yatsyna: The purpose of the name was to convey associations and be remembered. Judging by the questions of journalists and comments on our social networks, we coped with this task. I think the pro-feminist world will be able to forgive us for this joke. The main thing is that we do not do stupid sexist campaigns – this is not good.
What turned out to be more difficult – to create branding for someone or for yourself? Why?
Evgeny Zingerman: Making projects for someone is always more difficult. Here you need to do more work to immerse yourself in the topic and find a common language with the client, and this, of course, is a higher level of responsibility for the result.
By making a product for yourself, you negotiate only with yourself.
How do the process of creating a name for a brand and its packaging take place? Is it classic team brainstorming or are there much more effective methods? Maybe with experience, you have your own secrets?
Dmitry Yatsyna: I don’t believe in brainstorms. There is always someone who loves to talk, and someone who is overwhelmed or confused by the conversation or, or, or. I like to talk, because I am a kind of “receiver” and I am more comfortable with a person who concentrates, and collects thoughts. It may not be very convenient for another receiver, although it happens in different ways. But a more effective method is individual sprints by each team member or in pairs, and then discussing the results, spinning up or discarding non-working versions. And then start a new round.
What questions must be included in the brief in order to create a cool brand for a client?
Evgeny Zingerman: The main task at the briefing stage is to correctly understand the client’s task and his or her idea of the current state of affairs in the brand, level of service, target audience, etc. I always try to listen more, clarify a lot, and then compare the information received with what we can find out during the research phase.
Dmitry Yatsyna: Any campaign, any brand can be decomposed from the position of sensations and emotions that it evokes. Each of the sensations is achieved by specific visual techniques, metaphors, and images. What is a tech clothing brand? Most likely, you can imagine such a thing. And what would a site look like, an identity for a technological brand of sweets, for example? In the brief, we have a lot of questions related to the necessary feelings of the future brand or campaign.
What else helps you to better immerse yourself in the client’s project?
Evgeny Zingerman: The most honest strategy session with the owner and the team, in-depth interviews with all types of clients, as well as with people who could be clients, but have not become clients yet, and a personal walkthrough of the full client journey. The coolest projects are built on these three “pillars”.
How do you switch between projects if there are 10-20 or more of them in the work? After all, each client requires a maximum return, creativity, and involvement in his business. So close to burnout.
Evgeny Zingerman: Since Patsy is a small agency, we don’t take on more than two projects at the same time. You can switch between two projects. Especially if there are different tasks and products. The third will already lead to dispersion of attention and loss of quality. Therefore, we suggest customers wait a month or two. Over time, we will expand and be able to take on more projects without losing quality.
Looking at the examples of the brands you have invented, the impression is formed that you are very brave and free “artists”. In the sense that you are not afraid of completely new words and some extremely unusual combinations for the Ukrainian ear. How to understand that it’s time to stop and not “over-create”?
Evgeny Zingerman: Dima and I act as good censors for each other. This is the atmosphere where everyone can say to the other: “No, this is too much”, and no one will take it personally. The phrase said by my friend and colleague Alena Taranenko has long been living in my head: “Common sense is your brand manager.” No one has said better yet.
Dmitry Yatsyna: The main thing is to solve the client’s problem, naturally remembering our mission – to surprise.
Criticism is an integral process of working with a customer. But not all creatives are able to calmly accept this type of feedback. Many are offended and even offended. How are you doing with this?
Evgeny Zingerman: Young employees usually find it difficult to perceive criticism. I think all of us have gone through this stage. At least I do. Now I always remember that, firstly, they criticize not me, but my work. And, secondly, the constructive comments of the client often make the project really better, and this also happened more than once in my practice.
Dmitry Yatsyna: If the criticism is adequate, such people should be hugged and loved, thanked for the opportunities for growth. If “everything is bad, it didn’t work out” – hug and say goodbye.
Have there been cases when you encountered a lack of understanding of your idea by the customer? How long are you willing to “protect” your work?
Evgeny Zingerman: This has never happened in the history of the Boys, but in general, I think everyone who works in an agency or freelancer has gone through this again. Lost tenders, the client refused to accept strategies or designs. Here it is important to understand the reason and whether it is possible to fix something else or contact the client who is completely lost. If both parties understand that the project is not going well, it is better to part amicably.
Dmitry Yatsyna: I don’t really like the word “protect”. At the presentation of ideas, we demonstrate the solutions we came up with and offer them to help the client and his business. If they don’t understand us, this is our jamb and the idea needs to be finalized or abandoned altogether. Because if the client did not understand it, thousands of his clients will not understand it either. The presentation of ideas should charge the client with creative energy and the strength to create further, make the product better, and make the world e better place.
What trend has been observed lately – are companies striving for unusual and creative branding or something calmer, more traditional? Does this trend appeal to you?
Dmitry Yatsyna: The level of a company’s readiness for experiments is determined by many factors. First of all, the audience with which the company wants to establish relations, and the internal culture of the company itself. If creativity is not part of the culture of the company itself, then it will be very difficult to introduce it from the outside. But we always try to lay some kind of spark in projects that can kindle a fire of love for creativity and experiments in the team.
Therefore, for every creative branding there is its antipode – calm and traditional. This is a permanent change of poles.
Many global brands have managed to switch to the “fem” wave in time, and now to “recycling”, “eco” and all that. Tell me, should this flexibility be immediately incorporated into the brand philosophy? Or is a brand not a constant and a communication strategy already comes into play here? How do work and not fall out of the general process of world transformation?
Evgeny Zingerman: I often tell both my clients and my students that branding is a dynamic process. The trends that are mentioned are primarily a consequence of the great social shifts in Western societies and ignoring them by the marketing departments of brands would be tantamount to shooting themselves in the foot. The same Victoria’s Secret, which resisted the acceptance of a new reality the longest and continued to promote the image of a woman as a beautiful object for a man, is now experiencing significant financial and reputational problems. The company simply lost contact with its audience by ignoring changes in society.
On the other hand, blindly following absolutely all trends can make a company faceless against the background of competitors doing the same. After all, there are brands whose value for their customers is precisely in their conservatism.
The flexibility of a brand is determined by its ideology, framed in a brand strategy. It is this document that I consider to be the main one in making almost all decisions in the company. He manages the design, communication, and service, including the degree of innovation and trend following. And as for how a brand does not fall out of the process of transforming the world, no matter how trite it may sound, the only option is to listen to your audience and watch the world around. After all, just as customers influence the brand, the brand, in turn, can influence customers by offering its value system.
