Branded a fool

I saw some numpty professor on Sky Sports News this morning blabbing on about how old Golden Balls' reintroduction to the England squad was so timely because (ahem!) 'Brand Beckham needed a boost'. What a load of cobblers. 

Firstly, Beckham is a footballer not a brand and secondly what a man who is leaving a horde of fanatical admirers in Spain to become the most famous Englishman in the USA (and scoop £128 million into the bargain) needs a 'boost' for is beyond me. 

The Prof also went on to say that Beckham's inclusion was good for the England brand too. Sorry, I thought that England in this context was a football team representing a country called England.

Ah well, maybe I'm taking it too seriously. And what do I care anyway, I'm more interested in Scotland, the brand of my birth... 

Poor old Craig fans, what you gonna do?

The 'hame-knitted' advertising campaign co-ordinated around Edinburgh by the supporters of the local hopeful in the Any Dream Will Do talent competition running on BBC1's Saturday night just wasn't enough to save poor old Craig as he dropped out of the running with just two weeks to go. But, really, what did they expect?

They tied little posters of the grinning wannabe to the lamposts in Princes Street and rigged up a lifesize cut out in a farmer's field on the way to the airport. Alas, their limited outdoor campaign was never going to be enough but they didn't have any better ideas. They needed to get their message out and all they could think of was advertising.

But before we knock the folly of their ways, let us recall that they're not alone. They just did what marketing directors of big businesses all over the world do every day only on a much more ludicrous scale. At least the Craigophiles will only be counting the cost of a bunch of photocopies and not trying to justify a multi-million pound waste of space.

Get a life!

Out of interest, following all the hype, I thought I'd take a look at Second Life. I'm already regretting that decision. 

If the truth be told, I don't even have enough time for my First Life, let alone poncing around some fantasy world in the guise of Alfalfa Meriman, my digital alter-ego. 

Poor Alfalfa, I'm afraid is doomed to stagger around the acclimatisation zone until the end of time if my first encounters are anything to go by. What's worse for the unfortunate fellow is my insistence in chopping the standard issue Adonis down to something nearer the body shape I've grown comfortable with over the years so he'll have to get used to some very judgemental glances from the half naked cyberbabes that appear to fall out of the sky in the entrance way to this curious online world.

Anyway, my first brush with Linden has left me wondering what it's all about. While I guess 6 million 'inhabitants' can't be entirely wrong, I'm not convinced it's for me. Active online participation is such hard work. Believe me. Try becoming a blogger or a blipper (www.blipfoto.com) and you'll see that it takes a huge amount of effort to make even the tiniest impression. 

And if you're thinking about advertising and marketing strategies that may penetrate these brave new worlds, be careful - unless your product is loaded with caffeine or cleverly manages to extend time, you may find your messaging falls on deaf ears.

And now the votes from our Edinburgh jury ...

Wasn’t last Saturday night wonderful? For the first time in years I watched the annual high-camp farce that is The Eurovision Song contest and, I have to confess, I had a hoot.It was just like a good old-fashioned Saturday night in front of the telly when everyone gathered on the sofa and watched the same thing. First we followed the trials and tribulations of the Josephs and watched Rob the Builder crash and burn despite a brave stab at Born to Run. Oh the tears, the inconsolable supporters and the ritual hug-fest as 6 of the seven were saved for another week of stage schooling.

Then there was the highlight of the night and by this time the wine was beginning to kick in – hey, it’s Saturday, I can relax, can’t I?

As one monstrous effort followed another we chortled with glee and hooted with derision. As Terry kept us amused with his increasingly risqué comments (perhaps he was joining me on the sauce) the whole extravaganza hurtled towards the moment of truth – would Skooch be the cringe-making nul pointer that we on the couch expected it to be. They shipped in two extra girls in luminous baby-dolls to help boost votes and clearly it worked,  our old chums Ireland and Malta saved the day with 7 and 12 points respectively.

And then came a public outcry of outrageous proportions! It’s a disgrace! A waste of the licence fee! It’s a Soviet bloc-voting scandal! What’s the point of entering a competition we can’t win?

Uhhh, folks, were you listening? The UK entry was crap.

And so were the rest. That’s not the point. Eurovision isn’t about good songs, is it? It’s about the spectacle – and 100 million Europeans (and some folks from Israel) tuning in to find out which countries like each other the most. That’s why we were last – I’m excluding Ireland here as their entry was undoubtedly judged on musical criteria!

And the most amusing thing of the lot was that this huge, gullable, mainstream Saturday night TV audience wasn’t subjected to a single TV ad – just an awful Finnish ‘comedienne’ in a fluffy pink frock while other luckier nations cut to the ads.

Roll on next year’s spectacular from the streets of Sarajevo – maybe we should send Franz Ferdinand.

Old habits die hard

My kids let me into a little secret at the dinner table yesterday: 'Mum watches ER on a Thursday night.'

That's hardly surprising, I responded, after all, that's when it's on. But it's more complicated than that: "Mum watches the edition that we watch on a Monday and record for her at the same time.'

It transpires that she waits until the regular time on a Thursday but fast forwards the ads - much to my teenager's annoyance - because it 'leaves an irritating 10 minute gap before Graham Norton comes on'.

Although this delightful tale of modern family life may cast some aspersions on my wife's grasp of technology, I can assure you that she's no daftie. Far from it. Though it's true she still worries about what happens to everyone else when we pause live TV on Sky+, she's an online banking, emailing, iTuning, websurfing, fully PayPalled member of the 21st Century.

But there are deeper forces at work.

Ritual is our friend. And just the same as all good football matches take place at 3pm on a Saturday (except European games which are electric Wednesday nights), having complete liberty to dictate our own TV schedule isn't always such an attractive option.

While we're all having to adjust our media consumption comfort zones thanks to the convergence of an assortment of technologies, there may be some food for thought in the halfway house to which my wife subscribes. We're all for embracing the future, as long as it bears a fair resemblance to the everyday things we know and understand.

Gimmicks in the green light zone

Grolsch's latest viral campaign may be experimenting with the convergence of technologies but is it all worth it?

This week a good friend forwarded on a link to a viral campaign for Grolsch. So I clicked.

http://www.grolsch.co.uk/Campaigns/text/preview.html

But once it was all over, I wondered why I'd bothered and, more to the point, why they'd bothered.

To summarise this convoluted little campaign, when you get to the site you're asked for your name and your mobile phone number. There then follows a 30 second 'ad' that's supposed to sound a bit mysterious (but actually feels like ludicrously contrived gay pick up) at the end of which you receive a text as if from the lead actor. 

Presumably in some cases the link provided in the email you receive from whoever forwards it to you will already tie up with a mobile phone number if it was supplied by your chum in the first place.

Sorry, losing the will to live yet? I'll continue, all the same...

So, the guy lears at you from the screen, mobile phone in hand and you look at the text that's just arrived on your phone. That invites you to go back to the site that you're already on to check out a list of bars all over the UK that have previously been featured in 'the green light zone' whatever that is. 

Ironically, I clicked on one bar in Edinburgh (my home town) at random and the copy suggested that I 'Check out the wide selection of premium spirits, extensive wine list or if you fancy a cocktail - this is the bar to visit'. Not tuck into a bottle of Grolsch then, eh?

Anyway, after much rambling, I'll get to my point. It's all very well trying to get the video action to look like it's talking to me and involve me by buzzing my mobile but unlike last year's triumphant viral campaign for Mini, I'm really not sure what it is that they want me to do. 

If it's go back to a website I'm already in, then that's just daft. If it's to be wary of bearded Dutchmen who approach me when I'm drinking beer, then they've succeeded. 

Out with the old, in with the new

New Labour? To paraphrase Dexy’s Midnight Runners: Thankfully not living in England, it doesn’t apply. The remodelled, magnificently spun rebrand for the English Rose brandishing ‘national’ Labour Party is only a half-hearted gesture North of the border.
And, as Scotland prepares to vote tomorrow, all the signs indicate that Mr Blair’s legacy will be a shift in power to the Nationalists and their sketchy vision of freedom within the European Community.

Though the Scots have played an important role in shaping New Labour and populating Blair’s cabinets over the past 10 years, Labour’s grip on the public imagination north of the border is failing fast. And the truth is we never really needed ‘New’ Labour because good old-fashioned Labour was good enough.

New Labour, designed to appeal to middle England and take votes away from John Major, just wasn’t required in a country that never voted Tory anyway. In Scotland, the Conservative Party has been a long-standing joke. So much so that the launch of their ‘oak tree’ branding device (which looks like a criminal’s inky thumb print) came and went without hardly a derisory chuckle.

Ironically, New Labour, has had a massive impact.

Our current First Minister, a blethering former teacher who has either cuddled up to Blair or fended him off with a shitty stick depending on which way the political wind was blowing, has tried his best to ape his London masters and modernise himself and his troops. He even wore a non-tartan kilt at Tartan Week in New York to show how with-it he was. But as New Labour has lurched from crisis to crisis, starting wars, embracing Bush, flirting with scandal and planning another generation of nuclear weapons in our backyard, Scotland has increasingly turned its back on the Labour brand.

As a branding effort, it’s been poorly executed here too. You’ll have to look hard to see ‘New’ Labour on the Scottish Labour Party’s communications and it’s unlikely that you’ll hear many candidates talking up Tony outside the polling stations tomorrow.

New Labour is irrevocably linked with the Blair years. As that era draws to a close, Labour will have to find a way to re-new itself – but it will take much more than clever spin and fancy graphics to restore public confidence in a brand that has fundamentally lost its way.

I should go on Dragon's Den

That's what everyone tells me. About four times this week in conversation with friends and acquaintances while I've been updating them about my two year struggle to raise finance for a new business they've come up with the suggestion - 'you should go on Dragon's Den'. 

It's like reality TV must have a solution to the unreal activity of trying to raise big money for big ideas in the 'conventional' way. 

Believe me, I'm trying. I've developed the concept, done the logistics, put everything in place, done the marketing planning, created the spreadsheets and the business plans and paraded them all in front of po-faced accountants up and down the land but nobody's quite biting yet.

The Venture Capitalists aren't so keen on start-ups when there are rich pickings out there in deals that are measured in the billions and the entrepreneurs, well, they're all hiding behind their accountants or they're on reality TV.

Maybe I should go on Dragon's Den. 

Small print: who is it for?

I hate small print. You know, those little legal statements that we routinely art direct into a corner in our marketing messages. But who are they for?

i saw the daftest example ever at the weekend in DKNY's ad in the Sunday Times. It's a dumb ad anyway featuring a glaikit looking model in a suit, some black and white photography of New York and a giant DKNY brand. 

Then there's the small print: The Empire State Building is a trademark of Empire State Building Company L.L.C. and is used with permission. 

Eh? Sorry. I thought it was a famous building in New York. I've even been up it. Curious to think that I've been in the lift of a trademark all the way to the viewing gallery.

Anyway, like most small print nobody's actually supposed to read it. It's there so that some lawyer can say 'we told you' when some litigious customer says 'you never mentioned that before'.

So it's not big and it's not clever, it's just tedious.  

Battle for the ballot box taking place in the letterbox

Scotland's politicians are fighting to get their messages heard but the lion's share of their marketing spend seems to be going on DM.

11 different items. That's how many political bits and pieces I received yesterday morning. There were more today too. Door drops, addresed mail, pamphlets, newsletters, you name it, they're dropping through my door.

Our postman must be praying for the 3rd of May and an end to it all. Me too, most if it's junk.

It's hilarious looking at it all from a marketing perspective. There's the Tories' (ahem) 'Oak Tree' branding device which look's like a dirty big thumb print. There are endless attempts at 'direct marketing by numbers' and more calls to action than you'd get at a street corner hustings. Even the Greens are at it - on 100% recycled stock of course. 

As for ugly digital mug shots - don't even go there ...

But the good news for the parties is, it works. Scotland's floating voters can be persuaded and DM is a better way to do it than posters, press or TV. I've been swayed by one of the more active campaigners promoting tactical voting. 

So the message for would be politicians is clear: forget the soap box - if you can master the letter box, you'll be a winner. 

On the ball thinking will benefit Nationwide

While I’m never completely convinced of the benefits of sports sponsorship, you have to admire Nationwide’s twist on the subject with their latest campaign which will see ordinary customers getting the VIP treatment at the international matches the company sponsors.Now that may raise a few eyebrows amongst the Official Blazers and the Part-Time Supporter/Half-Time Prawn Sandwich Munchers but it’s a smart positioning statement from a company that revels in its mutuality.

It’s a clever use of the sponsorship too. If my take on the campaign is right, the customer-owner involvement is at the heart of a PR-riven branding exercise backed by direct marketing and everything driving to a specially created site online.

That all looks to me like joined-up-thinking, which is unusual in the financial services sector. There again, so’s mutuality – which has fallen out of favour with the Stock Exchange obsessed sector. Nationwide’s customers are its owners and the company is solid proof that mutuality is still a viable strategy for success. If their latest campaign can expose the profiteering banks along the way then that can only be good for all of us.  

Why + is a big minus for advertisers

We’re new to Sky+ in my household so you’ll forgive my current exuberance for a product that is changing the way my family consumes television.
At the weekend, my son asked me to record Soccer AM because he had to go to work. On Sunday morning when I emerged all bleary eyed from bed, he was already near the end of the programme. “How long have you been up?” I asked, noticing the Easter Egg debris strewn around the table and the advanced state of the day before's Soccer AM.

“About an hour,” responds junior.

“How can that be?” I replied. “Did you fast forward all the ads?”

“Well, duh! Dad, of course I did. Do you think I'm stupid?”

He has a point.

Pedantic, moi?

Perhaps Marks & Spencer had a question mark hanging over its future for so long that the company developed an aversion to them but is neat typography more important than grammatical convention? 

When Mr Lee’s Chinese Takeaway’s menu popped through my door this morning, I couldn’t help but laugh at some of the copy. ‘Speedy delivery service’ it shouted from the front page with the caveat, ‘(Please order in advance)’. It got better further down the page: ‘With Food Order £25 or Over FREE Bottle of Wine.’ But Mr Lee has an excuse – he’s Chinese and English, presumably, is at least a second language.

What excuse then, will the copywriter on the ubiquitous ‘What’s your M&S’ (sic) campaign make for the annoying omission of the question mark? Clearly the typographer didn’t want some ugly punctuation to spoil the signature block in the bottom right hand corner and won the battle of style over substance.

That little victory is, of course, completely appropriate for fashion advertising which is seldom more than just pictures and labels decoratively arranged. At least the M&S campaign attempts to give potential M&S customers a little more. There’s the inclusion of a price (which you’ll never find in a Louis Vuitton ad), there’s a diminutive attempt at a response device (bottom left hand corner) and there’s that question: What’s your M&S. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I completely understand the question although I think the answer may be ‘cheese scones’.

Client comments

How come nobody has anything useful to offer when faced with a blank sheet of paper yet everyone has an opinion when there are words and pictures on it?

Healthy budgets, dubious results

Sore back? Not eating enough fruit and veg? Poor mental health? Using too many illegal drugs? Drinking too much? Don't worry, the ad boys will keep you right.

Monday night is band practice for me. It's a bit of weekly welcome relief from the grind of a life/work balance that has never quite managed equilibrium. After rehearsals we usually have a quick pint in a bar that has been selected for proximity rather than anything else. It's an old man's bar - brutally bright, full of regulars sipping fizzy beer, crossing off the nights between now and eternity. Four months of Mondays since we started nodding in for one, the bar staff have started to say 'good night' when we leave. You know the kind of place.

And being media folks, you'll be familiar with the advertising in the toilets. This week's essential message from the Scottish Executive has moved on from enquiring whether I need to pee too often to pointing out that my mental health is as important as my physical health. There's a website for me to look at too. If only I had a pencil to hand, I could have noted it down.

It's great to know that the Scottish Executive is so concerned for my well-being that it will spend time, effort (and lots of tax-payers money) to address public health issues through advertising. But who are the ads really for? The guys in the bar quietly drinking themselves do death don't look like they're listening and even if they did want help (or even need it), would advertising really be the way to deliver it?

It seems to me that being seen to do something is easier (and more important) than actually doing something when it comes to public health. This model works for the agencies and the civil servants but I doubt that there's much value for the man and woman in the street.

Oh well, better get back to drinking my three litres of water, eating my five pieces of fruit and walking around to prevent my sore back, while avoiding cigarettes, booze, cocaine and forgetting to wash my hands after using the toilet ...