We craft and execute ROI-positive digital solutions for our clients. What’s your superpower?

The origins of the word brand go way back a long way to a time when we used to brand our property. Cattle ranchers would burn a mark into the upper thigh of the animal as a unique identifier ensuring the property was marked as his and not confused with the cattle of another rancher, the competition, if you will. The meaning of the word brand then started to evolve to encapsulate not just livestock but other goods to help distinguish one product or brand from another. An early example of this is Coca Cola. In the late 1880s when Coca Cola was first produced there were a lot of companies that sold sugary syrup to make sugary sodas from. But how do you make sure customers know it’s your sugary syrup and not the competitions, well, you give it a name or a unique symbol.

The story however, does not finish there. Over time the term brand continued to evolve and the core attributes, the unique identifier, started taking on more of persona until finally the marketing folks of the 1960s started giving brands real personality, allowing consumers to build emotional connections to those brands. David Ogilvy called this “the intangible sum of a products attributes”. Marketers started molding consumers perceptions around a product depending on what they wanted the product to stand for and in turn what they wanted a consumer to feel. With some brands it started going so far that consumers gave those products endearing or funny nicknames, this of course, only happens once a product has become part of the fabric of that consumers product eco system and lifestyle. Beemer in the UK, for example, is the name for BMW or Merc is short for Mercedes. Though it is not always the case that brands get positive or cool nicknames. It can, of course, backfire and sticking with the automotive industry, Fiat encountered this issue when in the late 1970s and early 1980s it became known as “Fix it again, Tony” (FIAT) in the United States, reinforcing the consumers belief that Fiat made unreliable cars. Upon reentering the US market in 2009 Fiat might have hoped that this nickname would have passed but unfortunately for them it had not. 27 years after the first round the automotive press could not help themselves but to greet the reintroduction of the car brand with headlines of: welcome back “fix it again, Tony”

Why is this important, well, inanimate objects have over time become greater parts of our lives and as they have become infused with emotional attributes, through clever tinkering of the admen or otherwise, they have taken centerstage as a way for us to show off our personalities, our status or are even used to represent our very identity. The fact that we let brands and their products take such important personas in our lives is astonishing and says a lot about our need to be accepted, respected or even adored by our peers and society at large. The rise of social media and our relationship with social media speaks to this as well.

With brands taking such an important position in our lives, it is a shame then that in our profession we are starting to water down the representation of brands through an over-reliance on data driven marketing. The days of great ideas and inspiring, sometimes over-the-top articulations of a brand seems to be all but over as the industry pursue a vanilla type approach where everything just becomes data driven bland noise, a nuisance that applies to a few more consumers as supposed to an inspiration that applies to less but more passionate devotees. Paradoxically we are in danger of moving backwards from the heyday of emotion fuelled, awe inspiring brands as personalities to indistinguishable monikers being branded on someone’s behind with a hot metal rod.

Digital business transformation is a silly term. It’s a catch phrase we use to market our organisations in a vain attempt to show how contemporary we are and how able we are to help with current changes in organisations but really all we are doing is riding on the bandwagon of an outdated mindset. Digital media, Digital Marketing, everything has to have digital in the name as if that makes what we do current. It’s our industries “i” as in iPhone and iPod but unlike the “i” label it is actually starting to harm us. 20 years after the first commercial banner appeared on the scene, digital is not just a part of business, it underlies everything. But it is not everything. Therefore, I argue that using the label “digital” is superfluous and misleading. It’s like when someone asks you what you do for a living and you reply: “oh, I work in work”. You’re not really narrowing it down anymore. While at the same time claiming a too narrow specialism to solve transformative challenges. A paradox that can be solved.

We complain that we find it hard to get to the right stakeholders, the c suit, the real decision makers, yet we fail to realise that this is the result of our own shortsightedness. The heads of organisations do not need a “digital” business transformation what they need is more holistic. Sure, the current shifts are driven by digital but that does not make the solution a digital one. The reality is more complex and needs something that encompasses a whole array of connected areas. We have spent 2 decades convincing everyone of how specialised and focused the field of digital is that using the same specialised label to solve current broad business challenges is a nonsense. We hope that by using this rather narrow terminology we can convince our clients that digital can address the broad challenges that their organisations face but it can’t. We all know that the required evolution of today’s organisations goes beyond digital, the necessary solutions need to tackles not just the technology side of things they also need to address processes, organisational culture, leadership and employee mindsets to name a few. We can argue that all of these are part of digital transformation but isn’t that more like shoehorning established management consultancy disciplines into our digital sphere. Would it not be better to acknowledge that the breadth required to solve current organisational challenges lie in large part outside of the digital realm and that digital has instead become a necessary part of the whole. A small but important mindset shift.

Don’t lead with digital, lead with business. Breaking down established silos, for example, seem to me much bigger challenge in current organisational evolution then implementing new technology. Yes, digital is an important element but only one element. So, instead of riding in on our high horses and proclaiming to be the masters of digital business transformation we should focus on the more important and holistic transformation of business, acknowledging its many different facets. Thereby negating the current pushed out of the grand hall, down the corridor and into the corner room where the digital folk live. Being advised that these are the right people for us to talk too. And all because we had to have digital in the name. Of course, I jest in regard to the location of the digital folk, many now live on the same floors as the rest of the departments but the point remains the same. If we are looking for a seat at the big boys table and we want to help organisations work “on” the business and not somewhere “in” the business then we need to stop labeling everything with digital and change our approach to be a more inclusive and strategic one. We need to start talking about the challenges business leaders actually face and stop talking about the small elements and buzzwords that we think sound special. Unless of course you want to stay where we are then carry on but then we need to stop complaining that we are not talking to the right level within the organisation.

Of course you can argue that it is called “Digital Business Transformation” because it acknowledges that the current shifts are driven by digital but is that how it is perceived when you hand over your business card? Is it not “Business Transformation” that we are looking to offer? I for one believe that I am helping transform business in a digital world and not digital in a business world.