Until his retirement last year, Jeremy Sampson was the go-to man on branding for South African CEOs and investment bankers, the pioneer and then pundit in quantifying what a brand value. The company he founded, Interbrand Sampson, has come a long way from its modest beginning that involved  explaining why annual reports could be a marketing tool rather than a regulatory requirement. Apart from his views on how to fix Brand SA in the short video above, in our transcribed discussion (you can also listen to the audio by clicking below) Sampson points to examples of companies which “get” branding – and those which don’t – explaining, for instance, why the Investec zebra works so well. He generously shares a lifetime’s experience, providing a masterclass in branding for both marketing experts and the rest of us. – AH Â
ALEC HOGG:    Today, we’re in conversation with Jeremy Sampson, South Africa’s branding guru. Do you like that term?
JEREMY SAMPSON: Alec, if you say it – thank you.
ALEC HOGG:   It is something you’ve worked on for decades and recently, when you decided to leave, it felt like there was a bit of a void in the industry.
JEREMY SAMPSON: It is very interesting. As you know, I came out to South Africa in the late sixties. I think you and I first came across each other probably in the late seventies – magazines and things. Later on, I went back to London for five years and came back. There you were at Absa and immediately, we started working together – so yes, it’s been a long time a-building. From qualifying at art school… I didn’t go to university, but I got a degree at an art school in England and joining the Observer, becoming a card-carrying member of the National Union of Journalists, which upset my father (but that’s history). Then, coming out here especially to start with a lot of annual reports and that sort of thing, so building brick-by-brick, a reputation perhaps over a few decades.
ALEC HOGG:Â Annual reports have changed a lot over the years. If one recalls, when you first started off, something like Remgro would put a couple of pieces of foolscap paper together and that sufficed. But now companies might have gone over the top…
JEREMY SAMPSON: Well, as you say, after foolscap, it was 24 pages, all typed, and that was it. I remember the battles I had with companies like Tiger, to say ‘look, you have all these wonderful products. Why don’t you put pictures in the annual report? After all, you want people to buy your products to make you do better’ and likewise, with Nedbank. Often, I used to actually, go overseas and pick up American annual reports, which were already very visual in those days, bring them back to the local guys and say ‘hey, come on. Let’s do something like this.’
ALEC HOGG: We’re probably as good as anyone in the world when it comes to layout. One of the areas that does concern local investors, is that content is not written from the heart. You’ll get a Jannie Mouton who would write his own Chairman statement at PSG, but he’s an exception.
JEREMY SAMPSON: Well, you’re absolutely right. I still remember going back to those days when someone very close to your heart – Warren Buffett – was already writing Chairman Statements of 14/15 pages so very early on, I started gathering up. I would argue that I had the best collection of annual reports in my office for a time where often, if we had meetings, I could say ‘well, come on. Look at what’s being done around the world. Look at these very clever people’. I also wished at the time, that I’d bought some of his shares, but that’s history.
ALEC HOGG:   And the evolution from there – from working on annual reports and building up that base – to getting into bed with Interbrand…
JEREMY SAMPSON: Well, I was already doing a lot of logos and corporate identities. Nedbank in 1974 I think, and even the SAB beer mug was early eighties or so. Going back to the U.K….being headhunted back in 87 and there, working across the board, I was actually in an old city ad agency. We were doing advertising with people like Rowan Atkinson – doing his first TV commercials – but also, working with the PR group in the company doing investor relations. I guess this was all morphing into what is now the world of communications, corporate communications, and branding. In those days, we hardly used the word ‘branding’. It was ‘fast-moving consumer goods’ and that was it.
ALEC HOGG:   And Anton Rupert – he was the one who always went with brands and clearly, built an amazing business as a consequence.
JEREMY SAMPSON: Well, there’s a lovely quote from him in his book where he actually says
‘accountants take ten years to become competent. Engineers take 20 years to become competent.  Branders take a lifetime to get some competency, and then they tend to retire’.
Unfortunately, I never met the man. I met his son (Johann Rupert) who is equally very clever and very impressive but as you say, what he did back in the fifties and sixties as the father of branding, and understanding the legal consequences as well… In other words, if you don’t have a trademark, you don’t own the brand.
ALEC HOGG:   And the valuations… that is something that you spent a lot of time unpacking because brands are not that easy to value. Where do you start?
JEREMY SAMPSON: Well, ideally, you start with the balance sheet on the brand. You have to look at the financials but you have to look at all the other aspects of it as well.  I think the first valuation we did in South Africa, was Koo and All Gold, which were then part of Langeberg and moving into Tiger. You had to look at the financials. You had to look at all the research. You had to look at Nielsen figures in those days as well (and still do), just to see what the brand was like. When I start talking about a balance sheet on an individual brand, still, not too many people do that.
ALEC HOGG:Â Â Â Where do you start with that balance sheet, though?
JEREMY SAMPSON: Well, that’s where you make some assumptions. For instance, if your brand was FNB, they knew exactly what was going on and therefore, it was reasonably simple but you had to segment the brand and in banking, there’s commercial, retail, and home loans etcetera. You can add it up.
ALEC HOGG:  Yes, but the point being here, that many of the transactions that are done between companies, which do not have lots of assets…the price that is paid is clearly, the difference between the assets and the eventual price is the value of the brand, I guess.  Are you called into those or had you, in the past, been called into those situations to give some insight?
JEREMY SAMPSON: That probably started from the late eighties – that long ago -, where people around the world were realising that when you looked at the market cap of the company, up until the seventies and eighties, 90 percent were tangible assets – hard assets. The buildings and the properties, etcetera. Around the world, that started swinging around. If I say ‘what are the assets of Google, Amazon, or Facebook today’ they’re probably single figures. It’s that minute. This is where we said we have to start measuring what the greater worth of the company is and that’s where it becomes important. You’re quite right, though. Remember, when we first looked at Absa and we valued Absa three times, you look at home loans. Home loans is a brand, which was worth virtually nothing because all the business came through the retail side. Likewise, the insurance side, which was highly profitable in those days and probably still is, but it was all business that was fed through to it. In other words, the brand wasn’t that important in those sectors but obviously, the main area (as it still is today) is the retail brand.
ALEC HOGG:   Who’s doing it well in South Africa?
JEREMY SAMPSON: A good question… When you look around, a lot of people say that banks (and you know them as well as I do) are all, very much the same. I think Michael Jordaan did break through the clutter a couple of years ago, but what’s been happening the last year since he left? They’ve already had the problems of Steve and things like that, so it’s interesting to see. Have they lost momentum? Absa seemed to be mired in ‘are they Barclays and do they know who they really are?’. After all, every other part of Absa apart from retail is now Barclays. Then you look at Standard Bank, which has been pretty rock solid, although it also has its problems of branding in Africa. Is it Standard Charter or is it Standard Bank?
ALEC HOGG:Â Or Stanbic in some place.
JEREMY SAMPSON: And Stannic. I went through an annual report once, I found 30 different names, starting with s-t-a-n, and that’s where it’s very confusing and very messy. This is where branding impacts on the business strategy.
ALEC HOGG:   What about something like Investec? I say that because I was recently in London in Gresham Street and as you walk into Investec, you know its Investec because they have a huge zebra (see right) standing in the foyer. They’ve really embraced that, haven’t they?
JEREMY SAMPSON: I think they have and this is where they’ve had a Director of Marketing, who came out of consultancy 15 or so years ago. He’s been there all along. He’s had the support of top management, so you have that pneumonic of the zebra, as you say. I’m just amazed how much money they spend on sport sponsorship. You watch England’s test matches and Investec’s there. Cricket. Rugby. All these things.
ALEC HOGG:Â Â Â Why would they do that, and is it a good investment?
JEREMY SAMPSON: Well, they obviously think so. Being a bank, I’m sure they have lots of metrics in place so they’re measuring it all the time. After all, Chief Executives, accountants, and bankers are often very critical of the marketing function/sponsorship function so they want to know that they’re getting the bang for their buck and I’m sure they are. I think it’s interesting, following Investec you’re seeing Vitality i.e. Discovery, also going a similar route on sport sponsorship overseas. Obviously, it’s helping them and breaking through the clutter.
ALEC HOGG:Â Â Â What are the metrics that they might be using there to make sure that it does give them the return?
JEREMY SAMPSON: Well, I remember we valued MTN about 18 months before the soccer World Cup in 2010 and then we valued it four months afterwards, and so we knew exactly how much money they’d spent, which was a horrifyingly high figure in American Dollars. As you can imagine, FIFA is more about banking almost, than anything else. Looking at the figures of MTN, and how they had done around the 22 countries that they traded in, how business had gone, and even looking at some of the competitors as well in their markets, to see that it was very worthwhile for them. It really positioned them as a global brand.
ALEC HOGG:Â Â Â Jeremy, take us a little bit forward now to the decision to leave full-time employment, of the company you founded.
JEREMY SAMPSON: I think we all have different chapters in our lives. That’s the way I see it and I guess I’m of an age where I hadn’t been doing the day-to-day running of the business over the last couple of years. This is where one actually looks around and thinks ‘well, should we be smelling the roses or are there other areas’. I think that whilst branding is a pervasive term, almost… After all, you – Alec Hogg – are a brand. A person’s a brand. People…all these things are brandable now, which wasn’t the case if we’d had this conversation 20 or so years ago.
ALEC HOGG:   But you’re not 84 – Warren Buffett’s 84. He still tap-dances to work. He still does what he’s done for the last 50 years.
JEREMY SAMPSON: Well, I still intend tap-dancing. Don’t worry. It’s interesting, already. The responses, the people, and people knocking on doors. This is where… What is branding today? I know exactly, the mainstream that Interbrand does, but there are lots of related areas. You know, again, from your world. Is it public relations? Is it reputation management? Do you have strategy? Corporate communications. There’s research thrown in those and some advertising. All these things now relate to the brand and this is where I think one needs to have an understanding often, of all these different facets. It frees me up to do other things, look at other things, and still, maintain a presence with Interbrand.
ALEC HOGG:   What about public service? Surely, Brand South Africa is not where it was. Brand Jacob Zuma could do with a bit of assistance.
JEREMY SAMPSON: Well, again, you’re absolutely right and I think the political parties (especially in this country) need a lot of help. The key individuals… I would love to be able to speak to some of the leaders in this country and say ‘why did you say that in a public forum’. Not just talking to (with respect) Alec Hogg and it’s going around South Africa… What you’ve said, if you’ve spoken to Alec Hogg, and it’s going around the world… People, local officials who say ‘don’t worry about Fitch’. You and I know that is absolutely crass. This is where there’s a certain naivety so again, perhaps in my elder years – if I can put it gently – you’re right when you say that Warren Buffett is 84. Seventy is meant to be the new 50, type of thing. In Davos, when you’re there in a week’s time, I’m sure you’ll find a lot of people well up into their seventies and eighties, especially Americans. They seem to revere people with experience much more, than sometimes in other parts of the world.
ALEC HOGG:   One of the stars of Davos is George Soros (right), who is now deep into his eighties. I think he’s even past Buffett’s age, but sprightly, bright-eyed, and still wanting to change the world. Do you want to change the world?
JEREMY SAMPSON: I still have an appetite for things – absolutely. I’ve always said that you have to use your experience and your knowledge, and that’s a certain wealth that everyone has but you have to stay relevant. We’re living in very exciting times. South Africa’s in very exciting times – just the effect of digital and global – and I think you and I still have the appetite to help, work, and stay involved in that but we have to stay relevant. It’s a word I often use. Start drifting away and losing your relevancy, and that’s the end of you. This is where we have to actually, blend together what’s happening today with the knowledge from the past.
ALEC HOGG:   You mentioned digital and I’d like to end off there because that is an area, which many Chief Executives of major companies in South Africa don’t have a clue about. You could probably count on one hand the number of CEO’s who have Twitter accounts, for instance. What is needed to drag these fellows (and they are mostly fellows) kicking and screaming into the 21st century?
JEREMY SAMPSON: Look, when you look at things like fortune…when it measures the Top 500 and it measures the top companies to work for etcetera, reputation branding are crucial areas today. They’re not just the major value of a lot of companies. This is what impacts on the Stock Exchange as well. I even know some senior CEO’s (they’re retired now) who don’t use a cellphone.  You think of political leaders. The leaders of Iran: do they have cellphones? Yet, they have a population just like South Africa – 50 percent under the age of 23 or so – and these people will become dinosaurs, so you’re absolutely right. Here in South Africa, people like Woolworths have taken a lot of flack over the last couple of years about being slow to respond/not having their finger on the pulse and this should be a lesson to everyone, to learn. That starts with the CEO.
That doesn’t mean to say the CEO has to tweet all the time, but you and I know that if you communicate with someone like Martin Sorrell at WPP, he will respond within a matter of a couple of hours. Whether he has a team of people – and I believe, he does –, that’s not the point. He is responding as Martin Sorrell and there are a lot of Chief Executives today who are actually, very poor communicators.
ALEC HOGG: And also, a lot of media personalities who are extremely powerful in that respect. Take Gareth Cliff for instance; who’s approaching 500,000 Twitter followers. If he goes out there and says something, imagine a stadium of half-a-million people.
JEREMY SAMPSON: Well, that’s the point and this is where the agility and the speed of response needed today, is so fast. You can put something on YouTube and it’s around the world. Didn’t someone like Mark Twain say ‘send a rumour around the world and before you actually respond to it, it’s already gone around the world’? He was saying that over 100 years ago. Today, its milliseconds and it’s gone. It’s out. You can never get it back in the bag, as it were. This is where you have to respond. You have to play to those rules. Everyone has an opinion today. Whether that’s legitimate or not, that’s by the by. Just looking at the terrible things that went on in Paris yesterday, the main source of interest was coming from Twitter. It was beating a lot of the major stations. Looking at some Sky and some CNBC, it was behind the curve. Yes, it caught up later on, but this is where Twitter is so powerful, has its finger right on the pulse, and it’s happening now.
ALEC HOGG: Instant communication: a threat or perhaps a support, for branding. The father of branding in South Africa, Jeremy says, is Anton Rupert. Well, the doyenne of branding today is Jeremy Sampson – off on a new adventure after leaving the company he founded, Sampson Interbrand De Villiers
