Customer First

Ceating a corporate ad

If you are planning a corporate advert – try not to over think it or over communicate. It is impossible to say everything in an advert.

 

Choose what you want to achieve and position your ad to achieve it. Raise visibility; assert your values; differentiate; give your customers something to think about; claim performance superiority; reveal your credentials. You can’t communicate it all you have to prioritise.

 

Start with the headline

• It sounds obvious but the simplest option is to promote the corporate brand – big as a house. Visibility creates favourability. When visibility is the goal the brand itself is the advert.

 

• Maybe you want to position the values of the brand in the market to state your claim, to differentiate. What is the value that defines the customers need? If you brand it, you own it.

 

• Create an intellectual hook and challenge the customers thinking. Give the customer a ‘big idea’ and invite a dialogue – ask the viewers to consider a truth, a claim, or question and imply that the brand is perfectly positioned to deal with the conundrum.

 

• Or, if you’ve got it flaunt it! Use performance claims to establish your leadership. Corporate chest beating requires the navigation of the fine line between arrogance and self confidence.

 

• You can just say it straight. Tell the reader about your vital stats – people employed, innovations achieved, sectors active in, regions covered, years in business etc.

 

Write the body copy

Make a selection of body copy. Use one or two of the following – you can’t say everything.

 

• Introduce the copy with a compelling idea that has an intuitive logic and is linked to the headline. An issue that your company is positioned to resolve.
• Use customer endorsement let the readers know who you work with. Borrow their brand reputation to add value to yours.
• Provide proof points – technical innovations, performance stats, business scale, history etc.
• Promote performance – fastest, longest, latest

 

Make sure the ‘tone of voice’ of the copy is in line with the brand.

 

 

 

Art direct and design

The corporate ad is enthused with the brand – colours, typography, image and style

 

Select a graphic approach:

• an image of the customer context to build empathy
• An image of the customer as endorsement (real or figurative)
• An image of an employee as the company voice to show commitment
• an image of the latest technology or product innovation
• Purely typographic
• Illustration
• Metaphor or borrowed interest

 

 

Using a strapline (see strap lines article

If there is a corporate strapline this should appear at the end of body copy or associated with the logo. Straplines are not used as headlines.

 

Call to action

The corporate website is the call to action. It is essential that the advertising and website are aligned.

 

In conclusion, remember somebody must make the judgement call. The corporate ad can not say everything, or do everything. Somebody must decide its purpose and direct the content and the approach.

 

 

 

 

The Prague 'brandscape' is an interesting mix

    

Successful branding is synonomous with differentiation. It's a paradox but place brands in the quest for commercial success are in danger of sacrificing their differentiation - and surprisingly branding is the problem. It will be a brave place that bans the brands and the one that does will truly be a 'place brand', rather than a branded place.

*All of the above brands were photographed on a recnt trip to Prague

It all started with this cup of illy coffee. I suddenly became aware of being surrounded by brands that had no Czech provenance whatsoever. In Prague there was a branding contagion that reminds me of Dutch Elm disease that can infect a place and take away its identity street by street. It strikes me as a little mad that we spend money and Co2 to escape our surroundings to explore cultural difference, to then be exploited by our desire to be surrounded by the familiar and spend more money on the things we could quite happily buy at home... strange.

From East European anonymity to popular city break in less than ten years… and the price maybe the city’s sense of identity. Prague has taken its place amongst the pantheon of Eurocity ‘place brands’.

Where did the communist era go? In four days I saw one Trabant car dressed up as a novelty. No insignia, no hammers or sickles. One small monument to Nazi oppression in an obscure park that no-one visits. And the largest ever statue of Stalin in the world replaced (probably had a point here…) by the largest and most irrelevant metronome in the world. Is this history by erasure? A history the people wish to distance themselves from? Or an unmarketable product for visitor taste? One clue to Soviet Prague’s past is the trams that are the same as those in Moscow, Warsaw and Volgograd and would be iconic in any self respecting cold war spy thriller – these were definitely the most romantic boy-thing on view - all poisoned tipped umbrellas and Barretta pistols…

The Prague story is now a concoction of distant events – thirty years war, Good King Wenceslas et al – and more than a nod to western ‘consumer culture’ - the winners definately won. Recent past is conspicuously absent. Even the quintessential Czech brand Skoda has undergone German ‘re-education’ and its true identity usurped. The brandscape today includes:

US fast food brands – Pepsi, Coke, MacDonald’s, Starbucks, Subway, KFC, TGI Fridays, Haagen Dazs etc. I almost admire Burger King for their apparent absence. If America is branding the world’s eating habits I despair on so many levels…

 Fashion and style brands from Italy and France – Cartier, Dior, Valentino,

 A whiff of the myth of British aristocracy – Burberry, Alfred Dunhill…

 Japanese design - Kenzo

Swiss - Swatch

High street names – H&M, M&S, Tesco, Zara

Asian electronics – Samsung

EU mobile networks – O2, T-mobile

Consumer products – Panadol, Evian, Lego,

Irish beer – Caffrey’s, Guinness

German and Japanese cars – Audi, VW, BMW, Toyota, Honda

Czech brands did not feature. Unless you count the local lager. It all begs the questions. Do cities in searching for commercial success, demean themselves on the alter of international mega-branding? No-one can fault the search for financial security that tourism brings but how do you protect the soul of a place? Is it a problem when high culture is sacrificed on the alter of consumerism? Do we care? Was it always so? Or should we just shut-up, enjoy the beer and the carriage rides just like the everybody else?

Quick recipe for creating a place brand:

 

1. Mix in a blend of historic events – choose from plagues, invasions, persecutions, boom times and bust, – the good times and bad times

2. Choose a dominant cultural brand experience – art, music, theatre, education, sport – or a mixed fruit cake of experiences if you have them

3. Promote your favourite sons and daughters – saints, martyrs, sinners, writers, painters. academics – if you haven’t got enough borrow talent and claim provenance for the visits of the famous.

4. Throw in some unique religious, political, and commercial architecture that differentiates the visual aesthetic – medieval, gothic, renaissance, baroque, neo-gothic, art nouveau, art deco, modernist and post modernist – so many styles to choose from

5. Popularise your artisans and create basketfuls of ‘nick-knackery’ for the gullible visitors to pay over the odds for; sentimentality on the mantel piece – glass, lace, jewelry,  models, clothes, hats, t-shirts, puppets, flags etc.

6. Provide a canvas for international mega-brands for emotional security and milk aspiration when the punters are particularly vulnerable – Dior, Hermes Burberry, Cartier, Alfred Dunhill etc

 

Mix together to create your own blend and serve up for middleclass weekend breakers to skim quickly across the surface of national culture, collect a few pics for ‘my pictures’ on the desk top, and a t-shirt for the barbecue.

Choosing a strapline?

There are many ways to choose a strap-line for your company or product campaign but there is one rule – the strap-line of choice should be engaging it must hook the reader.

 

A good strap line makes you think, promises something, provides a guarantee of performance or confirms your identity. The strap line is the pithy statement that reinforces your position and states a claim for your differentiation. At different stages of a business life and under different leadership your strap line reveals the inner focus of the organisation or product by focusing either on the emotional, ideas, and concepts or the rational, performance claims and statements of fact. The choice of strap line is not a matter of right or wrong, it is a question of positioning. However, it is a matter of good and bad. Which ever option you choose, above all avoid the wishy-washy, undifferentiated platitude that adds nothing to the reader’s experience.

 

In segmenting strap lines I have identified 6 options to choose from:

-                     Don’t have one!

-                     The hint of self actualization

-                     The proverbial ‘big idea’

-                     The ‘big idea’ as instruction

-                     The performance claim

-                     Say it straight!

The first four options require belief and faith – the last two options require measurable proof. Choose the option that best suits your business or product today – try to be brave and don’t just settle for the easy options, use the strap line to push your differentiation and help the brand to stand out in its market.

 

Option one: Don’t have one.

The transcendental strap line is conspicuous by its absence. This is an enigmatic choice and relies on the overall cache and image of the brand to transcend the need for a strap line in the first place. It is as if the customer is so intimate with the brand the strap line already exists in the in the subconscious and is written by the customer themselves every time they see the brand. Not a recommended option if your brand isn’t part of the fabric of your customer’s world. Lesser business mortals can always do with the help of a well considered strap line.

Hermes

Ferrari

Harrods

BBC

These are all brands without a strap line

 

Option two: The hint of self actualization.

This is the rarified or philanthropic vision. This strap line is metaphysical and engages us with an ideal – the promise of a better world. Rarely used accept by super brands, charities, or political parties who have a vested interest in our future and who are truly in a position of influence.

BP                   “Beyond Petroleum”

Orange             ‘The future’s bright”

 

Option three: The proverbial ‘big idea’

This option is comfortably employed by many consumer brands. Rarely used by B2B companies as they are uncomfortable to promote their brand as an idea – all the more reason to try. There have been some great conceptual strap lines. They often have the same structure as a proverb, i.e. they capture some fundamental truth and persuade us of the truth by the way the phrase constructed. Sometimes they unashamedly plagiarize proverbs and usurp our collective subconscious.

Tesco               “Every little helps”

Guinness           “Good things come to those that wait”

Persil                “Dirt is good”

 

 

Option Four: The instruction

This is a development of the conceptual strap line. In this option the big idea is expressed as an instruction rather than a truth or proverb. If we are honest we love to be told what to do, from a marketing perspective it negates our responsibility and gives us permission to purchase what we desire. Many brands take advantage of this confident strap line execution. Again not widely used in B2B and yet can be highly effective to underline differentiation

 

Nike                 “Just do it”

Apple               “Think Different”

 

Option Five: The performance claim

Probably the most common strap line type. It is the natural choice for product brand promotion. This type promotes the business or product from a performance angle. This strap line makes a claim it is prepared to defend empirically. We must be careful not to make claims that are vague, unbelievable or difficult to prove. If we do it can make the strap line un-provable. The customer intuitively senses this and it can make the strap line disingenuous.

 

Duracell            “lasts longer”

BMW              “The ultimate driving machine”

Pickfords          “The careful movers”

Halifax              “Gives you extra”

Option Six: Say it straight

This is the purely factual positioning type strap line. A favourite with B2B companies and the most rational option available in the strap line armory. It can only ever tell half the story as it lacks emotional and conceptual content. It is necessary to be able to communicate to customers what we do in strap line length phrase but am loathe to use this in campaigns there is no hook, no intrigue, no creativity, no reason to buy. Not recommended.

 

HSBC              “The world’s local bank"

In a digital world devoid of empathy, Coke gives us a refreshing alternative.

I love the new Coca Cola campaign. http://www.metacafe.com/watch/210959/coca_cola_grand_theft_auto/ If you haven’t seen it, it features an upside down version of Grand Theft Auto – the morally bankrupt computer game. In the Coke version the character gives a little love accompanied by the line ‘give a little love and it all comes back to you’. A really ‘refreshing’ campaign brilliantly positioned (all the target group will be Grand Theft players) and brilliantly executed – it made me smile.

Eden – ‘Working with the grain of nature.’ includes knife fork and spoon

First you need to know what your brand essence is and then you need to live it. Living the brand is easy to say but like many things it is difficult to do. Great brands reveal their differentiation in the detail. A colleague gave me this wooden cutlery set from the Eden Project. www.edenproject.com It would be so much easier to source regular plastic cutlery and yet they go the extra mile to reinforce their uniqueness.

Eden lives its organic brand values. “We … explore ways of working with ‘the grain of nature’; bring together science, art, technology and commerce; get together with others worldwide to share ideas; share ideas with you.”

Persil shows how the emotional creates value and the rational delivers it.

This campaign by Persil is a great example of customer centricity. It is a masterclass in balanced communication. The campaign recognises that customers not only value clean clothes they value getting clothes dirty even more! This campaign balances both the rational (getting clean) with the emotional (getting dirty). Persil uses the customer desire itself to differentiated the brand. This differentiation is obviously available to others however the brand that claims the customer centricity first owns the mind share.

Forget Waterloo

Traveling to Paris on the Eurostar from St Pancras last week for the first time (and a great piece of engineering it is too – Paris in two and a half hours and no Heathrow – fantastic!) I was really amused by this poster at Gare du Nord featuring a full-color reproduction of a painting by the 19th-century artist Charles de Steuben and the words 'oubliez Waterloo - forget Waterloo' - the train station not the battle -advertising the new service and the change from Waterloo to St Pancras in London. A really witty promotion that made me smile. A well positioned piece of communication cheering up weary travelers both French and British. I would have loved to have been in the meeting when the concept was presented by the agency. And well done to the managing director of Eurostar for sticking their neck out. It is not everyone that can be so brave. In marketing communications terms I am convinced that fortune favours the brave – hey it’s only words and pictures after all.

"The slowest car we have ever built"

 

The new campaign for the Audi R8 stands out. The counter intuitive campaign with a dialectic slogan “The slowest car we have ever built” hits just the right note when the accepted wisdom of the day is that fast is always better than slow. Promoting ‘the other’ has a very arresting affect (Persil ran a successful campaign for washing powder with the slogan “Dirt is good”. This campaign promotes the argument that it is the slowness of the build that guarantees the speed of the drive. Slow becomes the qualifier of speed and provides ‘the reasons to believe’. Our homogenous consumer age has created access for all and craft is the casualty – Audi is right to tap into this erosion of value and this campaign hits the mark.

Ignorance is as powerful as knowledge

The accepted notion is that knowledge is power.  This is true but ignorance is powerful too.  Before you employ your next star performer or business consultant stop and think - ask yourself a question, is it the knowledgeable candidate or the naïve and ignorant one that best serves your interests?

Sometimes we confuse intelligence and intellectual capability with knowledge.  Just because someone is knowledgeable doesn't make them smart and just because someone is ignorant, doesn't mean that they are stupid. Knowledge can obfuscate the truth. The mind that is untrammelled by the limitations and burden of knowledge can explore the creativity of naivety – the naïve will dare to ask the questions that the knowledgeable assume as immutable – we know that children have an innate wisdom born of ignorance, witnessed by the proverb ‘Out of the mouths of babes* and the Danish Fairy Tale The Emperor's New Clothes written by Hans Christian Andersen** The moral of the story is that :- Just because the whole world believes that something is true, doesn’t mean that it is, and perhaps also that one should not refrain from asking a question that may, at the time, be considered to be stupid by the majority.

Einstein was famous for his contribution to the ‘creation of knowledge’ not always for being knowledgeable. When in the US he was asked to fill in a basic academic test “to one question as to the speed of sound, Einstein replied: ‘I don’t know. I don’t crowd my memory with facts that I can easily find in an encyclopaedia.’ Einstein said he couldn’t understand how anybody could know so much and understand so little” ***

In the right hands, ignorance is a truly powerful force.  Ignorance is not limited by the boundaries of knowledge.  Ignorance doesn't have to play by the rules.  Ignorance is the crucible of creativity.  And yet ignorance is too often limited by anxiety, for the majority our experimentation is blocked “if we don't know, then we don't have a go...” when we should just do it anyway. In the hands of the brave and unhindered, prepared to march into territories of the unknown, for them ignorance is strangely liberating. The story of George Dantzig illustrates the point. "An event in Dantzig's life became the origin of a famous urban legend in 1939 while he was a graduate student at UC Berkeley. Near the beginning of a class for which Dantzig was late, Professor Jerzy Neyman wrote four examples of famously unsolved statistics problems on the blackboard. When Dantzig arrived, he assumed that the four problems were a homework assignment and wrote two of them down. According to Dantzig, the problems "seemed to be a little harder than usual", but a few days later he handed in completed solutions for two, still believing that they were an assignment that was overdue. Six weeks later, Dantzig received a visit from an excited professor Neyman, who had prepared one of Dantzig's solutions for publication in a mathematical journal. Years later another researcher, Abraham Wald, was preparing to publish a paper which arrived at a conclusion for the second problem, and included Dantzig as its co-author when he learned of the earlier solution.

This story began to spread, and was used as a motivational lesson demonstrating the power of positive thinking. Over time Dantzig's name was removed and facts were altered, but the basic story persisted in the form of an urban legend.****

We need to challenge the accepted wisdom that the more we know the better off we are.  We educate our children so that they can get on in the world.  We value the A grades and degrees from Harvard and Oxford. But sometimes it's what we don't know, that gives us a powerful competitive advantage. No consultant is worth their salt unless they are prepared to question the accepted, reveal what they don’t know to test the accepted wisdom and promote their naivety.

In business ignorance is a precedent for success. Many of the world's greatest entrepreneurs have few academic notations – they did’nt know much so they just made it up! (Steve Jobs –‘He re-calls dropping out of college one of the best decisions he ever made*****’ Richard Branson - challenged academically by dyslexia; Alan Sugar – left school at 16…), and the unacceptable notion is that - it wasn't what they knew that was the key to their success, it was what they didn't know that was the stimulus for their creativity.  Their ignorance was the precursor that mobilized their success.

Knowledge can inhibit vision, if your knowledge tells you that the impossible is just that and you believe it then you are unlikely to try “If I knew then what I know today then I would have never got started…” is a much quoted line – much better not to know in the first place. Ignorance is not only bliss it can be an advantage. Put yours to good use.

*PSALMS viii. 2 Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hath thou ordained strength

**THE EMPORER’S NEW CLOTHES first published in 1837, as part of Eventyr, fortalte for Børn (Fairy Tales, Told for Children).

*** IN THE MIND’S EYE Thomas West p. 124

**** WIKIPEDIA