I wanted to look in Olins because he is one of the worlds best known Graphic designers and he specialised in creating brands and creating corporate identities. He ran and was apart of two major brand consultancies, Saffron Brand and Wolff Olins alongside Michael Wolff. He consulted many of the worlds biggest business in progress with in their brand, identity and how to communicate with consumers. the companies he has worked with include BT, Renault, Volkswagen, Lloyds of London, 2012 Olympics, Orange.
Books Released:
- "Brand New - The Shape of Brands to Come" 2014
- "Wally Olins -The Brand Handbook" 2008
- "Wally Olins - On Brand" 2003
- "Trading Identities" 1999
- "The New Guide to Identity" 1995
- "Corporate Identity" 1989
- "The Corporate Personality: an inquiry into the nature of corporate identity" 1978
I wanted to look into Olins because he seems to be the mastermind behind many of the biggest brands and re brands in history, I wanted to look into his process, techniques he would use when producing them and if he thought about them ethically and if any were sustainable or unsustainable products or business'.
Interview with Wally Olins
By Kevin Finn
Kevin Finn:Before we get into that I’d like to talk about a wider issue, about your views on how branding, and its associated activities, has broadly shaped our society today.
Well, again, branding is at the heart of today’s society simply because branding is about manifestations of identity. It’s a demonstration of who and what you belong to, and in a world that is increasingly competitive this is important, not just in commercial life but in every kind of activity you can think of including sport, the Nation, the city, the family. Inevitably then, what brand you choose to belong to, what brand you choose to associate yourself with is of profound significance.
My view is that corporations are increasingly going to be seen as being socially responsible because, if you like, ‘conspicuous consumption’ is to a certain extent giving way to what you may call ‘conspicuous compassion’. That means people who buy things want to be seen to be giving as well as buying. And corporations with which they deal will have to demonstrate an association with some kind of socially responsible activity. And that in turn means a knock on effect for not-for-profits and charities.
When you start looking at that area you can see that the brand becomes particularly significant because the only thoughts that a charity or a not-for-profit can engender in people’s minds, are emotional. You don’t get anything out of going to a charity except emotional satisfaction. And that brings you back to branding again.
With branding being such an integral part of today’s society we’re somewhat over-saturated every day by this branding and general visual stimulus. To some extent, do you think the general public tends to switch off or become numb to all this? Or is it more a case of branding having heralded a kind of visual literacy amongst the general public?
I think, if you’re talking about luxury brands, or consumer brands—the things people buy—there is such a plethora that certainly some people are becoming numb. I think that’s true.
On the other hand, one should never underestimate the ingenuity of commercial organisations to seduce people. And if a commercial organization believes that it will be in its interests to become charitable, or to be seen to become charitable—I don’t want to sound cynical here but the appropriate phrase is ‘enlightened self-interest’—if they see it as being in their interest to be socially responsible, then that is what they will do. And that is a very powerful mechanism for change.
There is another mechanism at work, which is also significant; branding has entered sport, and the arts, and music, and culture in a huge way, both for better and worse. For better: because it makes them more professional, more effective and more available. For worse: because it inevitably has the effect of commercialising them.
In your recent book ‘Wally Olins: The Brand Handbook’ you state there are some who claim: Brands represent the consumerist society at its sickest. How do you respond to critics of branding, for example the Naomi Kliens’ of the world?
Well Naomi Klien has written a very interesting book No Logo but it is based on an entirely false premise. The idea she works with is that the brand itself has a morality. In reality the brand has no morality. It simply presents whatever it is representing in the most powerful and visual and emotional form.
Someone, I’m afraid I can’t remember who, recently wrote a book that was violently anti-brand on the basis that ‘brand’ had spawned the fascist Nazi and Communist governments in the 1930s and people have written serous reviews about how appallingly subversive brands are, and so on and so forth. What these people fail-—or choose not to—understand, is that the brand is without morality.
I’ll use an example: the Red Cross or Amnesty International. Do they make the brand good? The ‘brand’ is used, as a tool, by people who want to communicate a series of ideas and if they happen to be good ideas, or beneficial ideas or charitable ideas then the brand is ‘good’. If they are commercially seductive, then some people might regard them as ‘bad’. If they are politically motivated, depending on your own political motivations, people will look at them accordingly. The brand doesn’t have a morality. It is something we use. We need to belong. The brand is a demonstration of belonging. So [No Logo] is wrong. It is based on an entirely false premise.
Brands aren’t good or bad. You could say capitalism is good or bad. What [Naomi Klein] is saying is that capitalist society at its sickest uses brands to seduce and manipulate people. Well it does, if you choose to be seduced and manipulated then you will be. But if you don’t choose to be seduced and manipulated you don’t have to be.
Where in all this does the responsibility of the graphic designer fall? Do they even have jurisdiction? For example, Peter Saville says about branding: The job is to steer and engineer people’s perceptions of things towards a profitable outcome for your clients—that’s the job… It’s a misleading conspiracy, you know. It’s smoke and mirrors. The brief is: make us look like we believe in something, make us or our product look believable, [and] look like we mean something. That’s the job. (Open Manifesto #4) Isn’t this a sound argument?
Well, I think that is a rather extreme way of putting it but fundamentally, I don’t disagree. Where I think he and I might disagree is in the assumption that one can create a smoke and mirrors idea with which one can consistently fool people. But this is not likely to work for very long because when people find out that what you sold them is rubbish they won’t buy it again. It is a mistaken assumption, as Naomi Klein believes, and Peter may suggest he believes (though, I’m not saying he does believe) that you can fool all the people all the time. You can’t. If you are seduced into buying something and you don’t like it, well you won’t buy it again.
Of course, that is the power of a brand—it makes a company/product very visible.
It makes it very visible and very seductive the first time. And if you don’t like it you won’t have it again. And that’s the point. You know, this is not Nazi Europe. You have a choice. You can turn off. And I can give you a number of examples of this.
MG was a much loved car brand because for over forty or fifty years it built up a reputation for being the first fun car that lots of kids had. It looked lovely and won races, and all that kind of stuff. Over the following thirty years the company which owned MG systematically destroyed it, apparently almost on purpose. They destroyed everything about it: they produced lousy cars, they put the badge on cars that were entirely inappropriate, and so on. In the end, even the greatest admirers and lovers of MG weren’t convinced. They’d buy the old MG cars and not the new ones.
That is a company which destroyed itself because it was cynical and misused its heritage. But people didn’t fall for it. One can think of other examples of products or organizations that destroyed themselves in this way. All the time there are organisations that stop existing because they’re no good any more.
Another example: Andersen Accounting. One of the ‘great five’, the biggest of them all, destroyed itself overnight. It happens again, and again and again. It is absolutely not the case that people are victimized, seduced and manipulated by brands to the extent that they go goggle-eyed and buy them despite anything else—they don’t.
So while I don’t disagree with what Peter Saville says, what I don’t think he takes into account sufficiently is choice. There are hotel chains I don’t go to no matter what the advertising says, no matter what the communication says, because I don’t like the experience.
The issue is, if you’re buying products that are so similar in rational terms, like price, or quality or service, then it is almost impossible to choose rationally. Then you have to choose by emotion.
Another interesting thing Peter Saville said was, and it perhaps has to do with the visibility of a brand and the social responsibility of a brand: “a key thing for a brand is that it must be a regular and frequent ‘news generator’. If it is not generating news it is clipped out of our awareness. And the news it generates must be on message.” (Open Manifesto #4) Would you agree that, in today’s world, it is the news cycle which dictates how people see a brand in a more detailed way?
Yes and no, because that does not take into account web content. That was true until a very few years ago, simply because all content about anything was generated by the conventional media. Now it can be generated, and is generated, by everybody. So, if I want to make a noise about this watch [pointing to his wrist watch] and there hasn’t been much in the newspapers, or on the radio, or the television recently, I’ll make a noise about it in a blog. And I’ll put it on YouTube, or My Face, or Your Face or Upside down Face, and I’ll make a noise about it, either because it’s lovely, or it’s not lovely, or because I feel like it.
Georg Jensen is the name of this watch brand. Georg Jensen was an incestuous rapist and so on. Obviously, I just made that up. But if I put it on the web somebody would pick it up and there would be a whole performance about it. [Both laughing.]
It’s interesting that you mention Facebook and the web. How has technology changed things in branding?
Well, for people of my generation, not at all. I mean we kind of know about [new technology] and we use it in a hopeless, pathetic sort of way. I am very uncomfortable with it. But I recognise that it has immense power and the power that is has hasn’t even affected your generation [pointing at Kevin Finn], you’re too old for it. The power has affected twenty year olds, twelve year olds.
I was asked yesterday about the Wolff Olins 2012 Olympic logo, which I had absolutely nothing to do with because I wasn’t involved in the company then. And as I mentioned yesterday, the first time I even knew about it was when a journalist phoned me. But I could immediately see the Olympic 2012 logo was not a piece of standard print design.
So what’s it about?. It’s designed for the web. So I looked at it online and it’s marvellous. It changes colour, it jumps around, it works with other logos. So how will [technology] change for generations below you? It will change life hugely. How? A) They will be able to answer back, and they already do. B) Everything will move, and dance and jump around the place. It’ll be quite different.
Later in the Interview...
You mentioned the cultural aspects and the understanding and the misunderstanding between countries. There is a design consultant based in Sydney who has recently branded Abu Dhabi (Open Manifesto #5). In your opinion, how can someone who is not immersed in that culture, who doesn’t live there, how can they brand a city or a country?
Well, your example relates to a country which is an artificial construct. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, all those Gulf countries are new. They didn’t exist before. They emerged through the discovery and development of huge natural resources.
But the question you are asking is: how can a foreigner understand a nation with whom he/she has no kinship? First of all, if you’ve got any sense, you don’t work alone. You bring in expertise. You read some history and you work with people who understand the country a lot better than you, or who are much closer to it than you are. You work with historians, cultural experts, business people and that way you get to understand the country.
I like it because my training was in history, and I read a great deal of history and have a strong interest in anthropological and sociological matters. I like it and I enjoy it, and I think I am quite good at it [smiling].
[Smiling] I guess the other side of the situation is that being a foreigner provides some objectivity. In this instance one has no ties to a perceived tradition, which has to be projected…
Precisely. And if you have—I guess you could say, ‘courage’—you say what you think. And people inside the country find it hard to be objective, whereas those outside the country might find it easier to be objective. A certain amount of charm and brutality goes down as well. One needs that mixture [laughing].
What I took from this Interview
This Interview was very insightful because the opening questions relate to my essay and I was able to see Olin's perspective on the points because he was the man behind some of these colossal business brands, he knows consumer and big brands well and the effect they can have on people and he displays this in the interview, the part where he talks of enlightened self interest is very helpful as it shows that brands will be sustainable if it is in their interest to be because that is what the consumer wants. It also talks about choice, ideals and ideologies which will be apart of my essay. and finally it talks of new age of tech with social media and such how it affects branding.
Kevin Finn:Before we get into that I’d like to talk about a wider issue, about your views on how branding, and its associated activities, has broadly shaped our society today.
Well, again, branding is at the heart of today’s society simply because branding is about manifestations of identity. It’s a demonstration of who and what you belong to, and in a world that is increasingly competitive this is important, not just in commercial life but in every kind of activity you can think of including sport, the Nation, the city, the family. Inevitably then, what brand you choose to belong to, what brand you choose to associate yourself with is of profound significance.
My view is that corporations are increasingly going to be seen as being socially responsible because, if you like, ‘conspicuous consumption’ is to a certain extent giving way to what you may call ‘conspicuous compassion’. That means people who buy things want to be seen to be giving as well as buying. And corporations with which they deal will have to demonstrate an association with some kind of socially responsible activity. And that in turn means a knock on effect for not-for-profits and charities.
When you start looking at that area you can see that the brand becomes particularly significant because the only thoughts that a charity or a not-for-profit can engender in people’s minds, are emotional. You don’t get anything out of going to a charity except emotional satisfaction. And that brings you back to branding again.
With branding being such an integral part of today’s society we’re somewhat over-saturated every day by this branding and general visual stimulus. To some extent, do you think the general public tends to switch off or become numb to all this? Or is it more a case of branding having heralded a kind of visual literacy amongst the general public?
I think, if you’re talking about luxury brands, or consumer brands—the things people buy—there is such a plethora that certainly some people are becoming numb. I think that’s true.
On the other hand, one should never underestimate the ingenuity of commercial organisations to seduce people. And if a commercial organization believes that it will be in its interests to become charitable, or to be seen to become charitable—I don’t want to sound cynical here but the appropriate phrase is ‘enlightened self-interest’—if they see it as being in their interest to be socially responsible, then that is what they will do. And that is a very powerful mechanism for change.
There is another mechanism at work, which is also significant; branding has entered sport, and the arts, and music, and culture in a huge way, both for better and worse. For better: because it makes them more professional, more effective and more available. For worse: because it inevitably has the effect of commercialising them.
In your recent book ‘Wally Olins: The Brand Handbook’ you state there are some who claim: Brands represent the consumerist society at its sickest. How do you respond to critics of branding, for example the Naomi Kliens’ of the world?
Well Naomi Klien has written a very interesting book No Logo but it is based on an entirely false premise. The idea she works with is that the brand itself has a morality. In reality the brand has no morality. It simply presents whatever it is representing in the most powerful and visual and emotional form.
Someone, I’m afraid I can’t remember who, recently wrote a book that was violently anti-brand on the basis that ‘brand’ had spawned the fascist Nazi and Communist governments in the 1930s and people have written serous reviews about how appallingly subversive brands are, and so on and so forth. What these people fail-—or choose not to—understand, is that the brand is without morality.
I’ll use an example: the Red Cross or Amnesty International. Do they make the brand good? The ‘brand’ is used, as a tool, by people who want to communicate a series of ideas and if they happen to be good ideas, or beneficial ideas or charitable ideas then the brand is ‘good’. If they are commercially seductive, then some people might regard them as ‘bad’. If they are politically motivated, depending on your own political motivations, people will look at them accordingly. The brand doesn’t have a morality. It is something we use. We need to belong. The brand is a demonstration of belonging. So [No Logo] is wrong. It is based on an entirely false premise.
Brands aren’t good or bad. You could say capitalism is good or bad. What [Naomi Klein] is saying is that capitalist society at its sickest uses brands to seduce and manipulate people. Well it does, if you choose to be seduced and manipulated then you will be. But if you don’t choose to be seduced and manipulated you don’t have to be.
Where in all this does the responsibility of the graphic designer fall? Do they even have jurisdiction? For example, Peter Saville says about branding: The job is to steer and engineer people’s perceptions of things towards a profitable outcome for your clients—that’s the job… It’s a misleading conspiracy, you know. It’s smoke and mirrors. The brief is: make us look like we believe in something, make us or our product look believable, [and] look like we mean something. That’s the job. (Open Manifesto #4) Isn’t this a sound argument?
Well, I think that is a rather extreme way of putting it but fundamentally, I don’t disagree. Where I think he and I might disagree is in the assumption that one can create a smoke and mirrors idea with which one can consistently fool people. But this is not likely to work for very long because when people find out that what you sold them is rubbish they won’t buy it again. It is a mistaken assumption, as Naomi Klein believes, and Peter may suggest he believes (though, I’m not saying he does believe) that you can fool all the people all the time. You can’t. If you are seduced into buying something and you don’t like it, well you won’t buy it again.
Of course, that is the power of a brand—it makes a company/product very visible.
It makes it very visible and very seductive the first time. And if you don’t like it you won’t have it again. And that’s the point. You know, this is not Nazi Europe. You have a choice. You can turn off. And I can give you a number of examples of this.
MG was a much loved car brand because for over forty or fifty years it built up a reputation for being the first fun car that lots of kids had. It looked lovely and won races, and all that kind of stuff. Over the following thirty years the company which owned MG systematically destroyed it, apparently almost on purpose. They destroyed everything about it: they produced lousy cars, they put the badge on cars that were entirely inappropriate, and so on. In the end, even the greatest admirers and lovers of MG weren’t convinced. They’d buy the old MG cars and not the new ones.
That is a company which destroyed itself because it was cynical and misused its heritage. But people didn’t fall for it. One can think of other examples of products or organizations that destroyed themselves in this way. All the time there are organisations that stop existing because they’re no good any more.
Another example: Andersen Accounting. One of the ‘great five’, the biggest of them all, destroyed itself overnight. It happens again, and again and again. It is absolutely not the case that people are victimized, seduced and manipulated by brands to the extent that they go goggle-eyed and buy them despite anything else—they don’t.
So while I don’t disagree with what Peter Saville says, what I don’t think he takes into account sufficiently is choice. There are hotel chains I don’t go to no matter what the advertising says, no matter what the communication says, because I don’t like the experience.
The issue is, if you’re buying products that are so similar in rational terms, like price, or quality or service, then it is almost impossible to choose rationally. Then you have to choose by emotion.
Another interesting thing Peter Saville said was, and it perhaps has to do with the visibility of a brand and the social responsibility of a brand: “a key thing for a brand is that it must be a regular and frequent ‘news generator’. If it is not generating news it is clipped out of our awareness. And the news it generates must be on message.” (Open Manifesto #4) Would you agree that, in today’s world, it is the news cycle which dictates how people see a brand in a more detailed way?
Yes and no, because that does not take into account web content. That was true until a very few years ago, simply because all content about anything was generated by the conventional media. Now it can be generated, and is generated, by everybody. So, if I want to make a noise about this watch [pointing to his wrist watch] and there hasn’t been much in the newspapers, or on the radio, or the television recently, I’ll make a noise about it in a blog. And I’ll put it on YouTube, or My Face, or Your Face or Upside down Face, and I’ll make a noise about it, either because it’s lovely, or it’s not lovely, or because I feel like it.
Georg Jensen is the name of this watch brand. Georg Jensen was an incestuous rapist and so on. Obviously, I just made that up. But if I put it on the web somebody would pick it up and there would be a whole performance about it. [Both laughing.]
It’s interesting that you mention Facebook and the web. How has technology changed things in branding?
Well, for people of my generation, not at all. I mean we kind of know about [new technology] and we use it in a hopeless, pathetic sort of way. I am very uncomfortable with it. But I recognise that it has immense power and the power that is has hasn’t even affected your generation [pointing at Kevin Finn], you’re too old for it. The power has affected twenty year olds, twelve year olds.
I was asked yesterday about the Wolff Olins 2012 Olympic logo, which I had absolutely nothing to do with because I wasn’t involved in the company then. And as I mentioned yesterday, the first time I even knew about it was when a journalist phoned me. But I could immediately see the Olympic 2012 logo was not a piece of standard print design.
So what’s it about?. It’s designed for the web. So I looked at it online and it’s marvellous. It changes colour, it jumps around, it works with other logos. So how will [technology] change for generations below you? It will change life hugely. How? A) They will be able to answer back, and they already do. B) Everything will move, and dance and jump around the place. It’ll be quite different.
Later in the Interview...
You mentioned the cultural aspects and the understanding and the misunderstanding between countries. There is a design consultant based in Sydney who has recently branded Abu Dhabi (Open Manifesto #5). In your opinion, how can someone who is not immersed in that culture, who doesn’t live there, how can they brand a city or a country?
Well, your example relates to a country which is an artificial construct. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, all those Gulf countries are new. They didn’t exist before. They emerged through the discovery and development of huge natural resources.
But the question you are asking is: how can a foreigner understand a nation with whom he/she has no kinship? First of all, if you’ve got any sense, you don’t work alone. You bring in expertise. You read some history and you work with people who understand the country a lot better than you, or who are much closer to it than you are. You work with historians, cultural experts, business people and that way you get to understand the country.
I like it because my training was in history, and I read a great deal of history and have a strong interest in anthropological and sociological matters. I like it and I enjoy it, and I think I am quite good at it [smiling].
[Smiling] I guess the other side of the situation is that being a foreigner provides some objectivity. In this instance one has no ties to a perceived tradition, which has to be projected…
Precisely. And if you have—I guess you could say, ‘courage’—you say what you think. And people inside the country find it hard to be objective, whereas those outside the country might find it easier to be objective. A certain amount of charm and brutality goes down as well. One needs that mixture [laughing].
What I took from this Interview
This Interview was very insightful because the opening questions relate to my essay and I was able to see Olin's perspective on the points because he was the man behind some of these colossal business brands, he knows consumer and big brands well and the effect they can have on people and he displays this in the interview, the part where he talks of enlightened self interest is very helpful as it shows that brands will be sustainable if it is in their interest to be because that is what the consumer wants. It also talks about choice, ideals and ideologies which will be apart of my essay. and finally it talks of new age of tech with social media and such how it affects branding.
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