Category: Branding

I love this picture by David Armano. I am particularly fascinated by the way that David is able to tease out a problem and turn it into something visual. I guess that is, in part, what makes him and his work + blog so successful (does this sound like blog envy). But one of the reasons that David’s work is so strong is because of what his visuals DO NOT say.

There is no doubt that David is tapped into the blogosphere zeitgeist … a quick review of his most popular posts will show that his thinking is at the very forefront of blog/interactive strategy. But where he is consistently strong is in positioning the questions that allow us all to enter the debate. He certainly stimulates my thinking and pushes me to ask questions about my own approaches, theories and working processes.

This recent post is a great case in point. On the surface, this post is about R/GA being awarded AdWeek Interactive Agency of the Year, but as David explains, combining storytelling with a compelling experience is not easy (if it was we would all be doing it). It is clear that new modes of storytelling and new forms of engagement are emerging — in fact, they are being demanded by consumers — but central to this shift in the consumer-brand dynamic is the seismic shift in technology that continues to undermine the role of agencies. But not all agencies … just those that refuse to acknowledge and adapt to the shift. (OK this is really the subject of another post …)

Perhaps what is most interesting in this is not the agency world, but the consumer world. For example, if consumers are the ones who generate your ads, then are they still called ads? If the direction of your art comes not from "creatives" but spills forth from the fertile imaginations of your most passionate brand advocates, is it owned by the brand or by the creator? And if the emotional resonance of this work carries more weight and generates more sales than "professional" work, does the applause ring out or does it sound like the end of an industry?

What makes a good brand great? What do you need to wiggle your way from the bottom of the pile to the very top? And how do you bring your audiences along with you?

Last year, The Wiggles were Australia’s highest earning entertainers. But they didn’t start at the top … they started in car parks, playing to four people. Find out a little more about the way that they built their brand in my article over at The Daily Fix (the feature article today, thanks Ann!).

Toot, toot, chugga, chugga!

A great lesson today in knowing your consumers and how to respond to them … found by following my nose along the rich Z-lister path.

The folks over at ExtraTasty point toward this interesting article on Goyard, the luxury goods brand that REALLY focuses on "personalised" service. It is interesting that they focus on "personalised service" rather than "customer service" or even "customer experience".

Special stripes and personal monograms can be included in your Goyard luggage/accessories when you order, but you need to KNOW where to go before even thinking about it — there are only 12 stores around the world. And you CANNOT (as far as I can see) order online. You see, the focus is on allowing customers to "feel a kind of authorship in the process".

With my interest in writing I am sure you are not surprised to see this comment pricked my ears. When I look at the elegant travel luggage it reminds me of a time when international adventuring took weeks not hours and provided time for reflection, drinking, diversion and writing (I am sure I am romanticising here). However, there is no escaping the allure of a a slow-boiling brand or the benefits of quality, prestige and access to a long tail.

With a ZERO advertising spend but 90% sales growth in its only wholly-owned boutique in Paris, the Goyard team obviously have a great handle on "non-traditional" approaches. They certainly have a story to tell — and even better — their product IS the story. I expect that this style of luggage would actually PROMPT conversation while in the act of travelling — while waiting at the carousel playing luggage roulette, in the Club waiting for a boarding call, or at the hotel checking in.

Now, that is clever.
S.

I was just over at Asi’s blog following up some juicy hypertext love, and came across this great quote. And following on from this post on copywriting, I was struck by the way this quote readily applies to other situations … particularly the challenge of new/social media (actually that was kind of easy because that is the topic of Asi’s post).

Asi has taken a piece of copy supporting An Inconvenient Truth and brought it into the discussion about measuring the effectiveness of YouTube over a Super Bowl spot.

The thing is, this goes to the heart of the marketing/advertising industries … the answers to this are going to be seismic. The challenge for agencies is not how to keep afloat as the world changes, but how to reinvent themselves in a meaningful way. As Google and Yahoo and MSN etc all consolidate or dis-intermediate the agency space, there will be increasing fallout and change. And the winners will be … you all know already 😉

Don’t pretend that you don’t!

S.

The Staufenburgers have done it again! While digging around in the famous Repository, Patrick has uncovered yet another gem.

This time it is a paper entitled "What is a Brand?" by Stephen King. Check it out while it is still available here.

Makes you remember that the fundamentals have not changed … and that while it can be easy to get carried away with technology, it should not be an end in-itself.

Sometimes our clients think that we have a crystal ball … that somewhere in a dark corner of our offices there is a black velvet curtain under which lies the holy of holies … This magic orb is supposed to house a potent mix of business/brand strategy and the ingredient that will turn an idea into reality.

Of course, this is the role of the agency … so we should not complain (and I keep my crystal ball in my bottom drawer) … but an agency cannot manage a client’s internal alignment. We can talk big picture strategy and brand-customer engagement but we also need to make sure we truthfully tell our clients what it will cost to DO what they want. We need to prompt the conversations that will ensure the project succeeds for our client WITHIN their organisation as well as with their target audience.

Steve Vaught has a great post over at Mike Wagner’s Own Your Own Brand blog that speaks to all of us who deal with clients — internal and external. He references the five forces of brand ownership, focusing on "truthfulness" and explains the challenge for strategic execution is to deliver on your promises — "branding isn’t about something you say, it’s about something you do".

As marketers our challenge is to take on some elements of brand ownership. We need to be responsible for helping our clients understand where a program will work — what the barriers may look like and how to avoid them. We need to be realistic and advise our clients about the business impacts of success and wild success. And even though they may provide poor briefs we can’t just with the challenges away. We tell our clients not to expect a wish to come true, and we shouldn’t expect it either. We need to plan and prepare and guide the way. As Steve says "wishing is not a business strategy". But planning should be.

S.

According to Kelly the Startup Princess, every brand/company needs a theme tune. Apart from making me laugh because the name of her blog is so cool … it reminded me of the IBM song. (Of course, the type that Seth Godin was discussing here is more about adopting an existing song rather than composing your own.)

I had been working at IBM for a while, and a colleague started telling me about growing up in the IBM family — his father being a long term IBMer. And the standout section of the story concerned the IBM song. What? I asked!

Yes indeed, there was an IBM song. And while he offered to dig it out of the family bookcases, the vinyl record (yes it WAS pressed) never surfaced. So any of you IBMers out there who have an MP3 they want to share … give me a shout.

When I think about it … it brings a new dimension to Mike Wagner’s "own your brand" approach — closer to compose your brand (only joking, Mike). But despite the ridicule factor that a corporate song can cause, many companies do have them. What about yours? Got a current or past corporate song you want to share? Perhaps we could rig up an online vote for the best ones.

I think I may just have a winner in my bottom drawer somewhere!

S.

I love a bit of pop culture branding. I love what pop culture says about brands, and more importantly, the way that PEOPLE engage with brands. I guess this is why blogging and the Web 2.0 intersection interests me, because Web 2.0 is about DOING things with brands. It is about bringing brands to life in ways that show the playful side of life.

CK has a great post on Borat — one of the funniest creations of the inimitable Sacha Baron Cohen (ok let’s face it, who WANTS to imitate him) — and the way that the character has single-handedly raised the awareness of Khazakstan as a country. It is interesting example, because, undoubtedly, there is something distasteful in the Borat character (understatement) … but to have Borat making the agenda for Khazakstan’s President Nazarbayev’s upcoming meeting with President George W Bush shows the power of comedy. And in a way, it shows how to engage an audience.

And while I don’t know that you would want to "take one for the team" — especially Borat style … there is a real opportunity to build on the awareness that Borat has built. In building an audience, the challenge in moving from "awareness" to "postive perception" is about getting your story across. There is a supreme opportunity for Khazakstan to EMBRACE the Borat character … I am seeing a whole series of "come and meet my family" advertisements ("meet my sister …", "my cousin loves your country, listen to him sing your song of country", "this is my cow …"). Is that going to resonate with an audience? Is it going to build buzz? Absolutely … and it would be fun!

Just don’t let Borat feature in an ad for beachwear (see CK’s article and you will know what I mean!)

S.

If you are ever in doubt as to Russell Davies’ generosity, then all you need to do is take a look at this post where he steps us (patiently) through a recent presentation and the thinking behind it.

There is plenty to chew on … the challenge of attention/relevance, the discontinuities of communication, the illusion of the "big idea" … and much, much more. Even in style, the post is a great piece of storytelling … you can sort of hear Russell somewhere in the background muttering something self-deprecating.

There is a section on communication and the difference between analogue and digital (in a strictly analogue sense, of course). Russell talks about the way that engagement, and our EXPERIENCE of a piece of advertising or communication works … as a series of thousands of small hooks that work together artistically (the style, casting, design, layout etc) to allow us to emotionally enter the space of the work (attitude, look, feel, tone and so on).

One of the parts that I liked most was this section …

And Russell is right (of course). Execution is strategic and innately messy/chaotic. It is nice to think that strategy is a clean and refined/refining process, but it cannot be separated from the creative and ideation process. Well it can, but the ideas and the strategies will be weaker for it. We don’t like to talk about it because it costs us money to bring them together.

We don’t like to talk about it because it is expensive AND it makes it obvious that STRATEGY is as messy and chaotic as ANY ideation process. Strategy isn’t dispensed from on-high … it doesn’t (mostly) come from a single, clear direction or idea. It tends to be circular and tangential and deemed to be "true" only when it has been walked over, pulled apart, dipped in sauce, covered in coffee and dissected with a blade. That’s right, strategy works best when it is owned by a TEAM.

As Russell says "It involves lots of people, lots of dead-ends and wastes lots of ideas. But it’s the only way to produce stuff that goes beyond the everyday run of communications" … and THAT is what it is all about.

They say there is no such thing as a free lunch? Russell seems to be serving up yet another!

S.

The world is an exciting place. No matter where you are, there is something amazing, interesting, fascinating (or infinitely boring) happening somwhere other than where YOU are. But one of the GREAT things about the Internet is that you can still, in some mediated way, engage with the world of other people’s ideas.

A great example is the recent conference (Napoleons Live in Bucharest courtesy of Headvertising) in Bucharest that featured Russell Davies, Neil Christie, Jeffre Jackson and Ben Terrett. Diana has a couple of great posts that capture the excitement, energy and interest that the Napoleons were able to generate, as well as links to other blogs as well as some of the presentations. Enjoy!

S.