Is it Time for a Science of “BrandErgonomics®?”

“Branding,” at its highest level of practice, is an art. Certainly, it draws upon a teachable understanding of the processes of meaning – how meaning is created and reinforced in the imagination, how meaning is negotiated in social groups and how meaning can be transferred from elements of the culture to the signs, products and concepts of corporations. But while the process is reproducible, the product of the best branding work is not.

Great branding work responds uniquely to a unique context. So, although it produces formulaic imitations, great branding resists formula. There was a time when skilled practice of this art was sufficient to keep branded products selling at sunny price premiums relative to their functional substitutes.  But then something happened. Howard Luck Gossage noticed it in the sixties, when he whimsically observed that the advertising business used to be like shooting fish in a barrel, but lately the fish have been “developing armor plate.”  

Today we should assume that most buyers in both consumer and business markets have twigged to the constructed nature of brand meaning. Still, these same buyers seem willing – even eager – to play along, just as long as the branding process is accompanied with a dose of “authenticity.” How do buyers judge that authenticity? They do so through their own experience: “Does this experience pay off the meaning projected in communications?” “Does it deliver what attracted me in the first place?” “Does it feel right for me?” Today’s brand success hangs increasingly upon the answers to implicit questions such as these.

All of which brings us to propose the need for a companion discipline to the art of branding.  This companion discipline builds upon, and would be impossible to practice without, a deep understanding of meaning-making processes. But something else is required. If branding must forever be an art, this new discipline must aspire to the rigor of a science. This discipline must remain curious, skeptical about its assumptions and interested in data. This science must have a long, and longitudinal, attention span. The aim of this science must be to provide objective guidance for designing and orchestrating customer experiences in the pursuit of authenticity. In today’s economy, this would be a formula for value-creation.

Let’s call it BrandErgonomics^®.