The passion of innocence vs. the authority of experience

 I have just had an article printed in Mind Tonic magazine and here it is.  Mind Tonic is a creative lifestyle supplement that's floating around the cr8iv bits of London.  It's a really nice little paper, full of insights and interest from all areas of the creative world.  Their blog can be found here: http://themindtonic.blogspot.com/

We are constantly learning new things.  As humans we thrive on building a huge bank of knowledge.  As we get older, the more we practice something, the better at it we get.  We look up to our elders and learn from our parents and see experience as aspirational.  But just as experience brings with it rewards of knowledge, the innocence of youth brings imagination wrapped up in the inquisitiveness of the quest to learn.  So, in an industry of ideas and creativity - should we be driven by the passion of innocence or the authority of experience?  

Experience is a fantastic thing.  And there have been some brilliant leaders in this industry, who with age, have matured into advertising royalty, for example, Stanley Pollitt's pioneering the account planning discipline and Bill Bernback bringing together art directors and copywriters to name but a few.  They have moulded and shaped the industry that we work in today and without them, the landscape would be decidedly different.

According to the IPA, advertising is a young person's game, with 80% of the 14,000 people working in the industry being under 40.  But we must remember that our business is ideas.  Creating.  Innovating.  Disrupting - whatever you choose to call it.  And ideas, opinion and great thinking can come from anywhere and anyone.  Young people are capable of great things - Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Alex Tew (Million Dollar Homepage) are excellent examples of how fresh passion and a lack of worldly experience should never prove a hindrance to having a great idea.  Yet it is also the case that experience can prove equally as iconic.  Bill Bernbach wrote ‘We Try Harder' for Avis in his virtual twilight years by today's standards (in 1962 - aged 51).  This campaign has proved to be one of the best pieces of brand planning of all time, a campaign which set Avis up as the quintessential challenger brand - a campaign which is at the heart and soul of Avis to this very day.   

Merry Baskin, founder of strategic consultancy Baskin Shark has suggested that junior planners ‘are more of a liability than an asset'.  Speaking from a research perspective, Merry may be right in suggesting that experience is paramount to craft and hone these specific experiential skill sets.  We only learn that fire burns by burning ourselves, like we only learn how to devise great survey methodologies by doing them.  But from a creative perspective, a much more intuitive ball game, it doesn't necessarily follow that you need experience in having great ideas to go on to have great ideas.

Ken Robinson's book The Element starts with a wonderful story of a schoolgirl drawing a picture of god.  When the teacher suggested that no one knows what god looks like, the girl replied ‘They will in a minute'.  From a creative perspective, this innocent spirit of imagination is blinding and we should cherish the strength and conviction young people can have in their thinking.  Whether right or wrong, it's the bold strength of the idea that should be applauded.   

Winston Churchill was elected prime minister twice during his lifetime, the second in 1951 following his wartime premiership, where he proved himself to be a confident, supportive orator and celebrated leader amongst the British population, during a time of great global upheaval.  A younger, less experienced politician, might not have been given this opportunity.  Yet, Tony Blair was the youngest prime minister since Lord Liverpool (1812). In 1997, the nation was craving a fresh approach to politics.  Tony Blair packaged a new political outlook and delivered it with youthful enthusiasm.  An older, more experienced politician might not have had the same impact.

Maybe the key to the dilemma of innocence vs. experience is to see them as complementary, not mutually exclusive.  After all, experienced people can display passion and imagination, just as much as young people can display wisdom beyond their years.  Advertising royalty is something to aim at, through the passion, enthusiasm and openness of creativity - which can be displayed throughout our lifetime, not just when we're young - as Bill Bernbach proved for Avis.  If young graduates and senior directors share the same passions, they can be amongst the same sounding board - ultimately, innocence and experience can and should co-exist.

Community brands

As social networking continues its growth and appeal in new areas, the idea of community brands is gaining pace.  Traditionally buying into a brand meant that you were part of that community.  You are a  Tesco shopper, a Louis Vuitton advocate etc.  But now thanks to be monumental growth of social networking, communities are the brands themselves and this is being seen more and more online.  www.ooizit.com is a good example of how social networks are the business, the people are the brand.  Thanks to Ooizit, we can all be rock stars in our local area.  We're increasingly becoming a co-creators of our own world.  We're citizen journalists thanks to Twitter.  And now thanks to sites like www.zopa.com - we're the bank manager, the borrower and the accountant all rolled into one.  These brands are built on communities, built by the people that use them.  And what's exciting about a community is its naturally human and fluid dynamic.  It's not faceless and is much more than simply advocacy.  The people are the brand.   

Dreaming up ideas

Has anyone ever had a great planning / creative idea in their sleep?  Surely this must happen more often than not!

Last night I had an advertising idea in my sleep for something we're pitching on and in this dream I kept shouting to myself 'Wake up! Wake up! Write this down, this is genius!'.  I woke up this morning having remembered it and burst out laughing.  It was not genius at all.  It was very random, I'll give it that.  

So, I got into work and showed the Head of Advertising my nocturnal creative thought, to which he shook his head and laughed as I'd expected.  My planning colleague wasn't so critical and said it was interesting, so it's not all bad, there may be something in my REM-based thinking after all!

I am now thinking of creating an ideas bank for all of our creative and planning thinking that we have when we're asleep, just as an interesting record.  I know my planning colleague once rebranded Stockholm in a dream.  After all, you never know when genius will strike!

Sliding doors and brands

On Sunday, I made one of those 'sliding doors' decisions.  I could either have gone to Get Loaded In The Park, run the risk of bumping into my ex and starting a whole new *** storm of madness, tears, anger, maybe even reconciliation if he'd gained a brain since the last time we spoke.  This option did run the risk of me having a totally *** time though, being more upset than ever and not enjoying any of the bands, rendering £40 worthless.  The alternative was selling the ticket and using the money to buy dresses.  No bumping into him, ever again, no chance of upset, but also no chance of any positive engagement.  After half an hour of deliberating, I chose the dress option.

But if we apply this thinking to brands, exactly the same principles apply.  Brands have a lifespan and it's up to strategists and marketers to decide on the strategic future of the brand - which direction it should take in its life.  Like when Pot Noodle went a bit healthy and quickly realised its roots were in being the quintessential 'slag food'.  Or  when Tesco moved from 'Pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap' to a customer service ethic sort of positioning.  They could have stuck with value, but it wouldn't have helped them move on and achieve market leadership.  With Pot Noodle sticking to its guns was the best option, for Tesco it was a fresh approach.  One is about capitalising on strengths, the other about moving on to something new.    

I could have made the best of the situation, but where there wasn't much relative strengths to be gained from it, moving on was the best option.  I definitely made the right decision.  

I want to launch my own brand

After my nut-free nuts idea and experimenting with burning chickpeas on a Saturday night (yes, I know, I should get out more!), I want to launch my own brand. 

I was recently toying with the idea of a brand that was actually called 'Little Black' and retailed skirts, dresses, notebooks, pens and briefcases for the serious and sexy executive audience.  If this already exists, just slap me.   

Oh and a total PS to this post is, if John Hegarty happens to read this, which I very much doubt - I am 85% sure I saw him in King's Cross on Saturday.  I was standing right behind him then he dashed off to get the Leeds train.  As I didn't speak to him, I didn't suffer the embarassment that I did when I saw Badly Drawn Boy, clearly a concern of mine.  It's not really the same, but it is kind of.  It would be good to know if it was actually him!

Instant branding - blessing or curse?

Today I've been reading about Build A Brand So this is a site which lets freelancers and start ups create a new brand from scratch from design bits and bobs online to get their businesses and ideas out there.  It's a quick solution, cheaper than a traditional branding agency - and so not an investment.

I find this all rather worrying that there are 'fast and dirty' schemes out there for people with little branding nouse and little cash to create brand after brand - with no strategic integrity whatsoever.  Ok so they're not pedalling this as a solution to branding problems, it's something quick, fast and cheap. 

But for people with little knowledge of the branding process - who happen to be their target audience of start-ups - they may just think that this is a solution and something that'll last the test of time.  Without a proper strategic process, the brand could be fraught with inconsistencies and then after spending money on this solution (albeit not very much) still would have to approach an agency for help at some point down the line. 

This would likely mean a rebrand and in the short time the brand would have been up and running, it would render the initial instant brand would a wasted endeavour.  It's a temporary measure.  Brands aren't.  Brands need a strong gutsy launch to pave the way for the future, not an instantaneous temporal effort.  They need building from strong foundations and I just don't think this solution is strong enough.   

Brand commitment

We're living in a complex modern world and this is certainly not as complicated as things will get!  People are being bombarded with messages from all over the place 'Don't smoke', 'Spend your money, please' - so no wonder people are running scared and don't know what to do for the best.  How do we keep it all together?

We want to keep people committed.  We want them to think something and stick to it.  In the world we're living in today - that's becoming ever increasingly more digitised and we as consumers are mediating and creating our own rich media identities, does that help or hinder brand loyalty?  Is it easier for brands now than say, fifty years ago, to reduce churn and maintain a commitment with consumers because of the complex media environment that is consistently emerging?

I don't really know the answer to this, but I thought I'd raise the issue about what brand commitment is for consumers and whether it is more or less easily achievable these days.  As the world's oldest brands continue to plug their wares in this changing landscape and stay consistently strong despite media evolutions and economic turmoil - is this because successful adaptation and appeal fuels this longevity?  

Brands and human relationships

Yesterday I got thinking about how similar our relationships are to brands as our relationships are with human beings.  What got me thinking about this though wasn't an emotional connection thing, I was thinking more about messaging and the things we say and why we say them.  We all say stuff to each other that we know is appropriate in certain situations and stuff that isn't, but we say the appropriate things we do so that we don't rock the boat.  Yesterday someone said to me, knowing that I'd just been to the hairdressers, 'Have you had your hair cut? It's just, it looks the same'.  Honest, but most certainly not what I wanted to hear.

Is it the case that this is how brands work too?  Sometimes they're completely stripped down honest, no frills or fuss, we may not like it, but at least it is the truth.  It might not be for everyone, but that is ok.  I'd say that polarising brands are very successful - Marmite, Pot Noodle are examples of brands that know they're not everyone's cup of tea all of the time and they're honest and proud of that and stick to it.

Sometimes brands know what their audience wants to hear - they know them so well and know exactly what they want that crafting a message with general, broad appeal in that situation is the most successful option.  It might seem sugar-coated, but it works.  Women want to know that their periods are going to be bearable, men want to know that they will have the closest shave.  Ok, so these are broad examples, but I am sure you get the picture.

Any views welcome... 

Tampax, targeting men?

This latest campaign by Tampax is certainly a fresh take on the usual positivising periods for women - it shows a man - 16 year old Zack - who wakes up one day with a vagina and has to experience the harsh realities of periods

I think this is a really interesting move, opening the issue up to everyone and not being afraid to push gender stereotypes to their limits and break them.  Men famously don't understand what on earth women have to put up with, but whoever this campaign is targeting -  men or women - it's interesting to shift perspectives and tackle it from this angle. 

It's definitely much more compelling that the competition - periods are not nice and no matter how many times Always and Kotex and them lot tell me they have something new that'll make it bearable, it's just not going to cut it.  

Can anything be a brand?

Me and a friend recently had a debate over whether anything can be branded.  His thought was that they can't, because some stuff is just too complicated, like people and inanimate things like emotions, to simply sum up neatly and consistently in the long-term in a brand map or the equivalent - with values and personality. There is also not much point in it for some stuff where there is no marketing objective.   

My thought was that anything can be branded.  It doesn't matter how simple or complex.  It is all about understanding.  The key is understanding the ins and outs of whatever it is and then distilling it into one ownable idea based on an actual or potential marketing objective.

The fact that some things are not constant is true of any brand anyway - markets change, consumer needs and desires change - and its all about adapting to stay relevant.  This is just what brands do.  Emotions are brands in their own right and are qualified with testimonials, ideas and other emotional values.  Just because we can't see or touch something, doesn't mean it can't be fleshed out and visualised.

It was a really interesting debate - any ideas would be welcome. 

Idou? No, I don't!

 I read this morning that Sony Ericsson is ditching its Walkman and Cyber-shot phone brands because they're no longer in touch with today's consumer.  They're launching the Idou (really?) to compete with the iPhone.  I don't know what everyone else thinks about this, but I just think this is ridiculous.  Sony and Ericsson became a powerbrand - fusing technology and music and using the Walkman equity helped to fuel their prowess in the music-phone arena.  Walkman and music are synonymous.  If Sony are worried that Walkman and 80s music are synonymous (all cassettes and bad haircuts, instead of digitised to appeal to the iTunes generation) then I think they should have upped the ante with the brand, not ditched it altogether. 

 And Idou?! What does that possibly mean?  It feels far too close to iXYZ for comfort and smacks of piggy-backing on the current touch-screen phone technology.  Sony aren't as ahead with their iPhone challenger as their competitors, but I don't see why everyone has to follow suit.  Isn't it time someone lead the market in another direction rather than bowing to popularity and losing precious brand equity in the process?

The end is just the beginning

I was given some pencils the other day, they're Royal Institute of British Architecture pencils and they've got "This pencil is made from recycled video cassettes" on them.  My mousemat is made from a recycled tyre - it seems everything today was something else yesterday.  But the pencils have really hit me.  We're living in such a fast-paced multimedia 3.0 world that yesterday's video cassettes are today's pencils.  I remember video cassettes fondly, it was only 7 years ago that I spent endless Saturdays in Music Zone buying £3 videos.  It seems that today, both 'Music Zone' and 'Video' have been consigned to the annals of history.  

The world is getting faster and faster and it's a sign of our technological advancement fuelling as well as serving consumer need.  As this cycle quickens, so does our consumption.  Here today, gone tomorrow, NEXT! mentality prevails.  I know that the world has grown and advanced more in the past 50 years than it has the last 500 (something like that anyway), and that is quite amazing.  Is there going to be a point when we will be writing with some sort of retinal space magnets made out of recycled RIBA pencils?

So what can brands do in this changing landscape?  It's important for brands to stay ahead of the game and anticipate change.  Once the seeds of the demise of coloured pens and pencils have been planted, Crayola should be one step ahead and apply its equity creatively into the latest area its field is headed, ideally pioneering that step change.  This isn't always the case for all brands and they crumble.  But as the world gets faster, brands are going to have to be more alert and agile than ever before.   

Disease branding

Ok, so everyone in the office thinks I have swine flu.  But this led to an interesting discussion over breakfast this morning about the swine flu brand.

I mean, we've had avian flu - which sounds a little bit more bearable, nicer, even more treatable.  But swine flu - it just sounds a little bit dirty, sweaty and generally more unbearable.  

Who decided on swine flu as the brand name in the first place.  As a sub-brand of influenza (flu in the common vernacular), I get that monolithic naming protocol.  But swine?  Did they sit down and have a brainstorm about it?  Did it go something like this...?

'Well, we could call it pig flu?'

'No, people don't want to be told directly that there's flu from pigs doing the rounds.'

'How about pork flu?'

'No, people will think it's from pork and will stop eating it.'

'How about porcine flu?'

'No, people don't get what that means'

And finally, they decided upon swine - an understandable collective term, but with such virulent and unpleasant associations. 

Then we got thinking about other types of animal flu - Would donkey flu be ass flu? Surely not.  And is it time that Myxomatosis had a rebrand - rabbit flu sounds quite good 

Finding your element

I'm currently recovering from swine flu (ok, a throat infection) and I get VERY bored sitting about doing very little.  So, I've been reading Ken Robinson's The Element - which I can't seem to put down!  I thoroughly recommend it.  Insightful stories, fascinating facts and a generally inspirational read to get my creative juices going until I can get back to it.

It's a really positive, egalitarian take on the nature of humanity, creativity and intelligence - that they can't be measured in any traditional formulaic sense and that they work hand in hand.  Robinson's stance is that everyone is born with natural potential and abilities but we live in a world where our environments can't often nuture these talents and they can become lost.  The Element is about finding your natural talent, nuturing it and loving it as an epiphany of what you were in fact born to do.

Life-affirming stuff and well worth a read!

Brand simplicity

Every time I walk through London Bridge on my way home I see the same backlit poster ad. It has been there for weeks.  It says 'Tanya's Tongue is Tired' - no brand in sight, nothing, that's it. But it's amazing the amount of information that can actually be delivered through that message. The brand property - the typography - tells me the ad is for 3 and the message tells me that the network provides a lot of minutes (cost aside) for Tanya the customer to use - so much so that she's worn out because she's talked so much. She's gets to connect with her friends / family and is a happy customer for it.  All this is just inference, but it's quite nice the picture you can paint because of four words.  

The lack of overt branding I find the most powerful because 3 clearly feel confident enough in their values, tonality and iconic typography that they don't even need it. It smacks of confidence, but not arrogance.

It's interesting to see how big, strong brands in the public eye operate on a simple branding / brand property level.  Sky is another good example of much the opposite tactic. They badge content - they own it with their Sky mark.  Any possible image of TV content whether that's frogs on a stream, football or High School Musical - stick a Sky logo over the top and they instantly own it. Not only that, it gives the content a sense of credibility and quality. 

These are both confident approaches, relying on years of brand equity being built and plugged in. Overt and covert branding techniques both have their merits - but the key to both cases is simplicity