The value for brands in “making things better”

  

 

Brands can’t be indifferent to whether they are actually making their fans “better off” any longer, because we are at the beginning stages of a post-consumerist society – I stress the very beginning stages! We are entering an era where we witness a ‘culture of meaning’ not just of marketing.

Media-based agencies are understanding most quickly that people are now finding a greater fulfillment in thoughts, experiences, and pure information.  People don’t just want to buy, be sold and marketed “junk” anymore – they want transparency and openness.  Consumers no longer want the hard sell and they want a definite ethical undertone from their brands.  Check out the Gwilym’s disloyalty card 

Google for example see the value in making (or seeming to make) an ethical stand by  snubbing China.  And this positioning of itself as a brand that “does good things” – and takes the high ground – is pretty vital to achieve Google’s aim to build “products that can be used by a billion or more people.” (Forbes.com)

‘The old high ground was built for 20th century economics: sell more junk, earn more profit, “grow” — and then crash. An ethical edge operates at a higher economic level. It is concerned with what we sell, how profits are earned, and which authentic, human benefits “grow.” It’s a concept built for the economics of an interdependent world’ (Umair Haque).

Brands and businesses likely to operate best in this new and future landscape aren’t the ones that can claim they are perfect, but the ones that can tangibly demonstrate they are always trying to be and do better (remind you of a certain American’s election campaign!)  Whole Foods is a neat example. 

From 2010 brands will start winning by demonstrating they are trying to be BETTER, not by claiming to be PERFECT

 

 

It’s a wrap 2

The things we do…

The Catcher In The Rye – J D Salinger

Seven novels and plays that I studied as part of the circulum whilst at school really stood out for me and they were:

1) The Duchess of Malfi- a Jacobean macabre gore fest

2) Tess of the D’Urbevilles - Hardy’s classic heroine

4) Eminent Victorians – caustic and amusing

4) Richard III- “…sent before my time into breathing world scarce half made up and so lamely and unfashionable that dogs do bark at me as I halt by them…”

5)  One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Siberian prison camp. gruelling.

6) Brighton Rock – gangster heaven 

And …

No. 7) The Catcher in the Rye.  So JD Salinger I thank you and salute your memory.

J D Salinger (1919-2010)

 Read more here.

It’s a wrap!

Great day to be in the office, as we are watching the results unfold of an away day some months ago where we came up with the idea of bubble- wrapping a street to promote buying car insurance on Confused.com.

Safe as houses

This morning, Somerville Road in Worcester, which has one of the highest numbers of car insurance claims in UK in the past 5 years, got wrapped!

Safe as gnomes

Full album here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/accidentavenue/pool/

On twitter:  #accidentavenue

ME ME ME

End of the age of ME ME ME

Those in PR and advertising are watching people’s behaviour and wondering is it really the end of the ME ME ME culture for consumers; and the beginning of a new era?  Are we now seeing a culture amongst consumers that they truly feel that there are more important things in life than having the biggest and best.  It feels that way.

If the trends for 2010 are to be:

Buying ethically

New connectivity

Personal connections

Peer Recommendations

Authenticity

Then we are truly entering an era where the use of social media in PR and advertising will prevail like never before.  The time and the technology has been right for PR and ads delivered through social media to engage consumers more keenly than anything else for a long while, but now it feels like the whole larger milieu is right too.

It is not only me that is thinking this.  Very senior bods at major brands are reading this book http://www.ellenruppelshell.com/ and thinking how they can make absolutely sure their brands cannot stand accused of the ME ME ME attitude!

The truth of Mad Men

 

"If you don't like what's being said, change the conversation." Don Draper, Mad Men

 

http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/madmenyourself/

Having just completed the stirring second series of Mad Men, it set me thinking…

What would Don Draper be like in a 2010s PR or ad firm?  And although he may be at sea with the lack of drinking, smoking or sexism, I have no doubt he’d be worth his weight in gold.

Why?  Because he can do four of the most important things (in my mind) in the PR/Ad business.  That is:

1. He is a great storyteller.

2. He talks about individuals, not demographics.

3. Related to that, he believes in anecdotal research insights (not just stats).

4. He puts his heart into the products he is trying to sell; and where he can’t do that he delegates the work to someone that will.

But nothing is more important that the fact he can make his stories simple, concise and clear. This is what clients dig, and this is what the people he needs to engage about certain products dig too. Don would be great in this age of Web 2.0, where the personal, the sincere and the collaborative are what engage fans with brands. Simple, clear stories and conversation starters that work on a face-to-face level.

And as Don says:  ”I sell products, not advertising”.  You could swap the word “advertising” in the quotation for PR or social media engagement etc . Great stories (and means of engagement) need to eventually create fans of your product to increase sales, not just sell the medium being used itself. 

Below the famous Don Draper advertising pitch for the Kodak Carousel:

Don Draper: Well, technology is a glittering lure. But, uh, there is the rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash, if they have a sentimental bond with the product.

 My first job, I was in-house at a fur company, with this old-pro copywriter, a Greek named Teddy. Teddy told me the most important idea in advertising is new. Creates an itch. You simply put your product in there as a kind of calamine lotion.

 But he also talked about a deeper bond with the product. Nostalgia. It’s delicate, but potent. Sweetheart. (lights switch off) (changes slide)

 Teddy told me that in Greek, “nostalgia” literally means “the pain from an old wound”. (changes slide)

 It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. (changes slide)

 This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. (changes slide)

 It goes backwards, forwards, (changes slide) takes us to a place where we ache to go again. (changes slide)

 It’s not called the wheel. It’s called the carousel. (changes slide)

 It lets us travel the way a child travels. (changes slide)

 Round and around, and back home again. (changes slide)

 To a place where we know we are loved. (changes slide) (changes slide) (changes slide)

The M to the T to the Jelly

Multi-tasking isn’t new, especially to mothers, but for those heavily involved in Social Media it is very much a way of being, at least in terms of observing and filtering different feeds and conversations coming onto the screen of your ever present laptop, iPhone, Blackberry, Skype etc.

Even this idea of multiprocessing with technologies is not completely new: we’ve been driving while listening to car radios since they became popular in the 1930s. But it is fair to say this way of being has gone into hyperdrive with so much in our life now being about interactivity – from voting on Strictly Come Dancing, to getting trainer discounts via following a brands twitter feed, or to getting meal tips for dinner tonight from a food brands facebook page.

Odd to think less than a generation ago most home computers weren’t even linked to the Internet. “In 1990 the majority of adolescents responding to a survey done by Donald Roberts, a professor of communication at Stanford, said the one medium they couldn’t live without was a radio/CD player. How quaint. In a 2004 follow-up, the computer won hands down” (Time Magazine, 2006).

Personally I have a pressing reason for Social Media multi-tasking as it is vital for me professionally to keep on top of the buzz about my brands and this is made easiest by using the likes of Tweetdeck and many other platforms and tools.

However, yesterday evening I realised that a line had to be drawn when… I walked past the toilet to see the door open and my 4 year-old step-son sitting on the loo doing his business, whilst eating a bowl of jelly and playing with my Blackberry.  Wrong on so many levels, but these kids today sure can multitask!

Another piece of more surreal multi-tasking…

As Brown’s leadership crumbles, politics starts getting really entertaining…

 

He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health, a boy's love, or a whore's oath. (KING LEAR III.vi.20)

 

 

But who will replace the man with the deathly smile if and when New Labour lose the next election.  Well, Ed Balls is power hungry and barmy enough to, if my friend (who is a government strategist & worked into him for many years) is to be believed. But, can such a clearly unpleasant fellow expect support by his fellow MPs? And surely after the Brown experience the Labour Party will want someone with likeability factor, a factor that discounts Balls.

Contender 1

 

 

So then there is David Milliband.  He already has the support of James Purnell, who has performed admirably since his resignation, focussing on trying to assess what philosophies a future Labour Party could be moulded around.  Unfortunately though, Milliband’s Brownesque lack of backbone, but clearly visible Machiaevellian streak, in trying to get the big job earlier in the year may have ultimately scuppered his chances.  He hasn’t done much wrong, but when Brown goes down, surely MPs will remember all those most closely linked to the sinking and turn their backs on them – including Milliband.

Contender 2

 

 

Then there is his brother Ed – but will he shaft his big brother Dave?  Go on do it Ed! But with his geeky look and youthful demeanor, he’ll need some old heavyweights in his corner and who knows where the Dark Lord (Mandy) will be sat – as he has indicated that this may even be on the Tory benches! 

Contender 3

 

 

And many publications of note are now purring about John Cruddas.  Think it would be a bit like Red Ken becoming Mayor of London but on a national scale. It might work, but this would really depend what Cameron was like as a PM.  At the moment, the fact that Cameron goes frowny and crimson when he is telling a porky or on the back foot ain’t great, but compared to Brown’s laughable on air strops, it is perhaps the lesser of two evils.  And with Brown and Cameron to choose between, I will genuinely be able to ignore the surface images and vote for the party whose policies I believe will be best for the economy, society and of course myself and my family in the years ahead.  I suspect whichever party stops squirming when talking about the cuts and sacrifices that will need to be made as we move into the 2010s will have the most credibility in my eyes.  So the choice is between compassionate conservatism or whatever the hell New Labour’s core policy approach will end up being - other than inverse snobbery. So yes it will be the most exciting election for a long time – shame it has taken an economic meltdown to make politics seem so meaningful.

Contender 4

 

I bet Labour wish they had held a contest to formally  Brown elected when they had the chance, then he might have had the moral authority to successfully call off the wolves within his own party.

All eyes on iSlate

This will be a very important piece of technology.  Quite simply game-changing.

For newspapers that haven’t yet got a workable plan for survival in the digital age, one can only now feel pity with this new beast on its way to add to their woes.

Here is a demo of the iSlate, with an IKEA catalogue app being explored…

Finally being knowledgable is worth more than being wealthy

Recent studies from the US suggest that the recession has actually made people happier (unlike previous recessions)

The age of the economy of intelligence on its way

 

Why? Well we became so expectant of accelerated material growth (during the period where everything that anyone seemed to touch turned to gold whatever their level of talent) that our ambition became so over-inflated it began to eat away at our happiness.  So the old unrealistic ambitions equalling disappointment scenario.

But steadily we are seeing in the age of Web 2.0 materialistic wealth falling increasingly behind intelligence as the key currency.

“Perhaps this in because in a networked world, it is far easier to demonstrate intelligence than before. And because the idea of wealth as a measure of talent has taken rather a knock in the last two years” (Roy Sutherland, The Spectator- Christmas Issue).