I have to specify where my opinion comes from, from the very start. I will look at leadership and branding from the standpoint of a creative leader at a network agency, which I am. My approach is, of course, different from the one branding consultants such as Kunde talk about. This doesn’t mean that I don’t agree with them (I do agree), it’s just that the peculiarities of my profession suggest that I look at it from a different angle. I will start with leadership.
The question of leadership arises all the time: whilst working on brands in various segments and categories, while managing staff, or performing other tasks. However, the aspects of it are different.
Fairy is the leader in the segment of washing-up liquids.
Baltika is the leader in the beer sector.
Putin is the leader of the country.
Sokol beer is the leader of the “Movement for the Sake of Good”.
Honda is the leader in terms of reliability.
The word “leader” is the same, but the meaning is completely different. You may find hundreds of examples, each one illustrating a different type of leadership. The brands I have listed use this concept in very different ways. Some succeed in it, others don’t. Some make people move, others let them sleep peacefully and not worry about the future. Why?
Once we were having a hot dispute over AUDI’s image. It happened before we lost a customer and the story about “the right car for our circle” appeared. We wanted to find a concept of natural leadership. The image of a leader who doesn’t impose his own concepts and rules, who doesn’t force anyone to do what he wants. He doesn’t set his laws; he has to discover the ones that already exist and wait to be discovered. A leader stands at the beginning of an untrodden path, and other people will follow him on that way. We must have failed to find an appropriate image.
Under what circumstances will others follow? In a case where others understand where that path is taking them and when they know the rules which are to be applied on the way. After that, they begin to compare it to other leading ways that follow more or less the same direction, and then they choose their own path. We will have to create a friendly image that will communicate an assurance in the right choice.
I suppose I have described the tasks of a brand. Only a brand that can solve these problems can be a leader. How does the notion of a leader change when a new brand appears? It doesn’t. With brands it becomes clear how to be a leader. If I am told how to move my legs when walking, how to walk round puddles, how to pay for my luggage, but nobody bothers to say where this road is going to take me, I won’t move. If I am told about the end, but not warned about the pits and suspicious fellow travellers, I will try to turn aside as soon as I can.
In reality, it means that I won’t work in certain companies or use certain products.
One more important thing. Leading brands have to be living. What does that mean? They have to respond to environmental changes because the constantly goes ahead. That doesn’t mean they have to change all the time; it’s just that they have to be viable. Which is, they have to be mobile and still keep their essence intact. This is why the most successful brands – such as all the world’s religions – exist for centuries and do not lose their loyalty. They are trusted and followed, quite naturally. Maybe other brands will one day be able to boast of the same results, but for now, the parameters of time are incomparable. This is what leadership is, to my mind.
Anatoliy Yasinsky,
Creative Director, GREY WORLDWIDE Moscow | 
en.jpg)
