By Wayne Deakin, global principal creative at Wolff Olins

I’ve recently returned from the wonderful, dynamic city of Busan, South Korea, having been invited to do a keynote at Mad Stars on design and brand experience entitled Don’t believe the hype – Rethink experience, a provocation to creatives, brands and business to re-examine their tried and tested approaches to brand building.

Mad Stars – an advertising festival that’s been running for over 15 years, with a slight pause during the Covid pandemic – was previously billed as Ad Stars. It kicked off again this year in person, in a new form and with a new title. The ‘M’ was added to reflect a widening of focus, given the fact that the ways our industry can connect and sell have got far broader. This made perfect sense to me.

Reinvention is the word that spring to mind when I think about this international ad festival – not only the award show itself, but also the venue, the food, the content, the music… indeed, the rise of the ‘Korean Wave’ is as interesting as it is exciting. Like me, you might already be a fan of South Korean content and storytelling. Certainly, we’re living in a time when fashion and design are being heavily their influenced by this North Asian country.

I walked away from Mad Stars and from Korea with an even deeper appreciation for the culture and the speed of reinvention happening there. And it got me thinking about that word – let’s call it the R word – that too often creates fear in our minds.

Everyone – student or professional, corporate CEO/CMO, non-profit organisation or government – needs to be thinking about reinvention as we move into the troubled economic times that look set to lie ahead of us. Brands such as Apple, Google, Nike and Telsa think in these terms all the time. But this doesn’t mean throwing away the old for the sake of the new. It’s not done on a whim. It’s about being action-focused and thinking about awakening emotions; thinking in human terms to enable us to laser-target on what it is that connects us.

These aforementioned brands, like the Korean wave itself, are building on pre-existing assets, not throwing away. This is key. They’re not changing their core, their values, nor their vision. They are thinking human first. They don’t focus on telling people how great they are, but instead on showing them at the point where brand and experience meet the consumer. It’s about a mindset shift, a process of evolving.

But it’s not good enough to make a change and then sit back and relax. What’s more, silo thinking still gets in the way of your brand.

For any organisation or economy, the need to stay ahead and be forward facing is a prerequisite if you want to stay relevant and front of mind, or indeed, in business. So while strategies some 20 years ago aimed to outsource production – seemingly a good idea at the time – today, taking this approach can mean a business or a brand is often unable to innovate nor even compete against younger, more agile models which control more of the end-to-end process. Too many corporations are encountering complications when trying to define their perceived competitive advantage today as consumers change their behaviours and rules change. They may have transformed from analogue to digital, but are they reinventing things that need rethinking, month by month?

Reinvention is a moving muscle that needs exercising. Apple might not reinvent the iPhone with every new model, but within the mix there’s a new approach to UI or a new way to tell stories or a feature which creates buzz and relevance and that makes it feel of interest and fresh. Similarly, Nike doesn’t reinvent most of its shoes, but it reinvents enough to create a point of difference to tell a good story and stay true to the vision of empowering the athlete within. In this way, reinvention is a design thinking approach that means putting energy into rethinking something within the mix.

Yet in western society, we sometimes get too caught up in the perception of the word as meaning a complete 100% change; sweeping aside the old for the new. In fact, it’s about a shift of approach or a pivot – such as choosing black and white when everyone else is focused on colour. It doesn’t have to be 100% complete change. Weirdly – It’s like changing the style of your hair: You feel new and reinvented. It’s not about a complete overhaul and forgetting who you are. Rather, it’s about making smart and decisive choices.

Take what’s going on in the LA food scene, with second-generation Korean Angelenos chefs and entrepreneurs who have taken inspiration from other nations’ food styles but then reinvented the familiar to be not so familiar and cool. For a new LA generation, kimchi goes with tacos. It wasn’t a case of starting again but a case of adding to or stretching an approach to their advantage.

There are clear parallels when it comes to brand building. Today, a brand ought not to be static or fixed. While brands need to be mindful of their core at all times, they also need to stretch both in terms of their design and in the ways they connect with their customer. This is not about adhering to rigid guidelines but rather a set of fluid possibilities and opportunities that show where they can play to win and bring more relevance. Something as simple as tweaking a small piece of UI can make a brand feels fresh if you get the story right. It’s about working from the customer or the audience backwards; of working out the points of intersection which create meaning.

So, as harder times hit, it will be interesting to see who just cuts cost and looks inward and who instead takes a reinvention mindset and shifts people and investment to succeed. As was brilliantly evident in South Korea, brands and business need to be tweaking and thinking with a less defensive approach as times get tougher; embracing an end to end mindset which welcomes opportunities for reinvention.