Imagine there is a way to build a brand that your competitors continually ignore.
Imagine that it is really simple to do – and doesn’t cost a cent more than mediocre brand building.
And imagine it could make your company 5 times more successful.
Well, there is such a way.
It’s called: Don’t Change a Freaking Thing.
I’ve spent 3 decades helping to build some of the most successful brands in Australia- Apple, Freedom Furniture, Bonds, BHP, Telstra.
And I’ve seen almost no company use this method.
Instead they change their campaigns almost every year. They chop and change, chop and change, always trying to do something new and different.
Instead of having the discipline to stick with a brand position and hammer it home for years and years.
But there’s one company that resolutely, obsessively sticks with the same branding.
And on Friday the husband and wife founders made it onto the AFR Rich List, with a combined net worth of $1.3 billion.
Which they achieved in just 13 years.
The company is White Fox.
How did they do it?
Well certainly their gear looks good, but so do the clothes of 100 other fashion companies.
And definitely their online and social media has been excellent – vibrant and direct.
But what are they most famous for? Running the same ad on buses and trams – endlessly.
And when I say the same ads, I mean the ads never deviate from a stunningly simple formula.
The headline never changes: it is just 2 words: ‘White Fox.’
The style never changes. Every ad always has a solid coloured background.
The format never changes- it is either one or two girls wearing the clothes.
And even the girls don’t change! White Fox have been using the same two girls for years. 
So while all the other fashion brands change their advertising every single season, the one company in Australia where the founders became billionaires Don’t Change a Freaking Thing.
And believe me, that would not be easy to do. The White Fox marketing department would have been hugely tempted to do something new, every single year.
But with iron discipline they’ve stuck with the brand format. And ridden that obsession with consistency all the way to the bank.
So what can the rest of us learn from this?
We need to remember that great brands are built by sticking to a positioning. Great brands are not created quickly, they are built brick by brick, over years.
Every time you change your brand positioning, you have to virtually start over again.
And you end up like 90% of the companies which do that.
Invisible.
So if what you’re doing seems to be working, try the radical idea of sticking to it.
For years and years and years.
Don’t be like the sheep who all change their brands every year.
Be the Fox.
– Siimon Reynolds, Chairman
