HEAD BLOG

All too often marketing tries to push out a message without asking what it is the customer wants to hear.

It’s understandable. Of course it is. I want everybody in the world to know that Head First can produce really exciting and effective creative. I can shout about it. I can stop product managers I’ve been stalking for months and tell them that. It won’t necessarily convince them though. Or even interest them.

They might, for example, be a little more interested in whether we can be cost effective, or manage projects efficiently, or meet deadlines. No, no and no.

Only joking, of course we can.

The point, of course, is I can’t just force my message on them. It’s why some companies mistake this message with “brand” but that’s a topic for another rant time.

Discovering what it is the customer wants to hear means gaining insight. It means admitting that not every customer will be interested in what you have to offer because insight often tells us we have nothing in common.

But when we do have something in common, when understanding what it is they need leads to a better understanding of how our product can meet that need well that, that is exciting. That is the start of a bond, a shared value which, after all, is what brand is really about.

There was a period, a long period, back in the history of advertising when certain things held true. An ad could give advice, for example, or have an opinion and the agency would be pretty certain it would be received as intended. If they made a claim that doctors smoked cigarettes because they were good for your health then you and I would simply just accept this as a fact. If the agency, on behalf of their corporate overlords, assured us that the oil pouring out of a hole in the seabed was actually beneficial to the sea life, well, who could doubt the printed word?

Authority was absolute. At least for the purposes of selling.

The change in behaviour, however, was coming. Our relationship with consumerism and the companies which provided us with product after product was bound to be affected by mass media which showed us different cultures and the impact of our actions upon them. We were given the means through which we could see, test and then question the decisions our political leaders made and we could organise like never before.

These insights into how authority operated affected our relationship with advertising. Like seeing the flaws in a parent as we get older, so were we able to see how misleading the claims of advertising could be.

The past ten years has seen change of this sort again but at an unprecedented pace. The Internet has begun to affect us in ways we were not prepared for and still don’t truly understand. It may well be decades before we adjust to modern life, if such a thing is even possible anymore.

Businesses, and the advertising agencies which represent them, have reacted in different ways. A tiny few have embraced, and appear to understand, the responsibility granted by social marketing but many still adhere to the Authority model, filling their pronouncements so painfully with jargon as to make it appear archaic.

The reasoning, I believe, comes from too much love.

The people who work with these brands all respect the process too much. If a decision is made to make bottled water from tap water then, because they understand the process then they respect the decision. It’s the same logic that swallows the line about a company’s interest being its customers so why would it ever do anything to jeopardise that interest.

The balance comes not from cynicism, however. This leads to being unable to sell what the company has to sell. A cynical creative is one not in a position to see the good in a product that might lie beyond the jargon-filled nonsense.

The balance comes from questioning authority, from demanding it to explain itself in terms you can understand and by using talking points and conversation starters, not declarations.

Microsoft seem unable to commit

Now you see it, now you don’t. Microsoft released their new branding device and company tagline yesterday.

And then withdrew it.

It drew the usual polarised opinions on Twitter and then, just a few hours later, was taken down. The tagline was for real but the logos, which showed the Microsoft product family, were not, in fact, new logos. Rather, they were an example of “a standalone treatment to show the flexibility of joined brands” (Engadget).

The opinions, the polarisation, the hate, all of these are de rigeur for any new brand these days. When opinions (such as mine) can be released and propagated within seconds, it’s inevitable. What’s interesting, to me at least, is that Microsoft chose to withdraw them.

Brand design is such a personal art. You either love the logo or you don’t really care. Even the haters will continue as usual once their bile has sunk back again.

So why would Microsoft back down?

When it comes to creating logos to reflect brands, many companies, large or small, want to please everybody. They want something that (as Steve Jobs once proposed) becomes a jewel. Everybody loves jewels. They sparkle, attract our attention and are worth a fortune.

What’s more, we love them instantly.

Open the box and what do you see? That’s right, treasure. And desire plays out upon our faces. It’s the reaction beloved of companies.

When that reaction is lessened, for whatever reason, a company can be thrown into turmoil. They sense a lack of love and fear that will reflect upon their business.

It’s easy to see why Microsoft would do the same.

With Apple being the… ummm… being so well loved by consumers, Microsoft feel threatened. Witness the constant faltering and self doubt over many of their product launches lately. They get buzz but then lose it through the self doubt and inaction. Apple announce a product and then release it. Apple love themselves, Microsoft don’t.

They need to realise that many people are happy with what they produce. It might not be passionate, it might not be vocal.

But they show commitment nonetheless. They should understand that self doubt is infecting their brand more than any perceived criticism.

A little self-love would inspire far more confidence than the efforts of analysts and graphic designers.

The bandwagon gets a rough ride. Jump on board and everyone thinks you’re being lazy. The bandwagon haters form their own to ride alongside you and throw insults in your path.

It’s a fad, a phase, the next big thing. The bandwagon is, they say, where the also-ran sits, the followers, the sheep. Don’t ride the bandwagon because you’ll never find your way home to the cool stuff.

So iPhones and social media are what to avoid, hate Flash and eBooks. They have none of those on the anti-bandwagon bandwagon. Go your own way and travel with us.

But you’re in Marketing, they say, so what can we expect. The things we like don’t need marketing. Paper books and cathode ray tellys, open source systems and food from the bins. These are a few of our favourite things.

They are wrong though. The bandwagon isn’t such a bad place to be. Sure it gets crowded but what’s wrong with that? If you’ve something to say you need people to hear. A wagon full of people enjoying a trend or a movement or a product isn’t such a bad place to be. We all have to spend our leisure time doing something and if other people are drawn to a particular thing then maybe, just maybe there’s something to it. Something worth participating in, something worth enjoying alongside others.

It’s not all bad, this like-minded thing.

Yes, the bandwagon is fine form of transport. Hitch yourself to it and see where it takes you.

These says the term ‘brand’ has become a catch all for any company thinking about reaching into the hearts and minds of consumers everywhere. It can be summarized as a logo and, occasionally, a set of principles which the company tries to ring fence as being typically theirs.

It’s easy to see why they take this view of course. The super companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple and… ummm… Head First occupy the places in the minds of people that can be identified as ‘brand aware’. When asked, consumers will probably be aware, not only of these companies logos, but also of their ideological standpoints.

What right thinking, emergent company wouldn’t want a piece of this action? To them, getting the brand right leads inexorably to prominence, take-up and financial success.

Allow me to tell you a little story.

A friend of mine started a company providing services to children. On a casual consultancy level, I was asked to chip in on the subject of brand.
My friend was very keen on creating a brand.

I probed a little deeper in order to ascertain what, exactly, was meant by ‘brand’ and, sure enough, the concept appeared to be linked tightly to logo.

That’s not right, I said. Brand is different to design. Think of brand as something you earn through great service and a lot of time. And even then, turning your company into a brand takes a whole lot more than making sure you maintain your logo according to a designer’s style guide.

Look at Coca Cola, I said. That’s a brand. However we may feel about it, whatever we may see in the difference between the public face they market and the reality of their business practices, they can be clearly identified alongside specific values.
And that isn’t because they have slavishly followed design guidelines down the decades. It’s because they have vigorously marketed their product alongside a very particular viewpoint. It has cost hundreds of millions and taken decades.

Even those companies for which brand status has come quicker haven’t fallen into the trap of being restricted design-wise. Their service has come before all else and that is what has shaped any design elements to their promotions.

And those elements have changed over time, adapting, as they should, to changing tastes, expectations and technologies.

So the next time a designer (or a client) insists that you must present everything in a certain colour in order to adhere to brand guidelines, do them a favour and tell them to Google ‘brand’ for a while.

Rocking the grass verges and lowland passes there is nothing your intrepid reporter will not do to bring you the very latest in marketing buzz.

This week we are in Grasmere, enjoying a short break with my family and yet still finding time to be chained by the eyeballs to the world of marketing.

Grasmere, as any walker under the age of seventy five will know (and those older will just ignore) is as heavily branded a place as Paris or New York. The locals know what draws people to its grassy shores and willingly regale with tales of rushbearing and fellrunning (the closest to which yours truly gets is when stumbling arse over hat after his lunch bag). A shop selling ‘Herdy’ the latest mascot for these parts offers tourists a more modern, branded slice of Lake District life and locally made jams and chutneys line the mouths of children.

Everywhere you turn is a piece of slate engraved with that damn daffodil poem (I’m more of a Coleridge man myself) and only the garden centre seem to stand against local custom with their admirable range of Japanese shrubbery.

Walking through the graveyard on the sunniest of days, I even overheard a teacher giving her charges a masterclass in branding by pointing out the reasons why Sarah Nelson’s Gingerbread was so successful. No, not taste and customer service but a face. A wizened old lady lending her increasing senility to the promotion of spiced biscuits has done almost as much for Grasmere as that Wordsworth hack.

Of ocurse marketing is hard to escape from. If we are to keep our villages as History intended then they must suffer the attentions of the marketing agency in order to draw people in to spend their money. The trick is not letting the marketing overtake the actual charm a place has to offer.

Then, as the sun began to set beneath the postcard hills, a sales assistant in authentic black dress, white apron and Top Shop bag trekked home just as she would a hundred years ago.

You just can’t escape to the country anymore.

The humble tagline both attracts and repels me. As with a magnet, this effect largely depends upon which way it is pointed but one way to guarantee my dismay is to use then unnecessarily.

So whilst I am happy to learn that BA is “the world’s favourite airline” I am less interested to know that the people behind the East- West water pipe infrastructure are “keeping the water flowing”.

The former tagline grants me some kind of confidence as I choose which airline to fly with whereas the latter tells me nothing I didn’t know already and serves little purpose neither educationally or commercially.

It is as though the words leaked out from a meeting intent upon marketing its service in a ‘commercial’ manner.

The same goes for the BBC election broadcasts. Maybe I ought to be glad they are “making it clear” because all the other channels are “pulling the wool over your eyes since 1882″. The clarity of a tagline brings everything into sharp focus.

Public bodies, in their confusing remit to offer choice, seem to suffer more than most from the scourge of the pointless tagline.

Everywhere I turn I learn new and interesting facts.

Did you know (I didn’t and almost to my fatal cost) that the NHS is “safe, clean, personal”? I should hope it is but saying it doesn’t necessarily make it so. I don’t need the glib sales talk. It does nothing to make me feel better.

And then there are the taglines that don’t even give you any sort of clue why they were written. Travelling behind a van for a company called Fantasy Bathrooms I wondered at their tagline, “Why Compromise?” I can think of lots of reasons to compromise really. It actually seems like a good skill to learn. So what were they trying to say? Was it that their bathrooms were top quality and expensive, imitation brands at a low cost, very cheap and poor quality? What?

It’s such a general line that it evaporates into nothing. Much like Smirnoff vodka who also make use of it which just shows how interchangeable it is.

It is as though creatives or marketeers have a tool in their kit which they simply must deploy despite being unsure of how to use it. Perhaps these lines were trotted out as a way of selling in key creative which might be fine in the context of a presentation but less so when released into a population of people who aren’t fired up by the possibilities of sales talk.

Volkswagen have created a wonderful piece of what they call “social marketing” but which anybody familiar with gaming for the past thirty years would just call “gaming”.

At Head First we pursue work where we can make a difference; where we know that our ideas would be appropriate. Sometimes this takes us outside the games industry and the usual response is “where’s your relevance?”. I never struggle to find an answer.

I say something like games brings everybody together. To which I am told that the client isn’t a gamer.

I don’t believe them.

Everybody is a gamer.

They might not consider buying Modern Warfare 2 or Bioshock 2; they might not even own a “games machine”; but they are gamers.

The rise in what is commonly called social media has gaming built in as standard. Look at your friend’s Facebook updates and a game won’t be far away, clearly VW understand this.

Games unite people. Games teach people and games blaze the trail in terms of user experiences and technical accomplishments.

And if everybody is a gamer then it follows that there are certain elements they have in common; certain elements that can be used to reach them.

VW’s boast centres around the fact that their promotion had been downloaded over four million times. The “revelation” of their claim is supposed to be that all this was achieved without spending a penny on media. However, when you understand the power of gaming the revelation, however brilliant, isn’t surprising.

An eye on the future

Natal is exciting.

I was excited when the Wii was announced (and remain so to this day) but Natal is something else entirely. A hands-free approach to gaming which can change everything.

At Head First, where we strive to find what is exciting about any product, that’s something to sit up and pay attention to.

What’s more exciting, however, is how Microsoft are beginning to crank up the interest in it.

On Wednesday, Sony issued a press release to inform the world that their version of the Wii motion sensor was delayed. For those of you who aren’t glued to video games, Sony are entering the same market as Nintendo Wii motion and Microsoft’s Natal system. Their answer, announced last year will arrive in the form of a wand device which would be tracked by cameras similar to those on the Nintendo Wii.

On its own that would have been impressive.

But then Microsoft blew everyone out of the water with Natal. If that were me, I’d have taken my wand home and sulked for a while, muttering about not being understood.

To their credit, Sony haven’t done that and without getting a hands-on experience I can’t tell whether it won’t be even more successful than Natal. I certainly hope it competes because I love what Sony does.

So what’s exciting about Microsoft’s approach?

Apart from the technology, which sounds amazing, it comes down to Wednesday and Sony’s press release.

Microsoft took their time, all of a handful of hours, and responded with a bold claim about Natal.

It was, they said, “fraught with risk“.

This is a great thing to say. Put yourself in a movie for a minute and listen to the dialogue when two heroes are faced with an almost impossible situation. They think of a plan. “It’s risky, ” they say, “but it might just work”.

That’s what Microsoft have effectively done. Showing great confidence in their product by making claims to the contrary.

It sounds like they aren’t going in quiet on this one.

Following on from my earlier entry on celebrity endorsements for advertising I’d like to focuss on one particular product area: fragrances.

I can’t help but notice that TV ad time is swamped with star-studded endorsements for – The Fragrance (the last resort Xmas present). Ad-slots have heated up despite the snow with James Franco, Vincent Cassell, Josh Harnett, Ewan McGregor, Kiera Knightly, Nichol Kidman, Kate Moss, Beyonce all doing their utmost to convince us to buy the scent they represent.

Actually they are not doing their utmost, in fact they are doing very little but it’s better than just featuring the actual companies behind the product. Yet, is this really the best way to convince the public to buy their fragrance above all others? Especially when (conceptually) they are all the same.

I don’t blame the creatives or the agencies behind the ads; anyone in the ad biz knows the best ideas never get chosen but let’s face it, there’s not even the slightest attempt to stand out.

I get it though. Buy the smell and you’re buying into the glamor of the worlds inhabited by these celebs. Hell, it’s worked in the past and the wisdom here seems to say that if it aint broke… I just thought that maybe the consumer these days was slightly more knowledgeable and cynical about advertising to fall for that old one.

You would think though, that if this is the time of year when sales peak then surely the arena is more competitive.

So why be the same as your rivals?

There is a great opportunity to stand out and be memorable but I smell a rat. Playing safe seems to be the order of the day and in these times of accountability a good defense for decision makers is “well they do it, so why don’t we?”. Safety in numbers and all that.

Maybe that’s the point. Maybe they all smell the same, and so the ads are all the same. It could be an honest approach to advertising.

And that, my friends, stinks.