Brand Britain post-Brexit

Maybe the Brexiteers didn’t expect to win the referendum in June 2016. To quote from the confusingly-titled iconic Brit film, The Italian Job, maybe they “only meant to blow the bloody doors off”. Possibly they didn’t intend to shatter the whole edifice: they fled the scene so fast it’s hard to know. No matter. In uncertainty, as everybody knows, there is opportunity. And for Brand Britain to grasp this opportunity, it cannot afford the British habits of self-deprecation and ambivalence. Brands need to know what they’re about. And behave accordingly.

I don’t know how Britain will emerge from Brexit – who does – but I do know that it could help to look at it from a brand-building perspective. I have a 3Bs framework for this: aligning business, brand and behaviour. Maybe if Britain learns from corporate experience, it can avoid becoming a nation of Bregretters.

Seize the moment

With the world watching, attempts to shape Britain’s brand will have a disproportionate impact, amplified internationally by the press and social media. That opportunity won’t last for ever. The British government can help people reconnect with their identity, reframe the values that define the culture, and position Britain's role in Europe and the wider world for a new era. Political leaders should not get caught up in short-term posturing on the terms of Brexit – or its £60 billion price tag. This behaviour will reflect on Brand Britain. Rather than think of it as a cost, it should be seen as an investment. The European Union (EU) is not the only one listening and Brand Britain is a far greater prize at stake. Ultimately, brands are about identity and emotions. And, without empathy, Brexit may well have the same chilling effect of the separation of the British Isles from continental Europe following the last glacial period.

So let’s look at corporate brands for inspiration on how it could and should be done.

A branded house or a house of brands?

What is the national brand in question anyway? Brexit is an abbreviation for “British exit” where “British” refers to the people of the United Kingdom, which includes Great Britain – comprising England, Scotland and Wales – and Northern Ireland. As such, the UK is not a branded house like London Business School (LBS). Rather, it is a house of brands such as Unilever that owns power brands such as Dove, Axe (or Lynx), Lipton and Knorr, to name just a few. Unilever is also the world’s leading ice-cream maker, with brands such as Magnum, Carte D’Or, and Solero that are part of the Heartbrand, and Ben & Jerry’s that is not. Unilever’s Global Chief Marketing Officer, Keith Weed’s views on the repositioning of their brand can be usefully applied and can be heard in an interview I carried out with him here.

The brand architecture is complex, but purposeful. Brands such as Carte D’Or and Solero have a different functional positioning – sharing and refreshment, respectively – but are united under the Heartbrand’s umbrella positioning of “euphoric fun”. This aims to turn Carte D’Or’s sharing into a much more active “bonding” and Solero’s refreshment into an emotional “uplift”. Furthermore, Unilever’s corporate brand has the purpose of “adding vitality to life”, which for example, drives product development into lower-sugar ice creams.

Britishness too is a layered identity. Think of the UK as Unilever, Great Britain as the Heartbrand – with England as Magnum, Scotland as Carte D’Or, and Wales as Solero – and Northern Ireland as Ben & Jerry’s. And, of course, each comes in different flavours, just like London, the Lake District and Cumbria are all English yet different. Britishness is layered on much older identities of being English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh, which continue to resist a homogenised British identity. People differ in the degree to which they consider themselves as English versus British, for example, with some rejecting either aspect entirely. And it gets even more complicated when considering the EU: Remainers might add a dollop of Europeanness to their identity, which surely is a concept entirely foreign to the identity of most Brexiteers.