I was in London in May and noticed a lot of teenagers/twentysomethings drinking iced tea. This was surprising to me as I thought pretty much any deviation from "normal" tea (hot, Tetley/PG Tips, milk2sugarsthanks) was considered peculiar at best and traitorous at worst. It was enough for me to mention it to clients as a change worth noting. I just saw these nice ads today from W+K London for Nestea which capture the sentiment perfectly with a tagline "The Start of Something Different". Nice spots, even though the strategy is peeking beneath the hemline a bit too obviously.
I am one of the bigger Detroit Red Wings fans you’re likely to ever meet. And with good reason: They have won 11 Stanley Cups. They hold the longest current streak of post-season appearances in all of North American professional sports (20 years and counting). They have arguably the greatest hockey player in the world right now (Pavel Datsyuk). They battled back from a 0-3 hole to tie up this year’s Western conference semi-final series. And, most importantly, they are the team I grew up with.So when they lost in Game 7 of said series, I was crushed. How could a team with such an esteemed history and current strength fall to of all things…an expansion team?!?! And, beyond that, how would they find a way to regain their rightful glory next year?As I pondered that, it occurred to me the Wings face the same problems that storied brands like Coca-Cola, Microsoft, even Starbucks confront every year as well: How will we stay relevant? How will we deal with the upstarts in our category gaining momentum? How will we continue to win?Tapping thoughts from two great marketing writers (Seth Godin & Adam Morgan), I think two intertwined ideas provide the answer: Challenge and Humility. Embracing a challenger mentality provides humility. Humility reminds us we need to constantly re-earn the attention, loyalty and connection with our audiences. Do otherwise, and we may find ourselves bewildered at how our incredibly talented team managed to lose.
We travel a lot and are paid to have opinions about the "right" places to do consumer research. Would San Francisco be more suitable than Austin for this project...how about Dallas? In these situations we are often looking at the stereotypes of the types of people who live in these cities and checking the fit with the objectives of our projects. While these broad generalizations work really well (see Richard Florida on the Creative Class for more detail), I've started wanting to get beneath the surface a little bit and look at cities at a neighborhood level. At this level, you start to see the layers and differences that give a city a distinct personality or city brand. One way to look at this is to see what particular culture does the city support? Is it a mecca for music, a fashion center, a foodie capital or an active and outdoorsy place? Rather than look at the traditional travel guides for cities, I've just picked up a couple of eat.shop guides, which celebrate the locally owned restaurants and boutiques in each city. Each one starts to paint a bit more of a detailed picture of the sort of businesses that each city supports and armed with than knowledge I'm getting to know some of the nooks and crannies of these big urban environments that we visit every week. Check them out.
I'm not really a Smart Car kind of guy but I love how they are still so far ahead of the industry. And while we've been "skinning" our phones and Twitter pages for quite some time, you sure don't see many car manufacturers giving this kind of customization. Check this out to see how they sell it. Amazingly affordable too.
Two great examples of big companies doing excellent things with their packaging. They aren't the most recent innovations, but it feel good to hear about more of this gathering momentum.
The first example is Sun Chips' 100% compostable bag. Frito Lay took 4 years to develop this and it's a perfect fit with the Sun Chips brand. Hopefully more of Frito-Lay's brands can be packaged with bags made from polylactic acid...which frankly doesn't sound bio-degradeable, but breaks down in 14 weeks as captured by this time-lapse little ad/movie.
The second piece is Coke's Naked Can - designed by Harc Lee - no toxic paints required in production, no paint-stripping required in recycling. Too bad "red" is such a significant part of the brand iconography.
I learned about Robin of Shoreditch a few weeks back at Faris' blog and fell in love with it immediately. The 100 Brands Project is a wonderful idea and truly inspirational. Even though I'm not the first to talk about this, I simply feel duty bound to put it out there and try to generate even more support.
I don't think there needs to be much else said, other than to watch the intro video, then spend a little bit of time checking out some of the amazing ideas for big brands contained within. If you do any work for any of these clients, make sure they see this and then encourage them to participate. For what is essentially pocket change to any of the world's top 100 brands they could get immense publicity from supporting a cause like this. Go Robin! (and Little John too).
We have a lot of runners at Egg. A couple of us have experimented with the "freerunning" movement. In short, minimalist footwear to produce close-to-natural footstrike. While still within the minority, this freerunning movement is gaining traction (sorry, had to do it) and is proving to be a cost-of-entry innovation for most mainstream footwear companies. New Balance, Adidas and Nike have joined the race (there we go again).
These races against similar products inevitably produce a battle of differentiation (messaging, colorways, sponsors). Ultimately, the winner will harness an element of distinction its competition can't match. I'll propose Nike's getting there with the below video. Always attentive to its ownership of the convergence between athletics and pop culture, Nike produced a video with the help of a couple Japanese DJ's (not going to pretend I have the street cred to elaborate) that while absurd, highlighted the core attribute of its Nike Free shoe (next-to-natural flexibility) in a way that resonates with runners and peaks the interest of those profitable fashion-forward sneakerfreaks.
This is a challenge to rethink the way we communicate our most important attributes. Re-imagine how our targets experience the benefits we shout from the rooftops. Turn a simple function into art and in one down-beat, beat down the competition.
For many of the world's men, the airtight equation for camaraderie consists of one or both of these addends: beer and sport. The summation quite often includes both in the case of a big game. THE big game. Such as the UEFA Champions League game between AC Milan and Real Madrid football teams.
In a brilliant activation strategy, Heineken Italy proposes that the "most sacred time men have left" is at risk, then devised a stunt to call out the increasing influence external factors have in pulling a fan away from his set (and his buddies, and, well, a profitable beer occasion). More narration will only act as a spoiler, so spend a few minutes with this excellent case study to see how, ultimately, Heineken went viral, celebrated the sanctity of male bonding and created authentic engagement with its brand.
Cheers to the weekend.
When I used to work in the agency world, clients would often refer to some of their advertising as "branding spots" vs. work that had a more concrete, rational claim or "sales" approach. This distinction always bothered me, because it implies that communication that centers on creating a feeling or stirring an emotion is less persuasive in making a sale than messaging that presents more rational evidence of uniqueness. Ideally, the most effective work does both (like Volvo, Cadbury Gorilla), but sometimes a beautifully filmed idea can simply work by creating a positive feeling of goodwill around a brand.
In the case of this wonderfully shot ad for Pedigree dog treats, I not only starting thinking about the brand in a different way, but also about dogs in a new way (elegant, emotional, so expressive). Such a great ad and no need to mention the "nutritional goodness" or other nonsense to make the spot "more believable." The sheer vitality of the dogs says everything. This great work is from TBWA in Toronto.
My friend Mark was recently interviewed by a business magazine in Vancouver. The subject was about different ways of using visual branding in outdoor advertising. Mark asked me about some of my favorite outdoor campaigns and the one I kept on coming back to just for its sheer longevity of brilliance is The Economist. Even though outdoor is the anchor for the campaign, they've done fabulous TV/cinema spots and blindingly great print. At the heart of all of it is the beautifully simple branding device of the red color which is sometime dominant (as in outdoor) or a subtle accent. Most of all, I love the fact that the advertising isn't designed for everyone to get or enjoy. If you do get it, you should probably be reading The Economist, if you don't you probably shouldn't even be reading this blog. Here's the most recent stuff, courtesy of Ben Kay in London and here's a historical perspective of all the greatest work. I challenge anyone to come up with a better example of outdoor campaign brilliance.
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