HEAD BLOG

The village where I live have joined the marketing game. Investments in signage and newsletters are all around, logo design cannot be far behind.

The pressure to join this game is immense but all too often the execution is lacking the guidance which could be gained through an analysis of the aims. It’s clearly a case of ‘what’ shall we do rather than ‘why’ should we do it.

And so the residents are told of a postcard competition. Amateur photographers have been invited to submit their views of the village and a postcard is to be printed a distributed to newsagents in the local area where it will fade alongside the hopes of the out-of-date football calendar.

It’s the postcard which gives us our clearest insight into the committee process as, after showing a witty cartoon sketch card from the 1950s, the modern counterpart is unveiled alongside careful explanations. This image of the stone hewn village marker has been elevated to tourist attraction, that view away from the village is a point of difference. And look, we have included a view along the main lane because it was felt the boarded-up shops were not otherwise represented. Nobody seems to ever asked what these scenes really offer us by way of promotion. Just lots of people squeezing in aspects thought to represent a ‘side’ worth, well, representing.

Nowhere in the process has anybody asked what is being sold and that’s where the opportunity has been missed. All the perceived gears of marketing are being swung into action but we are missing the actual product.

Views of the village aren’t, in all honesty, up to much. These scenes won’t be chosen for chocolate boxes to represent a golden era. Flower displays, lovely and welcome as they may be, aren’t the reason a young family will put down roots.

The real sadness is that it wouldn’t take much to uncover potential products upon which a genuine sales initiative could take place. The village is surrounded by farmland that could be tapped to provide goods which could be uniquely ours. Local businesses and landlords could be shown the benefits of working together to make more of eyesore spaces that would lift the shopping areas. Such businesses would do much to foster community in which generations could mix. If you know your neighbours and your community, you are more likely to want to support it. Activities could then be based on people rather than new signs.

In all, efforts to find a real and sustainable product for the village would pay dividends for everyone and when the committee meets to flex its wannabe marketing muscles it can do so in the knowledge that they won’t be selling their own, hopeful impressions of a village that doesn’t really exist.

In the car, early one morning, my friend told me his boss had been trying to persuade him not to retire next year. The boss explained that he had never had any complaints about that one plant (my friend loads aggregates, it’s typically a one person per plant job and you need to be everything from labourer to customer care manager).

So, no complaints. Not a single customer had to call in ten years to ask where their concrete was.

The boss said he wished he had more people like my friend and asked why he was so different to every other plant manager in the group.

My friend explained that he lived by a simple tagline (he didn’t use that term) which was ‘deliver the promise’. If a customer had been promised a load and my friend was running late then the customer still received it as promised, even if it meant working late (and loads are never, unlike taxis, promised as being just around the corner).

My friend is one of those people, rare in my experience, who pose a real problem to management. They are indispensable in their current roles but would be invaluable ‘higher up’ in a training or management role.

Such a simple philosophy can underpin any other brand. I’m writing this whilst stood across the platform from a billboard proclaiming NatWest’s charter commitments as they make promises (I wish they were different promises really but that’s a separate matter) which presumably they will deliver.

Advertising can sometimes be an attempt to make something from nothing, an attempt to hoodwink the consumer into buying something they do not need (or at least desire). ‘Deliver the promise’ is the antidote to this. It cuts through to the core of what any brand should be offering and enables campaigns to be bold and uncynical knowing that what they are selling will deliver the promise of reliability, genuine interest, comfort – whatever it is the product has set out to do.

A kitchen gadget, the sort we all buy, might therefore, through a deliver the promise strategy, be designed to genuinely change the way we peel or slice rather than being discarded after a few tries.

My friend has promised to retire next year. I’d hope his company wishes that this one time, it’s a promise he doesn’t deliver.

He is the go to guy for many things these from fronting a startup to commenting on every issue under the sun (and probably on it too). With the effective departure of Steve Jobs as CEO of Apple maybe it’s time he took on a more serious role in the business world.

If legends are to believed, Jobs is the single visionary behind every successful Apple product launch. His carefully manicured brand image, as reliable as Bono’s sunglasses, have taken credit for the iPod, iPhone, and iPad in a series of moves that have led to the financial ascendancy of the one-time underdog. What’s more, this image has undoubtedly helped balance the rise with the anchoring of a more humble image in the eyes of the public.

To believe such legends, however, is to dismiss at a stroke all the thinking of thousands of employees. Engineers, artists and strategists may well have been encouraged by the reappearance of Jobs back in 1998 but it’s unlikely he hands them a ‘To Do’ list each Monday morning.

It’s startling, therefore, that the departure of a figurehead can make such a huge impact upon the Market. The notion that without him in the Director’s chair, the Apple show will revert back to less favourable fortunes takes neither the context of Apple’s mid-season break nor our current social attitude towards technology into account.

It does, however, reveal the importance of branding.

Company CEOs, much like politicians, are learning that education and ability are not sufficient qualities for leading a company. Wozniak may have been a genius on the circuit board but that beard would definitely cause trouble today. Our leaders, business and political, must represent the full package.

So back to Fry.

And a question.

Why not?

Could he generate the sort of interest, the sort of enthusiasm for product that Jobs does? Maybe not the same, but certainly of a level which would keep the world talking about Apple.

And certainly in a way that continues the levels of showmanship which have become almost mandatory in any product launch (although whether he could pull of a Samsung is something to be seen).

It is, ultimately, a question of branding. As the line between b2c and b2b blurs, as financial results are given the same media attention as football transfers (though the former aren’t usually as lucrative) then we mustn’t be afraid to interrogate our brands more fully. We are all businessmen, we are all showmen and if a brand is to be effective then it cannot shy away from influencing every area.

A comedian in a boardroom? Why not? We’ve had clowns in Downing Street for years.

Recently I’ve been writing a few short stories for a website run by Tom Mason. The conceit is that each story must be sparked off by an image and be no more than 330 words long.

It’s a great format for me because with it I can say something quickly without running into the issues of structure I’d face with something longer.

I do, however, periodically consider whether what I’m writing can be classed as “story” at all.

In fact, the definition of “story” is something we all wrestle with at Head First because it is integral to creating strong and effective advertising.

The difficulty I have with my 330 word stories lies in the difference between a story and a concept. Is it possible to relate a story in so few words? Or does the reduction render it to a concept?

It’s easier to see when you reduce the word count even further. To, say, 140 characters. One guy tweets very short stories which come across more as outlines (or perhaps poems) than stories.

You could argue, of course, that anything can be a story. If I write something like:

“She lived. She cried. She died.”

You get a sense of narrative. You get a classic beginning, middle and end. Even the choice of words plays a part. “Lived” is more emotive than “was alive” because it suggests more than the simple act of existing, of breathing. And by starting it that way, I set the scene for the tragedy that follows. The reader might arrive at their own conclusions but it is clear that the woman’s situation is a result of her having “lived”.

So that could be described as a story.

Except it isn’t. Not in the more traditional way.

For that, you need more flesh on the bones for story to occur.

My personal jury is out on the 330 word stories. Perhaps they are something different. Certainly they are something exciting (to write at least).

What is clear, however, is the lesson they contain for advertising. Because by challenging my understanding of story, they make me challenge the story of advertising.

Whether I’m writing a two word ad or advertising through social media the lesson remains. I must ask myself what story am I trying to tell.

For the two word ad I must work to ensure the experience, through the combined efforts of text and imagery, is sufficiently satisfying as to provide a story.

Because stories are how experiences are related and relationships formed.

And that’s a way to ensure advertising is effective at the deepest level.

Feel-good ads are a way to identify with the needs of your audience but they carry a risk in doing so.

John Lewis ads have, in recent years, become something of an art form. Layered with emotive imagery of wholesome living they are an art director’s dream and a way to explore techniques that will prepare them for that Julia Roberts film they’ve been planning.

Yet walking the tightrope of social and political viewpoints to pinpoint a common vision of Dickensian Christmasses and a gentle humour isn’t all that easy as they have discovered. Their most recent ad, featuring various unusual objects being wrapped, received complaints because one of those objects was a dog. Hardly acerbic satire and certainly not portrayed in a sinister League of Gentlemen manner – although wouldn’t that make for an eye-catching and headline grabbing advertisement? In a nation of dog-lovers, however, it was clearly the wrong subject for a company that never wishes to offend.

It speaks volumes about many things: about consumer power, precarious corporations and recession and even what it means to be British.

But most of all it speaks volumes about advertising messages, specifically about the fact that when your message is feel good rather than pay less or see more, you’d better please some of the people all of the time.

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.

Have Microsoft allowed too much time to pass between announcing Natal/Kinect and its release? From all the chatter at E3 it seems the veneer has worn thin and people have already moved on to the next big thing.

It’s been a few years since anyone at Head First attended E3. We tried it for a while, went along with the belief that decisions and impressions were made in equal quantity and that we would break into the States with our creative vision for how video games ought to be marketed.

The truth, however, is that E3 is a show for the public. It is designed to impress the journalists who then trumpet the products they fall for. It really is an amazing event for bringing the spectacle of gaming to the attention of the world.

Last year, that spectacle revolved mainly around Natal, a new take on technology championed by Nintendo through their groundbreaking Wii system. Natal, by Microsoft, blew everything else out of the water by appearing larger than life and selling itself on a dream.

It was a dream that managed to make Nintendo look as though they were just mumbling in their sleep. Here was the true vision of motion control, the future in vivid technicolor.

Microsoft had done what few people credit it capable of doing, they’d pulled an Apple out of the air.

Move on a year and much of the talk about Natal centres around the renaming to ‘Kinect’ an ugly portmanteau to many; and around fake families showing off the technology in demos that many commentators are labelling as disappointing. The buzz, hype and excitement of a year ago has been replaced by reality.

Practical limitations for gaming have been raised over this past year and the answers don’t sit well with the hardcore. Sony, touting their own motion controller now neatly called ‘Move’ are on full assault, pointing out that games need buttons and who wants to be seen playing with invisible guns like a five year old.

It’s clever marketing on Sony’s part who were seen as the poor cousins only last year with technology totally lacking in ‘wow’.

But timing really is everything and now the playing field seems a whole lot more level.

If Microsoft had announced, wowed and released within months rather than a year and a half then maybe they could have carried us along just as Apple seem to with each of their visionary but crippled devices.

That, however, isn’t the case and we’ve had a year to consider what we want (if anything) from motion controllers and are in a position to make calm, informed decisions. That means the money men must also address the economics of these devices, counting them against percentages of current ownership rather than, as once hoped, driving hard core consoles into the Wii owning public where fake families have been happily jumping up and down, waving their primitive sticks in the air, for years.

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.