A Bit of Branding from Richard Bran(d)son

Richard Branson of Virgin fame has some ads out on the Tube. The sales pitch?

Your sales pitch.

The idea is that you, the reader, pitch ideas for businesses – you #PitchToRich.

It’s brilliant.

Think about it. It’s a pitch for business ideas. They are advertising cash prizes for great business ideas. Richard Branson of course is a famously successful businessman, so it lends credibility.

But more to the point, this is a no-lose campaign for Branson. At best, he gets great ideas for businesses, at a relatively cheap price and with the chance to snap up entrepreneurs who may have the ability to implement them. These things cannot be taken lightly – but Virgin has the chance to win them at a low cost.

And what is the negative side? What’s the worst case scenario?

At worst, they get no good ideas. They perhaps lose a little money. But they build the Branson, Virgin brand for cheap. Because the basis for so much of Richard Branson’s success is not so much his business acumen in a literal sense, but his business acumen in the sense that he knows how to use the fact that people think he has business acumen.

I know - that’s a little confused.

But the point is that Richard Branson is famous for being an innovator, a great businessman – but most importantly as a man who takes risks and believes strongly in trying out new ideas. And even if it were not true, the fact that people believe it is in of itself a business advantage. It makes competitors afraid, and investors bullish.

And this campaign, whether it yields great ideas or not, is building and maintaining that reputation – and building and maintaining the business case for Richard Branson and Virgin for years to come.

Rapid Remarketing with Berocca

Berocca is a well-known alka seltzer-type vitamin tablet.

(Those are sometimes known as effervescent tablets. Advertising!)

It has an ad that’s been running for a little while now, showing a guy detailing all the things he has to do today that mean he needs Berocca. It’s a nice, fun little ad that does a good job of outlining why you need this product and how it helps you.

But that’s not what’s interesting about it. What’s interesting is how blatantly it is acting as a moment of remarketing and repositioning. Because the beginning of the ad shows the star’s friend coming up and remarking that he must have had a big night.

Berocca has a reputation for being a hangover remedy. I can’t vouch for its effectiveness but that is the name it has for itself. That’s all well and good but clearly to Berocca it’s too limiting a label. And so, quite obviously to anyone with an ear open, Berocca is rebranding: not just for hangovers.

In just a couple of seconds Berocca acknowledges its reputation, and then declares that it is so much more. It’s so fast you barely notice, but it’s an open, rapid remarketing. And it is very effective.

And that’s it. I just found it interesting.

Personal Selling from Crowdcube

Here’s another nice, simple sell from a brand – a series of ads on the Tube right now. Crowdcube is an investment company (I know, from the name I would have guessed communal box sharing), and their big selling point is that they allow you to pick and choose investments and personally support new up-and-coming businesses, some of which are featured in the ads.

There are small-scale breweries, storage space companies – the list goes on. The key values in all this are choice, and personal connection. And it’s a good way to market investing. It’s an area that too often has the air of corruption, high living and immorality. So why not inject a little personality and humility to it?

Each ad gives you a feel for the businesses featured, an idea of their personality, and why their individual traits might make you, the reader, connect with them. And that’s the most important aspect, and the most apt for the current market.

We see everywhere now the economic power of the small scale. Not because of efficiency, or expertise, at least directly. But because people have come more and more to value a personal connection to products and services.

It’s why craft beer is exploding. It’s why artisanal coffee shops are a thing. It’s why Innocent Smoothies tell you where their fruit comes from and make the growers the heroes of their ads. It’s why supermarkets tell you which farm raised your chicken.

And it’s why Crowdcube wants you to have a personal connection to your investments.

After all, it works on KickStarter. The world of investing blew wide open with that little idea. Investing becomes not just easy, but filled with emotion and choice.

And it seems to be what we want.

And contrary to popular opinion, advertising isn’t about telling you what you want.

It’s about finding out what you want, and giving it to you.

Nice.

Urgent Appeal for Two BMWs

I’m writing this on the train. Right in front of me are two advertising posters. Both of them are by cancer charities. Both are trying to raise money.

The headline on the first reads: “Urgent Appeal for Macmillan Nurses”.

The headline on the second reads: “Win £40,000 or two BMWs”.

The picture on the first is of a nurse in uniform.

The picture on the second is of the aforementioned cars, some cash, and a photo of a beach holiday.

It’s genuinely difficult to know what to think about these two posters.

It’s certainly rare that you come across an advert that is so crass and poorly done as the second of the two. I’d be interested to find out which was more successful at raising money. I mean supporting nurses is nice but two BMWs are hard to resist.

It’s just such a strange study in contrasts. One is a thoughtful, targeted appeal to help a charity support patients. The other, as far as you can tell from the ad, is essentially a raffle which happens to be going to a cancer charity. Except the ad is clearly from the charity itself.

The cynics might suggest this is pure advertising – that this is what you get when you trust advertisers with a sensitive subject like cancer. Crass, self-interested, superficial.

I disagree.

The first poster is the one which is a product of good advertising. An agency probably had a hand in it. There is a thought process involved. The second is the product of people who have no idea about what advertising is about.

If you couldn’t tell that from their respective production values (and you can), you can certainly tell it from their differing outlooks.

The second poster treats its audience as though it thinks they are selfish – that you can only be persuaded to help the sick through the chance for personal gain. That the passengers on this train are all vain robots, with nary a shred of interest to be had unless you dangle a picture of the Bahamas in front of them.

Sure, in my case that’s true, but I’d like to think that I’m the exception.

Joking aside, that second poster does seem like an aberration, a strange outlier of advertising. And it is the point I made before that I think is significant. Both of these ads are for a noble cause: raising money for people suffering from cancer. And yet that isn’t enough by itself to make their case. One side clearly determined that they needed to make a call to people’s emotions. The other, that it was all about money. I think most of us would agree which is the more appropriate, and the most effective.

But it is the work of advertising to make these things happen. If you think you can market your ideas on your own, you are welcome to do so. But the odds are that you aren’t a natural advertiser. Get help from the experts.

Because even the best of causes needs to be communicated properly.

Why Put Toilet Bleach on TV?

Why waste money advertising things that just aren't interesting? 

These days people have a myriad of ways to tune out and turn off advertising for things that don't interest them. So there's a legitimate question to ask about the reasons for advertising the mundane.

This piece is effectively an extension of one of the thoughts behind my last post - why after all should consumers buy into things we don't buy into ourselves?

Sometimes it does have to be conceded that there are certain products and circumstances in which money spent on advertising is no longer worth the candle. It certainly may be the case that television is ceasing to be a worthwhile medium for more humdrum products. But that is not to say that advertising for them needs to be abandoned.

There is though a very important point here, which is that with TV ad effectiveness dropping, advertisers for less “sexy” products have to innovate a lot further than most to keep getting their message across.

This can manifest in highly creative art direction, which can act independently of TV and instead work with lower cost formats such as out of home or print (to further this point there are some great recent examples collated at trendhunter.com/slideshow/cleaning-product-ads). After all, in some ways the obvious solution to a less interesting product is to use your creativity to render it more interesting.

But equally, you can go what we might call the "Ogilvy" route, putting emphasis on facts and figures to drive home trust in products - and this is something that print and social media can do well, by capitalising on the higher dwell time and a broader scope for longer copy. Most especially with social media, that dwell time gives the opportunity to build a rapport with your audience, to build personal connections that just aren't possible in other media types. The power of that kind of personal connection is exactly the response we can give to those who would argue for the death of FMCG advertising.

The truth is that if so-called "boring" products can’t be advertised, nothing can. The heart of advertising is convincing people to buy into not only the product, but also the brand behind it, building a relationship between brand and customer. If the message is good, and the relationship is maintained, engagement will follow.

That is as applicable to toilet cleaner as it is to Toyotas.

Be Enthusiastic About Vitamin Supplements, Improved Wifi, and Enamel Flooring

This is another post about good qualities for an ad person. In this case though this is a quality that is not just for juniors but applies throughout your career (as far as I can tell).

Be enthusiastic about everything you work on. Even if its objectively boring. As with a lot of these articles the point sounds strange but is also very obvious. You need to be able to find enthusiasm in everything, be it a pan with a new innovative handle, or a slightly improved formula for cake mix.

Now this might sound like I’m just advocating for a glassy smile to make the client happy – I’m not. Being respectful and saying the right things to the client is something you should already know. I mean, come on reader. Get your head in the game.

What I’m saying is you have to find some genuine enthusiasm. Not for the client’s benefit directly. But for the benefit of you, and your work. We all know that we do our best work when we’re enthusiastic about the work we’re doing. But why limit your enthusiasm to the times when you get to work on a beer account or an exciting jewellery brand? Sure, those are a little more obviously interesting. But someone who can only summon up their best work when they get what they want is never going to be more than a mediocre account handler. And you don’t get the great accounts by showing yourself to be unequal to the task when it comes to the more mundane ones.

Let me give an example. This is actually from the creative side. I had a creative director at one of my past agencies who could be enthused by anything. He got excited describing the qualities of a new corporate wifi outlet that one of our clients was releasing. In most other industries having his level of enthusiasm for marginally better wifi would be considered a mild form of delirium. But this is one of the most respected creative directors in the UK. You don’t get to the top through disinterest.

So what does this translate to in the day to day? Simply, it means having a genuine curiosity about life, and about what is going on around you. I hope you do have that (you probably shouldn’t have chosen advertising as a career if that isn’t the case). You have to be able to find a reason to work harder, care more, and take an interest in everything that goes on around your account.

David Ogilvy talked about this, that if your client is a petrol supplier you should spend your weekends at petrol stations talking to drivers. You can’t advance without having the will to learn more.

"Most of the young [people] in agencies are too lazy to do this kind of homework. They remain permanently superficial."

Frankly, it’s a lot easier to do that kind of research and active listening now than it was in his day. Even just searching Google for news once in a while is enough to make a big difference. But you have to be willing to make that effort. And curious enough to keep making the effort even when it eats into your ‘free’ time.

Advertising is the art of driving people to care about goods which often have very little natural emotion pull. How can you possibly succeed in that if you can’t even drive yourself to care about them?

Social Media and the Absence of Negatives

Social media, by the headlines in the trade press and the regular press, carries some hefty negatives for brands which engage in it.

Just yesterday Dunkin’ Donuts was caught out by a tweeted image of the Liverpool Football Club’s emblem which had been edited to be a bit of a silly Dunkin’ style graphic.

To do so they edited out the Eternal Flames on the emblem which commemorate those killed in the Hillsborough disaster.

Not the wisest of decisions.

With the internet being what it is, any mistake made by a brand can be captured and repeated and paraded across the world in moments – instant tsunamis of disapproval sweeping away months of built-up good faith.

This pattern has played out across multiple channels, many brands, and is simply a part of the fabric of social advertising at the point.

But why do brands take on the risk of such a fast-paced media? It’s not as though they gain much out of it. It’s rare to see many brands using social media for the purpose of direct sales. Most of the time it’s simply for branding purposes.

The answer is, to a large degree, to remove a negative.

Social media isn’t generally much of a positive. But the absence of social media is a real negative for brands which ignore it. It’s as much to show face as to show an attractive face.

As with the Burberry case earlier, being in control and being consistent in your brand voice are key. Social media is about defending your brand and not ceding the territory – either to other brands in the market or to negative perceptions of a poorly done and underfunded social presence.

Now, of course there is the viral quality of social media. This can cut both ways and can be a huge benefit in terms of awareness, certainly if you’re a large brand. But it’s hard to build a campaign around a hypothetical viral success, especially now that every brand and its mother (parent company?) are trying to do the same. These things have a limited predictability.

So how do you consistent succeed at social media? Again, it’s all about removing negatives. Successful social media is in large part simply about consistency, and thoroughness. Slipping up is both more likely and more dangerous. You just have to be careful, constantly.

Which is why brand social media is generally either dull or wildly controversial.

Which is why brand social media is so often just a game of damage limitation.

Gawker: Making the World a Worse Place

Coca Cola made a tie-in social media project for its Superbowl campaign. It wasn't anything gratuitous, just a funny Twitter program that changed negative tweets into funny text shapes. Something to make online trolling a bit less negative, to spin things around, to inject some happiness.

How dare they.

Gawker wouldn't stand for such behaviour, and so they tricked Coke's program into tweeting images using bits of text from Hitler's Mein Kampf. When Coke found the tweets, and with people complaining, they deleted them, and halted the campaign. And so a campaign designed to fight back against the pervasive negativity of so much of the internet was destroyed by the pervasive negativity of the internet.

Thanks for that one Gawker.