In Julie's post yesterday, she calls on brands to reject the false and fake and infuse their advertising with authenticity. I recently saw a great spot from Nike that does just that. Admittedly, you may think The Dozen has turned from marketing and innovation blog to a Nike soccer blog – but bear with me for this post – as I think it’s a great lesson in brand authenticity. We all know that Nike can do the big and glossy spots with all the superstars - we even blogged about it a couple weeks ago. But this new commercial is born from a song that originated on the football terraces at Anfield (Liverpool's storied stadium). Nike took that song, plus the local fans' love for their new striker Fernando Torres and turned it into an Iberian love-fest. I love the ad, but others don't agree, including Scott Murray at the Guardian who upon seeing the spot, wrote the following: For goodness sake - that Torres "Liverpool's number nine" [song], has already been appropriated by Nike for an advert. Is there nothing the moneymen won't sully? Can these people never leave things be, even if it's just for a year or two? I completely disagree. I think it's a true statement of authenticity, when brands are inspired (some might say steal...) from real life like this. Surely that's the only path to authenticity and connection. Sure, there's elements that are fake (I can't really imagine Liverpudlian's swapping fish n' chips for tapas), but the heart of the idea is genuine and real and that's the important difference. I think this idea demonstrates how local fans worship their favorite players wherever they come from and there's no greater form of flattery in football than having a song created for you by the fans. Here’s the song being sung on the terraces at a Liverpool match via a You Tube clip from someone’s camera phone...and here’s the spot itself. Judge for yourself. Apparently even the dog walking with Torres in the park at the end is his own.
Consumers have turned on us. They've changed. 9 out of 10 consumers don’t trust advertisers anymore. Now, that’s not all our fault. We didn’t create this situation. Or, rather, we didn’t create this situation...alone. There are a lot of other institutions and individuals that played their hands to get us here. As Pines and Gilmore say in “Authenticity” – the opposite of quality used to be junk. Now it’s fake. Consumers been faked out, lied to, misled, and generally betrayed an awful lot. And what is advertising if not “fake”? How many of you say to your kids – sweetie, that’s not the show, that’s the commercials, you don’t need to watch that. Fast forward. Our industry creates advertorial, which we design specifically to make our stuff look like the real stuff. How can we ever hope to succeed if consumers look at us - when they do look at us - as false? And how will you make your brand real? When we talk about brand authenticity these days, we need to think about everything a brand says and does, and even how they say it. Get real. Now.
It’s conceptual…it’s a metaphor…it’s a personification…it’s aspirational…it’s a gimmick…it’s just plane confusing. I like a good mental challenge as much as the next girl, but I find LG’s Scarlet promotion of their flat screen TVs ties my brain into a knot of Gordian proportions. For those unfamiliar with the campaign, LG has created a fictional…well…fictional character named Scarlet – a red eyed super-something (hero? cop? spy? cyborg? vampire? siren? model?) The ads feature fictional promotions for the fictional TV show for the fictional character and end with a blink-and-you-miss-it oblique reference to flat screen TVs. Every time I come across this campaign, I find myself plagued with questions: What is it? Why is it? and Do I like it? And, strangely, the answer on all three counts is: I’m not sure. Explanations from the producers just deepen the mystery with vague Lynch-ian quotes about clues and martial arts: LG Reveals Mystery Behind 'Scarlet' I can’t help but think that if people who do this sort of thing for a living can’t figure it out, there is no way consumers are coming along on this journey down the rabbit hole. Is this a sign of abstraction in brand communications to come? Or did they forget to take that left at ambiguity?
Great ideas can come from anywhere, allegedly. Kudos to Ogilvy in Toronto which built a whole campaign to re-launch Shreddies cereal based on an idea from an intern. Hopefully the intern is now earning proper money and not making the tea. This campaign shamelessly lampoons both new product innovation AND qualitative research. It's not often that both strings to my professional bow are so amusingly twanged in one campaign. What I like most about this idea is that it invites us all in on the joke - a brand that is so confident in itself that it can laugh at it's own deficiencies (essentially square, boring and uninspiring). A great story, a lovely simple idea and one that can run and run. Thanks to Martin Bishop for the tip.
Need relief from record-breaking gas prices? Buy a new car! Does that seem counterintuitive to anyone else? With gas prices hitting $4 a gallon across the country, consumers need pain relief at the pump more than ever before. So automakers like Suzuki and Chrysler are capitalizing on the media frenzy and consumers’ concerns with marketing claims that promise to ease the pain. Suzuki’s “Free Gas for the Summer” program provides free gas for three months in vehicles purchased through June 30. And although auto sales dropped seven percent last month, Suzuki’s daily selling rate was up nine percent when the campaign kicked off in the first week of May. Chrysler’s “Let’s Refuel America” campaign offers gas at $2.99 a gallon for up to three years. Automotive News reports that if you actually do the math, Chrysler customers would save only $400 a year with the “gas price protection program”. They would be better off opting for the usual $2,000 rebate often offered in vehicle promotions. Yet, the company’s website activity is up 25 percent and showroom traffic has increased ten to 20 percent. The quick-fix of free or reduced-price gas wards against uncertainty. It also proves the power of tapping into consumers’ emotional needs. As gas prices continue to sky rocket, car companies will need to be increasingly more creative to convince consumers of great deals during a downturn. Makes you wonder what the next big ploy to encourage vehicle purchases will be…
So if you work in the world of brands, I challenge you not to get entirely sucked in by this little site, created by the smart Noah Briar and taking the blogosphere by storm. It's popping up everywhere. Thanks to PSFK for the original link, but I've found reference to it here, here and here. It's even been picked up by the Wall St. Journal. Based on the simple truth that brands exist as constructs in our heads, whatever you associate with a brand, is essentially that brand. The site pulls up a logo and you just enter a word or phrase that comes immediately to mind. It then generates a big tag cloud of associations with that brand. Register on the site and have a play. Hard not to get drawn in, especially to the bit that lets you guess the brand based on the tag cloud.
Since the epic Good vs.Evil spot from 1996, Nike has done a great job with its football ads, using stars from around the world to promote it's connection to the beautiful game. My mate James at AMV in London sent me a link to this latest spot, directed by Guy Ritchie, where we are transformed from being mere observers to actually being participants. While other ads (and movies) have used the "protagonist POV" technique to engage and draw people in, this spot does so in a dramatically effective way - and does a fantastic job of showing first hand how fast, skillful and physical soccer can be. All the big names are there, Ronaldo, Rooney, Van Nistelrooy, Ronaldinho, but you are right in the middle of it, alongside them, rather than just outside looking in. It's authentic, involving and different. What do you think? (click the image to play)
The other day I had a mini-epiphany. I walked past a Volvo wagon (in my defense, it was a "sportier" Cross Country) and thought "I would be OK driving that". Maybe it's the impending second child, maybe it's the fact that I've already been driving a full-on dadmobile for 4 years anyway, but suddenly the Volvo seemed like a good fit. Certainly, part of the switch in my head is due to their age-old message of safety being more relevant to me now than in the past. While I could professionally appreciate the amazing work done for years and years by AMV/BBBO, I never found it really relevant to me. However, I must admit being immensely impressed by Volvo's recent announcement that they are aiming to prevent any injuries or deaths in Volvo vehicles by 2020. Now that's an impressive claim and a new way to take their promise of safety to a new level. I may, of course find myself in a Volvo before 2020, with the same hope. But it made me wonder what other brands have made such bold pronouncements and actually lived up to them?
It’s Brita vs Fiji a prize fight matching two water titans in the endeavor to prove to the American public that one is more green than the other. Brita comes from the left, urging people to leave the disposable bottles alone and instead refill a bottle with purified Brita filtered water. Fiji is now countering with a right hook claim that, with Fiji, ‘every drop is green’. For me, this provokes 2 questions: First, I question the wisdom of this tagline for a bottled water company and fully expect to see it in Jay Leno’s Headlines by the end of the week. Second, I question the ability of this company to live up to the claims of the push for greenness when their fundamental business is transporting a commodity, which this country has in abundance, thousands of miles, encasing it in plastic and selling it to those discerning Americans who thirst for a more exotic and colorful filtered water product. With every company scrambling to put out a green message, we are starting to see a flow of eco-friendly claims that just aren’t believable no matter how loudly and emphatically they are proclaimed in the pages of Vanity Fair. Who will be the green referees who point to the winner when the bell rings?
You’ve got to admire the bare audacity of Georgi Vodka. Wrestling with the challenge of how to up the ante with its New York “butt girl” bus campaign it appears to be heading in the opposite direction by leveraging the low bar opportunity gifted it by the Ashley Dupre / (ex) Gov. Eliot Spitzer scandal. New York prepare yourself for a renewed cheeky ad assault. What’s more apparently Georgi is also considering launching a sub brand No. 9, affectionately so called in homage to Spitzer’s hooker designation number. Is this a clever through the line marketing idea or an ill conceived over the line brand management mistake? I guess both time and the all important New York commuters will tell. Well as they say where I come from… in for a penny, in for pound. You go Georgi!
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