Friends Re-separated?

I received a rather plaintive email this week, from one of the founders of FriendsReunited, the reunion-based website launched in the UK in 2000. The email had the dramatic heading The Sunset of an Era and was written in rather emotional terms. Here it is:

Hi Susan In the summer of 2000 we launched FriendsReunited as a method for people to find their old friends from their school days. The internet was in its infancy and the world was a very different place. Social Networking was not even a term anyone used, but FriendsReunited grew very quickly to become one of the largest sites in the UK. A lot has happened since. In 2005 we sold the site and moved on. We watched from a distance whilst other sites came and went but for some, social networking became ingrained in our life and is here to stay. During that time FriendsReunited declined. Despite efforts to reverse this trend it couldn‘t compete with the giant services like Facebook. Not long ago I was approached by the FriendsReunited owners, to see if I wanted to take it back and try some new projects with it. It was evident that putting the site back to be more like its original form was not a service people would get excited about using again. The site is still used by a handful of members however it has become clear that the site is no longer really used for the purpose it was built for. For the site to continue it needs a complete re write and this is just not viable. Therefore, it is with a heavy heart, that we have decided to close the service down. This will commence in the next month, We do recognise that people have a lot of old photos within their profiles on the site. We will therefore provide a link to allow you to login and download your photos. You will be receiveing an email in the coming months with further information on this. Although FriendsReunited is closing, we are also opening a completely new service called Liife. Liife is all about capturing key moments in your life - both the past and the present. And then sharing them with just the important people who actually took part in those moments. There is a lot more to liife than just that though - if you want to register your interest then go to www.liife.com. More information will follow.

To read more about the above click here

Steve Pankhurst

In its heyday, before Web 2.0 came along and broke up the party, FriendsReunited was bought by ITV and branched into other media - TV shows, compilation CDs and so on. But once the ubiquitous Facebook started gaining ground, in 2007 or so, the attempts to revive FriendsReunited appeared increasingly desperate. The site was relaunched as a 'memory sharing site' in 2012, trying to capitalise on the human need and interest in nostalgia.

I'm not that saddened by the demise of FriendsReunited. To me it was never really a brand - it was a service that I made use of and moved on. It's telling that Steve Pankhurst talks about it as a 'site'. 

Maybe that was the mistake.

Somehow, FriendsReunited was a brand-in-the-making that never quite made it. The elements - reunion, research, true friendship, nostalgia, memories and maybe even Britishness - could, in the right hands, and with a bit of luck, have built up to a brand that could adapt and survive.

Axe your magic?

After 20 years of a positioning that could be summarised as 'Get sprayed, get laid', Unilever's male grooming brand Axe/Lynx has been repositioned. A new commercial from 72andsunny, Amsterdam features a guy with a prominent nose, a hipster with kittens (of the fluffy rather than the sex- variety), a guy wheelchair-dancing and a catwalk model (male) sporting killer heels. There isn't a bikini-clad babe in sight.

It's a nice-looking ad, and ticks all the 'inclusivity' boxes - except the lack of subtitles for hard-of-hearing, as one YouTube wag pointed out - and the message is less about getting the girl and more about 'finding your magic.' 'Find your thing - now work on it!'

Unilever and their agency say it's all about 'inspiring and supporting' young men, and the 'e' word that we know and love from Dove has already been used. Only 5% of men in the UK, according to Unilever's research, agree that they 'feel like an attractive man.' Well, that could have been something to do with the way the question was phrased, but there we go. Unilever say: 'The pressure to conform has gone up. Guys have lost their confidence to express themselves. The moment you show individuality then people get bullied, and this is the big issue.'

Hmm.

Maybe that could be re-phrased as 'the moment you show something that could be construed as sexist, then you get bullied.' I have seen no evidence that Axe sales are on the slide, or that the product is no longer relevant to the target group. What I have seen is plenty of commentary of the sort - how can Unilever promote Dove as empowering women, while producing those awful sexist Axe ads?

But were they? History seems to have been rewritten here. Yes, Axe have produced some notoriously sexist ads (although I always regarded them as tongue-in-cheek) that probably don't belong in the 21st century any more than Benny Hill or Carry-On films. But there have been some brilliant films, too. which have shown how the basic brand idea can be brought up to date and executed in a way more fitting to the values of the day:



This one is over 10 years old and still looks good.

Or this, from a couple of years back:



If I'd been on the Axe team, I'd have asked what was the magic of Axe, what was its 'thing' and tried to bring it up to date. There are plenty of examples of that around - James Bond, Sherlock, Star Wars, even Old Spice.

As it is, I worry they have diluted the magic, or lost it altogether. From moving from sexual attractiveness (which doesn't have to be exclusively to women, by the way) to being a 'beautiful human being'/empowering/building confidence or whatever the idea is now, they have lost the link to the product and the uniqueness of the brand.

In fact, the whole campaign seems to smell a little bit of 'attractiveness to yourself', but maybe that's the method behind the madness - to appeal to the narcissistic generation.

Fascinating Archetypes

I've never been too sure about the use of the word 'archetype' in a marketing context. As a psychologist, my association with the word is Jungian, and something far more complex than which box you end up in in a Buzzfeed - style quiz.

OK, reservations aside, I do admit that sometimes a 'typology' exercise can be useful in brand positioning work. It's more than just a description of a personality - it  can help describe how people relate to your brand, and maybe gives a tone of voice for the brand communication. In a crowded market it's a way of distinguishing between brands.

I was intrigued to see the 49 Personality Archetypes developed by the How to Fascinate consultancy, led by Sally Hogshead. The consultancy is mainly in the business of personal branding, but of course brand managers also want their brands to fascinate! Sally Hogshead has a background as an advertising copywriter, and has defined '7 Advantages of Fascination' - Innovation, Passion, Power, Prestige, Trust, Mystique and Alert. When these are put in a matrix, the 49 personality archetypes emerge, each with a primary advantage plus a secondary advantage, creating personas as different as The Wise Owl, The Control Freak and The People's Champion.

Similar to Myers-Briggs, you may think. But these personas are less about how you see the world and more about how the world sees you. Each has its own communications style, relationship approach and set of priorities.

I am not sure that this could be applied 100% to brands - and, of course, the questionnaire and algorithm used in the analysis are rightly proprietary, but nevertheless, it's a potentially interesting new way of looking at brands.

Fascinating stuff.

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!

Pre-digital Christmas

... well, it's now 21st December, so probably a bit late for all that!

Sometimes, instead of being all plannerish and analytical, I like to simply revel in beautiful pieces of advertising from the past.

This year, I'm going back to my roots and 1960s Britain. I'm afraid I don't know the artists of these beautiful posters, but if anyone can enlighten me I'd be grateful.

And, finally, fifty-plus years later, this one from the COI is just as relevant today.
Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy & Healthy 2016!

Perfectly Positioned?

I'm often called upon to think of parade examples for great campaigns, and top-notch examples of brand positioning, and the more I read about Airbnb, the more I think I'm going to be including this one as a brand that's doing rather a lot right.

It's very much a brand of its time, tapping into several of the megatrends for the early 21st century, with a degree of healthy tension - between belonging and individuality, between exploration and feeling at home.  The slogan 'Live like a local, not a tourist' taps into something many can identify with. And it's all made possible by connection via technology, such that the digital and real worlds are seamlessly linked.

Airbnb is the world's 3rd most valuable privately-held start-up, operating in 190 countries, 34,000 cities with over 1m hosts. And they've only been going since 2008.

Those 1m+ hosts are the core of the brand, and Airbnb is completely dependent on them. This is what makes Airbnb so different, and potentially brilliant or disastrous. 1m+ human beings in all their diversity and irrationality. There can be no 'consistency guidelines' here.

It's interesting that the brand positioning or purpose, 'Belong Anywhere' taps mainly into the guest mode or point of view. Is it a weakness that the hosts (or people in host mode rather than guest mode, as I am sure there is plenty of overlap) have entirely different motivations (and a far greater risk) than the guests, yet they are not addressed in the core positioning?

It's certainly a brand to watch, but I have one other reservation (if you'll pardon the pun) before I use this an example. I haven't even tried Airbnb as a guest, let alone offered myself as a host.

Maybe one resolution for 2016 should be to give it a go.

It is Christmas Day in the Workshop

If I could pick what has been the biggest change in the way marketing and advertising people work over the last twenty-five years or so, I'd have to say that it's the rampant rise of the workshop. Since I've been freelance, the majority of requests that come in are for designing and running workshops.

I looked at my trusty Oxford Dictionary (published in the 1980s), and at this point, the main definition of 'Workshop' referred to 'a room or building in which manufacture is carried out'. Maybe that's why I have always associated the word with the grim connotations of 'Workhouse'. There's a secondary definition, which does suggest a 'meeting of several persons for intensive discussions, seminars, learning' but the emphasis here is on something extra, for educational purposes.

These days, workshops seem ubiquitous. I have even heard 'workshop' used as a verb - 'let's workshop it.' What did we do before workshops? Well, we did have plenty of brainstorms, but I notice these have gone rather out of favour. The post-its, the flip charts, the marker pens are now the weapons of choice of the workshop facilitator.

With colleagues working on a project often dispersed geographically, one reason that workshops have gained popularity must be the need to use the limited time that people are together, face to face, wisely and effectively. There's a worry that a free-flowing discussion, or a simple meeting won't be productive, therefore the need for more planning and structure.

While this makes sense in a lot of cases, and a well-conceived, designed and run workshop should yield results, I'm sure we've all experienced so-called workshops that have over-run, gone off on another tangent, provided reams of indecipherable post-its, or have simply confirmed one or two lowest common denominators, aka 'alignment'.

Often these workshops are ineffective and focus on consensus rather than brilliance due to a lack of clarity at the outset of what the purpose is. For me, brainstorms are about ideas, while workshops are about specific solutions to specific questions. It's a bit like qualitative and quantitative research.

Before we go into automatic pilot and 'workshop it' - we should ask ourselves: what is 'it'? What is the question we want to find a solution to? Is a workshop the best way of doing this?

Or should we have a brainstorming session, or simply a good old-fashioned meeting?