Screw you brand equity, I've got a point to prove!

I always feel it's a bit unfair to publicly criticize advertising. Without having seen the brief it's tough to know what the objectives were, what the key insights were, what the research showed. Without knowing the client, it's impossible to know how many committees the creative got chewed through and how many managers had to leave indelible fingerprints on the work. That said, I love to criticize advertising. It's what I do and if I have to run someone through the ringer every so often I may as well do it with gleeful spite.

Canada Dry Ginger Ale has recently launched an aggressive brand campaign and it's been gnawing at me for a while. What I've seen so far has been TV ads and new packaging, though it could be in other media, just not the ones I use. The TV ads are totally unremarkable. In fact I'm having a hard time remembering what they were--and I can't find any on Youtube. I vaguely remember something about a shopping cart and, uh, ginger ale. The slogan is "made with real ginger." Heady stuff.

The packaging is where it starts to bother me. One look at the old and the new and it's not hard to imagine a shiny new CMO or brand manager looking to leave their mark on the product. The consumer research probably said things like "feels too stuffy" and "not fun enough". So it's likely they ambitiously set out to re-design the packaging to show how "fresh", "vibrant" and "fun" the product could be. You can imagine they got really hot about "breaking out of the category" and "moving the needle".

At least that's how I imagine it.



So the key insights behind this entire effort could have been that people would buy more ginger ale if they knew it was made with real ginger and if it looked fun. This probably came out of a focus group. I can imagine asking a focus groupee if she'd buy more ginger ale if she knew it was flavored with real ginger, not that fake ginger flavor that nobody's been talking about. In my mind she answers, "Shit. I'd run out and buy a case tomorrow if I knew that!"

Right.

What bothers me about this is not unremarkable advertising and ill-conceived design work. That shit is everywhere and I've learned to ignore it mostly. No, I'm bothered by the prestige of an old, storied brand, with years of equity built over the effort generations, stripped away in one fell swoop by a well-meaning but ham-fisted effort.

You could say I'm being sentimental, but sentimentality is a part of brand equity. Same goes for nostalgic.

Canada Dry has any number of stories it could tell, yet they chose to tell the 'made with real ginger' story.

It also had class. I remember "the champagne of ginger ales". I remember a classy green bottle, with a bold but elegant, worldly logo. It was the kind of thing that Hemmingway might splash into whatever he happened to be getting 'tight' on. It was a part of history and culture. It was the mix of choice for sophisticated partiers. Yes, it had brand equity. At least it did in 1934.



So, this campaign grates a little when I think of the possibilities. It reminds me how difficult it is to build brand equity and how easy it is to lose. And it reminds me how hard it is to stick to an idea, when everyone at the table has to leave their mark on it. I just hope whoever came up with this stuff doesn't get their hands on Mercedes-Benz ("runs on real gas!") or Rolex (research showed consumers would buy more if it ticked.).

Check out this link for a seriously ugly page, but a great resource for historic Canada Dry ads.

The Death of the Advertising Industry: Part 3

Crispin Porter + Bogusky recently crowd-sourced a logo for their client, Brammo Motorcycles. It's a pet project of theirs and they appear to be looking to get good ideas for cheap. Apparently people are willing to give them away for cheap. The commodification of creativity really appears to be happening. Advertising is a tough biz to break into and those on the outside will do just about anything to get a foot in the door.

The way things are going, a lot more of us are going to be on the outside. In fact if agencies keep commodifying creative endeavors, agencies will simply become curators and facilitators. Creative will be a value-added service and it won't be vertically integrated.

Take a look at photography to see this in action. Photography has long been the realm of dilettantes and amateurs. But only a tiny fraction earn livings from the craft. Then along came iStockphoto.com and upset everything. Amateurs with chops could find their work being used by art directors and designers around the world, yet only get paid pennies for what a photographer used to get paid thousands of dollars for. But for the amateur it was satisfaction enough to see their work used. They were taking the photo anyway, so why not?

It's been painful for the pros. It's been extremely painful for the big stock houses like Getty and Corbis. It transformed the photography industry and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

Now istockphoto.com is about to do it all over again, except to the field of graphic design. I got an email today asking for my logo submissions. They're going to start selling logos. This isn't a new idea, but we've seen what istock can do. They have the capacity to transform industries there's no reason why their machine can't swallow up graphic design and illustration as well as photography.

I'll admit, I'm lazy-- and clients are always looking for a deal. So I use a lot of stock photos and illustrations. If I need an icon for a website, I could spend half an hour making it in Illustrator, or I could spend five minutes and five bucks and get something close to what I want from istock. I do it all the time and I've been doing it for years.

For some reason I think logos are different. I'm sure all the photographers looking for work right now would back me up here. A logo exists for one organization. I shudder to think that you can find the logo that perfectly encapsulates the essence of your brand by flipping through a catalog. But I know I'm wrong. One look at all the crappy logos out there and I realize that no-one cares nearly as much about logos as designers do, and that includes clients.

Saul Bass is probably turning over in his grave.

You get what you pay for.

My wife has worked for a big evil oil company for over a decade. I won't mention the name for fear of reprisal ( hint, they're dutch). In 2004 they got caught lying about their reserves. And are still paying the price for it.

Estimating reserves is mostly science, partly voodoo and it's fairly easy to get wrong. As such, it's easy to understand how they saw a 20% overestimation as a little white lie. This case however was systemic and shareholders and media alike punished the company for it. Ever since, they have been trying to gain share value through efficiencies. Outsourcing has been one of those attempts to become more efficient.

Recently a department my wife used to work for was shipped off to South Africa. All her friends there have been scrambling to find new positions in the company or have left for what closely mown greener pastures remain in late 2009. Some have found temporary work training their replacements.

Today Yahoo published an article claiming that a carrier pigeon is faster than the internet in South Africa. Which leads me to wonder how well this outsourcing idea is going to work. "Let me just email you this spreadsheet, document, etc. sir and your problem will be solved in no time." That's an easy promise to break when data transfer rates are such easy targets of hilarious, but poignant pranks. Obviously 'mission-critical' isn't going to be a key part of their service offering.

Regardless, we live in an age of fast answers, instantaneous solutions and it appears the South African infrastructure isn't actually set up to compete in that age. If companies keep moving customer service departments there it should eventually support the required infrastructure. But it snowballs from there and costs can only climb. Eventually it'll be cheaper to exploit another area and it'll be time to move shop again.

I believe in local economies. I like the idea of taxes going to local governments to support local infrastructure and profits going into the local economy. Of course I also believe in integrity. I can't help but wonder if some of this current, ongoing problem and many subsequent future problems could have been prevented in the first place by not lying about reserves.

Transparency is here, whether a corporation likes it or not. Advertising and marketing will not cover up lies in this day and age. Which means that being competitive relies at least in part on being honest.

Is a brand your friend?

If you were a company whose key differentiator was 'real relationships', wouldn't you embrace social media? When I think about 'real relationships' I think about someone I'd make out with, or someone I'd go get drunk with. Those are real relationships, at least within my narrow world-view.

But I look at my Tweetdeck and I don't actually see a whole lot of friends there. I see a lot of companies, magazines, bloggers, governments, etc., telling me a lot of crap I really don't care about. In that respect it's a lot like TV or radio. But there's a default column in the software called 'friends' and all those aformentioned things are in there. It's a bit insidious actually.

Facebook is only marginally better. At least there I can be a 'fan' of a brand, which distances me a bit. Although the software still shows me a brand almost the same as it shows my friends.

I'll admit to being a bit surly. Which explains my paltry 63 facebook friends. But to be honest, even that's too many. I could get along fine without half of them--just like I did before I signed up to Facebook. And I'm pretty sure I can live without the added noise of half the junk I'm following on Twitter.

So I wonder what kind of traction your favorite dish soap is going to get when it starts trying to be friends with you--having a 'real relationship'. You could go out and get drunk with your favorite beer brand of course, but you're still going to be alone.

So I'm not sure I'm ready to cuddle up with my toaster. Honestly I share all my feelings and all I ever get in return is toast. Tasty, but not very fulfilling.

Brands who claim to have real relationships with their customers are going to need to do some hard thinking about what that means, and whether it's a commitment they can actually live up to.

How Dumb Can Art Directors be? Part 2

In yesterday's post I edited out a smarmy line about how people still weren't cracking a lot of Hitler jokes, even 60 years later. I realized it didn't contribute much so I cut it.

But I just came across this doozy. And what a doozy it is. The DDB Brasil ad was insensitive and misdirected, but I actually think Das Committee, who made this Hitler ad, are just plain stupid. Seriously, who comes up with this shit? And worse yet, thinks it's a good enough idea to actually approve it?

I get PR. It's part of what I do every day. People say outrageous shit to get attention. In fact it's the single biggest problem with the blogsphere. But I understand taking the Marilyn Manson approach to delivering a message. Just maybe try to have an idea that makes sense or even has an ounce of thought behind it before you try to shock the world. Idiots.

The big idea, again.

I came across another blog post talking about a blog post that talks about the death of the Big Idea. To the contrary, Edward says:

"...I’m referring to things like The Ultimate Driving Machine, Just Do It, Got Milk, or Dove’s campaign for Real Beauty.

My guess is there’s not a brand in the world that wouldn’t die for an idea like that."

And here's the root of a lot of the bullshit surrounding this -- are those big ideas really dying because we live in a 'new age'?

The Dove campaign is one of the most awarded campaigns in Canadian advertising history. Sure, it's a nice sentiment. Give yourself a hug, you're beautiful in your own way. Maybe it could have won awards simply for that. But I think the real reason it won so many awards is because it pushed the boundaries of advertising in the current age. The Big Idea worked amazingly well across a huge variety of media, events, and anywhere else Jancy and the rest of Ogilvy could think to put it. It used media, pr, the web. It used traditional techniques and new technologies equally well. It built communities and it became cultural. It engaged consumers and solicited opinions. It never lost sight of the big idea, it transformed a brand. And it helped to sell soap.

I'll admit the campaign for real beauty is the exception, not the rule. But it suggests that the Big Idea is not dead.You just have to be exceptionally creative to come up with it, be smart enough and resourceful enough to evolve it, and have the courage to believe in it through its life-cycle.

How Dumb Can Art Directors be?

The answer is: Pretty damn stupid.

The furor over DDB Brasil's poorly thought out WWF ad has hit the mainstream media and Joe Average is pretty up in arms about it. It's a sensitive topic.

I'm an art director and I'm sensitive about stupid ideas. For life of me I can't figure out what this ad is about. All I can get out of it is an art director with the resources of a big outfit like DDB jerking off without really thinking about what the ad says. Because other than that it doesn't really make a lot of sense.

Which leads to why this ad was done in the first place. It was an art director jerking off so they could win awards. Dog & Pony show wrote an excellent post, with some great follow up comments so I won't belabor the point. My question is who thought this ad was a good idea in the first place? The AD and copywriter obviously did, and they're idiots. WWF did according to an Ad Age article. And a CD must have as well. Why did they all think this was a good enough idea to win awards?

Art direction is about good ideas, not just good execution. Maybe people who read Luerzer's Archive too much forget that every now and again. But senior creatives should be tuned into the 'big idea' and have the experience to recognize a bad idea glossed over with nice execution.

Which ties back into something I touched on the other day. The big idea is not dead. Despite what social media hypesters will tell you. If you lose sight of the big idea, like DDB Brasil did, your brand will suffer. Sure, an idea might not survive across every execution in every media. Something culturally accepted in one market might get torn apart in another. But someone, somewhere should be keeping the big idea in mind and looking out for the brand's best interest. That shouldn't be a committee. You'd really think it should start with the art director and copywriter and move up the chain.