Michael Campion: How can brands play with perfection and imperfection in order to increase their desirability?‍

Bob Sheard: We respect good brands, we love great brands, we respect perfection, but we fall in love with imperfection. When things are perfect they're a bit out of reach, like the gods. When they're imperfect, they become more human and become within reach. We can see ourselves and our own imperfections reflected in those imperfections.

So in the sporting arena, when you see Djokovic, who by any metric is one of the best athletes living today in the world, certainly one of the best tennis players. He is a metronome of athletic and tennis perfection and you've got to feel sorry for him when he looks up into the audience at the end of winning a Grand Slam and you can see in his eyes and he's thinking, 'why am I not loved?'. And it's because we can't get close to him, because he's this metronomic expression of physical perfection and sporting perfection. Yet he's won far less Grand Slams, but we saw in John McEnroe the human frailties, frailties of character that were writ large, that came to the surface. And in seeing his imperfections we could see our own imperfections in him and we love him. And so in that example we can see how we respect perfection but we love imperfection. That's so powerful and so important for brands.

It helped us when we developed the Levi's brand because we were able to say to Levi's 'you are one of the world's best designers of imperfection'. As your genes elegantly decay, they reveal imperfections. They reveal the character, the biography of the wearer. They reveal the character of the fabric, the character of the people that made the product, connected to the character of the user of the product and that really took us to a point where we could say you wear other people's jeans but you live in Levi's, where that's really important on other brands you can see a brand that's sadly no more, but the original Defender for Land Rover. Many of the people that loved that product would tell you about all the stuff that didn't work on it, how it was an uncomfortable ride, how the clutch was too stiff, how there's nowhere to put your elbow. But they loved the brand, they loved the product because of its imperfections. They accommodated those and they became part of its mythology.

When we worked with Team Sky and they were going through some difficulties during the Bradley Wiggins affair and we were able to say look, yes, this is serious. But actually the consumer and the general public are seeing some of the frailties, are seeing some of the vulnerabilities, they are starting to understand some of the difficulties that you're actually becoming slightly less godlike and slightly more human like, and this is an opportunity to turn huge respect into love and affection. And, as they're now into Grenadier and Ineos, I think that you can see that that's there, so it's really important, I think, that people understand the difference between striving for perfection and actually accepting imperfection, and not only is it a very important aspect and lesson in brand design, it's just a very important lesson in life.

Michael Campion: Definitely, Definitely. An important lesson in life and listening to you talk about you know Djokovic and Makinro. For me it was always that Agassi, Andre Agassi versus Pete Sampras dynamic. I loved Agassi, absolutely adored the way he played, but he was imperfect and he was a bit wild and tempestuous sometimes, but he was a fighter and he's so scrappy and that's why we loved him, didn't we? Whereas Pete Sampras was just serve and volley, metronomic perfection. He was a great player. Everyone respects him, but you fell in love with Agassi and I think I've been guilty in the past, certainly some of the brands I've worked with. I know about chasing perfection and you see it now that the consumer is a bit too savvy, the modern consumers too savvy, and they can very quickly pick up on those brands that are presenting an overly polished veneer and overly, you know, artificial constructs in their social media channels. Is this something you're seeing with this desire for authenticity in terms of marketing and communications from brands?

Bob Sheard: I just see it as being a humanity thing. The humanity bends towards truth and when a brand tries to present a highly polished veneer, I think we start to see through it if it conflicts with our understanding of the truth of that brand, and that's where it becomes dangerous.