Family.love.brands

Our branding and design company Family (and friends) is seven years old this year. A friend wished us well and asked me “What’s made it work?”. I said “Love”.

Maybe that was a bit glib, but on reflection I think it’s absolutely the case that love is all you need, at least as a mantra to be in business.

Love for the job
You’ve got to love the communications industry – often a love/hate thing, but with anything that you are truly passionate about there are going to be good and bad days, maybe even weeks of hell. But you stick with it because you are in love with it. It’s a life’s vocation. You’ve got to love the process of discovery – meeting new people, learning about other people’s industries and finding the right solution for their needs.

Love for your clients
You’ve got to love your clients. If you find yourself bitching about them when they’ve left the meeting, then it ‘aint gonna to last long. Of course we can’t love absolutely everyone, but you’ve got to be in love with your key client’s business and people to keep happy and sane. Else get a divorce.

Love for your team
You’ve got to love collaboration and the team you work with. Openness and honesty is the only way you can make great creative solutions. We only work with a close and trusted bunch of friends – never just casual freelance staff, which we have come to regret engaging on occasion.

Love as a brand brief
Actions, communications and ‘feelings’ are the things that make a brand. In our small way we work to contribute insights, messages and visuals to the brand mix that people want to proclaim a love for – because if the customer doesn’t love your brand, then it’s all in vain.

We have as a society, successfully managed to objectify brands to become personalities – personified things that we can choose to love or loath, or indeed be ambivalent about. F&f have a stated mission, which is to create ‘brands that people love to love’. Our aim is to define a distinct and loveable personality for each  of our brands before anything else begins.

Love as a brand measure
Strength of sales and profit is now making way for strength of purpose in many organisation’s measurement priority. ‘Purpose’ is a much more emotive idea, and as such, is closer to being a measure of consumer love. Affinity, admiration, advocacy…which in turn will help build the sales.

With this in mind, we have a new objective at F&f to find ways to measure the metrics of love. Watch this space, ideas most welcome.

With Love.