Put a tiger in the bank

Brands have long used symbols from the animal world in their logos, names and advertising. Animals are universal symbols, and can quickly convey a host of easily-understood values or characteristics. From the bears on Hofmeister beer and Fox's Glacier Mints, to the black horse used by Lloyds Bank, the Peugot lion, or the Andrex puppy, animals are used to convey anything from strength to softness, to cleverness.

One of the most popular animals used as a symbol is the tiger. My childhood memories include the famous 'put a tiger in your tank' from Esso and Tony, the Kellogg's Frosties tiger. But sadly, the number of tigers in the wild is now far fewer than in those days, with the numbers left in the low thousands. Tigers are on the brink of extinction.

When I published my children's book The Bother in Burmeon , whose storyline involves rescuing a tiger from a most horrible fate as a tiger skin rug, I decided to donate some  of the royalties to a tiger charity, and chose Tiger Awareness.

I am now very pleased to see a great idea from the Panthera conservation organisation: Tiger Royalty. 
This is one of those ideas that's just so brilliant and spot-on that I'm amazed no-one has thought of it before - royalties for tigers from all the tiger-inspired brands and products that are produced around the world, an artistic rights fee for tigers that goes towards the funding of Panthera's Tigers Forever Program.

As Tony the Frosties tiger would have said - That's Terrrrrific!

Would you rather be trusted or famous?

Victoria Beckham once said that she wanted to be as famous as Persil, an objective that she has probably more than achieved. For the former Spice Girl, fame was an end in itself, and that's fair enough. Who's to say whether it's brought happiness or any other more lasting and possibly valuable benefits.

There's evidence that, for brands, the fame route may well be easier to achieve and pay off more profitably, in the short-term at least. The IPA 2008 study "Marketing in the era of accountability" shows that brands who use "fame" as a communication objective rather than image, awareness or trust are more likely to see success where it matters - at the business end.

And "fame" may well prove a more tempting proposition for marketeers, given the tendency to move on to the next brand after a year or two. Surely it's better on your cv to show how you made Bloggo famous, the brand everyone's twittering about, rather than attempting to build something as nebulous as trust, which is surely just a synonym for the rather dull values of reliability and dependability?

Trust is a tricky objective. It's hard to pin down, it's a long-term thing and, importantly, it has to be done through-and-through, not just via communication. Every time any of your stakeholders encounter your brand or company, there is an opportunity to build or lose trust. Most companies simply aren't structured to deliver that as yet.

But just because it's tricky doesn't mean it shouldn't be attempted. For all manner of organisations - not just brands - trust is taking on increasing importance as the 21st century progresses. Unless people trust you and your organisation, they will not support it.

Any brand can become famous through excellent communication. But trust has to be earned.

I do wonder if any up-and-coming soap powder brand has an objective that they'd "like to be as famous as Victoria Beckham."

What's the big idea, then?

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!

The third dimension

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.

The good and the great

If you're looking for a definition of happiness that's slightly out of the ordinary, look no further than Steve Henry's blog.

Once I'd tittered about that one a little, I went on to read the legendary creative man's musings on "good" and "great". I go with him all the way when the subject is avoiding the safe and the ordinary.

But I do take issue with the topic of "good" vs. "great" - and which is more desirable. There's an assumption somewhere here that "good" is rather like "nice" - aka "mediocre".

My view is, that especially today, the two are not a linear progression. Think about it this way. Go back to the Middle Ages and imagine two kings. After Steve, let's call then Henry. There's Henry the Good and Henry the Great. Which of the two was a better king? Or, more to the point, who would you rather have lived under?

My bet is that Henry the Great would have been rampaging around the outer reaches of the known world somewhere, using his people's money to bash up barbarians with a massive spiked ball on a chain. This would be the equivalent of making a big noise at the Creative Awards, I guess.

Henry the Good, on the other hand, was probably taxing all the barons who'd got too big for their boots to provide free mead and ox-roasts for all his subjects.

A question of loyalty, perhaps?