Building a career in the arts is not easy. Great work and outstanding performance is not enough: you have to be considerate and smart about how you put yourself and your work out there in the world. Certified Brand The Change facilitator Ad Pontier (38), from the Netherlands, challenges fine arts students to think like brand strategists, and to re-think what branding is and can be along the way. He brings the Brand The Change method to renown universities like the HKU University of the Arts Utrecht, and combines it with a wealth of other tools and methods to create his own unique curriculum. I recently spoke to Ad about his practice as a teacher, the tools, and his journey to develop his own unique approach to brand building.

AM: Branding and fine arts are strange bedfellows. Tell me more.

AP: If you see the world through branding, you tend to understand it better. The common belief that good ideas will always sell themselves is unfortunately not always true. Understanding the power of branding and how it works has fascinated me for a long time. The impact of it is so profound that it’s astonishing that while marketing, economics and communication studies thrive, branding is not yet a study subject on its own in higher education.

Especially young creative artists like fashion designers, musicians and animators are very good at their craft but need help getting their work out in the world, with branding being the missing link to getting the recognition their art deserved. In my search for a method, I found the book en tools from ‘brand the change’ are giving a perfect overview of analysing other brands and being able to start your own. The aim for the next couple of years is to reach even more students.

AM: How will a stronger brand help young artists?

AP: I speak to a lot of people who, after finishing school, are having trouble ‘selling’ their ideas or work. Schools are very good at providing their students with knowledge and skills for a certain profession, but little attention is paid to how these young professionals can find their place in their field of work. A strong brand will give them a head start! 

AM: What does your process look like?

What makes a piece of art stand out or even be exceptional? Understanding and looking at a brand is not so different from valuing a work of art. It can be very personal, but experts can agree on what is good, or what ‘works’. 

By using the same mechanism to understand art, I let students take a close look at small and bigger, well-known brands. I might ask them to go to a fast-food chain or their favourite coffee place and write down everything that defines this place as a brand.

As a teacher, my classes stretch a period of a few months. I also run short workshops and everything in between. My favourite is the two-week-long ‘pressure cooker’, where a class of 16 students works full time for two weeks straight on the subject of branding. This way of teaching provides the possibility for knowledge exchange that surpasses a series of classes spread throughout the year. 

AM: Can you share a special teaching moment?

AP: I’m always super excited to take my students to Rotterdam on a ‘city safari’. In small groups, they’re set free to explore the concrete jungle of Rotterdam. They come back full of stories of brands they discovered. I am proud when the consensus on what is ‘best on-brand’ isn’t the obvious famous hipster coffee bar, barber or fashion shop. After the last safari, students had to admit that the Italian supermarket Little Italy was most ‘on brand’. From their way of presenting their goods, low-tech, language spoken, ceiling lights: every sense is addressed to make you feel like you are in Italy. 

AM: What is your favourite tool from Brand The Change, and why?

AP: The Brand Thinking Canvas gives a visual clarity on ‘outside-in’ and ‘inside-out’ thinking, which is key to understanding how brands work. Also, I’m amazed at the fact that I don’t have to explain the canvas, because students will start to fill it out by themselves.

More than 500 students have worked with the Brand Thinking Canvas and most of the tools included in the book. 

Brand the Change is the backbone of my course. When students ask for more information on each separate element I refer them to other books, like ‘Friction’ by Jeff Rosenblum, ‘Contrarian Branding’ by Roland van der Vorst and thinkers like Steven van Belleghem, Sasha Strauss, Mark Ritson, Michael Bierut, Marty Neumeier, Clayton Christensen, Adam N. Stone, Wiemer Snijders and documentaries by Douglas Rushkoff about the history and impact of branding.  

AM: How have you made the tools your own?

AP: Everyone has that one teacher that they remember. For me, that was a teacher in Rotterdam who told the class to pick up our chairs and walk outside onto the Erasmus bridge. After we settled outside on the bridge he asked the question if we felt any difference. It was the perfect start of the course experience marketing.

From day one as faculty, I was searching for new ways of teaching and I found them at Stanford D-school, Hyper Island and Kaos Pilots. Using their methodology, which is heavy on design thinking, the focus is more on a combination of play and a focus on attitude, knowledge, and skills.  

AM: Can you share a ‘pro tip’ for working with the Brand Thinking Canvas or any of our other tools?

AP: My best advice would be to convert tools into a physical experience for them to come alive! With the ‘mapping-tool’ I wanted to teach my students about ‘finding the gap in the market principle’. And also making them familiar with some principles of branding like that not only pure facts count but the perception is very important and can be very different between people.

My best advice would be to convert tools into a physical experience

By drawing a big cross on the floor using tape, I create a huge map in the classroom. I have a collection of around 50 soda cans that my wife accidentally almost threw out when she stumbled upon them. Students place them on different axes according to different values such as healthy/non-healthy and cheap/expensive. They have to agree where to put each soda can which leads to entertaining discussions like ‘how healthy is apple juice?’. 

By having multiple rounds in which the axis change they start to see the ‘gap in the market’ principle. My last class found that drinking in the evening with company only has a very limited amount of healthy options, but kombucha fits right in!

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