Extrawurst: The Film

Well, there's a thing! Extrawurst goes Hollywood. Or Babelsberg.

Nothing to do with this rather ageing and dilapidated blog, of course. But I did have to go and see it.

Extrawurst, the film, is about what can happen when we shove people into "identity boxes". The scene is a tennis club AGM, and what starts as a well-meaning suggestion (maybe) soon gets out of hand. The tennis club members are literally at each other's throats.

The film is a non-stop volley of insults based on what "women", "old white men" or "Turks" are "meant" to think or do. Rather than relating as the club members with a shared interest in tennis -  Melanie, Heribert and Erol.

Extrawurst is pretty damned funny, and a good reminder to look for universal truths when developing advertising. Putting people in target audience boxes, from "LGBTQetc." to "GenZ" is lazy and superficial. 

And it's just not tennis.   

Status Quid

 

If any British retailer represents the Status Quo, it’s Marks & Spencer. That’s why I was a little taken aback, then rather tickled, to see this TikTok ad which seems to have upset the Status Quo of the advertising world.

The origins of the film are interesting. Campaign rather sniffily just refers to it being “in-house”. But what actually happened is that M&S have been giving their store managers autonomy to do their own thing on social media for a while now. One young store manager - the chap who appears at the beginning of this video, who’d been doing his own TikToks for a while - put up his idea via the digital equivalent of the old-fashioned staff suggestions box.

Advertising types in trendy parts of London, predictably, find the result quite ghastly. And yes, it is cheesier than the counters of all the M&S Food stores put together, but that is its charm. Why is Barbie acceptable cheesiness, while this is not? 

But even worse than the creative types tearing out their rainbow hair are the pompous planners on their high horses about branding. I am at a loss to understand how this little film - it’s hardly a multi-million image campaign - can be detrimental to the brand.

The message is highly relevant to our current “counting the pennies” situation. It shows that the brand knows exactly where people are.

The jollity and exuberance of band, staff, influencers and customers will surely attract a few more people in-store rather than ordering online.

Francis Rossi and his band are just as much a national treasure as Twiggy, Dawn French or any of the many M&S spokespeople - best of British and unafraid to take the p*ss out of themselves.

And the beauty of it is - as with top-notch humour - it unites people across generations. Rather like this rather more spectacular ad from Australia:

If Francis Rossi rakes in enough money to get a new guitar, I won’t begrudge him that.

Dream-Pedlary

 

During the first wave of the pandemic, advertisers from retailers to telecoms, food to insurance, appeared to all have received the same script for their TV commercials, which was executed in a remarkably similar fashion worldwide: plinky piano music, an "empathetic" yet rather sombre tone, vignettes of human despair and hope, and a promise of "being there for you.”

Meanwhile, on social media, people created and shared their own entertainment: OK, there were plenty of mawkish poems, but much inventive and fun stuff too - horse-riding and mountain-climbing illusions created within the confines of a small apartment, toilet-paper jokes a-plenty and song parodies that most of us still have stuck in their heads. Which seems unlikely for any of those "we're here for you" ads, let alone whichever brands they were attached to.

Those few weeks really brought into focus the challenge facing the advertising industry today, which Paul Feldwick examines in his latest book, "Why does the pedlar sing?". Advertising is less liked and less effective than it was a decade or two ago. 

While many of those in the industry may put the blame at the door of the client, for not being brave enough to buy their edgy, disruptive ideas, Paul Feldwick asks the question: what is good advertising, actually? Is it the bold, kick-ass, "stuff that matters" that's celebrated on LinkedIn and at awards ceremonies?

The answer to this question is drawn from Paul Feldwick's previous book, "The Anatomy of Humbug" as well as a fascinating look back to the origins of modern advertising, 20th century examples from his own experience, and recent studies/works from Binet & Field, Orlando Wood and Byron Sharp: good advertising is popular, something people like and something that makes brands famous.

The book is full of good advice on how to develop - and even create - better advertising. I work as a strategic planner, and I found the idea of getting away from the "essentialist" theory of brands a good wake-up call: instead of theorising about brand essences in a Platonic sort of way, get down to a direct appeal to the senses through a brand's "distinctive assets". And let the "creative process" - if it can be described as such - take its chaotic, iterative, not logically-predictable course.

The book raised questions with me, which is a good sign. Is fame (in a mass-media, mainstream sense) different for niche or local brands? And how does the call for more representation/reflection of people's lives in advertising tally with a return to the fun of the fair, the cartoon animals, the wild and wonderful, satire and general nonsense? Not to mention the much stricter regulations and guidelines imposed on the industry?

Like "The Anatomy of Humbug" before it, "Why does the pedlar sing" is engagingly-written, with a good dose of personal experience and opinion thrown in. I'd recommend it to anyone who works in brand communications and advertising.

And once lockdown is over and I can get back to the UK, I'm heading to the Museum of Brands.

RETROWURST: Carnival in Germany March 2003

Time to rummage around in the archives of my pre-blogging days again, and this month I have a special treat. My first ever Extrawurst, which also gives you a little bit about the origins of my blog name. This delight dates from March 2003, and is accompanied by the sound of slightly tiddly oompah music.

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Seeing as this is my first Extrawurst, I’d better give you a quick explanation as to what an Extrawurst is. Yes, it literally means a ‘sausage thrown in’ if you’ll excuse my German. A typical use of the phrase is ‘The problem with Franz is that he always expects his Exrawurst’ or, in better English ‘Franz always expects his added extras (at no added charge)’. I’ll be giving you some thoughts on life and brands from behind the Sauerkraut curtain every month which I hope will amuse and inspire. 

My theme for my kick-off Extrawurst is Carnival, or Karneval, or Fasching which you just can’t avoid here at the moment. I’m pretty sure that if you ask people in the UK about Carnival at this time of year, Notting Hill aside, they are far more likely to bring to mind the jazz bands of the New Orleans Mardi Gras, the sequinned costumes of the Rio dancers or the romantic masked balls of Venice than the goings-on here around the Rhine. But Carnival has been building up to a climax here since November, when the Carnival Clubs officially launch their campaigns with the high points of Rosenmontag and Fastnacht before Ashermittwoch (Ash Wednesday).

 

You may have noticed the mention of Clubs and Campaigns there, which is one little element of Carnival, German style. Everything is meticulously timed and organised with parades starting at 11 minutes past the hour precisely. There are also very strict rules of behaviour for the revellers- even though you may call the colleagues you’ve worked with for 20 years by the formal ‘Sie’ for the rest of the year, not calling them by the familiar ‘Du’ if you happen to bump into them at a Carnival party will mark you down forever as being hopelessly stuffy. 

 

What are some of the typical elements of German Carnival? Well - the skimpy costumes of Rio are not recommended in February temperatures in Germany- far more popular is something with maximum coverage and minimum shape, to disguise the number of beers you’ve downed - variations on clowns are a perennial favourite and furry cow suits seem to be this year’s fad. Of course, the powers-that-be in the Carnival club have their own special costumes and fools’ caps in the carnival colours of red, yellow, blue and white, with the most extravagant costumes worn by the Carnival Prince and Princess (who are likely to be called something like Prince Gunther II and Princess Gundula IV). Gunther could well sport a fine Rudi Voller hairdo and moustache with his costume while Gundula is likely to be a little on the portly side with a particularly severe pair of glasses. Who needs the glamour of Rio?

 

Whoever thinks that German carnival is all frivolity and foolishness is very wrong. The Carnival had its origins in satire against the government and politics still plays a huge part. In the parades, there are huge paper-machée models of Herr Schroeder, Fischer and other (un) popular figures with our friends from the US being high on the agenda for satire this year. Germany must be the only country who would think of sending a Spitting Image puppet of its Chancellor as representative at the Eurovision Song Contest! It’s no surprise that Carnival was very definitely verboten during the 1930s.

 

Carnivals isn’t Carnival without food and, most importantly, drink. Traditional fare is doughnuts, called variously ‘Kreppel’ or ‘Berliner’ depending on where you come from - hence JKF’s infamous statement on his visit to Berlin in the early 1960s. ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’. But the main course on the Carnival menu is drink, and plenty of it. Here the Germans really come into their own. Carnival is strongest around the Rhine, which is wine country and half litre white wine ‘spritzers’ where the wine is probably just given a quick look at the water bottle are a typical drink to get people into the mood. Beer is also not to be avoided, especially in the carnival centre of Cologne (Koelsch) plus little bottles of Schnapps with innocent –sounding names like ‘Pflaumchen’ or ‘Little Plum’ or ‘Kleine Feigling’- ‘The cowardly little fig’.

 

 So, what relevance does all this have for brands? Apart from not calling German colleagues too early in the morning on Ash Wednesday or the obvious product and promotional opportunities (buy a furry purple Milka cow outfit and get ten doughnuts free) I think that it says something important about brands. Sometimes, I feel we (brand owners, managers, stewards, whatever) get just a little bit too precious about what Brands should and shouldn’t do, rather than thinking about how the brand in question might do whatever it is, and, importantly, what effect that might have on the brand’s fortunes. Carnival is certainly a way of getting noticed and eliciting plenty of sympathy (and hangovers) amongst the brand’s community (or potential community).So, just because the brand Germany may have values such as efficiency, organisation, duty and obedience to authority at its core (along with the more Carnival-friendly attributes such as oompah-music, jolly good beer and no worry about wearing ridiculous clothes in public) doesn’t mean to say that these values can be brought to play in celebrating Carnival, as we have seen, in a way that is 100% true to the brand.

 

That’s my first Extrawurst- I hope that you enjoyed it. I’m off to eat some doughnuts because tonight it all has to come to an end and the offer of ‘Traditional Aschermittwoch herrings in our local town hall’ tomorrow doesn’t sound that appetising!

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Well, a lot of readers will know where it went from there. The music got worse as the years went by, the costumes even more grotesque (1980s shell suits were very popular last time I looked) and, in a tip of the clown's hat to inclusivity, we had a gay Prinzenpaar locally.

Last year, I made one of my biggest mistakes ever. We spurned the local carnival parade in a self-righteous manner and went jogging, for about 10km, around it. How smug and holier-than-thou can you get? I really don't know what on earth got into us. Certainly not alcohol.

We paid for this error. Last year would have been the last carnival as we know it for some time. Carnival parades 2020 were some of the first super-spreader events, and this year it's all been online and making cute YouTube videos with Playmobil figures. Yawn.

At least I don't have to eat pickled herrings, though.

Comfort and Joy

 

A Christmas Story by Charles Rebel Stanton

Comfort and joy may have been in short supply this year, despite many of us forced back into our own comfort zones for rather too long. It's been clear that for brands, too, communications have been created with something of a "walking on eggshells" mentality, with concern over tone-deafness and misreading the mood of the nation. 

This somewhat restrictive approach, worrying about getting it wrong rather than determination to get it right, has led to a lot of bland, joyless and strangely soulless advertising and other communications.

Maybe it's time to stop thinking about advertising's role to reflect the world as it is, and start thinking about its role to entertain and present the world as it could be. Or another world completely.

Joy is a good start, but joy always feels a little bit sanitised and homogenised, like a choir of over-zealous evangelists. Especially when it pops up in a marketing plan which eulogises over making each touchpoint a "joyful connection".

I hope next year, advertising can dust down its entertainer's glad rags. Not merely joyful, but bringing us belly-laughs, mischief and mirth. Witty repartee, farce, a subversive smile. Whimsy, euphoria, glee and giggles. 

That's how to sell stuff, in the end.

So long, spontaneity?

When I first came to Germany, back in 1996, one of the strangest aspects of culture shock was what I called "unspontaneous dancing". I'd been alerted to this to some extent in Austrian ski resorts, but this still couldn't prepare me for the weirdly robotic and joyless spectacle of what the Germans call Disco Fox. The low point had to be seeing a couple grimly going through the mechanical motions to Smoke on the Water. It was enough to make me want hail a taxi to the airport and hop on the first plane back.

Of course, these days, hailing taxis and hopping on planes seem like quaint memories of the past. We have all read enough articles showing how the COVID-19 crisis has accelerated trends in behaviour that were going on anyway. I commented already some years ago about the reduction of (positive) surprise in our lives, both online and offline.

It's apparent in communication and keeping in touch, where phone calls are scheduled, both business and private, and even meetings with friends are organised with the precision of a military operation - aided and abetted by all sorts of apps and software as well as both virtual and real assistants, planners, coaches and organisers.

Even before the crisis, the entire travel, hospitality and leisure industry was going this way with all-important checks on TripAdvisor, and extensive online research even for a trip to the pub. Serendipity was already on its way out of the window for many people who pooh-poohed the "real god of travellers":

All the strangeness, all the distinctiveness of a country will utterly escape you as you are led and your steps are no longer guided by the real god of travellers, chance. - Stefan Zweig, 1926 'To Travel or be Travelled'

After all, who needs strangeness? These days, "stranger" equals "danger" more than ever.

As the world emerges from lockdown, it's clear that chance should play as small a role as possible. It's a world where everything should be controlled, scheduled and traced. Safety and security have become idealised virtues: stay safe, safe spaces. Safety is what is known. Or what we think is known, that is, predictable. And we are armed with templates, frameworks, algorithms and tools to  box in, clarify and capture anything that might care to be numinous, elusive or inexplicable.

But, I wonder. While jumping on planes with gay abandon and merrily ticking off bucket-lists might become a thing of the past, maybe more conscious travel and the knowledge that things don't always go to plan may just open a door to discovering things off the beaten track?

And with social distancing the order of the day could those standardised dance moves foxtrot their way back to the 1980s and make room for something a little more inventive and expressive?

Unmistakeable

The other weekend, I slunk off on my own to the cinema to see Stanley Nelson's documentary Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool. Some reviews have suggested the film is a little pedestrian with its cradle-to-grave and talking heads approach, but I found it fascinating.

What struck me most of all throughout the film was the contrast between complexity and clarity. We talk about change and the VUCA world today, but when I think what changes culturally, socially and technologically Miles Davis lived through in his (rather-too-short) life, it's quite extraordinary. The quick-cut stock-footage introductions to phases of Davis' life that Nelson uses are tremendously effective in bringing this home.

Parallel to the evolution of the times was the evolution in Miles Davis' music - influences, collaborators, band, styles - from hard bebop to cool jazz to funk fusion, and all the rest.

And super-imposed on all of this is the complexity of the man himself. He was complicated: a genius artistically, cool, proud and brave, but also arrogant, violent and jealous, anti-social and drawn into the self-destructiveness of drugs and alcohol.

I came out of the cinema with all that complexity swimming around in my mind, but above it, a sound. An unmistakeable, clear, non-vibrato, melodic trumpet singing "simple, pretty notes" (just 12 of them).

What's this got to do with brands? To me, it's yet another demonstration that brands are not "like people." Who in their right mind would attempt or even want to hang a personality like that of Miles Davis onto a brand?

But yet, who wouldn't want a voice as clear and distinctive as that of Miles Davis' trumpet for their brand? Forget the complex personalities and archetypes and character profiles: to make your brand distinctive, nail the voice and be true to it, whether you're playing funky stuff or lonely ballads.

My favourite example of a clear brand voice at the moment? Burger King.

AI: Master, Servant or Something Else Altogether?

The use of AI in the entertainment industry has been the subject of a number of posts here - there's Creative Direction by Numbers  and Why advertising may be the last refuge for creativity - and if you put my entire blog through your super-advanced AI platform, you'll doubtless find many more.

I was talking with a friend about the publishing industry recently - and how new novels seem to be identikit these days - from the reviews ("heartbreakingly sad yet life-affirming") through to the interchangeable cover designs. Many new novels seem throwaway and forgettable - with a superficiality and lack of edge that suggests they are the literary equivalent of the selfie.

Films seem to have gone this way a long time ago, and this week, I read an interview with the CEO of corto.ai where, yet again, I got the impression that entertainment is increasingly data-driven, and not necessarily in a good way. The company "have successfully developed a quantitative model of how various narrative structures drive performance for movies, trailers and marketing campaigns." And here, I'm assuming "performance" means pure commercial performance, not awards or reputation won, or whether the film will go into the annals of history as a classic.

Here again, if you look at the entertainment example given on the website, the analysis is all about "what were" and "what have been" - that is, the old rearview mirror method of predicting the future based on the past. A self-perpetuating system.

No creative person needs evidence derived from AI to understand that what people find interesting is a balance between "known" and "novelty" - nor can AI really help you to get this balance right for any particular individual. It's part intuition, part good judgement plus a large sprinkling of luck.

In contrast, another AI agency, discover.ai, presents a different philosophy. Less concerned with Hollywood (although I am sure Hollywood could benefit from this approach) and more with brands, this agency makes it clear that expertise in AI and expertise in people work hand-in-hand. The blog post Why we should embrace bias gives another perspective to the one that suggests bias is a negative in research that AI can help eliminate. It's well worth reading, with some points dear to my heart - "No objective truth", "Data is not reality" and "People make decisions, not data". I particularly like the quote from Gary Smith )"The AI Delusion"):

While computers are very good at discovering patterns in data, they are useless in judging how best to apply them in the real world because they lack human wisdom and common sense.

AI is best used to accelerate and augment human intelligence, not substitute for it.

I'm jolly excited by AI - in the way that I'm far more excited by a springboard than a straitjacket.

Book Branding Part 2

In my last blog post, I talked about Author Branding vs. Book Branding, and today I'm going to launch something rather special that's been waiting in the wings (or the hangar) ready to fly.

If I'd decided to go down the Author Brand route, I expect I would have put something together that would have ended up looking like every other Author Website, with a few fun facts about my schooldays, how much I love cake and how many cats I have (none).

But I decided early on that people aren't that interested in me, rather in getting a glimpse into the world of my books: characters, cars and planes featured, links and more. And all my websites do allow a little bit of author-ego indulgence as I'm not completely immune to the lure of the limelight.

The original idea for the look of the website came from Stefan Lochmann, the designer. In the stories a 21st century boy, born into the digital age, travels back in time to the mid-20th century. In the same way that the book design reflected an old book "found" in an attic, Stefan wondered what an "analogue website" would look like.

The idea translated into the websites for the first two books, each reflecting the specific setting and atmosphere of each story, but with the central idea of an "analogue website" made up from signs and materials from those times. So here, for example, we're whisked into a Cold War winter of 1957.

Website for Trouble in Teutonia

As with the book covers, the websites all reflect the essence of the book series: The Past is a Dangerous Country, and play with the digital/analogue theme as well as each having its own individual feel and atmosphere.

The latest story, The Al-Eden Emergency, is set in a 1966 Middle East and Swinging London jetpunk world. There's a preview shot at the top of this post to entice you in, and I can now proudly present the finished website.

Just be careful you don't tread on any scorpions!

SPAM's people

Over the years in this blog, I've dug up enough evidence to show there's not much new under the branding sun whatever fancy new terminology and buzzwords are introduced. For example, my Christmassy piece of branded content, or some useful branded guides to baking and motoring.

I came across a fascinating article by consumer behavioural researcher Ayalla A. Ruvio this week, entitled How Spam became one of the most Iconic American brands of all time. Definitely worth reading in full, it shows how a not terribly exciting product became an iconic brand through involvement and emotional connection with people, employing all manner of ingenious "brand experience" ideas decades before the term was coined.

The article is brimming with historical examples of collaboration, co-creation, tapping into culture and generally being informative, useful and entertaining.

Yes, entertaining. The Spam story that caught my imagination the most was that of the Hormel Girls, a musical troupe of female WW2 veterans. So there's even female empowerment in there too!



But maybe the biggest example of Spam's iconic status is the passing of the brand name into everyday vocabulary. Of course, the brand could have kicked up a huge fuss and not wanted their name sullied with connotations of junk mail.

But I am sure that would have done more harm than good.

Rebel bands and brands

I went to an open-air rock concert at the weekend, something I hadn't done for some time. One aspect of the experience that intrigued me was that they seemed to be giving away ear plugs at the bar. Rather weird, if you ask me. I asked the girl behind the bar what that was all about and she didn't really seem to know but commented that "maybe some people are sensitive."

A strange remark, I thought, but there seemed to be a streak of concern for the sensitive running throughout the show. At the entrance was a security sign telling you what was allowed and not allowed in terms of bringing stuff into the show. All very well. But then there was an extra section listing what is not liked at the venue: racism, sexism, homophobia and so on, but also stuff like overstepping personal boundaries, coming on to people inappropriately and that sort of thing. Look, I don't like that stuff either - but does it really need to be spelled out to adults?

It reminded me of the sort of sign you get at swimming pools: no running, no jumping, no diving and all the rest. And even though I've left my adolescence behind long ago, those sort of signs always make me want to do exactly the opposite.

The band's singer gave us some cod philosophy about "the rules are there to be broken", but I felt pretty sure that no-one would look kindly on anyone breaking those rules of desirable behaviour that the venue has laid down. I wondered vaguely if the venue's management go through the back-catalogue of lyrics with a red pen each time some rock dinosaurs come to strut their stuff.

Hate is only acceptable when it's channeled in approved directions.

Perhaps the conversation Johnny has in The Wild Ones would go like this today:

- Hey, Johnny, what are you rebelling against?
- What's on the approved list?

This is important for brands, as I sense an increasing homogeneity: brand values are interchangeable, and even "rebel" brands seem to be more and more conformist. I am not a great fan of those "12 Brand Archetypes" tools, for a number of reasons. Not only is there rather too much over-simplification involved, but the whole thing seems to be about fitting in rather than standing out. ("Which Disney Princess is your brand?" to which a real rebel brand should really answer "None of 'em!").

Are the "usual suspects" who get held up as Outlaws or Rebels really so? Harley Davidson, Virgin, Diesel et al? Or are they merely the establishment's idea of an acceptable rebel?

I'm on the lookout for brands that do something genuinely rebellious. Existing only in the Internot, for example.

Past Forward

Sometime in the 1970s, inspired by Blue Peter, I buried a time capsule in the woods at the back of our garden. Well, time capsule is a bit grand: it was a biscuit tin filled with various ephemera - a newspaper, probably, a paperback book, sweet wrappers, that sort of thing.

The only problem is that 40-plus years later, I have no idea where I buried it.

One criticism of much marketing activity is that it's terribly short-term. Even for durables and long-term services, the emphasis in today's digital world is on the now and the present and the instant. OK, there are the occasional exceptions. Ads for watches that you're just keeping 'for the next generation.' Or the promise of your own share of a barrel of whisky to enjoy in a decade or two. We've got a couple of rather nice bottles of red wine, vintage 2000, sitting in the cellar to enjoy when the boy turns 18 - not too long to wait now.

I've written a post here about taking your time, which mentions the Long Now Foundation (Founded in 01996 to foster long-term thinking and responsibility.) And here's another smart piece of thinking from Remy Martin and their agency to promote their Louis XIII cognac, which takes 100 years to make.

Two years ago, they kicked off the 100 Years campaign by producing a film starring John Malkovich which would first be released in 2115. (They are lucky they chose Mr Malkovich and not Kevin Spacey, but no doubt there will be other worries by 2115.)

And now they have teamed up with Pharrell Williams to create a music track that won't be released for 100 years. And this time there is a 'planet positive' message built-in: the disc has been pressed on unique clay vinyl (using soil from the vineyard - whatever next!) and will be stored in a water-vulnerable safe. So if we mess up, and water levels rise, our descendants won't get to hear it in November 2117.

Of course, people in 2117 may be wondering who on earth Pharrell Williams was, but still.



Now, some people may argue that it's a bit pointless spending so much on and making such a song and dance (and film) about a product few can afford. (A bottle of Louis XIII costs over £2,000.)

But advertising Concorde never did British Airways any harm.

Creative direction by numbers?

I've already bemoaned - or at least questioned - the use of 'predictive software' in the film industry, both here and here. And I see the phrase 'data-driven decisions' everywhere I turn, it seems.

The latest company I've become aware of plying their wares in this are is ScriptBook whose tagline is 'Hard Science. Better Box Office.' Moving on from the 'Hard Science,' they have quite a hard sell - 'subjective decisions lead to box office failure.' And they have the data to back it up. 87% of films lose money.

Now, there may be something wrong in the logic that making a film involves subjective decisions, and most films lose money therefore subjective decisions mean failure, but anyway. What ScriptBook  offer is Script2Screen, which employs artificial intelligence to analyse screenplays, delivering an objective assessment of a script's commercial and critical success. Out with hunches, intuition, bias, gut feeling and in with fairness and objectivity.

Not only do ScriptBook promise commercial and critical success, but innovation and originality, too:
'At ScriptBook, we believe that by unifying technology and storytelling, we will enhance innovation and bring back originality in film and television.'

Eh?

Do tell me how a 'predictive algorithm' which works by looking at a database of existing scripts can bring back originality? Unless it means oh, RomComs are successful and so are Zombie films and Historical Biographical, so let's have Gandhi meeting a zombie for a madcap affair.

Let's go back to the data-driven decisions. I remember a few years ago, panic about how e-commerce would destroy existing bricks and mortar retailers. But what's happened is not an 'either or' situation. Everyone is going multichannel in retailing.

It's the same with data. In the same way that Millward Brown and other pre-testing research agencies used to claim to 'predict' the success of your TV spot based on the analysis of their database of tested commercials, companies like ScriptBook are no different. it's just that there's even more data, and what we can do with that data is ever more sophisticated.

Perhaps data-informed is better than data-driven. 'Driven' suggests someone cracking a whip at a herd of cattle. As Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said, while speaking about House of Cards: 'We start with the data ... but the final call is always gut. It's informed intuition.'

Before we leave this subject, here's some light relief for my German-speaking friends. Who needs artificial intelligence when you have monkeys? Comedian Jan Böhmermann composed this smash-hit single with the help of monkeys who chose which of either the four most frequent words in German Chart Hits ('Menschen' 'Leben' 'Tanzen' 'Welt' ) or phrases from TV commercials should come next in the lyrics:

Storytelling by numbers?

Seeing the rather splendid Wes Anderson Christmas Ad for H&M has reminded me yet again of how close the worlds of branded communication and entertainment have become. The current interest in storytelling, which I've blogged about here, shows no sign of abating, and, while I have some misgivings about the way storytelling is being pushed by naive and/or unscrupulous consultants, it's a subject which is close to my heart.

There's a good article in The Atlantic by John Yorke which poses the question of whether All stories are the same - and if so, why?

The article starts off with looking at the similarity of many story-lines: Avatar and Pocahontas, for example, or Jaws, Beowulf and Jurassic Park. My favourite that I always use is those three great 19th century novels - Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary and Effi Briest, along with the 20th century true story of Princess Diana - unhappy wife commits adultery and comes to a sticky end.

Story shapes and structures are remarkably similar. But is structure something that can and should be learned? Screen and novel-writing courses, and increasingly courses and services for brands and companies include a lot of theory about structure, narrative arcs, inciting incidents, heroes' journeys and all the rest. I have ploughed through Joseph Campbell myself, and it was a bit of a slog.

Some would argue that it's not necessary to learn all that stuff consciously, that it's better to assimilate it naturally through listening to, watching and reading plenty of stories yourself. I was at a school class of 10 and 11 year olds recently, and gave them a simple bit of theory about beginning, middle and end aka the 3-act structure. But I honestly don't think they needed it. All the short stories they produced had a shape, a structure, that made sense.

I belong in the camp not of rejecting all the theory outright, but of not getting too tangled up or constrained in it. The author of the article warns: 'It is all too tempting to reduce wonder to a scientific formula and unweave the rainbow.' Furthermore: 'all great artists ... have an understanding of the rules whether that knowledge is conscious or not.'

For anyone involved in telling brand stories, it's the same. Imagination, a way with words and pictures and an understanding of the brand - where it's come from and why it exists - as well as a big dose of human empathy will get you further than knowing what % of the way into the narrative the second inciting incident should come.

Once you know the rules, you can break them.

Now, get me on that train to the Grand Budapest Hotel!

All together now

I'm a great fan of Coca Cola's marketing. I have blogged about how the old dog does indeed learn new tricks here . The ideas from Coke that stem from the bottles are a marketing masterstroke, from the original 'Share a Coke with ...' and the names, to the football teams, to the 'Coke through the decades' retro pack designs. These are ideas that are about togetherness and individuality, the collective and the personal simultaneously.

And this summer, Coke has done it again with 'Share a Coke and a Song.' The 'Big 4' Coke varieties will include song lyrics on the packaging, with a promised mix of 70 songs, encompassing old, new, borrowed and blue(s), I expect.

This feels so right for Coke and hopefully will be worth all the effort and expense taken to secure the lyrics. Music is, of course, an international language which unites people. Music is about emotion, memory and mood, which ties in perfectly with Coke's new 'Taste the Feeling' campaign.

In another smart marketing move by Coke, the company will be rolling out its 'One Brand' packaging in 2016 and 2017.

It makes sense to me to bring the variants closer together under one brand - rather like car brands such as Audi, it's the marque that is important emotionally, not the individual variant that suits your physical tastes or needs.

And, going back to the music, I wonder whether it is also one in the eye for Pepsi, who have always had close associations with music in the past.

Hooray for Humbug!

I have lost track of how many discussions, arguments and debates I have had about how advertising works. How many articles, papers, blog posts and books I've read. How many talks, lectures and seminars I've been to. And at the end of it, there is no Holy Grail.

A breakthrough moment came to me a few years into my career when the agency Hall and Partners leapt into the UK market research scene with an MRS paper, a philosophy and methodology that seemed eminently sensible to me: advertising works in ways that may well be mysterious, but are certainly various. It can work through the mind, or at least rational thought (Persuasion), or through the emotions (Involvement) or through the senses (Salience). I've blogged about this here.

I've just finished Paul Feldwick's excellent book, which I mentioned in my last post, The Anatomy of Humbug. I had a similar feeling of a breakthrough on reading this - it's a review of advertising practitioner (rather than academic) thought from the 19th century onwards. Six ways in which advertising probably works (which are not mutually exclusive) are outlined. Please note, however, that Mr Feldwick mentions that six is simply a convenient number - these are in no way 'The Six Definitive Ways In Which Advertising Works.'

They include our old friends Salesmanship, Seduction and Salience, which correspond approximately to the three ways outlined by Hall & Partners. Then Mr Feldwick adds Social Connection, Spin and Showbiz.

The 'schools of thought' are illustrated by quotes and anecdotes from ad men and researchers through the ages, some I'd heard of (Bernbach, Ogilvy, Rosser Reeves, Stephen King, Ernest Dichter and showman P.T.Barnum) and others that I hadn't, who I now feel compelled to read up on ( Lasker, Hopkins, Starch, Bernays). At last, after nearly three decades in advertising, I know what 'Starch' and 'DAGMAR' refer to!

The book is refreshing to read - intelligent, witty, incisive and opinionated in a good way - a long way from the standard business book blah.  I liked the way that the book ends with 'Showmanship.' How often have you thought, or said, after all the posturing and pontificating and over-intellectualising - come on, it's only advertising!

I suspect that many of us are happy to be suckers. We know the rules of the game. We know about hype, but do we really care as long as we get value for money? To me, 'Showmanship' is a bit like 'Salience' - it's an immediate appeal to the senses, instant gratification, and not to be analysed or taken too seriously.

As another (fictional) 19th century showman (Mr Sleary, the circus owner in Dickens' Hard Times) said:

People must be entertained.

And maybe it's brands that should be doing that.

Getting sentimental over you

I read an interesting article from The Book of Life recently, entitled Sentimentality in Art - and Business.  In it, the author makes the observation that sentimentality has moved from the art arena to the business arena. I assume it's meant that sentimentality hasn't completely decamped from the art arena, as I see it as alive and kicking, especially when it comes to popular art and entertainment - from the moody photos of hunky man holding vulnerable baby to the paintings of Thomas Kinkade - and a large percentage of what's shared on Facebook, if you can class that as art.

The article includes Oscar Wilde's definition of sentimentality from De Profundis: 'the desire to feed off an emotion without paying for it' - so all of the positive elements with none of the shadow side.

I would contest whether the move into the business arena is a new thing. Advertising has always been  escapist, larger than life, a utopia, escapism - right back to the impossibly cute Pears children and before. But, by and large, advertising plays by rules that people accept as part and parcel. No one is so naive as to believe that this is a representation of reality. Even if, these days, so many brands are trying to populate the same utopia - see Vignette Roulette for a cruel but amusing illustration of just how interchangeable these various brand worlds are.

But these days, as we know, the borders between brand and corporate, employee and customer, business and private are blurring in a social media fog that's actually far from transparent. Sentimental language and behaviour has crept into the boardroom - 'Lovemarks', 'embracing' this and that, 'reaching out' to all and sundry, 'passionate' about anything from loo rolls to insurance.

This has spawned all manner of sentimental company manifestos and employee brand statements about a better planet, about mother love, about future generations.

No longer confined to external advertising, the sentimentality is flowing through companies in a syrupy tide and no-one is looking at the shadow side.

And this is where it gets tricky, because no-one wants to pay.

Empathy or manipulation?

Facebook is littered with them. Personality tests that can reveal which character in literature you most resemble, your ideal career or your core personality type on the basis of which coloured door you'd go through. And no women's magazine is complete without  a check on "which perfume bests suits your personality" along with the usual horoscopes, graphology and numerology features. Some of this stuff is even branded - how you eat your Oreo says more about you than you'd ever guess!

I still love this stuff, even though I know the psychology behind it. Take the example above. I was thrilled to be a "sharp-angled, but curved tip" sort as it means I'm creative, enthusiastic, energetic and all those other desirable traits. But would I have been so disappointed with the "flat top concave" description? Probably not.

The way it works is known as the Forer Effect, after psychologist Bertram R. Forer. In 1948, he gave his students a personality test, the result of which was a "unique personality analysis" for each student. What he didn't tell them was that everyone got an identical analysis. They were asked to rate its personal accuracy on a 1-5 scale and the average rating was 4.26. Forer's "unique analysis" was cobbled together from horoscopes and riddled with phrases of the "at times you are ... but at other times you are ..."

As advertisers and marketers, we make use of this effect in our work, consciously or intuitively. Interestingly, if you read about the Forer Effect, it is associated with manipulation, quackery, deception, gullibility.

I take a different view.

I think it's a great confirmation that, despite our differences, there are commonalities that unite us as human beings. There are universal truths in what qualities are desirable, in how people would like to be seen. Yes, people want to be seen as individuals, but there is also a basic need to belong as part of the human race. And people are not stupid. I'm pretty sure that most people that do these tests sense what's behind them, but go ahead for the fun of it anyway. In the same way that people in group discussions will often state that "I'm not taken in by advertising" before describing how the John Lewis advert made them cry.

One man's manipulation is the next man's empathy.

P...pick up a Puffin

Which brands from our childhood have the most impact on our lives? In my case, Puffin Books stands out as a major contributor to my obsession with both reading and writing - and the way the brand was marketed in the late 60s and 70s is still a text book example of marketing to children - and getting it right.

For those not in the know, Puffin books was Penguin's children's imprint. In the late 60s, Puffin's  chief editor, Kaye Webb launched the Puffin Club, whose main medium was the quarterly magazine Puffin Post. This was packed full of book reviews and previews, interviews with authors, jokes, competitions and contributions from Puffin Club members. The whole package (including the envelope) was wittily and charmingly designed by the illustrator Jill McDonald.

Kaye Webb was a woman before her time when it came to marketing. She had a Mission - to get children reading, a strategy to do this - to connect children to authors and illustrators and held the belief that the world would be a better place if more children read books. She's even quoted as seeing her role to spread "Puffinness" - a most modern idea of branding!

So many elements of the Puffin brand and Kaye Webb's approach ring a bell for 21st century marketers: added value and brand extension, a social network, 360° marketing, edutainment - it's all there. Just from the top of my mind, I remember diaries, badges, bookplates, even a Puffin glove puppet to make yourself. And there were holidays, although I never got to go on those. That's on top of all the wonderful books with their brilliant cover illustration and design.

Now, that's what I call making a difference to someone's life.

P.S. For the Puffin nerds amongst us, have a look at The Puffin Club Archive for some wonderful memories.

Why advertising may be the last refuge for creativity

It's well known that these days, the entertainment industries - particularly music and film - use algorithms to assess hit potential, based on past performance. 'Creative Risk Management' company Epagogix proclaims loudly on their website:

"Data-based decision-making is on the rise all around us!"

or

"The art of quantitative prediction is reshaping business and government."

Now, it is debatable whether "quantitative prediction" should be classified as an art, especially when you observe the results of this omnipresent rise. The last time I checked what was on at the local cinema, I was offered Fast & Furious 6, Scary Movie 23, Hangover 99 or Alvin and the Chipmunks 666.

It used to be that if you weren't good enough to be a Hollywood producer, you might be able to scrape a living in the grubby world of advertising. And these days, that may even be a preferable existence. You see, much as Epagogix and their like may rub their hands together in glee when they see the advertising budgets of the big global brands, it's hellishly difficult to predict advertising success based on the past, despite what certain market research agencies may tell you.

For all our shift to "conversations instead of disruption", advertising is still, for the most part, uninvited. The fast-forward button on the video, the channel change on the remote control have been joined by the AdBlock app. You won't often see a queue of people like the one above eagerly awaiting your next TV ad, unless you're John Lewis.

All of this means that the element of surprise, newness, chance is still vital in creating good brand communications. Creativity, in other words.

Finally, I would always question a claim for "prediction". Prediction of what, exactly? In most cases, the talk is of box-office success - bucks and billions. And, fair enough, money still makes the world go round.

But can anyone "quantitatively predict" which films will change the world, which will be hailed as classics in a hundred years? I doubt it.