Extrawurst

The Straight and Narrow

2012-02-01T14:27:00.005+01:00

About twenty years ago, I sat with my Planning colleagues at Saatchis on one of those Awaydays where you reinvent Planning. We had some great ideas - we were going to dispense with going through linear processes and running round in circles, or cycles, and the Brave New World was going to be Quantum Planning. Great in theory, but I suspect that, a couple of decades later, most young Planners at Saatchi - or anywhere else - will still be able to draw you a Planning Cycle but may draw a blank at the suggestion of Quantum Planning.

Maybe we could have done with this new book: No Straight Lines - Making sense of our non-linear world by Alan Moore. I haven't launched into this "book" yet - of which more later - but what I've seen so far promises to be visionary: a new organisational, social and economic model based on a more human-centric, participatory society. Less about process, hierarchy and straight lines and more about networks, humanity and sustainability.

What is particularly interesting is how the "book" presents itself - as a read/write book that is described as both personal and collaborative. "No Straight Lines" is a idea, a way of thinking, which can be discussed, experienced, disputed, built-on, applied and so on through communities and workshops as well as "book" media.

It does sound as if it's worth looking into. But I do sometimes wonder why Quantum Planning never caught on. Maybe the answer is that sometimes you just want to get from A to B. And the best way is along a straight line.

Somewhere to hide?

2012-01-26T12:15:00.004+01:00

Top of the wish list in most customer satisfaction surveys is that companies should behave with honesty and transparency.

It seems a shame that many of the big, largely internet-based companies don't seem to have cottoned on to this one yet. People have a need to know who they are dealing with - that there is something solid behind that virtual presence.

I had a ghastly PayPal experience last summer that I needn't go into except to say that trying to find a postal address for them was next to impossible.

I've been dealing with a large US-based internet services provider this week. They have been doing a lot of things right in terms of customer service: prompt replies, helpful staff, even a personal voice message from the VP or CEO suggesting you email him if you have any trouble.

But I needed their postal address. Could I find it? I searched the website high and low - I googled them...no clear answer.

What have these people got to hide? Not providing a postal address on your website makes people wonder what, exactly, is behind the facade.

David vs. the Amazon

2012-01-20T12:30:00.004+01:00

For years, I loved amazon without really thinking about it. Living out here in Germany, it's invaluable, I teeter in and out of being a Top 1000 reviewer there and I've recently acquired a Kindle.

But there is another view of amazon that I'm becoming increasingly aware of - as the big, bullying monopoly that's killing off real bookshops - especially the cute quirky little independent ones. (By the way, the pic is of Ripping Yarns in Highgate. Never been there, but I must!)

In this article from the Huffington Post, there's some super thinking about what those independent bookshops can do. And it boils down to using your competitive advantage.

Rule 1: Don't play amazon on price - you'll lose

Rule 2: You're local - use it. Be something in the community.

Rule 3: You're real, bricks and mortar - use it. What events could you hold in your store?

Rule 4: You're staffed by human beings who love books, not driven by algorithms - use it!

Let's hope that these Davids fight back and don't go the way of record stores.

Expectations exceeded

2012-01-14T14:03:00.005+01:00

Missions Statements and corporate intent posters are forever blathering on about "exceeding customer expectations," or sometimes it's "over-delivering on". Not something I take much notice of, as usually none of these companies bother to find out what their customers expect, anyway.

Recently, however, I really have had my expectations exceeded, and, boy, does it feel good! A classic example of how a company can right wrongs and then some.

Back in November, Apple recalled its first generation iPod nano, due to a potential flaw in the battery. Annoyingly, this is probably the only gadget in the field of consumer electronics where I've ever been an early adopter in my life - I've had the thing for about 6 years.

I dutifully dug it out and went through Apple's complicated recall policy instructions. OK, the instructions were not so complicated, but it was all a bit of a faff. The packaging didn't turn up when it was meant to, all emails were of the "no reply" variety, a visit to the Apple Store scored a zero on the helpful scale - I began to think I was dealing with PayPal.

But...the arrival this week of a sparkly new clip-on iPod Touch with a massive 8 GB (the old thing was 2 GB, I think), which was immediately grabbed hold of and pronounced as "coo-el" by my 11-year-old more than made up for all that.

Apple, you have exceeded this customer's expectations. Thanks!

Planning by Numbers

2012-01-09T09:10:00.005+01:00

I hear so many complaints these days from all walks of life that essential elements of doing a good job - from personal contact and discussion with colleagues to thorough problem-solving thought - have been taken over by form-filling.

And often the completion of a form means "job done" - end of story. To used that horrible phrase, all the boxes have been ticked.

In the marketing world, there have always been companies who have been more keen on forms and templates than others, but the disease seems to be rampant.

The internet is packed with templates and forms to "enable" you to write a marketing plan, or a communications strategy, or whatever.

And for most of these, you just need to follow the template, copy and paste your own info and - job done.

I'd like to see less dumping and more thinking. More small groups of people sitting in a room together and working out an overall structure. Less delegating of "OK, you guys do Section 3.1.4 to 55.6.3" and more discussion as to the overall picture.

And, once that part of the job is done, to put it into action while there's still time - and stick to it.

Nous is More

2012-01-03T17:10:00.006+01:00

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who is a little weary of the trend forecasters and their oh-so-witty portmanteau designations ("Flawsome" et al). Here is a super post with a link to a very sharp presentation from Richard Huntington of Saatchi & Saatchi.

Mr H is calling for less trendspotting and more real insight - which he rechristens revelation. And I am all for that, but I make one plea. Can we stop talking about "generating insights"? A generator, like this chappie above, churns out something basic, a commodity, in mass, untouched by human hands, let alone emotion.

Real insight is about those uniquely human abilities - intuition, intelligence, empathy. It's about nous, the difference between understanding and information.

I hope, this year, I'll have less cause for Richard Huntington's "guaranteed free of insight" rubber stamp.

All I want for Christmas is...

2011-12-23T10:12:00.003+01:00

I was going to post something deep and meaningful about insights as my last post this year, but then saw this corker on a friend's Facebook wall.

For my non-German-speaking friends, Father Christmas replies to Kevin as follows: "I've no idea what you're talking about. You're getting a book."

Wishing all readers a happy Festive Season and hope you all get what you wish for!

Drinking around

2011-12-19T08:35:00.003+01:00

If you are anything like me, your wallet is probably bulging with silly little loyalty cards from the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, the hairdresser, the chemist, the sandwich shop...

Now, here's an idea that I've seen before, but something about it tickles me. In Singapore, the Be Disloyal card has been introduced to benefit the city's independent cafes. The idea is simple - instead of slavishly frequenting one of those plastic corporate coffee places, you get the opportunity to visit 8 different coffee shops, then go back to the first to claim your free cup (or whatever.)

It's encouraging drinking around, which must be a Good Thing.

And it makes me wonder - which other old marketing chestnuts can I subvert next year?

Beg, steal or borrow - and share

2011-12-13T09:55:00.004+01:00

These days, market research agencies devote a lot of interview time to establishing the potential "buzz" value of a piece of branded communication in their pre-testing as well as tracking studies.

How likely would you be to "share" this on social media?

Would you "like" this on Facebook?

As well as the old standards about "this is an ad I'd talk about with friends."

Sharing, these days, is big business. On the Unruly Media list of "most shared" commercials, The Force for VW has had 4.8m shares - over twice the number of its nearest rival - and 46m views. That's about the size of the population of Spain.

In the Top 5 were also DC Shoes, T-Mobile (twice, with Angry Birds Live and Royal Wedding) and Kia, with Party Rock Anthem.

If you look at the Top 20, and think about the "share" factors of entertaining, informative or useful, it's obvious that entertainment wins hands down. And, sifting through the usual internet suspects - cute kids, celebrities, music, dystopia, cars, apes & gorillas, laser swords and furry creatures - something striking emerges.

Almost everything in the Top 5 is borrowed: from movies, theme parks, games or real events.

Perhaps "borrowed interest" is not such a dirty word any more.

Curiosity killed my free time

2011-12-08T08:50:00.004+01:00

Curiosity, at least in its form of Openness to Experience, is said to be one of the Big Five factors of human personality.

I do wonder sometimes, though, how much of the time I while away chasing information is genuine curiosity and how much could be classified as some sort of morbid addiction.

Years ago, I didn't spend hours in the library poring over encyclopedias unless I had to, for an essay or an exam. Yet, these days, a substantial portion of my day is taken over by googling and Wikipedia-ing, chasing after useless facts and confirming half-lost memories.

I do it because I can. And I don't always feel any better for knowing whatever it was.

Sometimes it feels like a food addiction. It's so easy that it's difficult to stop and, the more you eat, the less satisfied you get. Rather like chomping your way through a packet of Pringles instead of preparing a healthy meal from scratch, laying the table, sitting down and eating in company.

The more I know, the less satisfied I am.

I just hope that there won't be a Pandora- or Bluebeard's wife- style nasty surprise at the end of it.

The dustman and the supermum

2011-12-01T17:16:00.007+01:00

Planners in Germany have a regular spot in the trade magazine New Business, under the title Strategy Corner. The last two articles have interested me, as there seems to be a direct connection between them.

In "The Dustman as Role Model", Bärbel Boy discovers that the public standing of people who work in advertising in Germany is on the bottom rung, below that of politicians and bankers. Cheery stuff. And, what's more, our reputation has worsened over time. Cheerier still is that the dustman is the rising star - well, cheery for dustmen, at least.

And, this week, in "Women - the real economic power", Anne Brit Maier shows how the portrayal of women in advertising has shifted all of a mm or two over the last 50 years. The cliche of Supermum with her baby and laptop is every bit as unrealistic as the perfect Hausfrau of the 1960s.

I think it's telling that both of these women have founded their own Planning agencies and don't work for any of the multi-nationals. Because I'm convinced there is a direct connection between these findings. I expect half the people that were interviewed about reputations were women. As Bärbel Boy points out, there is sometimes a feeling of living in a navel-gazing hermetically-sealed capsule when it comes to German advertising agencies - not all, but many - rather like living in "2nd Life" (what was that?) and about as relevant and interesting to the outside world.

So, come on, German agencies! Over on YouTube, the John Lewis Christmas Commercial from the UK has over 3m clicks and is hotly debated all over Mumsnet and beyond. It's about time we stopped churning out yet more cliches for the dustman's bin.

Entertaining, Interesting and Useful

2011-11-25T10:48:00.004+01:00

In these days of so-called "distraction culture", we are constantly reminded that for branded content to work, it must fulfill at least one - and preferably more - of the three following criteria:

- entertaining

- interesting or informative

- useful

Even in the days when we didn't have so many distractions demanding our time and our attention spans were slightly above that of the average butterfly, I think the same thing was true.

I can still recall many TV commercials from my childhood that were genuinely entertaining, probably more than I can from the last twenty years, although that's possibly a sign of age. Interesting or informative is a little more difficult, although I think many of the classic long-copy print ads fall into that category - there were some great ones on the London Underground platforms.

The useful category had me stumped until I started thinking beyond what was called "advertising" at that time. And then they came, tumbling back into my memory - those often subtly branded items that became part of of everyday life - and, dare I say it, improved it in some little way.

The Be-Ro cookbook, with its recipes for Fairy Cakes and Victoria Sponge. The National Benzole set of "touring maps" of Great Britain - a must for those caravan holidays in Wales or Scotland. And the Lloyds Bank "Black Horse" money box for young savers which apparently evoked many a Godfather joke amongst the bank staff at the time. But - I still hold an account with that bank to this day!

These days, of course, many of the "useful" ideas will be apps rather than something solid and tangible. But if brands can develop digital gizmos that are half as useful as the examples above, it's one way to keep people involved for more than the distraction culture's seven minutes.

Fuzzy Objectives

2011-11-20T13:28:00.004+01:00

I'm sure I am guilty of it as the next person. I'm talking about fuzzy objectives when it comes to developing a brand communications strategy. It's often all too easy to resort to the vague, the wooly, to that that sounds impressive and "high brand" but is, on closer inspection, unspecific and probably not measurable.

Objectives like:

- to strengthen the brand image of being good quality and trusted

- to communicate the brand positioning of uniquely understanding the consumer's needs

- to consolidate perceptions of the value advantage over our competitors.

OK, I don't think I've ever been quite so fuzzy, but you get the idea. So it was very refreshing to read Charlie Snow's commentary on the recent IPA Advertising Effectiveness Awards and see that, even on a relatively small budget, if you think differently, ask the right questions and, most importantly, think specifically instead of in generalities, you can make a difference.

There's the campaign to demobilise Columbian guerrillas in which the right question was "can we change the medium?" and the answer was to bring Christmas to the jungle. And then, a simple idea - can we change the usage occasion? - which worked to get people drinking a traditional bedtime drink, Ovaltine, for a daytime break. Or - can we change the role for advertising? - the Marie Curie Daffodil Appeal did just that by advertising for collectors instead of for donations.

And another commonality between all these ideas is that it's not just about getting people to think differently, or even feel differently, but about behaviour. And as behavioural change is often the trigger to perceptual change, rather than the other way around, it's no wonder that these ideas create effects that are observable.

So let's consign the wool and the Fuzzy Felt to the needlework basket and think about the active, the specific, the behavioural - and not just when the budget is limited.

The Box of Delights

2011-11-14T12:30:00.003+01:00

Shopping these days has, for me, evolved into a somewhat functional, even utilitarian process. The DHL van turns up sometime in the early afternoon, bearing its cargo of brown packages from dot coms and dot de's with names entirely written in lower case.

Sometimes the packages are for me, but usually they are for neighbours. But they all look alike, distinguished only by the inscription on the address label. There's nothing unexpected, nothing inspired, just a sense of mild annoyance when you've been out and will have to make the trek to the Post Office with its strange idea of opening hours, which you can never remember.

Now contrast that with dusk on a late afternoon in mid-November and a stroll along Piccadilly and up Regent Street. The Christmas lights are still freshly turned on and there are long-legged elves outside Fortnum and Mason, causing a hold-up to the pedestrian traffic. From the childhood memories of Hamleys to the 21st century hi-tech of Uniglo it's a world of glitter and magic, enchantment and surprise.

In the same way that rumours of the death of TV have been exaggerated, so too has the need for wonder, for sensory participation been played down in the progress of retailing. In the end, media are not replaced - we simply add more layers of experience. It's not either:or. We still watch TV, albeit with a laptop to add extra texture and layers of meaning.

And as Christmas approaches, we still need the allure of Santa's grotto and the sensory carnival of Aladdin's cave.

Doin' it for myself

2011-11-10T11:05:00.004+01:00

Advertising agencies are notoriously bad at doing their own marketing. With one or two notable exceptions, who grab a unique bit of something and stick with it, most of the positionings and marketing efforts adopted are pretty much interchangeable. It's rather like those doctors who are useless at diagnosing their own ailments.

Now I am in the position where I must roll up my sleeves and market something that I have produced. Without getting into a virtual game of charades, it's a book.

And what I've discovered - or maybe knew all along - is that having the ideas, putting together the theory, the grand plan is the easy bit. Where I know I am going to lose sleep is over the nitty-gritty. How much does that cost, exactly? Should I get that set up before I - or? Which bits need to be linked to what, and in what order?

Maybe all Planners should spend more time doing rather than thinking.

What's the big idea, then?

2011-11-03T15:13:00.005+01:00

The Big, Media-Neutral Idea.

How often do clients ask agencies for it?

And how often are they then disappointed when the agency fails to deliver?

Robert Senior of Saatchi & Saatchi Fallon Group makes a very good point or two in Campaign, to quote: "There are very few big ideas - and the really big ones had no sense of their destiny at birth." It's quite true - huge oak trees don't just appear overnight. His advice to clients when assessing work is, therefore: "Ask not 'Is this a big idea?' but 'Could it become big?'"

On the media-neutral question, my son asked me recently which came out first, the Star Wars films or the Star Wars books? Star Wars started life, as far as I know, as a film (or at least a screenplay), but it didn't have to. It's a media-neutral idea, along with Pirates of the Caribbean, which started life as a ride. Either of these could have started life as a game.

Just because an idea comes attached to a particular medium when you first see it does not detract from its media-neutrality.

Looking forward to an acorn or two in the next agency meeting!

A Good Gestalt

2011-10-28T18:16:00.003+02:00

I'm probably a bit slow on the uptake for this one as far as Germany goes, but thought my UK and US friends might like to see a lovely example of branding done right.

I love it when every bit of a brand - the idea, the product, the name and the packaging - is outstanding in itself, but when it all fits together so beautifully, you get an extra dimension to the wow!

These drinks are both organic and Fair Trade and the names are knockout - LemonAid and ChariTea. Apparently this stroke of genius in nomenclature came to one of the young founders of the LemonAid company in a 3-in-the-morning Eureka! moment.

More about the drinks can be found on the company website here under the slogan "The Liquid Revolution."

Hope that the company continues to push its boundaries and, meanwhile, cheers to the two social entrepreneurs behind it!

Blistering Brandbuilders!

2011-10-23T20:22:00.004+02:00

I'm all a-gog for the new Steven Spielberg/Peter Jackson film of Tintin, which opens here this week. It's a project that's been in the offing ever since Spielberg first laid eyes on the Tintin comics thirty years ago (what a deprived childhood the poor man must have led.)

Apart from the film living up to its expectations, my main hope is that Tintin does not become brand/blandified, in the way that other children's characters have. I'm talking about the process by which a once quirky character has all its edges filed down to a uniform "soft play" surface which then takes over the world via pyjamas, rucksacks, reduced-sugar yoghurts and "sleepover" nappies. Thomas the Tank Engine and friends are one major culprit, but the prize for the most successful blandification must surely go to Winnie the Pooh. For a Bear of Very Little Brain, he certainly knows how to make money.

But with Tintin, I feel that there are just too many edges, nooks and crannies for comfort. Too many bits which probably don't warrant much digging and delving. Too much of an un-PC, non-bland nature.

In the end, my advice to Tintin is this - don't let them cut off your quiff, young man!

Planning and Propaganda

2011-10-13T10:52:00.003+02:00

Years back, reading through the awards for Planning, you were rarely treated to a story more world-changing than a cheeky competitor knocking the brand leader for birdseed off its perch. Of course, this is what our job is all about and what keeps us and our clients happy. And there's nothing much wrong with that.

But occasionally, when reading through an award paper for a charity, say, we might be tempted to feel that our talents could be put to better use for the greater good of humanity than pushing birdseed.

This year, the Grand Prix in the APG Creative Strategy Awards has been won by Colombia-based Lowe-SSPS for their work with the Colombian Ministry of Defence entitled Operation Christmas - a campaign to encourage guerillas to demobilise.

The insight was that even hardcore guerillas, like all human beings, are most susceptible to a message to lay down their arms at Christmas - and an amazing campaign that resulted in 331 guerillas demobilising was created.

A great achievement, without doubt, but probably worth a pause for thought. Propaganda became a dirty word in the course of the 20th century, largely through its very effective use by those on the "wrong side."

It's doubtful that a recruiting campaign for the guerillas, however effective, would win any prizes.

Beautifully simple thinking - inside the box

2011-10-09T18:22:00.004+02:00

There's a new book out about the Saatchi driving philosophy: "Brutal Simplicity of Thought."

As Maurice Saatchi says, "(to achieve the impossible)...you will need a deep distaste for waffle, vagueness, platitudes and flimflam - a strong preference to get to the point."

I'm definitely with that, but I've often wondered about whether the phrase is "brutal simplicity" or "beautiful simplicity." OK, "brutal" is a better word for a copywriter. But one of the examples he gives, of the Central Park blind man whose takings are much improved as he changes his hand-scrawled sign from "I am blind" to "It is spring and I am blind" shows a transformation from the brutally obvious to the beautifully human.

On that note, I've discovered a clever new brand, Scandango. They can take a shoebox full of your old photos and scan them, for 50 GBP. The idea, the logo and the website are simple, fun, human and practical.

Everything fits beautifully.

If social media were really such a revolution, wouldn't we be making a song and dance of it?

2011-10-06T10:07:00.003+02:00

In the last week, I've noticed more than a little social media fatigue. Not only have a couple of bloggers that I read written about "disciplining" their social media behaviour, but I've also seen the phenomenon of "Facebook Suicide" - in dubious taste, but complete with note.

Of course, it's people of my sort of age doing all this. As far as I can tell, younger people just get on with it and use social media as an everyday part of their lives. A teenager hasn't known a world without Facebook, so they are not going to make a song and dance about it. Which leads me on to my theory that, if you want to know what's really important in the lives of young people, listen to their music.

Going back to the days when a career in account planning wasn't even a twinkle in my eye, there were a few songs about that made references to media or means of communication. Hanging on the Telephone, Video killed the Radio Star or that awful thing with the guy whose girlfriend is killed in a car crash and he calls her answerphone to hear her voice one last time.

And these days, although the artists may have risen to fame via MySpace (what was that?) or use a bit of textspeak in their lyrics, I haven't heard any of these songs:

Digital killed the Video Star

Facebook Love

I'm in love with a German blogger

Every breath you take, I'll be following your Twitter stream

No, rather predictably, the songs are about the joy and pain of love or partying on Saturday night.

Just as they were when communication involved a handful of 2p pieces and a phone box that stank something rotten.

What's your line?

2011-09-30T10:51:00.005+02:00

When I was a very little girl, we had a Sainsbury's in the High St. I still remember clearly the decoration and tiling and the store interior, a broad corridor with counters at either side where shop assistants would carve ham, cut cheese with wire or simply hand you a packet of Sainbury's own brand cornflakes.

A few years later, Sainbury's opened a supermarket in the new town centre. I recall the simple but striking graphics of their own label range - from the cola to the golden syrup.

It's interesting to see that Sainbury's have changed their endline from "Try something new today" to "Live well for less". To put that in context, I have pinched a list of Sainsbury endlines from this article.

SAINSBURY'S SLOGANS

1882: Quality perfect, prices lower
1918: Sainsbury's for quality, Sainsbury's for value
1945: It's clean, it's fresh at Sainsbury's
1959: Good food costs less at Sainsbury's
1991: Sainsbury's - everyone's favourite ingredient
1997: Fresh food, fresh ideas
1998: Value to shout about
1999: Making life taste better
2005: Try something new today
2011: Live well for less

It's amazing to think that the endline that is most familiar to me was knocking around for 32 years. And I think that the reason for its longevity was that it's more than an advertising endline, tagline or jingle. It is more a statement of what the brand is about - a brand slogan, if you like, than simply a neat summary line of the advertising campaign.

I'm a bit sorry to see the "try something new today" line being ushered out so quickly. As I understood it, this was more than a catchline for the advertising - it's actually a positioning for Sainsbury's which is based on a clear commercial strategy of increasing the average spend per shop, and casts Sainsbury's in the role of the shop where you find interesting and inspiring new ideas - more competitive, I would have thought, than yet another creative iteration of the value equation.

Or maybe the ad agency just decided to act out their own slogan.

Green Te

2011-09-25T09:16:00.003+02:00

I'm pleased to see the supermarket Tegut taking up the "Taste the Waste" banner. In the September issue of the customer magazine, Marktplatz, there are features on the film and the supporting book, as well an interview with the filmmaker Valentin Thurn.

Recipes using leftovers, tips about what sell-by and best-by dates really mean and examples of what the retailer does to minimise the problem are a good start. But the most important job to be done, along with optimising the supermarket planning and logistics system is to change people's expectations.

We're used, in these instant gratification days, to being able to get anything we want, at almost any time of day. That will have to change. And there is some interesting data to show that it may be amongst the young people that the biggest change is needed. Tegut commissioned a survey that asked, amongst other things, what people do with food that's past the sell-by date. Do they look at it to see if it's still usable, or automatically chuck it away?

Overall, 17% automatically chuck it out, but this figure was only 13% amongst the 50+ group and 22% amongst 14-29s.

Maybe this is one area where the younger generation can't blame the older ones for having messed up the world.

Dealing with modernity

2011-09-20T15:09:00.005+02:00

I've just read a speech which I think is a superbly constructed and argued case for the internet's impact on all our lives in the early 21st century. It's from Ben Hammersley, editor of Wired and was given to the Information Assurance Advisory Council in the UK.

The speech is not just an excellent statement of truths - such as that the internet is the dominant platform for life in the 21st century, but also makes provocative statements which will ring true for many people in the light of politician's reactions to the UK riots a few weeks ago. For example: "The world is currently run by a generation whose upbringing has left them intellectually unable to be (sic) deal with modernity."

Ouch.

As well as politicians, advertising agency bosses, please take note.

But, although an excellent speech, there may be one or two areas where Hammersley's obvious zeal for the wonder of the internet lets him get carried away. For all that he sees his 30-something generation as a "translator function" between those digital natives (in the most extreme form, a toddler who tries to use a TV as a touchscreen) and those no-hoper 50+s who are unable to "deal with" modernity, he should perhaps remember from which generation all the internet and digital pioneers came!

And finally, I did love one comment on the speech, from a Tim Green, which I'll quote:

" Excellent stuff. My only comment would be to disagree with your contention that “The internet isn’t a luxury addition to life; for most people, knowingly or not, it is life.”

I think this is an over-exaggeration of the significance of the online space. We shouldn’t forget that people post restaurant reviews because they like eating, watch youtube because they want to play the guitar better and join dating sites because they like kissing other humans.

Real life will always win, for all but the most insane anoraks. The Internet just gets us there faster."

Well said.

Green Guide

2011-09-15T08:21:00.004+02:00

Back when I was in the Girl Guides, we collected badges. There were badges to be awarded for anything from orienteering to childcare and, once awarded, the badges were carefully sewn onto your uniform sleeve (particularly neatly if you had the needlework one!). In some ways, having the badge and being able to display it gave you more of a kick than the possessing the knowledge or skill to get the badge in the first place.

I'm pleased to see that the supermarket REWE has launched a green initiative, Hallo Erde! I've noticed already from the UK that supermarkets, of all retailers, are probably best-placed to lead the way to sustainable shopping. They are bang in the middle of local communities and supply one of the most basic needs of human beings, regardless of age, class or tastes.

Hallo Erde! is, luckily, not accompanied by a glossy TV film banging REWE's own drum about how much they do for the planet, but is rather a collection of smaller and bigger initiatives, many of which have been running for years, untrumpeted. There's lots of good stuff here - and plenty to participate in, including a free packet of wild flower seeds (although, REWE, it's not really the season, is it?).

However - and I have noticed that this is the way a lot of green initiatives are going - looking through the brochure, I was reminded of my girl guide days. There are badges and logos everywhere. PRO PLANET, MSC, Fairtrade, NATURECotton, GOTS, Blauer Engel, Cotton Made in Africa, Die Taflen, DGNB...not to mention 30+ logos from partner brands plus those from all the other REWE Group companies.

In the end, thinking, acting and living sustainably should be more about getting the stamp or sewing on the badge.

Waste not, want not

2011-09-09T11:10:00.004+02:00

A new documentary film, Taste the Waste, has just opened in Germany. It's about the subject of food wastage across the globe, or more specifically, amongst the Western countries.

The trailer is full of alarming data-based statements: for example, the food that's wasted in Europe could feed the hungry people of the world twice over.

What's interesting about this issue is that it's one where everyone can immediately take action, in their own home. And, on top of that, it's an area where it shouldn't take the food manufacturers and retailers too much effort to stop being part of the problem and start being part of the solution.

I still have one of Pret a Manger's founding principles in mind - at the end of the day, all unsold sandwiches are given away to the homeless.

So maybe the big supermarkets and food companies can turn their attention away from "3 for 2s" and BOGOFS, grotesquely large packs and silly sell-by dates and focus on this issue instead.

In the long run, only good can come of it.

Everyday magic

2011-09-05T10:06:00.005+02:00

At our most deluded in this industry, we think of advertising as being a dream factory - producing spectacular works of high art that will inspire and uplift to the heavens.

But sometimes that's difficult when your client makes toilet cleaner.

However, when you think about it, most of the products and services that we do end up planning and creating for are everyday for some people. Even that premier car brand, which might be out of reach for most, is the family car for someone. Or the luxury spa and fitness club will become part of the everyday routine for its members.

Sometimes by focussing too much on dreams means we lose touch with the everyday and its own magic. Every now and then, a book comes out that deals with just that: the history of everyday life. There was "Queuing for Beginners" by Joe Moran a few years back, and I'm currently getting stuck into Bill Bryson's "At Home".

And if anyone doubts that there is magic in the everyday, think about the fascination of discovering an old newspaper in a trunk in the attic - the small ads, what was on TV, the minutiae of daily life. Or that section in the Science Museum about everyday life - or the Mass Observation archive.

While there's always room for the spectacular and fantastic in this business, some of the best advertising has always focussed in on the amazing fascination of the everyday.

Jumping on the oompah-bandwagon

2011-08-29T20:57:00.004+02:00

We're not out of August yet, but the Oktoberfest is already banging on the door, dressed in a jaunty Dirndl and bearing an unfeasible number of Mass beer glasses.

The celebration of Germany's most famous Fest is not confined to Munich. Increasingly, brands, especially retailers, are cashing in on the act. A few years ago, this was restricted to a little display of tinned Weisswurst and a few Bavarian-pattern paper napkins in the local supermarket. But these days, it's big business and - like Christmas - starts earlier every year.

If you're looking for something to wear, then look no further than C&A where the selection of Dirndls ranges from the matronly and Landfrauisch to the simply saucy - definitely the place to kit out the entire family.

And Tchibo have a fine selection of cooking gadgets and gimmicks from a kitschy Bambi timer to some seriously professional knifery to help you recreate the Wies'n in the comfort of your very own home. All demonstrated by charming Trachten-clad models, including a Japanese couple to add to the authenticity.

But maybe the best selection I have seen this year so far is from the pet superstore Fressnapf. From comfy Herzilein cushions to a smart checkered collar, the furry friends don't need to miss out on the fun, either.

We are what we are

2011-08-25T09:57:00.005+02:00

One sign, I think, when a brand or an industry is in danger of losing its way is when it starts trying to be something it's not. Instead of holding fast to its original purpose, it grabs onto a rising star and tries to fly heavenwards.

Although there may be debates about how accurately the world of 1960s Madison Avenue is portrayed in MadMen, I expect no-one in those agencies at the time had any doubt about what their job or the role of the company that they worked for was. Ditto in London in the 1980s. We worked for an advertising agency and we were proud to do so.

These days, of course, advertising is a dirty word and agencies try to position themselves as anything other, trying desperately not to use the "a" word, rather like the game of Taboo. For the last twenty years or so, my role, the Account Planner, has adopted various personas removed from the world of advertising to try and justify its existence.

There was a Management Consultant phase where we went through an "Agency MBA" and shelled out our hard-earned cash on forbidding textbooks on Corporate Strategy and Organisational Management, when all we really wanted to do was make ads.

And the current mode seems to be Account Planner as programmer geek, where I expect a touch of a Californian accent, a name like a 19th century farmer (Seth, Josh, Abe) and a smattering of facial hair takes you a long way. There don't seem to be any training courses anymore to learn to be an Account Planner (apart from the odd Bootcamp) - instead, you "share stuff" at unconferences, barcamps and Open Sources.

I've nothing against learning from other industries - but in the end, I'm here to help make ads that work.

Chasm-Crossing

2011-08-18T13:04:00.004+02:00

When I first saw an iPhone, three or four years ago, I was singularly unimpressed. A guy from one of the ad agencies had bought one in the US and while he had fallen head-over-heels in love with it, I saw it simply as an impractical, complicated and expensive gadget.

I'm coming up now for my one year iPhone anniversary and I note that even primary school kids seem to have iPhones these days.

The difference between the ad agency guy and me is that he's one of the early adopters in this market and I'm one of the early majority. Doesn't sound like a huge difference, but it is. We tend to think of the adoption curve for new products as continuous, but it's not, always. If you're not familiar with it already, I recommend a look at a book from 1991, Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore. And in this book, you'll see that, for discontinuous innovations - those requiring a behavioural change, there is a huge difference between those two "early" groups. A chasm, in fact. The guy from the agency is a visionary. I'm a pragmatic conservative.

Crossing the chasm between these two psychologically vastly different groups is even more relevant these days. With the fast churn of technology, there are simply more discontinuous innovations around. This may explain the huge interest in behavioural economics amongst the marketing community. And, it's also vital to hang onto your visionaries aka early adopters for long enough to let you cross the chasm, before they flit off to this month's (week's?) thing.

The book was originally written with hi-tech markets and products in mind. But the theory may also be applicable in areas where a behavioural change is required - like moving to a carbon-neutral lifestyle, for example.

And that may be a chasm we're all going to have to cross one day.

BlackBurBerry

2011-08-12T13:44:00.004+02:00

However hard you try, however well-honed your target audience description may be, brands often get hi-jacked by groups way outside the "intended" users.

I expect most whiskies are a case in point. Despite the many descriptions there are floating around of dynamic, cosmopolitan, happening, sporty 30-somethings, the reality is that most of the consumption comes from the over 60s.

It happened to Burberry a few years ago, in the UK, when the formerly exclusive fashion label with its trademark tartan became an essential part of chav uniform.

And this week, we've heard that, whoever the thugs are co-ordinating the riots (and there seems to be a great deal of discrepancy in the reporting), they are using BlackBerry, specifically the messenger service, as their chosen communication system.

I suspect, in BlackBerry's case, the dust will settle and not too much of it will stick - somehow it is not quite such a visible brand as Burberry.

It's strange that it works both ways. For every "exclusive or professional" brand that ends up in the hands of the rabble, there is at least one brand that positions itself at the young rebels and outsiders but is lapped up by the middle-aged mainstream. Just look at Levi's and Harley Davidson.

Although some of that is the difference between targeting and positioning.

Thanks for not sharing

2011-08-05T14:29:00.004+02:00

There seems to be an epidemic of oversharing these days in the world of brands. Every logo tweak is accompanied by a lengthy exposition from the design agency, every piece of communication is justified with a full-length feature on the making-of by the ad agency, brand managers are obsessed with collecting Brand Touchpoints with the same enthusiasm little boys show for Pokemon cards and a huge array of soul-baring corporate films clutters up YouTube.

I'm all for transparency in the sense that companies, at least, should not be trying to pull the wool over people's eyes, but many brand managers seem to confuse this noble virtue with picking their noses in public.

It has long been said that successful brands - especially those in certain categories, such as luxury goods or fashion - owe their greatness in many cases to maintaining an aura of mystique. Angostura Bitters is one of my favourite examples.

So let's hear it for mystery, aloofness, even - and a few more "Please Do Not Touch" points.

Narcissistic Brands

2011-08-01T16:46:00.006+02:00

I've never been a huge fan of the "brands are like people" mantra. OK, it's a reasonable metaphor up to a point. But I start feeling queasy when people start applying essentially human terms to brands. Loyalty is bad enough, but love? And while some brands can be annoying, or provide a less than enjoyable experience, is hate maybe too strong a word?

The "hate" that's expressed in a temporary irritation with Ryan Air, or that slightly sick feeling at being stuck with eating one of McDonald's goo-ridden burgers due to lack of alternatives is the sort of "hate" that a five-year-old expresses - it'll be gone in the morning.

But the latest attack on social media from Baroness Greenfield has reminded me of a way that some brands have of behaving that really is reminiscent of some people who get a little carried away on Facebook and Twitter. The Baroness comments that social media is making people narcissistic, rather like a toddler stuck in the "Look at me, Mummy. I've done this!" stage of development.

And, yes, there are brands who are guilty. They use the social media platforms to tweet mindlessly or get people to upload photos wearing a silly branded hat in the interests of participation. While a bit of fun now and again is fine, it would be good if the people managing these brands could remember that they need to offer people something - from a solution to an everyday problem, to a fulfilling experience, to satisfying a fundamental human drive.

No one is that interested when a brand learns to stand on its head.

Bangers and Bier

2011-07-23T14:11:00.004+02:00

With a blog titled as mine is, it was only a matter of time before I'd be contacted by the Rate my Sausage blog. For sausage lovers everywhere, this is a must.

I would ask my German friends to keeps their tongues firmly in cheek, though, as they read through. And maybe prepare for a little shock. Rate my Sausage has recently run a "Which European Country Makes the Best Beer To Drink When You're Eating Sausages" challenge.

I'm afraid to tell you that the Veltins beer chosen to represent Germany, although valiantly picking up points for flavour and sausage-ability generally, finished a miserable last.

There are rumours that a Russian linesman may have been involved.

Retromatic

2011-07-20T15:07:00.003+02:00

A little while ago I bloggered on about reinventing the wheel and I meant to mention Hipstamatic as a cracking example of just that.

It's the perfect combination of old fashioned and cutting edge with its promise "Digital Photography Never Looked So Analog."

In fact, the whole retro film thing seems to be unstoppable at the moment - every second car ad seems to feature nostalgic scenes from some golden 70s summer. Not to mention Spielberg's film Super 8.

I wonder what will be next - an app to get your iTunes songs sounding scratched and sticky as the result of an accident with a bottle of Pomagne?

Worst nightmare?

2011-07-13T13:55:00.005+02:00

One of the worst nightmares for a client is when the agency simply regurgitate something left over in the drawer that another client obviously didn't buy. Or sometimes it's a general "one size fits all" idea that can be passed from client to client with different logos until someone is dim enough to buy it, or clever enough to fire the agency. In fact, I distinctly remember one bright copywriter set up a program to generate random scripts for a client who favoured a certain straight-jacketed TV format.

Now you don't even have to waste any money on layouts. On Wheel of Concept, you're invited to "Spin the Wheel" to generate new media ideas for your favourite brand. Anything from Social Gaming to Crowd Sourcing.

I tried it for my friends at ENTEGA and got the above. I also tried it for two of my least-favoured brands and was offered "iPayPal" which will bring me "brand-centric updates" from the PayPal-centric brand as well as Augmented Reality for Ryanair. The reality of Ryanair being bad enough, I don't think I want it augmented!

So, minutes of harmless fun. Thanks to Graham Thomas for pointing it out, although I expect clients will get something rather better from Radical Company.

Let's reinvent the wheel

2011-07-09T17:36:00.004+02:00

I've just downloaded the IPA's Planning App - Fast Strategy, which is a series of tips for when you get bogged down in a particularly sticky strategic conundrum.

If I was to give a hint for this deck, I'm quite keen on "Reinvent the Wheel." I quite like the subversive idea of turning all those "creativity" cliches on their heads. Another one would be to "stay inside the box" - who knows what you might find there!

It's all a bit like Ecclesiastes Chapter 1:

"What has been will be again

What has been done will be done again

There is nothing new under the sun."

Or:

"There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow."

Now, you can either take this as world-weary philosophising on the futility of living, or you can see the positive side. People in marketing have such short memories that the revisiting of an idea whose time had not yet come could be gold dust for your brand.

Or, "new" from whose point of view? To a new-born baby everything is new and yet to be experienced.

And then, there is the moon. And other suns...

Facts, gaps and headaches

2011-07-04T10:19:00.003+02:00

My immediate pre-holiday period was marred this year by the annoying minutiae of the internet, specifically two companies that are products of the internet age. I'm still debating which caused me more headaches; PayPal for their inability to attend to someone hacking into an account I set up a couple of years ago and have only used once or Ryanair for their ghastly, horrid booking system. I know, I know...if you want a cheap holiday, you just have to grit your teeth...

So, a week of no internet, no emails, no global brands shoving their logos in my face (OK, I did spot a Lidl and an IKEA from a distance but their blue and yellow logos actually look quite jolly against a sun-saturated sky) was just what was needed.

And a link to a wonderful organisation from a colleague on my return has restored my faith in the power of the internet when in the hands of the right people. Gapminder is an organisation dedicated to replacing myths with a fact-based world view. Data and graphics are used to great effect in their presentations and videos to explain what is happening in the world.

Particularly recommended is a TED talk from Hans Rosling, pictured above, on the magic washing machine that produces books and professors. Much more constructive than PayPal.

Price is just a number

2011-06-24T15:35:00.003+02:00

I'm going to be very lazy today and direct you to another blog rather than having too much original thought.

I have spent more hours than I care to remember over the years discussing the merits of price campaigns vs. value campaigns. And I've usually come down on the side of value, although that always seems infinitely more difficult to get right.

In this blog by Inese Smidre of my old pals The Value Engineers, the issue is discussed in detail, with some great examples from John Lewis to the latest British Airways vs. Ryan Air campaign.

The big truth that shines out for me in this is that price is just a number - which is, of course, not unique, while value is a unique human benefit.

The trick is then to define and communicate what value means for your brand. Which is difficult, as value is something personal and different for every human being.

But just because it's difficult doesn't mean that we shouldn't try.

Read the book, seen the film, bought the T-shirt - now eat the ice-cream

2011-06-19T20:42:00.003+02:00

There's nothing I love more than a good brainstorm, thinking up names and ideas for new products. And some of the most fun can be had with food and drink products. A couple of years ago, I noticed a new tea variety from Meßmer - "Romeo & Juliet" - with flavours of raspberry and marzipan, and wondered if this would start a trend.

It seems that it has. No longer happy with mint choc chip or rum 'n raisin, Langnese Cremissimo has named a couple of new ice cream flavours after classic movies. The variety pictured has raspberry and dark chocolate ice cream with raspberry sauce. In English, of course, I am rather concerned about the juxtaposition of raspberries with "Gone with the Wind" but they can probably get away with that in German. There's also a "Dr Zhivago" flavour with a kind of snow 'n vodka theme going on.

I just hope they don't get too carried away and introduce a "Silence of the Lambs" variety.

Facebookends

2011-06-14T21:12:00.006+02:00

The talk on Facebook, funnily enough, is that usage of the social media site has dropped in Britain, USA and other countries where it enjoyed its initial boom.

And it's not just doom and gloom in virtual - social media sites and their use/abuse are dominating conversations from the dinner table to the halls of government.

Of course, the "glass half empty" among us will cite MySpace, Second Life and the rest of the "flash in the pan" casualties of the social media revolution, but I think Facebook has simply made too many inroads into too many people's lives to disappear in a puff of smoke.

I must admit that my own relationship with Facebook is uneasy. I've been part of it for at least four years and never really fallen in love with the place. In fact, my news feed often reminds me of one of those sensory or motor homunculus figures that show proportionately how much of the cortex is taken up by certain body parts - in that it gives an unnatural view of who my real friends are and how important they are to me.

I know I should get wise and delete a few people or at least remove them from my news feed, or create some sub-groups or other such cleverness. But it's just not worth the bother. In fact, what worries me most of all is exactly how you delete your account should you decide to vote with your feet.

It'll be interesting to see if I'm still hanging in there in four years' time.

I put away childish things

2011-06-08T15:12:00.004+02:00

I don't seem to remember my parents being obsessed with who was top of the "Hit Parade", or finding Brutus jeans a "must-have" item, or needing to be an absolute ace when it came to Clackers when I was growing up.

So why are so many people who are old enough to know better (let's say 40+) so much in need of the latest Hollister sweatshirt, so desperate to download the latest game app or so enthusiastic about reading Harry Potter?

Apparently, such creatures are known as "Kidults" - grown-ups who don't see why they should put away childish things. They used to known as "mutton-dressed-as-lamb" which is, incidentally, a great idea for a fancy dress party if you're of a certain age.

But I'm not saying that all apps per se are childish - in fact, a recent report suggests that children these days only really know about those that aren't terribly useful, which is kind of reassuring.

From Capital-list to Social-list in two decades

2011-06-01T10:32:00.004+02:00

In the 1980s, there was pressure to be rich, especially if you were young and going places. I'm pretty sure that this was the era when The Sunday Times Rich List was born. People boasted about salaries and, in one case, a salary was even named after a person.

These days, there's pressure to be social. Not in terms of a 1980s socialite throwing glitzy parties at Stringfellow's but by being a mover and shaker as far as social media is concerned. And The Sunday Times has now launched a Social List through the agency VCCP.

I refrained from joining up and calculating my "social networking activity and prowess" on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Foursquare, because I already know the answer to that.

While it's OK, in my view, for a bit of entertainment, if you're into that sort of thing, I really don't like the language associated with the press releases about the site - "competition, climbing the ratings, jostling for position" - it all sounds as vulgar as Harry Enfield's Loadsamoney character did in the 80s.

So, if you'll excuse me, I'll just go and scuttle off to my virtual hermit hole where I can continue to talk to myself.

A thousand boring Powerpoint Slides

2011-05-25T16:21:00.006+02:00

Everyone in marketing and advertising needs a reality check now and again, if you'll excuse the ghastly buzz word. And you may get yours from playing buzz word bingo in boring client meetings, or putting together absurd brand positioning models as I used to do in my Saatchi days - reminder to self, pull those out - they could be worth something to someone.

So this blog entry is a blatant plug for a very funny man who knows his marketing and can see the absurd side of the brand onion. (What? An onion doesn't have sides?) I used one of his cartoons here and hope you have time to have a look at Tom Fishburne's site.

I love the Mission Statement cartoon and the ones about the fun you can have with focus groups as well as the brand positioning cartoon that introduces the splendid concept of a Brand Butterfly. And check out "The Tower of Eco Babel" if you're working on a sustainability project.

Most of all, I love this quote: "If a picture tells a thousand words, a cartoon tells a thousand boring Powerpoint slides."

Bad Hair Play?

2011-05-19T09:26:00.004+02:00

I've just bought a new Wella product from the local supermarket. I suppose that this possibility has been in the (h)air since Procter & Gamble bought up the established hairdresser brand a few years back - and since Schwarzkopf Henkel launched the affordable professional haircare brand Syoss last year.

I'm not a great haircare junkie, but I was interested to read the blurb on the back of the Wella Pro Series product. It's of the "close but no cigar" variety. It's going to help me become a hair expert - me, one of the great unwashed - although, of course, nothing can replace a professional stylist. I'll just come close to that just walked out of the salon feeling.

Funnily enough, I did walk out of a hairdressing salon yesterday, with a bag of products that my hairdresser charmed me into buying. Funnily enough, she is a bit off Wella these days and terribly enthusiastic about a new range of products from Tigi.

They're owned by Unilever, by the way. But I don't think we'll be seeing them in the supermarket.

Toying with brands

2011-05-11T11:47:00.003+02:00

Visualising the essence or personality of your brand has always been a challenge but here is something new from JWT to help you with just that.

Brand Toys combines data from Millward Brown's BrandZ study plus real-time online buzz from Social Mention to create a toy for your brand.

There are - I think - 9 different body shapes which reflect Potential and Familiarity, then different body parts, sizes, accessories and facial expressions represent the values and qualities of the brand. So, size of legs/feet represent trustworthiness. Not good news for someone with size 37 continental, but there you go. A cloud or sun in the background shows current level of sentiment - no prizes for guessing what the weather conditions in the land of the BP toy are!

It's probably my age, but they all look curiously similar to me - like the choice of avatars when you join a new chat site, or proposals for the mascot of the next big sporting event.

Overall, though, what do you think? The ultimate dumbing-down or a blast of fresh air in the midst of all that fuggy Brand Onion breath?

At the very least, you could always use them as a voodoo doll for your most hated brand.

Creative Circle

2011-05-10T08:23:00.003+02:00

One development I noticed going on back in the UK a couple of years back was advertising and communication agencies actually getting into new product development. Not just on behalf of their clients, which is something that we've always tinkered with, but for real.

Now I'm pleased to see that this is happening in Germany, too. The range of bathroom products with the Can't-believe-it's not-butter-esque name above have been developed and launched by Korefe, the design (including product design) arm of Kolle Rebbe, one of Germany's leading independent creative agencies.

The idea is of the IKEA variety - you do your part (what it says in the tin, um, bottle) and we do ours (stop using artificial ingredients, testing on animals, wasting energy in production...)

In a way, I suppose it's a logical development. If you're going to give the responsibility for creating communication over to the people in a magnanimous sweep of CGC, what's left to do? Or maybe it has something to do with maturity, the urge to generativity, to produce something of more than ephemeral value. I've often noticed what particularly enthusiastic Dads guys in German advertising agencies make.

The Mums aren't always so enthusiastic - but that's a another story!

What's the Big Idea?

2011-05-03T20:35:00.004+02:00

Sometime in the 90s, possibility not for the first time and probably not for the last time, "advertising" became a dirty word. We felt it particularly strongly at Saatchi in those days as the out-of-love suffix was wrenched away from our letterheads, our telephonist's lips, our pencils.

We were no longer "Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising". We were "Saatchi & Saatchi - The Ideas Company". Nothing wrong with that - we were all quite cock-a-hoop about being an Ideas Business in an Ideas Economy. When I went freelance, I toyed for some time with the name "Ideas for Sale" before settling on "Secret Agency."

But I recently found the website of The Joined-Up Company which reminded me that ideas are not ideas are not ideas. And, it may be worth saying that there are some of these idea genres where The-agencies-formerly-known-as-advertising do have a more natural talent than others:

Business Idea - it's about beliefs, structure, objectives: what makes the business profitable?

Brand Idea - classic long-term meaning and mission

Communications Idea - how media in the broadest sense are used to keep the brand strong and the business profitable - and, not to forget...

Creative Idea

I was also going to mention Advertising Idea. But that may simply be a Bad Idea.

Just do it

2011-04-28T11:54:00.005+02:00

If I was a decade or two earlier in my career - and still lived in the UK - I think I'd be signing up for the course run by the apg "21st Century Planning for integration and behavioural change."

The blurb about this course points out that planning is not just about what "message" you need - if you need one at all - but that's it's vital to plan campaigns around desired behavioural change.

This sounds good to me, but it does remind me that we did sort-of pay lip service to this aspect in our creative briefs a decade or two ago, with the "desired consumer response" section. In this, we would state what we'd like people to think, feel and do as a result of the campaign.

Unfortunately, I don't think many of us thought past "buy the brand" when we filled in that section. It would be great if this course can get people beyond that sort of thinking.

By the way, why is Behavioural Economics trendy and a buzz-phrase while Behavioural Psychology is not? Is the clue in the picture?

Ozymandias Airways

2011-04-25T20:36:00.005+02:00

I was lucky enough to cut my planning teeth on the British Airways account, at the end of the 80s.

It may seem odd to people starting out in their careers now that working on an airline was the jewel in the crown as far as accounts went back then - just as cigarettes had been a few years before. But it does occur to me that the best communications tend to happen when the category is a "happening" one - like Apple or Google today.

Airline advertising had a dromedary of a golden age - the first hump ran from the late 40s to the early 70s and comprised mainly of print advertising which just oozed the glamour of air travel and the exoticism of the destinations.

A slight oil crisis/cheap packages on charter flights/hi-jacking fears dip held things down for a few years in the 70s, but with the privatisation of British Airways and the increased popularity of long-haul business flying, airline advertising entered the second hump of the golden age, with some of the best TV commercials the world has seen.

Working on an airline account must be a challenge these days. Horrendous acts of terrorism have led to ever more intrusive security checks. Cheap n' cheerful no frills budget airlines have stripped the whole sector of its glamour and dreams. And anyone with a smidgeon of conscience will surely wonder if it's not just Concorde that should be pensioned off as being non-sustainable.

Perhaps it's no wonder that airlines reach back to those carefree golden days for their communications, whether it's Virgin celebrating 25 years in glorious 1980s style, or Lufthansa selling retro-style travel bags via Tchibo.

Happy Talk

2011-04-14T17:51:00.004+02:00

There was a time, when I lived in the UK when I couldn't walk past a building site without being told "cheer up, love - it might never happen."

Builders were always Britain's official cheerer-uppers - and their chirpiness was guaranteed to produce a curmudgeonly "grrrrrr" of a backfire.

I'm afraid that the following piece of advertising evokes a similar reaction in me. It's a shame, because the movement behind it, Action for Happiness, does seem to have some substance and some intelligent thinkers associated with it.

But while I agree with the sentiments is ticking an email "pledge" to try to create more happiness really the way?

It's a bit like money. The people with the most aren't the ones talking about it.

Antisocial Media

2011-04-11T15:54:00.003+02:00

I'm pretty mediocre when it comes to social media, apart from this blog. I have a half-hearted presence on Facebook, use LinkedIn for business contacts and click "yes" for most people that come looking for me on Xing. And there are a couple of communities relating to non-work interests that I'm quite into, when time allows.

I've noticed in the last week that a couple of these networks are "coming back at me" - and not always in a desirable direction.

It looks as if LinkedIn are starting to recruit people to take part in surveys. This is just about OK in my book - and at least they had the decency to ask if I wanted to take part in future surveys, and how often. Plus there was the option of donating the €5 incentive to charity.

But a worrying development happened via a site called InterNations, that I joined once, never used, and don't seem to be able to extricate myself from. It was a classic cold-caller selling financial advice who used every repugnant trick in the book until I called his bluff and he admitted to having my details from InterNations. What's rubbish about this, apart from the annoyance, is that not only did the financial advice firm take a plummet in my estimation for using such shoddy tactics (I'm not naming names yet as I am giving them a chance to redeem themselves) but the whole grubby feeling also manages to rub off on InterNations.

What you'd call a lose-lose situation, I suppose.

Sweet Sixteen

2011-04-06T14:50:00.005+02:00

For one reason or another, I've been looking at presentations from a number of major market research agencies lately and one thing that the quant agencies are trying to do is to get a handle on the way people respond to communication emotionally.

Interestingly, agencies are looking at ways of classifying human emotions or motivations (NB: I'm not using these terms inter-changeably as others seem to do!) and using this as a basis for quantifying response to a piece of advertising - what desire does the brand meet or which emotion does the advertising evoke?

I was reminded in all of this of my own studies and one thing that's remarkable is that most of these grids and lists seem to focus on the magic number 16! There was the personality inventory, the Myers-Briggs grid and another Magic 16 that seems to be referenced by many of the research agencies is Professor Steven Reiss' "16 Basic Desires".

It seems reasonable that these desires govern behaviour to some extent but I would question whether they really define someone's personality. Personality is surely something more fundamental, more complex, more long-term. And I also wonder if there should be some good old Maslow-esque hierarchy at play here: can you really put "Eating" and "Idealism" on the same level? And where is creativity ?

But as a basic list, it's not bad and could certainly help in defining which human desires your brand in particular can satisfy.

Mum's the word

2011-03-31T11:38:00.007+02:00

In time for Mothering Sunday in the UK and to lead up to the London Olympics 2012, Procter & Gamble are about to unleash their first-ever corporate advertising for the general public. Interesting, because I've been involved in discussing the rights and wrongs of such an approach in the past. Interesting, because arch-rival Unilever has had its corporate logo on all its brand advertising since 2009.

Of course, newer companies don't have this headache. There aren't shadowy corporations lurking behind the brand names when it comes to the amazons, Googles and Virgins of this world. And even some of P&G's fellow-centenarians from Coca-Cola to many car brands have put their company name forward as brand name from the start.

You have to sympathise with P&G and their ilk to some extent. In the brave new internet age you can't hide. And if you don't take some kind of stance about who you are and what you stand for, someone else will do it for you. But however much I believe that P&G should have done something, I'm afraid that they've done the wrong thing.

Part of this comes out in the way both P&G and Unilever talk about why they've gone for the corporate-to-general public approach:

"(The Olympics)...is a great opportunity to talk to consumers about P&G and what we stand for." The phrase "talk to consumers" says it all. Isn't it about conversation these days? It's true enough that people these days want to know more about the companies that they buy products from - but they won't learn by being "talked to," like a naughty child standing in the corner.

Or this: "Our research says that consumers...are increasingly marketing-savvy and know that there are people who are behind brands." Well, I never!

While I'm sure that P&G have done their research, I'm a little uneasy that they appear to have done their usual version of copy & paste, which is known as "search and reapply". A successful campaign that ran for the Vancouver Olympics will be used in the UK - "Proud Sponsors of Mums."

I do find this a slightly patronising - and exclusive approach - after all, men and women without children have to clean their homes, wash their hair, use denture fixative, do the laundry and all the rest, too.

And when it comes to it, do I really want to be thinking about Pampers when I'm buying perfume? And talking of Pampers, what would be really fantastic is if P&G ditched the corporate budget when it comes to Germany and ploughed the money into an action-led campaign - from Pampers - that really did something to change the lot of mothers in Germany, as suggested here.

Second Hand Brand

2011-03-24T15:18:00.004+01:00

One of the little email highlights of the week is seeing what new ideas are percolating around the world via Springwise. And, like myths and legends, similar ideas seem to spring up independent of each other in countries as far flung as the Philippines and the USA. You can either blame the internet or maybe it's just a touch of the good old Collective Unconscious.

The trend I just love at the moment is new from old in the fashion industry. The Fortune Cookie purses from Diana Eng pictured above just make you want to smile. They are made from scrap leather from the furniture, upholstery and garment industries and each comes with its own history as well as a fortune - in words rather than coins, I hasten to add.

Over in the Philippines, Rags2Riches are also using discarded scraps from the fashion industry to make handbags and rugs - and helping disadvantaged women at the same time. And Saved is an idea from Do The Green Thing which rescues unloved and unwanted T-Shirts to give them a new story and a new home.

I have to say these companies, organisations and enterprises have brilliant names and Worn Again is no exception. They are a UK company who make bags and the like from old aircraft seat covers from Virgin Atlantic - and they are also in partnership with Eurostar and the Royal Mail.

Interesting to speculate who may have sat on your new shoulder bag?

Labyrinthine Reality

2011-03-17T21:16:00.006+01:00

I have just finished reading one of Alain de Botton's books, The Architecture of Happiness, and have come out not just a little wiser about architecture but also grasping a few general truths about people and how they tick.

Putting his finger on why some buildings, despite genius architects, splendid plans and sweeping vision, leave us feeling just that little bit uncomfortable, de Botton says this can be traced back to "architects who forgot to pay homage to the quirks of the human mind...seduced by a simplistic vision of who we might be, rather than attending to the labyrinthine reality of who we are."

Hear, hear! Let's stop trying to the predict the future, whether it's with:

- all those patented market research techniques that claim to predict how a piece of communication will "perform"

- those creative briefs that state what people will think, feel and do after they have seen said piece of communication

- or even all those clever-clogs algorithms that tell me that because I liked this, then I will also like that...

...and rejoice in the labyrinthine reality of the here and now!

Corporate Playground

2011-03-11T18:36:00.003+01:00

I have been spending rather a lot of time at airports recently and before I get onto this blog, I feel compelled to say that unlike the lady above, I never travel in a white suit. The probability of turbulence plus coffee has always been a touch too much on the high side for me.

One thing that always strikes me about airports is that they are the one public place where all the corporate ads can come out to play. Images rarely seen outside the Annual Report & Accounts or Trade Journals can present themselves to a captive audience of movers, shakers and decision-makers in all their glory. Unfortunately, they have all had the same idea.

The truth about air travel is still this: no-one in an airport is in a normal frame of mind, with the exception of the people who work there every day - and my guess is that these corporate ads aren't aimed at the girl that hands out see-through plastic bags or the guy that drives elderly passengers around on one of those buggies.

No, everyone is jet-lagged, disorientated, tense about the forthcoming meeting, annoyed that they'll be late home, miffed that they'll miss their connection, nervous about just how good the security controls are, insulted by being manhandled and demands that they remove yet more articles of clothing...and the sum total is that, however big a mover, however huge a shaker, however ginormous a decision-maker, nobody is in control.

And so, the gallery of corporate visual delights of a parallel world - of calm seas, endless skies, reflections of nature's glory, vast expanses of green, hopeful sunrises, satisfying sunsets, rowing teams pulling together in perfect harmony and the intricacies of a humming bird's wings seem to mock rather than inspire. They feel like the visual equivalent of the calming music played to cattle before the slaughter.

In combination with the contrived names that many of these companies sport - which give no clue as to whether they are in pharmaceuticals or insurance, engineering or financial consultancy - the net result is that they bypass the busy executive and float, unattended to, like the aluminum intricacies of the airport's roof structure.

This Hun for Hire

2011-03-04T17:31:00.003+01:00

The world of advertising is probably more littered than any other profession with creative, clever and downright absurd ideas to bypass the normal recruitment process and land yourself a job.

One of my contemporaries at Saatchis, Paul Arnold, famously pulled off a similar stunt to the chap on the left with a sandwich board: "I'm P...P...P...Paul and I want a job in advertising."

And I remember literally begging a young man not to sever the end of his purple tie in a graduate interview. He thought he'd invented branded performance art for Silk Cut. I thought otherwise...

So I'm intrigued to see what one young Art Director is trying to get herself noticed - "Hire a German." On Kristin's website you can see her buying and building an IKEA desk with alarming efficiency. Kristin comes with a plastic budgie, a signed photo and rather fetching white socks and Adiletten.

It's probably not all to everyone's taste but I certainly admire her cheekiness!

Campaign for real mothers

2011-02-26T15:06:00.004+01:00

One aspect of German society that never fails to surprise visitors is just how mother-and-child-unfriendly the country is. As well has having the lowest birth rate in Europe, Germany must be one of the few countries in the world with its own insulting phrase for a mother that doesn't spend 24 hours a day tending to her little ones - Rabenmutter - or "raven mother". Quite what ravens have done or not done to deserve this expression remains an ornithological puzzle.

There have been a couple of surveys reported on recently from German brands targeted at young mothers. Eltern magazine, for example, reports that the reasons that people believe the birth rate is so low include worry about financial stability, the belief that German society values performance in job more highly than starting a family, the difficulty in combining career and family, the lack of childcare and the generally child-unfriendly climate.

The baby food brand Milupa has got together with the market research agency Rheingold to understand the feelings of mothers from the psychological perspective and their study shows that there is tremendous pressure - real and perceived - for young mums to live up to some sort of ideal imposed by society - and, interestingly, that mums have more trust in brands like Milupa or Pampers than in German politics!

Milupa has developed a campaign from these findings: "Milupa Mama Coaching." The idea here is to coach and encourage mums to be more relaxed and listen to their instincts. This seems a reasonable idea but I do wonder whether they could have taken a bolder approach.

The thing is, however well-intentioned "Mama Coaching" may be, it still leaves the finger pointing back at the mother to change. The campaign is confined to places where only mothers will see it and will have little impact on the world outside. In the spirit of the Dove campaign, wouldn't it be great for Milupa to tackle perceptions of non-mothers - of employers, of public authorities? And maybe to spend some of the budget on actions that would help mothers in a concrete way? Maybe this is planned for the future...

Talking of the future, there seemed to be signs at the end of last year that the birth rate might pick up, although the official figures for 2010 will first be released in May. And the current Family Minister, Kristina Schröder, announced her own first pregnancy in January. Who knows? Maybe Frau Schröder will follow her predecessor's example by having seven children in her own contribution to raising the birth rate.

The price is wrong

2011-02-19T14:44:00.004+01:00

I was pleased to hear this week that at least one of the irritating radio ads that assaults my ears here in Germany will soon be no more. The D-I-Y chain Praktiker is going to knock its price positioning on the head to go for something a little more sophisticated in terms of branding. Just how sophisticated this will be, given that it will involve the ubiquitous Boris Becker and building up values of Simplicity, Trustworthiness and Good Value, is yet to be seen, but at least the retailer has seen sense about positioning yourself on price alone.

For years, Praktiker has used the slogan "Hier spricht der Preis" ("Here speaks the price") with a high audibility radio campaign promising "20% off everything except pet food."

The thing is, these days, who believes or needs price advertising? In these days of online comparison, the true answer to where you'll pick up your latest Bosch power tool for the best price is less than a second away. And then, no-one has ever bought anything on price alone - we automatically do that complex balancing act in our heads of time, effort, hassle and reward for the money paid - the personal value to me. This can be very different to answering a battery of questions on whether Retailer X is generally "good value for money" - yes, Retailer X is generally better value and if I was going there anyway for other stuff...but I like my little local guy round the corner and fancied a chin-wag with him today plus I know he'll give me good follow-up service if the thing blows up...

And, while every segmentation study will throw up a segment of people who are driven by price, the point is that these people are deal-loyal, not brand loyal. When a cheaper tariff, or whatever, comes along, they'll jump ship instantly. In the long run, especially in fields such as energy, business models that position themselves on lowest price are simply not sustainable.

When it comes to the price, the discount price and nothing but the price, as far as building a brand goes - the price is wrong.

Infinite Ad Stock

2011-02-13T12:02:00.004+01:00

The Michelin building is celebrating its 100th anniversary and to mark the century that has passed since it opened as the French company's UK headquarters, a number of classic poster ads are being republished and sold.

What's interesting about these ads - along with the classic Guinness posters, for example - is that they have become ingrained in our collective consciousness. Call it infinite ad stock if you like, but classics like these are still working today - at least in terms of generating awareness for the brands they advertise, even though the products may have changed beyond all recognition.

And, more recently, I am sure that some of the classic commercials produced in the last century continue to wield their effect through YouTube resurrection. Take this classic from Hugh Hudson. I don't smoke, and Benson & Hedges is a minor brand here in Germany, dwarfed by the ubiquitous Marlboro, but the brand name is still present for me.

The poster of a hundred years ago became the spectacular film of the late 20th Century which became the app of the early 21st century. But I do wonder if something like the Domestos Flush Tracker will still be working for the brand in some way in a hundred years.

MacOstracised

2011-02-08T12:02:00.004+01:00

Phoning Telekom used to be right up there on my "favourite things to do in Germany" list along with discussing pension plans, visiting the dentist and filling in my tax return. Every time something went wrong with my email, or that box on the wall, or that thing with flashing lights that sits on my desk, I would be filled with creeping dread.

They have got better. Problems have been sorted out without a 30 minute da-da-da-di-dah! preamble. And they have now even started to get proactive.

A nice young lady rang me up the other day with an offer too good to refuse. They'd twigged that I called their technical people regularly so now I was to be offered my very own dedicated technician. It sounded just the ticket.

But...

Me: "Does this technician understand Macs?"

She: "Uh...no. Our technicians understand Microsoft."

Here tone changed completely. Admitting to having a Mac was tantamount to admitting to some nasty highly contagious disease caught from dodgy practices of an unmentionable nature. She wanted to end the conversation as soon as possible. Even my pleas for her to pass on my suggestion that maybe they could recruit a few technicians that understand Macs fell on deaf ears. Da-da-da-di-dah!

Come on, Telekom! There you are selling iPhones like hot cakes but hasn't it occurred to you that all these people with iPhones could be attracted to an iPad, or a MacBook? And that they might need a bit of support with the internet side of things?

That phrase with left hands and right hands and not knowing what the other is doing comes to mind.

Why, oh why?

2011-02-02T10:22:00.003+01:00

"I keep six honest serving-men

(They taught me all I knew)

Their names are What and Why and When

And How and Where and Who."

Rudyard Kipling, from "Just So Stories"

Whatever field you work in, as long as it involves information-gathering, you'll probably have come across some model, tool or principle based on Kipling's "honest serving men."

And it's not just journalism or police investigation that are well-served by these six honest men, but the world of brands and branding, too. One of the first positioning tools that I came across in my work with brands was something called the Brand Square. I still use it to this day.

It asks, very simply:

WHO are we?

WHAT do we do?

For WHOM do we do it?

HOW do we do it?

There's a very useful book and website by Simon Sinek for looking at brands and organisations which puts the serving man conspicuous by his absence from the Brand Square at the start: Start with Why. Here, it's argued that, unless you define your Why? - your purpose, cause or belief, you can't really go into the How? (guiding principles) or What? (tangible proof).

This is great thinking and something particularly relevant for brands that are an organisation. To have a reason for being beyond making profit gives a brand or organisation sustainable value.

But - a word of caution. In the same way that some brands are not naturals for social media (no, I don't want to enter into a relationship with toilet paper...) there are some brands where the Why for the brand should not be pushed or forced. If you end up constructing one of those Mission Statements that's all about "the relentless pursuit of quality solutions to passionately meet customer needs", maybe your time is better spent defining the more pragmatic issues - the Who? What? and How? clearly and uniquely.

Getting real

2011-01-26T14:50:00.003+01:00

In days gone by, one of the inadvertently funniest aspects of my job was sitting behind one-way mirrors with a group of assistant brand managers, none of whose first languages matched that of the poor souls we were watching, in something called a "Concept Lab" where we would "generate consumer insights."

The words "lab" and "generate" are telling. Very little of our generated output would bear any relation to anything a real person might say. You know the sort of thing: "These days I have to juggle so many roles - Supermom, household manager, personal shopper for my girlfriends, yoga coach for my neighbour, Stepford Wife as well as moonlighting as a rocket scientist on the side. Wouldn't it be great if there was a panty liner that was as flexible as I am?"

Now there's a whole site dedicated to this sort of absurdity: "Things Real People Don't Say about Advertising". It made me laugh and it made me cringe - occasionally, just occasionally, I have been there myself. Crackers include "I wonder if my favourite brand of kitchen roll has a Twitter stream I can follow" and "that viral made me LOL so hard, I think I'll buy the car that was in it."

See, that content really is both entertaining and informative. I will now act as an evangelist and pass it on immediately to my friends and colleagues.

Oh.

I'll build on that...

2011-01-21T09:44:00.004+01:00

Back when I was a fresh-faced young planner, in the days of faxes and Tippex and things called Word Processors which I didn't have to understand - the secretaries did that - a book came out: "How to Plan Advertising." And in this book was a section on Creative Briefing by Damian O'Malley that became inscribed on my Planning soul.

For the odd person who may not know it, it is a very clever piece on how the Pope's Account Man may have briefed Michelangelo on the painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. You can see it here, on John Griffiths' website. As an aside, note the "best" briefing isn't a snappy single-minded proposition. It's more a brand story. Or something.

But twenty years later, we have the case history. Very funny. Very cleverly done and full of all those ghastly cliches that tumble out of our mouths so easily: "messaging included..." "traffic increased by..."

Do have a look.

Mimicry

2011-01-14T13:31:00.004+01:00

Mimicry is all around us. As well as in the world of nature, mimicry abounds in bookshops, with more Harry Potter, Da Vinci Code or Twilight wanna-bees (at least from the cover picture and blurb) than you can fit in your BILLY. And, of course, if you have the good fortune to resemble any List-designation of celebrity, you can usually give up the day job.

In the world of brands, mimicry has long been with us, manifesting itself everything from those almost-but-not-quite perfumes you find on market stalls, to the belts and bags sold by persuasive young guys in far-off places.

And then there are the supermarket's own brands. Aldi seem to be good at this, with their Kinder lookalike very cleverly imitating the colour-coding of the real McCoy.

Finally, there are those brands that are number 3 or 4 in the market who seem to think mimicking the market leader, perhaps at a slightly lower price, will ensure success. One example of such could be Alpia and Milka.

But that which makes a brand - its emotional added value - cannot be copied. You may be able to copy price. But you cannot copy value.

Name dropping

2011-01-10T08:48:00.004+01:00

Starbucks seems to be one of those Marmite brands that you either love to bits or hate with a vengeance. So anything the brand does attracts plenty of comment.

In March 2011, Starbucks will be rolling out its new logo in a re-brand. Most of the comment from Starbucks themselves (aka Howard Schulz) has surrounded the dropping of the word "coffee" from the logo. In a rather cryptic sentence (not helped by its strange grammatical construction), Mr Schulz reveals:

"Even though we have been and always will be a coffee company and retailer, it's possible that we'll have other products with our name on it but no coffee in it."

What is particularly baffling is that there is no "coffee" or name - Starbucks - on the new logo. Now, I expect the Starbucks lovers will say that this is the ultimate show of confidence from the global brand - that they are so well known, who needs a name? (The" artist-formerly-known-as" approach).

But the anti-Starbucks brigade will retort that this is nothing more than defensiveness or even shame surrounding the S-word.

Who's right? I suppose it all depends on whether your Starbucks coffee is half-empty or half-full.

Top

2011-01-01T14:02:00.004+01:00

I'm going to start the New Year with an optimistic cocking of the snoot (if you'll excuse me) at all those doom-mongers who declare that advertising, specifically TV advertising, is dead.

Here are Horizont's Top 15 TV spots. As well as the international blockbusters, there are German ads celebrating the German national obsessions of cars and football. And although quite a few of these are virals and cinema spots, rather than strictly TV, my two favourites are classic TV spots.

One is for IKEA so I'm a bit biased. The other is for Lieken Urkorn bread - not actually a dream client for creatives, you would think. But the film they have produced is breathtaking. A simple idea, beautifully executed.

Here's to a few more of those in 2011!

1. Nike World Cup

2. Audi A8 "Die Kunst, voraus zu sein."

3. Lieken Urkorn "Aus guten Händen"

4. Hornbach "Faces"

5. Mercededs Benz E-Klasse

6. Gelomyrtol "Welt ohne Schleim"

7. IKEA "Inbus"

8. 13th Street "Last Call"

9. Telekom "Liga Total"

10. Bud Light Viral

11. P&G Old Spice

12. Skoda "Glasmusik"

13. McDonalds viral "Uli Hoeness"

14. Internet Explorer "8 Experts" viral

15. Quirin Bank Image Spot

Advent, advent - mein Kalendar brennt!

2010-12-22T11:53:00.004+01:00

I don't know if anyone else feels that they have been bombarded with Advent Calendars this year, or whether it's just me.

Each year, there seem to be new and hugely pricey Advent Calendars piled high at Toys R Us, including an absolute "must-have" (from 10-year-old viewpoint) from Lego Star Wars (very seasonal.)

Then there are those sales promotion jobbies that normally sell for 49 cents in Aldi that are thrust at you by the furniture stores and the like.

And this year, more and more online offerings. I have definitely had them from Telekom and from my bank. The things pop out of every website you attempt to look at like manic Yuletide jacks-in-the-box and have to be carefully negotiated around.

The first Advent Calendars date back over 100 years and were originally for children to "sweeten" the time before Christmas. In terms of behavioural economics, they make a complex concept (time) concrete - how many times must a sleep before Father Christmas comes? It's the same principle as taking a ticket at the deli counter or being told how many people are in front at the Post Office counter. The idea is to make you feel a little less helpless.

Although I am not sure that any parent who gives in to buying a Lego Star Wars Advent Calendar feels less, rather than more, helpless.

iCapitulation

2010-12-14T15:05:00.004+01:00

Nearly six years after first seeing the Web in mobile, I have capitulated and got myself an iPhone.

What may be of interest to anyone looking at this particular Customer Journey is, firstly - how long it was. I mean, six years of knowing that I could have all the benefits of mobile internet at my fingertips and not doing anything about it!

And then there were the two "nudges" or "moments of truth" that shoved me to the point of no return. The first of these will have all the Customer Journey Academics nodding sagely. Last time I was in England, I couldn't check in over the internet. Which meant that, but for the legendary kind-heartedness of Lufthansa (what?), I would have been separated from my young son on the plane.

But the second one is both silly and frivolous. You see, when I was in London, I bought a rather natty iPhone cover. So I just had to get something to put in it.

Right - off to become a fully-fledged Apps bore.

Journey

2010-12-08T08:41:00.004+01:00

Everyone seems to be on a journey of some sort these days. And decisions about what we buy, whether it's a car or a coffee can be mapped out in detail in Customer Journeys or Customer Engagement Cycles.

Customer Engagement appeared in the marketing lingo in the early 2000s, along with the concept of Touchpoints. In some ways, CE has become the Holy Grail, replacing such simple measures as Customer Satisfaction (which only looks at one point in time) or even Customer Loyalty (which doesn't have the emotional component.)

Gallup introduced an 11 question metric for CE back in 2001 which includes 3 measures of loyalty (overall satisfaction, intent to repurchase, intent to recommend) and 4 overall emotional attachment factors:

CONFIDENCE : always trust X, X always delivers what they promise

BELIEF IN BRAND INTEGRITY: X always treats me fairly, X can be counted on to reach a fair and satisfactory resolution of problems

PRIDE: proud to be a customer, X always treats me with respect

PASSION: X is the perfect company for people like me, I can't imagine a world without X

Back to the Journey - this is then the stages that a customer travels through, typically something like awareness - consideration - inquiry - purchase - retention. And there are plenty of visual depictions of this ranging with funnels, arrows, boxes, cycles and all the other delights to be found on Powerpoint.

Just two words of warning here. The idea of "stages" and names that echo old communication models such as AIDA do tend to suggest a linear and rational process. While it may be helpful to try and visualise the Journey, it's always remembering that "the map is not the territory", as Captain Scott and others found out to their cost.

And however much we may try and rationalise this into a process, human decision-making is not rational. Think back to the last time you bought, say, a pair of jeans. Did you draw up a nice "consideration set" with a table of prices and availability? Thought not.

Internet in analogue

2010-12-01T09:42:00.005+01:00

You can't turn on the internet these days without hearing something about the internet. If it's not protests about Google Street View, it's the latest fuel for disrupting diplomatic relations from WikiLeaks - or some chat about the Internet of Things, which will soon be upon us.

I ought to remember the first time I saw the internet, but I must admit that I can't. I do remember email addresses with numbers longer than an IBAN or whatever those things are called and we did have it all up and running at home by the end of the last century.

As part of something called Internet Week Europe, the digital arm of RKCR Y&R, Saint, had a clever idea - to get people in the industry and schoolchildren to draw the internet. The results are here. There are plenty of Google logos, worlds, 60s graphics, brains and lolcats.

Although it's a great idea, unfortunately the website suffers from at least two of my frustrations with the internet. Maybe I am being thick, but I can't seem to view the pictures properly in full size without going through a complicated procedure.

And the commentary is littered with apostrophe-related mistakes: "the industry with all of it's wisdom" and "the industries finest." (sic)

Ironic.

Go East

2010-11-23T21:20:00.003+01:00

Back in the 1980s, Phileas Fogg escaped from the pages of Jules Verne and travelled the world in search of snack products. He was single-handedly responsible for introducing the tortilla chip to the UK - or at least the brand of the same name would have us believe.

Nearly thirty years later, the products from MeiAsia caught my eye in my local Tegut. This is a range of Asian sauces and ingredients from Thailand, Japan, China, Indonesia, India and Singapore. Behind the brand is Heuschen & Schrouff Oriental trading, a Dutch company who have been distributing Asian food brands for years.

Well, now they have developed their own brand and they seem to have ticked all the right boxes. They have a damn good story - traveling Asia for two years tracking down the favourite recipes of the Asian people. The packaging is gorgeous, National Geographic-style photos of people and their recipes. I don't know how authentic it really is, but it certainly feels that way. The company also runs the Frits Schrouff Foundation, supporting social projects in Asia.

Oh, and if tonight's prawn jalfrezi is anything to go by, the products are pretty yummy, too.

Party on, not fade away

2010-11-16T21:29:00.003+01:00

When I was a devil-may-care young thing in advertising, we often used to wonder what happened to people in our business once they hit 40. Such ancient specimens were, to all extents and purposes, invisible.

Last week, at the Charlotte St 1970 - 2000 reunion, there were precious few people to be seen under 40. So, with a whole club filled to bursting with old ;-) people who had been in advertising and who I hadn't seen since we were all in our 20s and early 30s, it was time for an answer to that question.

Well, there were a few who were still in the business and quite possibly still working in Charlotte St. And a CEO or two of some thrusting young start-up. But what was delightful was that I also met mature students, farmers, charity workers, a novelist or two, the happily retired, ladies of leisure - and even a builder!

There were a few wrinkles, a few paunches - mostly mine (!) - but the spirit and joie de vivre and energy were all still there. Not in a mutton-dressed-as-lamb way, but with the realisation that in our "work hard, play hard" ethos we shared a golden age of young adulthood that no-one can take away.

Surprise, Surprise

2010-11-11T10:20:00.004+01:00

I always look forward to the IPA Excellence Diploma essays that come in a supplement with Campaign. I commented on the last lot here and I've just read the four that achieved distinction this year.

Tim Jones of BBH has a great new metaphor for a brand - instead of all those onions and keys, he's looked at gaming as a way of moving from brands as message transmission devices to behaviour change systems.

And, maybe influenced by a game or two, Simon Robertson of Dare believes that brands should embrace their Dark Side. I'm not convinced that it must always be the Dark Side, but I'm convinced that brands need an edge, a quirk, a bit that doesn't fit.

What really got me was that two of the essays, both excellent, seem at first sight to contradict each other. Sarah Morning of Agency Republic argued for the counterpart to the spatial-based Big Idea in the temporal-based Long Idea, with the reintroduction of myth and ritual into the digital world. And then James Hamilton of McCann Erikson argues the case for putting surprise and serendipity back into marketing, believing that our lives are increasingly predictable as we're driven more and more by algorithms that tell us what to read, watch, know....?

But both can be part and parcel of one brand and its communications - and maybe this is the trick. IKEA comes to mind, surprise, surprise. There are new ideas, surprising products, inspirational combinations. But the elements of ritual from KNUT to following to arrows to the hot dog at the end are there too. A seeming paradox but the key to success.

Psychobank

2010-11-05T08:39:00.005+01:00

A horrifying scandal has been exposed in Germany. It seems that the Hamburger Sparkasse is using devious and shadowy methods of psycho-profiling its customers to sell them more financial services. Who would have thought something like that could happen in this day and age? Just when you thought you had a good relationship with your advisor at the bank, you realise that he's got you pigeon-holed as a "Performer" or a "Hedonist" and will be following some fiendish ploy to get right inside your head to your innermost thoughts.

The point is, it was always thus. What do people think selling and marketing is about, if not psychology? To me, the only scandal is just how unsophisticated and cliche-ridden the "segmentation" is - you can see it here. I would hesitate to describe it as "neuromarketing" myself.

Personally, I find some of those ghastly stock shots of shiny happy people far more terrifying than Norman Bates.

Markenmeister

2010-11-03T09:11:00.004+01:00

On a recent trip to the UK, I popped into Lidl just to see how much thinking global and acting local was going on out there in the chill cabinet.

It was a rather interesting mix with familiar German specialities such as Lebkuchen (it was October, after all) rubbing shoulders with Indian-style ready-meals (the closest you'd get to this in a German Lidl might be a chilled Currywurst.)

It looks as if Lidl has certainly claimed some of the UK's stomachs, if not their hearts.

So I wasn't surprised to see two German brands up in the 20 final contenders for The Marketing Society's Brand of the Year. This will finally be decided at their Annual Dinner on 18th November by text vote amongst the top five.

And the nominations from Germany are...Audi - not surprising as Vorsprung durch Technik is one of the few German phrases that most Brits know that isn't connected directly with the Second World War. And the other brand that is up for it couldn't be more German if it tried - Jägermeister.

But our old friend Leberkleister has been very cleverly marketed in the UK, via music festivals, playing on the "heavy metal" look of the brand. Jägermeister experienced 100% year-on-year growth in 2009 in the UK and should do well again this year.

Somehow I don't think this would have happened if they'd called it "Hunt Master."

Generation 50Minus

2010-10-26T08:48:00.004+02:00

Lady Gaga is one. So are Barack Obama and David Cameron. And Wayne Rooney. Oh, and my ten-year-old son.

They are everywhere these days.

I'm talking about Generation 50Minus. You know, that consumer segment also known as First Agers, Immature Consumers, Junior Citizens and Bronze Agers? Only, of course, you should never directly refer to them as such in your marketing. For some reason, they don't like it.

Actually, they are a very interesting group for advertisers: when it comes to brands, they aren't interested in substance or quality, only in brands as superficial badges or cult objects to compensate for a not-yet-formed personality.

And they are pretty easy to market to as they have precious little knowledge, wisdom or life experience. Reliability and responsibility are foreign concepts to them.

Can we please stop this absurdity right now?

Wining and Mining

2010-10-16T14:35:00.004+02:00

To go with our meal last night, I admit to being drawn to a rather nice Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon. And I am not the only one, it seems.

I read a report in the English press that the coverage of the rescue of the miners in Chile seems to have had an influence on wine-buying habits. Oddbins reported a general 10% lift over the past few weeks and Waitrose customers apparently showed their solidarity with a +25% uplift in sales on the day of the rescue.

I have friends from Chile and I am pleased that the media coverage seems to be having a positive effect, not just on the image of the country, but possibly on the economy as well.

And it makes a change from the "forced" marketing of produce from a particular land that we have to suffer during, say, a World Cup. I still haven't quite recovered from the onslaught of "South African" products that hit the stores this summer!

Conform

2010-10-12T11:27:00.003+02:00

I do like this blog to be mainly a channel for my own musings, but I occasionally read something that I wish I'd written and take the opportunity to pass it on.

Some time ago, I think it must have been the early 90s, I noticed that almost every print ad had the same look. That was the time, of course, when art directors started doing layouts on their Macs. It led to a certain conformity of style.

Jim Carroll, the Chairman of BBH London, remarks that a similar thing happened to cars around 1983. They all started looking the same, because they'd all been through the same wind tunnel. And in this article, well-worth a read, Jim bemoans what he calls "wind-tunnel marketing" that has resulted in a conformity of output of advertising agencies.

Expertise and judgement losing importance in favour of systems and testing, Jim says. And while we learned, back in the 80s, that branded communication should be relevant, motivating

and different, relevance, in Jim's words "has trumped difference."

Is this just another "sour grapes" agency chairman, trotting out the cliche about "research killing creativity"? No. Like me, Jim started his career in market research where I expect he received a good grounding in what research can and cannot do.

Did you spot the deliberate mistake? Of course, "research" cannot do anything. It is inanimate. Nor can it speak, last time I looked, so do remember that the next time someone uses the expression "but the research says..." They probably have fairies at the bottom of the garden, too.

Devils (and angels) in the detail

2010-10-06T08:51:00.004+02:00

I commented in a recent post that neuroscience seems to be the flavour of the year when it comes to understanding that age old question: "How does advertising work?"

While I am still incredibly cautious about anything that involves "subjects" lying in a brain scanner, unable to move more than a few mm, I was interested to see that Thinkbox, the marketing body for commercial TV in the UK, have released their first neuroscience study.

And the topline is - when it comes to creativity in advertising, the little things can make all the difference. It seems that very small details - that often cannot be recalled consciously - can have a significant effect on how people process and store an ad in the brain, and thus its eventual effectiveness. Little details, such as facial expressions, and the timing of music.

Now, I am not sure that we need a neuroscience study to tell us this. Good creatives, directors and producers know these things intuitively. But it sure as anything adds weight to the argument that quantitative pre-tests, particularly those employing storyboards, may not be testing what we want to test. I'm all for creative development research to look at the potential of an idea but I don't like the idea of people's preference for the facial expression of one orange-faced drawing of a Hausfrau over another determining the creative direction of the brand.

Creativity at Work

2010-10-02T17:56:00.005+02:00

There seems to be a lot of creativity buzzing around the ether at the moment - or at least ideas about the creative process itself.

One book that I've come across this week is "The Creative Process Illustrated: How Advertising's Big Ideas are Born" by W. Glenn Griffin and Deborah Morrison. The two professors of advertising asked hundreds of creative professionals the question: What does your creative process look like?

Their replies are fascinating, from a fly fishing metaphor to a 16-step process worthy of the best of Procter & Gamble to the totally enigmatic.

And I love this video to support Steven Johnson's "Where good ideas come from". Chance favours the connected mind - yes, indeedy!

Perhaps what is most enlightening for me is that I recognise the way I go about Planning here. Does that make me a Creative Planner or am I just in the wrong job?

The third dimension

2010-09-27T15:08:00.004+02:00

For me, the best campaigns are not those that are merely "integrated", whatever that means. The best campaigns are those that, like people these days, flit effortlessly from the real world into the virtual world and out again, edges between one world and another blurring as they go.

But I don't think it stops at two worlds. Take the IKEA Campaign for the catalogue start from Germany - Der neue IKEA Katalog kommt nicht allein. At the centre of this campaign is (arguably) a rather traditional and old-fashioned medium - a paper catalogue. But IKEA has surrounded this medium with a story (IKEA designers coming into real German homes to do makeovers) which is played out in the real world, and on the internet via IKEA's own community and what are now known as "earned media".

It could have stopped there. But what I particularly like about this campaign is that it adds a third dimension. After virtual and real, this is a sort of hyper-reality, the world of larger-than-life. The designers don't just sidle into Germany with the next train from Malmo - they are parachuted in. And it's this hyper-reality, which uses the film medium to its best extent that adds stature, greatness and good old entertainment value to the campaign and the brand. Here's some content I couldn't have created myself. And sometimes people need that.

Stereurotypes

2010-09-21T09:05:00.004+02:00

While developing brand communications, we often have to consider the part that the provenance of the brand in question plays. And often, this can be quite different in different countries. While working on British Airways, years back, one of the difficulties of developing a global campaign was the differing perception of Britishness around the world. In the US, this could be summed up as "cute and quaint" while in Australia it centred around "colonialism and whinging Poms."

The latest "internet sensation", Mapping Stereotypes, may be a fun place to start if your brand has European roots. This is a series of maps from a Bulgarian graphic designer (he lives in London) showing Europe from seven different viewpoints. That's Germany, above.

While certainly not PC, the maps are at least a little diplomatic - I am sure that Germany is associated with arguably worse things than "dirty porn" by large sections of the US and UK populations. But what's interesting to me are the brand names that pop up - VW, Nokia and Volvo, for a start.

And what is most gratifying to me personally is that the whole of Sweden is rechristened "IKEA" as far as the Germans are concerned!

Brutality or generosity?

2010-09-14T09:58:00.006+02:00

The celebrations for 40 years of Saatchi are underway, with a well-publicised do at the Saatchi Gallery last Thursday. It has to be said that Saatchi is a phenomenon - and I am still proud to have been a part of it.

I joined Saatchis in London in 1988, which was somewhere near the peak of their success. I learned a lot, much of which stays with me today. Saatchis were always good at getting ideas to stick in people's minds.

I suppose most of what stuck can be filed under Jeremy Sinclair's idea of "brutal simplicity of thought" which underpinned the notion of a Singled Minded Proposition and of only presenting one creative idea. I remember a short film - "Hold fast to the original idea. Do not give in to the pressures of the moment." In those days, if the one creative idea was seriously shot down in flames by the client, it was a case of "Rip it up and start again" - or even dropping the client!

I don't see so much of that these days. There are tissue meetings all over the place, pre-tissue meetings, chemistry-tissue meetings, re-briefings and God knows what. There's a lot of cut n' paste and incremental tweaking, and bolting on of this mandatory and that. Many would argue that the world has moved on. It's become more complex. "Consumers" have become more "empowered" or "savvy". Generosity, not brutality is the order of the day.

But when I look back at the way Saatchis worked in the 80s, I do wonder. Was it arrogance, or positive self-belief? Was it inflexibility or was it having the courage of your convictions? Brutal simplicity of thought can also lead to beautifully timeless, highly emotional work - "Real Fires", "Lanson" and "Intercity Relax" were three TV spots of the time that are as fresh in my mind now as then.

Times have changed. Now that we have had a real pregnant man, the poster above loses some of its shock value. In the words of the Kinks, it's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world. Which is why, I believe, brutal simplicity of thought - and I am not talking messages or propositions here - is our main hope against wooly, vague and indecisive thinking in communications.

The great Rock & Roll swindle 2010

2010-09-08T16:51:00.004+02:00

A new perfume has been developed by the French fragrance company, Etat Libre d'Orange under the Sex Pistols name. Available in France and the US, the fragrance claims to "exude pure energy, pared down and pumped up by leather, shot through with heliotrope and brought back down to earth by a raunchy patchouli." The publicity material for the perfume also includes a list of must-dos for the potential wearer (resist tradition, fight conformity, express yourself with abandon...) and a reference to the "unruly turbulence of a prune."

As I see it, the only unruly turbulence that prunes are probably creating for the Sex Pistols these days is in their stomachs in combination with too much All Bran in an over-zealous middle-aged breakfast. But the perfume launch has brought plenty of comment ranging from the dreadful puns ("Pretty Fragrant") through to the disappointment that it smells of heliotrope and patchouli rather than cat piss/gasoline/stale sweat/ spilled beer/sick or cold cigarette smoke (sic.)

And there are those who are saying punk is dead.

But punk isn't dead. It's alive and laughing all its middle-aged way to the bank. And if Malcolm McLaren is turning in his grave, it's only because he's not getting his cut this time.

Twiteracy

2010-09-03T11:45:00.005+02:00

It's ironic that I learned my alphabet in a country where the literacy rate for females is still only around 35% (c/f males at over 70%). So maybe I have never really taken being able to read and write for granted. If I'd been born a native of that country, the chances are that I would not be able to read or write today, in 2010.

When you think about it, one of the developments of the modern world is the increased presence and power of the written word. We very rarely make phone calls these days when we can send an email, tweet or message of some sort. OK, some of this "written word" may be barely intelligible as English (or whatever language) - from text messages to YouTube comments.

Next Wednesday, September 8th, is International Literacy Day and my friends at Red Spider have been working with the non-profit organisation Room to Read, which promotes literacy and gender equality in education around the world to develop a campaign via social media to raise awareness and invite donations.

Without giving too much about the campaign away, it will be an ingenious way of using social media to show what it's like not being able to read. Check out the Facebook Page if you're interested in getting involved in the campaign.

Which reminds me - I've got Facebook running on Pirate English at the moment - which I understand even less than most YouTube comments.

Radical Solutions

2010-09-01T12:40:00.003+02:00

As a freelancer, I sometimes wonder if I should set myself up as a proper company, rather than carrying on as the flexible sort of one-man-band that I am. I've got a cracking name in Secret Agency so I guess it would probably involve getting a proper logo done and a sign by my door and maybe tightening up exactly what my offer is a touch. But usually, the whole idea of the bureaucracy and admin that's involved in Germany for setting up a company makes me shy off.

But I'm always interested when people I've worked with in the past set something up. The latest one I've seen is the Radical Company, newly opened for business in Camden and a number of other locations around the world. Apart from their radical attitude, the company has made a focus on digital media their point of difference.

I suppose that I would not have been surprised had the Radical Company been set up by an ex-colleague of recent times, one of my former interns or someone of similar youth. But the great thing about it is that it's the brainchild of someone who I associate with the golden age of Saatchis and TV advertising - Graham Thomas. Instead of joining the "things were better in my day" crew of old advertising hacks with their Mad Men-wannabe tales of non-stop champagne, cocaine and rock & roll, Graham has looked where things are heading and sprinted right off in that direction with the speed of a teenager.

I wish them all much success.

Appliance of (neuro)science

2010-08-27T17:48:00.004+02:00

I studied psychology many moons ago but I still like to see if anything I learned in those far-off days can be applied to my daily work. I also need to catch up with new developments.

Neuroscience seems to be one avenue that is opening up to marketeers these days. Martin Lindstrom's book Buyology uses findings from neuroimaging techniques and a number of media companies are dallying with the appliance of neuroscience.

The big boy amongst agencies who know their stuff when it comes to these techniques is Neurosense. They describe themselves as "a next generation consumer research enterprise" who use "applied neuroscience to see into the consumer's mind." Their website is well-worth a visit and I certainly intend to dig deeper into the subject.

However, however...I do hear a few faint warning bells which remind me of those that drove me away from Experimental and Cognitive Psychology all those years ago. The website describes "subjects" "performing a task" or "being subjected to marketing stimuli". This is the language of rats in cages, being given an electric shock as a punishment for not "performing a task".

I also wonder what creatives would say - particularly those critical of group discussions held in studios for being "unnatural" - to their precious "marketing stimulus" being "subjected" while "the consumer" lies in a brain scan machine in which they may not move their head more than 3mm and which may employ a bite bar to reduce motion.

I am all for progress, but I'll continue to use intuition and common sense in large doses along with the scientific evidence.

Teddy Bears' Picnic

2010-08-24T08:15:00.004+02:00

The market for children's toys must be one of the most dynamic of what could be called "durables". Normally, any one toy is only likely to be played with by any one child for a couple of years maximum before it's broken or passed on to the younger sibling or the flea market.

But there is one toy brand, which happens to be German that I believe will not just still be going but could well be producing exactly the same models in fifty or even one hundred years time. I wouldn't put a bet on even Lego still being around in 100 years, but I reckon Steiff will still be producing its teddies and other furry creatures.

In the same way that the company itself has longevity and durability, so do its products. Toys from Steiff are very rarely thrown away and will more likely than not find new homes on ebay, often changing hands for hundreds of Euros.

In these days where brands are told that they have to be flexible and adapt to changing circumstances, Steiff is the antithesis. Still a family firm after 130 years, the company continues to be true to the motto coined by the founder: "Only the best is good enough for children".

Sometimes it's good to be steif , or stiff, as a brand.

Social Media Mumbo Jumbo

2010-08-17T21:07:00.004+02:00

It may be my age, but I am still a little uncomfortable about the prospect of being T-shaped, having a transmedia narrative or even being responsible for the creation of an engagement platform.

Which is why it was heartening to read Justin Gibbons of WorkResearch in Campaign, reminding us of what good advertising (or brand communications of any sort) is based on:

1. Brand Understanding

2. Consumer Insight

3. A great idea (creative and media)

Getting to 1 & 2 and distilling this into a punchy creative brief to inspire 3 has always been at the heart of what Planners of any flavour should be about.

But...if you are ever the position where you have to write a social media strategy, this gem from Mike Phillips should help. You can mix verbs and nouns to come up with something that makes something quite straightforward sound as clear as mud.

I like "leverage conversations to maximise social currency and foster engagement."

Clippings

2010-08-11T13:54:00.005+02:00

In the days before digital, the PR department of every brand and company spent hours scouring the press and cutting out snippets of interest. It's a habit that dies hard and I am also guilty of hoarding papers and magazines years past their publication date on the principle of "that might come in useful".

Campaign is just about the only trade press thing that I have in paper form these days and every so often I have to cull the stack that sits in my office. So here, at random, are four articles or thoughts that caught my eye 2008/2009:

Austerity and Brightsiding: Joyce King Thomas of McCann Erickson says it's "a good chance to get back to basics and teach my kids good values and not so much consumerism." Still on trend, still relevant.

Brand Invention: This was all about agencies, such as BBH's Zag, getting into creating, developing and launching new products full time. From their website, it looks as if they are still going strong - the best of luck to what I think is a clever venture.

Insights: More of a soundbite than a big idea, from Simon Law via Adliterate. "An insight is a revelation, which elevates it from being simply an observation." For ever and ever, Amen.

The Long Now: A very thoughtful piece c/o Laurence Green about long-term thinking, which introduced me to The Long Now Foundation, founded in 01996! Must find out more...when I have time.

Bittersweet

2010-08-06T09:36:00.004+02:00

Returning from the sun to gloom and rain gives you an instant yearning to retrace your steps to whence you have come.

For me, nothing captures the spirit of Northern Italy more than those famous Aperitifs such as Aperol. While the Germans and Austrians are more focussed on what you knock back after the meal, the Italians have had the Aperitif off to a fine art for at least a hundred years.

I'm not talking Martini and Cinzano here: these brands have become too international, too ubiquitous. For me, it's the Bitters that sum up the quirkiness of the Aperitif. The ingredients are odd (artichoke), contradictory (bitter orange), mysterious (thirteen herbs and plants). The bottles, with their dark blues and oranges and gold-framed letters look like trinkets of Murano glass. Nothing looks as if it has changed since the early days of the last century when drinks like Aperol, Campari and Cynar were introduced.

I suppose you can drink the stuff at home, and dream, but I don't really want my Aperol gespritzt with grey German rain.

Ephemera

2010-07-26T11:43:00.005+02:00

We often ask our clients to think long and hard about the business that they are in. Sometimes, when I think about what business I'm in, it comes down to a rather beautiful word. Brand communications are, as often as not, ephemera.

Ephemera used to refer to printed matter but I would include film, audio and internet on top of that. Like a mayfly, most pieces of brand communications are not intended to endure for any length of time, however long-lived the brand behind them may be.

But it's good that there are people devoted to keeping such ephemera alive. One place I really must get round to seeing next time I'm in London is the Museum of Brands, housing the collection started by Robert Opie. Because even though the posters, wrappers, packs and print ads of my past have long exited into the great recycling machine in the sky, the impressions that they made have left permanent traces in my mind.

Paperback Writer

2010-07-15T14:07:00.002+02:00

Like most bloggers, I rather fancy myself as a writer. And now, helped by a fantastic new idea that's been doing the rounds of the internet since last Friday, I know which writer I am most like.

Apparently, sections of this blog are comparable to Douglas Adams, Kurt Vonnegut and David Foster Wallace (I'm not sure I like this one as a. I'd never heard of him and b. once I google'd him, I found out he'd topped himself...)

The link to this new way of wasting time is here.

And why stop at your own writing? Why not try it on some of your brand communications? Is your brand more of a James Joyce or a Dan Brown?

Funny old game

2010-07-12T11:20:00.005+02:00

One of the things that makes working in brand communication so interesting is that you can never predict what exactly is going to catch the public imagination.

Take the recent World Cup. Apart from the football itself, what got people talking? And what scenes and images from the whole circus are we left with?

The sound that is most likely imprinted on the collective audio memory is not Shakira, or Waving Flag, or any of the other songs, but the monotone drone of the onomatopoeically- named vuvuzela.

And the visual image has to be a character with whom I feel a certain kinship. Born in England, living in Germany, Paul the psychic octopus.

And what have they in common? Well, without over-analysing, I suppose you could say that both a vuvuzela and Paul are a little rough and ready. Unpolished. Definitely not high-production, high-gloss.

Football and brand communications - both are a funny old game.

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink

2010-07-06T13:55:00.003+02:00

Behavioural Economics, Choice Architecture and the book "Nudge" are not just the current buzzwords in politics: many of advertising and marketing's leading lights are making it their mission to incorporate more of this thinking into our profession.

Rory Sutherland wrote a very good article on decision-making in Campaign a couple of weeks back on this theme. I'm not sure about whether I want to become a "Choice Architect" myself. Firstly, Choice Architecture suggests a structure to me and a structure suggests a PowerPoint presentation full of arrows and boxes and filters and funnels and the sorts of decision-making models that we are trying to get away from. And I don't really want the title on my business card.

But the basis of his article is spot-on. Why do we continue to ignore the evidence of our own minds and slip back into describing the decision process as a sort of "brand beauty pageant" when it comes to that creature quite unlike us, "the consumer"?

Rather than lining all our "consideration set" up and rating them, the decision process is far often more an iterative one, determined by context as much as by absolute measures of value.

Rory also points out the importance of "immediacy bias" - we are "disproportionally affected by the ease and attraction of the first step rather than the long-term consequence".

This is vital for those working in marketing - how can we make our first step even more attractive and easy? And for those in communication - perhaps we should focus on showing what makes our first step so easy and/or attractive rather than on relying on the appeal of the long-term benefit.

Toblerhome

2010-07-02T12:23:00.004+02:00

There are some brands that seem to be completely entangled with one particular point-of-sale, which often adds another thread to their brand voice.

Apart from the category example of tomato juice and aeroplanes (does anyone drink the stuff anywhere else?), I associate Paynes Poppets with vending machines on London Underground in the days before it was smoke-free.

Toblerone lives in duty-free shops. Which rather suits the brand as it has a hint of the exotic - if not of Eastern Promise, then certainly the promise of Swiss luxury, expensive watches and dashing ski instructors. Like its fellow honey and nut concoctions such as Montelimar, nougat or halva, it hints at something rather more European-sophisticated than Cadbury's Dairy Milk.

Toblerone is one of these great brands that has both coherence and a touch of mystery - or bits that don't quite fit. Is the shape derived simply from the Matterhorn or from the rather more Ooh La La Folies Bergeres dancers? The graphics and pack are instantly recognisable but where exactly is the bear in the logo? Toblerone has over one hundred years of consistently being there, but there are always new variants - after the snow-topped variant I am expecting a springtime Alpine flowers version.

But maybe for Cadbury's fans, the most encouraging thing about Toblerone is that it maintains its distinctiveness despite now being part of the massive Kraft empire.

Damaged

2010-06-23T11:42:00.004+02:00

I don't know who I'd least like to be at the moment - Raymond Domenech or Tony Hayward. Domenech is on the way home with one goal and a mutiny to show for France's World Cup campaign, the reputation of French football in tatters.

Disasters happen, from losing a football match or two to serious disasters like the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Any company or brand has to be continually aware that something can happen that will cause damage to human and animal life and to the planet, as well as their company's reputation.

But many seem to make the mistake of worrying about the company's reputation, their life and their job first and foremost. The Chief Executive of BP seems to be doing just that - trying to shrug it off, reacting too slowly, dodging questions, passing the buck. Surely it is better to overreact, to act in any case quickly and, importantly, to put people first when such a disaster occurs by a genuine expression of empathy and compassion.

A question of loyalty

2010-06-21T10:02:00.003+02:00

I am sure I am not alone at the moment in not having much else other than football on my mind. Four years on, it's interesting to look back and read my scrawlings on the Sommermärchen that was the World Cup 2006.

Football teams, both national and league, do have a lot in common with brands, of course. Those that build up a good reputation over the years can be excused one bad performance once in a while. And it does look to me as if the German team, despite their recent defeat, has held on to a lot of the values that they developed when the tournament was on home ground.

But I worry about England. They just seem to be lacking in cohesion - like some big conglomerate corporate brand that has bought up a collection of brands from here and there that don't seem to fit together or have many values in common. Just about the only thing that seems to be shared and consistent is the hype surrounding them.

And, although he has since apologised, this is why Wayne Rooney's sarcastic words to booing fans - "that's what loyal support is" - were so troubling. These days, whether it's to your country, your marriage partner, a political party, your team or a brand, the concept of unconditional loyalty is a dying one.

These days, people are only too prepared to vote with their feet when they are let down by poor performance or bad service. Let's hope England start doing something with their feet soon, too.