Brand Architect

Raining Fish Makes for Good TV Ad

Apparently the fafrotskies phenomenon is a rare meteorologic phenomenon that has been reported throughout history and occurs when whirlwinds or tornadoes pass over bodies of water, sucking up small animals like fish and frogs into the clouds. These creatures are carried by wind currents and eventually "rained down" over land. This rare event makes for a nice commercial by Nedbank Capital that speaks about how to handle the unforeseen.

The Dangers of the Ivory Tower View

They shouldn’t, but too many brand managers and strategists do it all the time: trapping themselves in the ivory tower of head office and a limited view (read understanding) of the market and their brand’s interaction with consumers. Management cartoonist Tom Fishburne brings it home nicely in the cartoon above. Below is what Tom had to say.

“It’s easy to think of marketing as what happens in the head office: the PowerPoint presentations, the slick ad boards, the debates in meetings. But brand meaning is created by consumers, not by marketers. Consumers interact with brands in the midst of their busy, chaotic lives, not in the artificial, carefully scripted way we imagine in brand onions and positioning statements.

“It doesn’t matter how our brand resonates in a 30-slide PowerPoint deck with crisp graphics. It matters how it resonates in a crowded shelf of a dimly lit pharmacy to a time-pressed mother of four...

“It’s easy in business to get trapped in the ivory tower, detached from the actual consumers who buy our products. But you’ll learn a lot more away from your desk than at it. No matter how much Nielsen data you have.”

The State of the Internet

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo.

The above video gives nice insight into the size, composition and activity of the Internet. Can’t vouch for all the numbers but many of them are similar to what I have seen elsewhere. Found the video here.

Marketing to Keep Up With The Joneses

The Joneses, with the tagline “They’re not just living the American dream, they’re selling it”, is an interesting concept for a movie scheduled for release in April. The storyline is that the “perfect family” move into an upscale gated community and become the envy of their neighbours. The twist in the plot is that they are not a family but employees of a stealth marketing company who through a combination of tryvertising, branded content and viral marketing get others to buy what they have. You can view the trailer here.

Getting the Message Home

Above is an exceptionally well conceived and executed French television commercial to combat drunk driving. It works backwards from the normal execution of excessive drinking leads to a horribly accident and disfigured victim. Ad agency was Lowe Strateus in France, art director was Frederic Rougier, copywriter was Aurelie Guilbea, creative director was Vincent Behaeghel and director was Xavier Mairesse. Came across the ad on Ads of the World.

Integrated Brand Strategy Workshop

A couple of times a year I present a masterclass workshop on integrated brand strategy which looks at crafting and implementing brand strategies that embrace both the business and creative sides of branding, particularly in turbulent and ever-changing socio-economic environments. We call this approach fluid branding. My next workshop is scheduled for Johannesburg 9 & 10 March and builds on previous workshops by drawing more from management and social science thinking and tools not normally associated with branding. In addition, the workshop will include the popular sessions dealing with research and insight, developing a brand stratline, digital brand strategy and measuring the brand strategy. You can find out more about the workshop here.

The Dearth of Originality

Another new ad, another previous ad that is remarkably similar. This time between a commercial for Coca-Cola that aired during this year’s Super Bowl and a 2002 ad for an Israeli milk brand Yotvata. The Yotvata commercial was by Shalmor Avnon Amichay/Young & Rubicam and the Coca-Cola one by Weiden & Kennedy. Click here to read an earlier post of mine on striking similarities in high-profile ads and click here to read what 5 Blogs Before Lunch had to say about the ads above.

Luxury Brands’ Two-Tier Strategy

After a couple of tough years, luxury brands are embarking on a two-tier strategy with The Wall Street Journal reporting that luxury designers are limiting production of some high-end items to foster a sense of scarcity, whilst at the same time, established brands are offering a broader range of entry-level goods.

Management consultancy Bain & Company are forecasting a "timid" global uptick for luxury in 2010, with 1% growth globally following an estimated 8% decline in 2009.

Core luxury consumers—those with assets of at least $5 million—have re-emerged from the spending slump, and people with at least $1 million in assets are on their way back as well, Hana Ben- Shabat, partner at management consultancy A.T. Kearney, told the newspaper.

“Noticeably absent, however, are the ‘aspirational shoppers’ who, before the recession began, drove the luxury boom by stretching to buy higher-priced prestige items. With credit tight and unemployment high, they remain on the sidelines - but are still window shopping and keeping track of trends,” The Wall Street Journal quoted Ben-Shabat.

Retailers are looking for ways to woo them back, primarily by pushing designers to create lower priced collections. One example is the French label Chloé, which introduced a canvas handbag that is 50% less than the brand’s usual $1,200-and-up handbags.

Plain Copying or Jung’s Collective Unconscious

Increasingly we are seen highly regarded ads repeating what has already been done.

The print ad above left was down for the Child Safety Seat Coalition in Toronto by Juniper Park. The ad focus on the “Baby on Board” sticker in the rear window of the hearse, virtually identical to the award-winning execution done earlier for the Alberta Occupant Restraint Program by Calder | Bateman. Very, very similar.

Last month I wrote about a campaign for Mini Cooper that left large boxes made up to resemble the packaging for a Mini Cooper Christmas present around Amsterdam and the fact that Heineken had previously done a similar thing for its walk-in fridge campaign.

The quickest answer is plain copying, but I think perhaps Jung’s theory of a “second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals” or an adaptation of it also deserves consideration.

In 2009 I worked with a talented and original creative team on a concept which, to our great dismay, we discovered that the execution was very similar to one for a non-related brand that launched their campaign before ours but after we had started the creative process.

I was inclined to let our campaign run because I knew it was original, but the creative director knew we would be accused of copying and, in hindsight, correctly changed our campaign.

We live in a connected world where information and concepts are constantly and immediately shared, and where six degrees of separation appears to be two degrees too many. Perhaps then in the deluge of input, our subconscious grabs something that our conscious innocently retrieves later.

The fact that the hearse campaigns happened in Canada and the boxes in Amsterdam possibly supports the shared inputs theory. Or perhaps it supports the creative plagiarism view.

Related posts:
Mini Cooper Boxes Clever

The iPad and the Ad

Amid all the hype about the iPad and its e-reader / tablet peers, one question, long overdue, is starting to emerge in more mainstream conversation. How will the ads fit into this new environment where physical anchoring is jettisoned in favour of context and convenience?  That e-reader ads will embrace multimedia is obvious, but where the ads will be displayed is less cut-and-dried. Answering these questions, or at least, properly scoping the questions is occupying considerable mind space at Sagacite. Branded content will feature strongly but is far from the complete answer. Thinking about the ad as the framework rather than the filler moves us further down the road, but at what cost to journalism. Expect to see more of these questions and answers emerge as the iPad and its brethren reach the hands of consumers.

Insuring Women Over Backward Men

Humour sells and South African agency Black River F.C. uses it to great effect for their client 1st for Women insurance brokers.

The Future of the Media Industry

The future of the media industry is of vital importance to everyone in the communication industry, whether it be news or brand communication. Changes here are going to ripple across all related industries for a long time to come.

Booz & Company recently released their perspective on the media industry and had the following to say: “As 2010 begins, the industry is truly at a Darwinian moment, in which the evolutionary process will rapidly distinguish between winners and losers. The view of Booz & Company’s media and entertainment practice is that the companies that will define the next wave of industry growth will require competencies that are substantially different from those that ensured success during the analog era. Previously, winners were defined by their strengths in content development, packaging, and distribution—all key for an entertainment world characterized by scarcity.

“The digital era is characterized by unprecedented levels of consumer choice, ubiquity, and interactivity. To succeed in this more dynamic environment, companies need to acquire and build new skills. They must excel at developing deep audience insights; building consumer relationships across multiple platforms and user environments; creating targeted content, applications, and advertising opportunities; and managing a mix of monetization models across advertising, subscriptions, and commerce.”

The management consultancy - anyone noticing how management consultancies are increasingly commenting on issues key to the operation of ad agencies - listed 10 key developments shaping the strategies of leading media and entertainment companies. here are a couple of them:

-- Although most companies have cut costs in the past year, ongoing structural changes in the media and entertainment industry will require continued vigilance on cost reduction—even as advertising and retail markets stabilize.

-- The traditional value chain of marketers, agencies, and media companies will continue to evolve, unravel, and be reconstituted in more heterogeneous combinations.

-- Media sales and marketing teams will need to go beyond basic advertising placement in order to drive breakout growth.

-- Media metrics to measure spending effectiveness, with a greater emphasis on results, are evolving across the marketing mix and at all stops along the path to purchase (at home, on the go, in the store).

-- Social media outlets are becoming important distribution hubs for content, given consumers’ propensity to share content, links, and networks.

-- The rapid expansion of online video, along with new “tablet” devices and readers, will compel media and entertainment companies to regain control of the customer interface in order to better monetize the digital experience.