I want to be alone? Or maybe not.

 

Nivea must have waited a long, long time to find its purposeful answer to Dove, the great grandmamma of all purpose campaigns. But here they are, and the societal issue they’re tackling is a biggie.

The global loneliness epidemic.

A new film, created by Publicis One Touch, spearheads the campaign. The central idea is “We are not alone in feeling alone” (thanks, Sting!). The film uses ET-style aliens to represent that feeling of “being from another planet” when you don’t feel included and part of things. But the melancholy aliens quickly metamorphose into humans with friendly words and kind gestures.

The film is part of a  long-term campaign package to fight social isolation, called NIVEA CONNECT.  

Now, I think the good people at Nivea and their agencies have their hearts in the right place, but there’s another connection that's missing for me.

Why Nivea? What has skin cream to do with loneliness? I can understand someone like Telekom picking up on human connection - or a food or drink brand that’s shared. In fact, Cadbury’s in the UK have had a campaign on the theme of kindness and generosity for years. 

And ... there’s Coca Cola. The Nivea film reminded me of an ad from 16 years ago:

The creative idea is related - but in my view much stronger.

What stays in my head from the Nivea film? A rather mawkish melancholic mood, depressing depictions of victimhood. 

And from Coca Cola? 16 years later it’s still bringing a smile to my face and I’ll be humming the song all day. 

The dinosaur had a baby - and they called it O.W.N.

 

A couple of years ago, I addressed the question of old dogs and new tricks, and a little while later wrote about Beiersdorf's first new product launch in 30 years, Skin Stories.

I'm back to Beiersdorf again today, with the launch this week of O.W.N. - a personalised skincare brand for cleansing, day and night care.  

Now, to look at O.W.N. you'd be forgiven for thinking it's yet another of those hip, start-uppy new brands that flood Instagram. 

All the boxes and more are ticked: 

A pure digital D2C business model

On self-care mega-trend and need for individualisation

Sustainability

Personalised at scale, with 380,000 formula combinations on offer

All driven by A.I. and algorithms, which get to know your skin better day by day

Brand identity fits current aesthetic, including brand name (which stands for "Only What's Needed"), and of course your own name on the packaging

But what's different here is the role of the dinosaur mother company. Only with 140 years' knowledge on skincare and the backing, in development, of a study of 10,000 women in Europe and Asia, with 2.5m "skin measurements", are you going to get the trust and buy-in at scale that O.W.N. is really going to do what it says on the recyclable tin.

And it's all part of the grand (yet flexible) strategic plan and purpose of the matriarch.  

Now, notice I said "mother company", not "mother brand". Did Beiersdorf consider bringing out the new brand under the Nivea name, or at least make some allusion to it? I'm sure that was hotly debated.

Maybe there's something to be learned here for the companies where brand and corporate name are one and the same. 

Whatever, this is a clear sign that some of those legacy dinosaurs aren't going to die out just yet.

More than skin-deep

I wrote a while ago about old dogs and new tricks and here it comes - a brand new and very impressive trick from a positively ancient old dog - or at least its great-grand puppies.

Beiersdorf's first new brand to be launched for over 30 years is Skin Stories, a skincare brand for tattooed skin, including a sun stick, UV moisture lotion and a special repair serum. The new brand recognises that tattoos are mainstream these days (nearly half of all German women aged 25 - 34 have a tattoo - or two).

The cleverness lies in the winning combination of experience/trust (skincare expertise) and innovation - a skincare brand not targetted to gender, age or skin-type, as has been done in the past, but to a segment of the market who have chosen to modify their body in this way.

And there's a brand purpose, too - better and safer tattoos - with the brand going beyond product to set up a think-tank for modern tattooing, for example.

Let's hope it comes up roses for Beiersdorf.

Holy Logo!

Reader's Digest have recently published the third annual Trusted Brands Survey. The main survey is carried out in the US, where 5,500 people were asked which brands in 40 product categories they trust the most, and would recommend to family and friends. The study backs up, with numbers, a lot of stuff that marketers know intuitively - for example, that people are prepared to pay more for brands they trust.

From the results, Reader's Digest have created the Trusted League, giving the brands superhero names and personas. So McDonald's becomes 'The Satisfryer', or Dove 'The Beholder', and then there's 'Swoosh', representing Southwest, above.

It's a lot of fun and probably a nice pat on the back for the people working on these brands, but without being a total dreary killjoy, I'll add a note of caution: don't take this too seriously when you're creating your advertising. It could land you into a spot of hot water or holy hubris.

There's also a German version, with fewer product categories and no superheroes, although there are plenty of the usual suspects: Nivea, Milka, Haribo, Allianz, Persil.

I was a little surprised, however to see C&A on the list, as well as Deutsche Telekom and - wait for it - VW.

Maybe it goes to show that goodwill built up can go a long way when you do tell one or two porky pies.

Discounter Duels

This Autumn, both Aldi and Lidl have launched noticeable new campaigns. But these couldn't be further apart in terms of approach.

Lidl is making the most of the fact that they have always stocked a certain number of brands as well as their own brand. And with Aldi taking on more and more brands (they used to only stock one of two, such as Haribo, but they've now got some biggies, like Nivea and Pampers) this is perhaps timely. The new campaign for Lidl is very simple, very hard-hitting: You have the choice. Strong brands and strong own labels. The advertising idea is a direct comparison of price - for example 15 iglo (aka Bird's Eye) fish fingers for €2.89 or 15 Ocean Sea (Lidl) fish fingers for €1.59.

In some cases, the branded product costs double that of Lidl, but the point is that the choice is yours, and Lidl stock both.

Meanwhile, over at Aldi, there's a completely different sort of campaign going on. This is not as grubby and straightforward as talking about price, but is on a much loftier level. The campaign idea is Einfach is mehr ('simple is more'). The website, posters, films and brochure are all full of philosophical musing about how our life has become too complex, how children smile more often than grown-ups because they don't need much to be happy, how we need more simplicity in our lives.

There's a cooperation with a rapper, Fargo, who has released a song on this topic, and, yes, you can buy the T-Shirt, too. And if that wasn't enough, there's yet another platform or website or something, Einfach. Ganz. Ich where you can sign up for all manner of training videos, expert tips, recipes and all the rest.

This route is backed up by Aldi's principles. For example, life should be simple: you don't need 9 kinds of lemons. The range in Aldi stores is limited, and everything is so cheap you can't make a bad choice.

But, much as I agree that the world is too complex and a lot of people have forgotten what simplicity means, I don't think Aldi is the solution. Aldi, if anything, increases complexity by its time-limited offers, which are usually things one doesn't actually need but feels never-the-less compelled to rush out to the store early on Monday or Thursday to snap them up before anyone else does. While you don't need 9 kinds of lemons, you may well have a favourite brand that Aldi don't stock, and have to make an extra trip to get that.

Admirable though the initiative is, I don't think Aldi is at all credible as the sender. And despite best attempts to do otherwise, the campaign has a distinct 'finger-pointing' feel to it.

So, who will win the duel of the discounters? My money is on Lidl.

My price or yours?

Winning brands

Around this time of year, awards ceremonies are all over the place - you can't move for red carpet. Or something. I'm always interested in the brand world equivalent, and a few weeks ago here in Germany the 13th year of Best Brands winners were announced at a big gala do hosted by various media companies, advertising and market research agencies as well as the association for German brands.

Although not exclusively focussed on German brands across the various award categories, I was expecting a good show from what I think of as classic German brands - Nivea, maybe BMW, maybe Becks.

The winners are chosen based on two broad criteria - marketplace (financial) success and 'share of soul' - popularity and emotional connection to the general public. As GfK are involved in the whole thing, the methodology for selecting the winners is pretty thorough.

No real surprise, then, in the winner for Best Product Brand 2016 - this was Nivea, which also won in 2013 and 2014, and came second this year. The words 'from strength to strength' come to mind.

Perhaps a bit more surprising was the winner for Best Growth Brand 2016 which was WMF. Jolly well done to them, and this shows that you don't have to be a techy, appy, 21st century new kid on the block to show phenomenal growth. WMF was founded in 1853. While there is probably a limit to how many cutlery sets anyone actually needs in a lifetime, I have noticed that WMF have been very active in joint promotions with supermarkets and simply present as a great brand name.

In other awards, the category-specific award for e-commerce was won by amazon (no comment) and the Best European Corporate Brand 2016 was won by Porsche.

That other well-known German brand, VW, however, was nowhere to be seen.