Building brands on more than advertising

A talk with  Mr . John Brash, the founder and chief executive of Brash Brands

 Great brands are built on more than just advertising.

If you doubt that, just ask John Brash, the founder and chief executive of Brash Brands, a Dubai agency that helped create the public image of the Burj Khalifa.

Mr Brash believes companies are spending too much on advertising and need to "take a step back" before shelling out on expensive campaigns.

The fictional Don Draper from the television series Mad Men would doubtlessly disagree but Mr Brash is adamant.

"A lot of organisations just do what they've always done and they don't take a step back and reappraise. Therefore, I would say that they are definitely spending too much on advertising," he says.

"[If] advertising is the correct means to reach your target audience, fine, do it. But don't just do it because you've always done it. It might be relevant for your brand, or it might not."

Mr Brash's clients have included Emirates Group, Abu Dhabi's Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC) and the Dubai-based property developer Emaar. Part of his work for Emaar involved the renaming of the Burj Dubai, the world's tallest building, as the Burj Khalifa.

Here he talks about how an organisation's front-line employees are critical to the success of a brand.

What is the difference between branding and advertising?

Advertising is a way to help sell a product. Branding is looking at the core of the organisation. It's basically your DNA, what goes through your veins. It's what makes you who you are. And that's something that will last 10 or 20 years. If you're building a house, if you don't get the foundations right, then the house - no matter how beautiful it is - might never be sustainable. I almost feel branding should be part of the capital cost of the organisation, like your IT bill or your fixtures.

I'm sure you do, given that you're in the branding business … does this mean brands should spend less on advertising?

I would say brands should not just go to their traditional methods. Look at your customer's journey, look at all the key touch-points. Who are your key stakeholders? It could be government, it could be shareholders, it could be customers. What you do is map all of that out and then you say, 'Who are we trying to communicate to?' You don't say, 'Let's do an ad straight away.' If your brand is about being personal and being intimate, having a billboard on Sheikh Zayed Road is not a way to create intimacy.

How important are the employees in branding?

Critical. Because brands should begin inside out.

What if a low-paid employee in, say, a fast-food restaurant, is just in a bad mood? Can't that destroy a brand's image?

Whoever you employ, you need to spend time to engage with them about the reason why they are working in an organisation. Even at the lowest-paid job. We did a job for a waste-management company and we didn't just do the brand values as things that you pin on the wall. We actually [spelt out what the brand] means for the senior manager, the middle manager, and the workers on the ground sweeping the streets. We related the values in a manner that was relevant for them.

What excites you about branding?

Working in such varied industries - from an airline one minute, next minute you're doing waste management ... I've worked in one of the biggest ball-bearing factories in the world. I've worked on healthcare brands, education brands and Formula One brands. We did the branding for the Burj Khalifa. We then understood the importance of that to Dubai, to Emaar, to the ecosystem. And that's really interesting because what you're doing is you're seeing how all the dots join together, how the bigger ecosystem works. And that's a buzz.

You were working on that project when the name changed to Burj Khalifa. Did that cause a problem?

No. Before, we had been doing some work on communication. And we were also focusing on the UAE-ness of it, before the name change actually happened. The importance of the Burj Dubai or the Burj Khalifa to Dubai is critical. But to the UAE, it's one of the key statements. So to share it as part of a federal thing is a no-brainer. When we were approached by our client with the name change, it didn't come as a shock, it was a natural evolution of it. The brand personality was exactly the same.

So define your reaction when you first found out about the name change.

We found out a few days before. And the one thing about us is that we were born in the UAE, we set up in the UAE and changes like that happen on a daily basis. We [can] either embrace it, celebrate it, do it - or complain. And the one thing we don't do is complain. You have got a country that has only been going for a few decades that is progressing so fast. It's just the nature of growth. Growth isn't perfect but it's exciting.