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By Justin Holloway

June 24, 1999 | In my native England there exists a cookie called a Hob-Nob. And for reasons perhaps peculiar to the idiosyncratic British palate, an extremely popular one at that. This chocolate-meet-oats concoction arrived in the mid-'80s to a rapturous public reception, and hasn't looked back since.

Anyway, back in 1988, just weeks after I started as an advertising account planner, my agency was awarded the prestigious Hob-Nob account. This was, as I remember, a controversial move at the time, as the previous agency had just launched the brand, to both critical and commercial acclaim, using the landmark slogan "One nibble and you're nobbled." (Don't ask.)

My first internal meeting of any significance was about Hob-Nobs. I was invited to sit in and observe as senior members of my department set out their strategic vision for the brand's future. But it seemed to me that the former agency had figured it out pretty well. What would our guys be able to add?

The title of the planners' presentation set the tone. On the front page, in weighty, Germanic typeface to denote earnestness, appeared the somber title "Hob-Nobs -- A Case History Problem." Inside, the lead planner had formally laid out his judgment on the launch campaign. Yes, he acknowledged, consumers may have loved it. And yes, OK, it did sell boatloads of Hob-Nobs. But in truth, he opined to the hushed and horrified crowd, it had been a failure -- for it had neglected to define the essence of the brand.

I looked around the room to get a sense of the gravity of this oversight. Judging by the number of disapproving faces, this was a high crime indeed. And as the presenter warmed to his theme the tut-tutting and head-shaking increased, until his withering summing-up settled the jury's verdict. "The previous advertising," he solemnly declared, "though successfully launching the brand, has failed to determine what Hob-Nobness is."

This was the first time I'd heard the term "brand essence," or seen "-ness" suffixed onto places where it had no honest business belonging. But I doubt if in the 10 years or so since then I've gone a single working day without hearing one term or the other. Over that time, the power of a company's brand image has come to be seen as the critical determinant of its success, and "essence" its holy grail -- hard to track down, but once discovered and harnessed a powerful property indeed.

The quest for brand essence has become big business. Pots of money are spent on brand essence research studies. Numerous brand consultancies have opened their doors, tempting in clients with promises of infallible (and of course proprietary) techniques for sniffing out this elusive quarry. And nailing a brand's essence is now often the deciding factor in major advertising pitches. Just last month we read that Toys 'R' Us had awarded its account to Chicago's Leo Burnett because Burnett showed "a clear understanding of the essence of our brand," and CNN went with Hill Holliday because it "captured our brand essence in the review process."

In short, brand essence has become essential. Robert Posten of the research and consulting company Icon & Landis summed up the prevailing view of the critical role of essence in his 1997 Advertising Age article when he wrote, "The essence of the brand must be strategically defined ... the very survival of the brand is at stake." Dramatic stuff.

My problem is that I still have the same nagging concern as the day when I heard the term "Hob-Nobness" to describe the essence of a common cookie. Is this brand essence thing going too far? Are we strategists in danger of taking ourselves a little bit too seriously here?

Next page | Not all brands are equally fascinating to the consumer