Most people start businesses because they believe their product or service meets an unmet need, and there will be people for whom that need is unmet. It’s that simple. Advertising is simply the task of connecting your solution with the people who need it. 

Communications hegemony, like the ideas you find in Byron Sharp’s How Brands Grow, suggests making that connection is all about reaching as many people, as often as possible. Leaders at smaller brands and their agencies can get sidetracked by the idea that a ‘big play’ ad campaign – with the associated bank-breaking budget – is the only way to get your product off the ground. 

When you’re a start-up or a scale-up, yes, you do need to build your brand. Performance marketing alone won’t find those people or make you relevant. You need to get your name out there. You need to build emotional connections with people. You need to get noticed. You just don’t need to do it in the same way as Unilever, McDonald’s or Coke do. You don’t need TV, you don’t need big budgets.

The power of distinctiveness and credibility

So how do you fake it ‘til you make it? How about taking your cues from the animal kingdom. What about the butterfly with wing patterns that look like huge eyes, or red deer with booming basso calls that make them sound much bigger than they are. What we’re really saying for smaller brands is, how can you use some simple tips and tricks to help your budget go further, and create the big impact every brand craves. 

In reality, those tips and tricks are pretty basic stuff. The first is consistency. Making sure that, everywhere you turn up, you turn up looking and feeling the same so that anytime someone sees you, they’re going to start connecting those moments together. Take Trinny Woodall’s eponymous make-up line, Trinny London. She started it from the ground up, using her own face as a billboard, demonstration plate, advocate – the lot. Five years on and she’s still that intimate, slightly manic presence in front of what at least feels like a webcam and a ring light in her closet, only now she’s fronting a $250m brand. Her company’s fortunes might have changed, her schtick hasn’t. That’s consistency. 

The next keystone is distinctiveness. Brands, and especially smaller brands just starting out, need to be bold, to stand out and be noticed. Whether it’s a point of view that’s disruptive, an insight that’s deeply considered, or a way of telling your story that makes you feel brighter than anyone who could possibly exist in your competitive space. This is your butterfly wing, your red deer’s booming call. It’s the bright, blue splash on the baboon’s ass. 

And crucially it’s about marrying that distinctiveness with deep credibility. You need to stand out, but equally stand for something. You need style and substance. You need to root your communications in a deep truth of your product or service, whilst finding an expected way to bring that to life. True, but not obvious. And that requires a unique blend - deep expertise on your business, brand and its values, with the fresh, external perspective needed to find the unexpected. 

Grow brands, not just agency reputations

Unless you are the rarest of unicorns, you need to find a partner. And it has to be an agency partner that is deeply committed to your business and understands that it is their job to grow your business, not make themselves famous. You’d be surprised (and saddened) by how unusual that is. 

But equally a partner who can challenge you, who sees things in a different light, who asks difficult questions and brings new perspectives. And in return, you need to be prepared to listen to that challenge, to know that they’re making decisions that aren’t the ones you would have made but to make them all the same. If you’re insistent on your way or the highway, you don’t need a creative agency, you need a production company. 

But with the trust and partnership and understanding that their business is to grow your business, those decisions are more likely to resonate with you as well as challenge you - and to turn simple best practice like consistency and distinctiveness into advertising that grows your business and makes you famous.