Building Iconic Brands | Samuel Milne

Brands are all around us - from Nike to McDonalds. The modern world is full of branding.

If you’ve ever wondered about the people behind the brands - today we’ve got quite the individual for you.

I introduce Samuel Milne, brand strategist for Fluid Branding out of Melbourne, Australia.

Q: What are some of the most important lessons you’ve learned working as a designer & brand strategist?

I worked at a company called Cato Design, which was probably the prominent brand agency back in the day. Since then, the category has changed significantly, but I very much enjoyed working for that studio.

I learned a lot about the technical process, I learned a lot about the value in very clear communication and while I was working there, I managed to work on a number of fairly high profile national and international brands.

At which point I started to learn the toolkit for not just creating beautiful things or things that look nice, but creating things that have a significant impact on businesses bottom lines.

As much as it's about communication, it's about creating things that need to be profitable. Otherwise, all of that work is more or less pointless. Working in the beer category, the wine category, even in charities or other CPG categories, a lot of the investment, you want to make sure that it's worth it in the long run.

The amount of time and effort people put into that work, you want to make sure that they're getting something out of it at the end of the day. So it was more important to learn that you're not just a designer.

So we're a visual artist, but you're one in a chain of different people, from design directors, through to creative directors, account managers, to brand managers, to CEOs, to executive leadership teams, all of them have a role to play in making sure that that product is success in the long run and it's learning about how you can most positively impact that process

Q: What does your design process look like? How do you go about coming up with ideas that play into the company’s bottom line?

When I first joined, I had a very different process. It was more about just putting ideas down on a page that look interesting or different or stand out compared to what everyone else is doing.

However, over the years, I've learned that there's a real need to pay attention to the various assets that you're changing. Those visual assets, they have a life outside of your experience with them. It's more about the experience that your audience has with them.

Therefore, when you're changing them, you need to be changing them in a way that respects what your audience already knows about them and what the company knows about them. But you need to change them in a way that reinvigorates them and makes them new, but in ways that are recognizable.

Where I feel like a lot of the balancing act often is in our project. So instead of jumping in and just sketching something on a blank piece of paper, it's much more important that you really do thoroughly understand what the audience sees, what they understand the brand to be in the existing market.

Then you respect the effort of time and money and talent that's gone into developing that brand to where it is and then your input is really on evolving it and taking it forward to engage either new people or reengage old audiences, or to make sure that the brand stands for something that the audience resonates with.

So that's really where the process starts for us. It's not just about a blank page. It's about connecting with something that people recognize and making sure that those things that they recognize are emphasized, and the things that are irrelevant are discarded or made renewed in a way that will reinvigorate their connection.

Q: What are your outlooks on AI and it’s impact on strategy and branding?

Quite often the battle that designers have is to help people who don't have the same imagination as them to see the vision in what they're trying to build.

So I feel like AI can have a really positive impact on ideation, where you can quickly pump out something that looks close to what you need it to look like but is not technically correct.

That can then at least provoke a response from a client, and then you can work towards that as a goal or as an initial sort of step in the right direction.

Eventually I'm sure the AI will get to a point where it is much more technically correct and can produce finished art and work that is printable and uploadable in high res, can be used in to replace the need for photographers, can be used to replace the need for copywriters on websites.

A lot of that sort of work is already underway and I can see that changing very rapidly, but it's not quite at that stage yet. Eventually I feel like it's going to pretty significantly shape the amount of investment that goes into the category by replacing a lot of the external suppliers to the category and that is a positive and a negative thing.

Q: What are some books that have significantly impacted you as a brand strategist?

1. How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp

2. Building Distinctive Brand Assets by Jenni Romaniuk

3. Crossing The Chasm by Geoffrey Moore

4. The Long and Short of It by Les Binet and Peter Field

5. The Mini MBA by Mark Ritzen