brand-e

By Hugh Jordan. Marketing personality. Jack Morton has been a stalwart in the marketing industry for over 70 years. The agency made its name as an events company, specialising in B2B. Now, though, it is using its experience to help redefine the B2C experiential market.
brand-e caught up with Matt Jones, director of strategy at Jack Morton, to get his take on the agency’s change of focus, experiential marketing and – his favourite topic – social media.
“Jack Morton is trying to move away from being a company that creates an event, instead replacing the notion of an event with an experience,” says Jones.
“We don’t do branding. I make that very clear to people. What we do is put a brand’s personality across. And we want to become a world leader at doing that.”
Brands currently doing well with their personalities, in Jones’ opinion, include the likes of Innocent, Virgin Airways, Zappos and, his personal favourite, Apple.
He uses the consumer good market as an example of the need for brands to shift their focus from a product- to experience-led mindset.
The quality of TVs and other electronic goods so high, says Jones, that when a customer goes into a shop it’s difficult for them to differentiate between the various brands. And this is where the point-of-sale experience comes into play.
A brand like Apple not only designs its products, it controls the buying environment and, thanks to its Genius Bar, the owning experience too.
“When you walk into an Apple store, regardless of whether that store happens to be in London, New York or Tokyo, there is a consistency,” he says. “What we are really talking about is ‘people brands’. Everyone in the company is connected to the brand story, they believe in that story. It is lived and delivered through every person in the employment community.”
Where the margins between competitors and the products they offer is so narrow, Jones believes the only way for companies to distinguish themselves is to own the total brand experience:
“It’s about getting the brand experience to come through at every touchpoint,” he says. “It’s about having a better-designed product, better-designed stores and better-trained staff.”
And the first touchpoint for a brand to focus on is almost always internal.
Jack Morton will usually start by helping a company to create its brand story then work with the staff, helping them to engage with and believe in that story. Only then will Jack Morton look to sell the brand story to consumers.
“The world is more connected than it ever has been yet it is harder than ever for brands to cut through using traditional media,” says Jones. “But if a brand has a great story, it only needs to connect with a few people and those people will then pass that story on.”
That is the reason for the rise in branded entertainment over the past few years, he says, with brands investing in high-quality content, such as films and music, that stand up as pieces of art in their own right.
And this doesn’t have to be forced onto people – consumers actively seek it out and pass the work on to friends. If the content reinforces the brand story, that is being passed on too.
So, does the future lie in social media?
Jones hesitates, and well he might. He recently wrote an article for AdAge, entitled – Why I Hate Social Media.
His issue, though, lies with the term, not the concept.
“I don’t like the word media. I think if marketers treat social media like traditional media it will end in disaster.
“Brands should always start with a desire to build a stronger, more value-added relationship with a specific audience, then go to social media. It should always be that way round… Having a social media strategy is not an idea.”