You might have thought this was branding.

Here's what happens when a law firm decides that it has a brand.

We were curious when we picked up Friday May 27 Australian Financial Review, "Gadens' brand: you have to laugh", to read that Australian law firm Gadens has gone out on a limb and said that unlike most law firms, "We actually are different and we prove that by behaving differently".

According to Managing Partner, Michael Bradley, at the firm's Sydney office, Gadens is known for its "irreverant and relaxed" culture. Well we went looking for it. And here's why.

Last year we were approached by a large second tier law firm looking to rebrand and reposition. We were excited at such an opportunity and did some extensive benchmarking on Australian law firm brands. An opportunity was ripe for the picking. We did the right thing, flew out to the meet them at our own expense, wrote a lengthy proposal, providing them with plenty of evidence that law firms (let alone most profeessional services firm) don't know how to differentiate themselves, let alone how to brand, and then waited. And waited.

Sure the Managing Partner and his marketing manager thought it was a great idea but he'd have to get it through all the partners in the firm, and he really wasn't prepared for anything even closely resembling evolution. We pitied the marketing manager.

So let's hand it to Gadens. Internally their brand activities concentrate on developing a unique culture, which will inherently serve to enhance and develop distinct brand attributes such as irreverence and ease and which will differentiate it from most of its competitors. And they are making attempts at reflecting this in their recruitment advertising. But is this just the activity of their Sydney office, because we see no evidence of this brand position in what is a crucial part of brand articulation - their website - nor in their visual articulation - their look and feel.

Here's a sample from 'About Us' on their company website:

With more than 85 partners and 720 staff throughout Australia, Gadens Lawyers has the infrastructure and resources to partner with clients at local, state and national levels. Importantly, as the only Australian member of the International Lawyers Network - one of the world ’s largest associations of independent legal firms - we have access to 80 high-quality, full-service law firms with over 4,200 lawyers world-wide. The Network provides clients with easily accessible legal services in 61 countries on six continents.

So where does it say they are "irreverant and relaxed"? We couldn't find any jokes on the site and even Michael Bradley's own bio is more reverant than irreverent.

So, we think this is what happens when a firm only does part of the job of branding [or is there more on the way?]. Perhaps this was a publicity exercise and perhaps they are not what they seem, but branding is much more than an exercise. It is completely holistic and it should, as Gadens does in part understand, permeate the entire organisation and be part of all its communication. It's an idea we're still waiting for companies like Gadens to embrace. So for now we will just have to wait and see.

Guess who has no idea?

Advertising agencies have been put on notice, again. Be ideas companies or disappear.

That’s the latest warning delivered at last week’s annual American Association of Advertising Agencies management conference.

According to the New York Times, what clients want most from their agencies is "the power of the big idea”.

“Yet that is probably a phrase that makes every agency cringe because there's no clear path to get to it”, said president and chief executive of Volvo Cars North America division of the Ford Motor Company, Anne Bélec.

Generating bigger, better ideas was also on the mind of another speaker at the conference, MDC Partners Toronto’s chairman and chief executive, Miles Nadalat, a devourer of creatively focussed advertising agencies across the States.

"The challenge for our industry is to make advertising a business of ideas instead of a business of ads and their distribution" said Nadal.

"What clients want most are ideas, innovation, creativity," he added.

While all too often agency leaders have a "focus on money rather than on results for clients", the Times reported.

"The most successful people in this industry are not motivated to come to work every day to make the most profits, but rather to come up with the best ideas.”

Now how many people in Australian agencies would dare even say that they’re ideas companies or that they are in the business of ideas? And how many clients, like Volvo, would demand it? Or even pay for it?

Australian ad agencies reflect in part the paucity of demand for inspirational ideas and concepts from clients, combined with their own slavish corporate attendance to the bottom line. Tell us any different.

No Idea Astro-Glo T-shirt image (c) www.contagious.com

Why we're scared of brand "narrativism".

According to Iconoculture's latest Iconowatch (www.iconoculture.com) the new word for brand narratives or brand stories is "narrativism". While we're very happy that the idea of a brand narrative is starting to seep into general discussions of brand and more importantly, into people's understanding of how complex brand structures and stories evolve, we're more worried about the use of words that don't exist or are innaccurate.

"Narrativism" is not in any dictionary we could find. The closest, according to our Shorter Oxford, is NARRATIVITY viz. "the quality or condition of being or presenting a narrative; (the action of story-telling)". As a verb it could be NARRATIVIZE "to present or interpret in the form of a narrative"

In a wider context, if the people at Iconoculture mean "narrativism" to mean "to tell our tales, cobbling together bits of promise from a scattershot of brands and products to create our own complex consumer tale" they may also be referring to the application of French semiotics term often used in the analysis of subculture BRICOLAGE, "the construction or creation of whatever is immediately available for use".

Understanding brands and branding can only be made easy for people if, as George Orwell always maintained, we use words that speak clearly and accurately project meaning.