The courage to fail

Bjork, it seems to me, is a great example of an artist who has the 'courage to fail'. Always experimenting, always trying to figure out what can be done differently, even when she gets it fantastically wrong she never fails to command attention. When she gets it right, well, the results can be spectacular, as the millions of people who bought Debut or Volta might agree.

Marketing is not art, and those who think it is are often in danger of disappearing up their own YouTubes. But it does need to be invigorating, educational, entertaining, vital, in the way that good art is. Good marketing can move beyond relatively low-level branded communications and become content; then, if it's particularly sticky, it can even become a point of cultural reference (we've got some interesting content on the way about this). But it's not art, because art - true art - exists primarily for its own sake, not for the sake of a capitalist agenda. (There's a debate in itself.)

The courage to fail is an interesting concept to explore in the context in marketing, and in particular to what extent agencies should encourage clients to innovate. Invention and exploration are evidently key to creating content that is sticky and effective; equally, brand equity is a currency that should be protected, and creativity for creativity's sake rarely works. (Talking of which, I had an interesting conversation the other day about the Cadbury's 'drumming monkey', and whether that was a rare example of a 'random' good idea somehow gaining traction. Of course it bloody isn't.) But brand equity is often misunderstood, with clients and agencies placing too much emphasis on the preservation of design styles and logotypes, and too little on how brand promises can be preserved and enhanced in the mind of the consumer - which is of course the only place where the equity exists.

Finding new ways to creatively communicate a core set of brand values, personality traits and promises is not only laudable but essential; the drumming monkey was a perfect example of this, which is why it performed so well (even if it did put Phil Collins back in the charts). Great planning is a key part of this process, and the hoary old cliche about 'the freedom of a tight brief' is still as relevant today as ever. The courage to fail, then, feels to me like the courage to let planning lead you creatively where it wants to lead you - into what Donald Rumsfeld might term 'the known unknown'. Keeping the consumer at the heart of that process - consulting, discussing, relationship-building - feels like a good way to remove some of the risk. Because, after all, who is really the brand 'owner'?

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