Iron Branding

Tags

Charles Saatchi, Conservative Party, David Cameron, Gordon Reece, Labour Isn't Working, Labour Party, Margaret Thatcher, Maurice Saatchi, Sick Man of Europe, Thatcherism, Winter of Discontent

It was the ad that rocketed Margaret Thatcher to power and ushered in Britain’s first female and longest-continuous serving prime minister on three back-to-back victories and 18 years of Tory rule — with three, stinging words.

Labour Isn’t Working wasn’t just a political provocation. It remains the single most significant piece of political communication in British history. It was also an exposition of Thatcherism — that is, minimal government and maximum personal responsibility — designed to level up, to generate prosperity, which in turn could help the disadvantaged. As Margaret Thatcher summed up, “the facts of life do inevitably turn out to be Tory.”

Ironically, Thatcher proved smarter at recognizing the poster’s impact than the legendary Saatchi brothers. Charles Saatchi — the reclusive creative force of the agency — had rejected Labour Isn’t Working. But it was re-inserted into the final presentation by Andrew Rutherford — the anonymous copywriter who authored it. Thatcher is said to have called it “wonderful” the moment she held it — suggesting she had a better instinct for political communication than those hired to provide it.

The media sensation provoked by Labour Isn’t Working — which showed a long, snaking dole queue leading up to an unemployment office — thrashed Callaghan’s government forcing him to postpone the general election which only further aggravated his authority which had already been shredded by a series of labour strikes known collectively as the ‘winter of discontent’ — a Shakespearian reference to post-war Britain that was in the maw of national decline, throttled by socialism, and left to rot as the sick man of Europe.

Unlike their American counterparts, British political parties had never hired agencies to run campaigns which were developed pro bono by supporters. Thatcher, however, was persuaded that a trend-setting, creative agency could make all the difference. She was right, of course. But there are as many myths as there are truths about the precise role of the Saatchis. After all, they were credited with changing everything from her voice to her every move in their role as her closest advisors.

While their campaigns are the stuff of legend, the truth is that Charles Saatchi had never met Thatcher having even declined to attend her celebrations at No.10 when she was voted into power. To this day, they have never shaken hands.

The public image of Thatcher was largely managed by Gordon Reece, a mediaman she appointed as her Director of Publicity in February 1978. In fact, it was one of his first decisions to appoint Saatchi & Saatchi Garland Compton as the party’s advertising agency. Moreover, it was his idea to present Thatcher doing the washing-up, shopping for groceries, fussing over prices, and to be seen as a working housewife.

Reece ‘softened’ Thatcher. He hired a National Theatre coach to train her to lower and deepen her voice, advised her on clothing, accompanied her to interviews, and steered her from belligerent interviewers who could make her sound or appear strident. Till her very last day, she was pitch-perfect — not a hair out of place — and a persona cast from hot iron. Thatcher agrees: On the unveiling of her statue at the Houses of Parliament, she quipped, “I might have preferred iron; but bronze will do.”

In his tribute, Prime Minister David Cameron called Thatcher, “… the least conservative Conservative.” For, politics aside, she had a full sense of the theatre of herself. She challenged consensus, fostered destructive dialogue for constructive ends, all the while fully conscious of her womanhood — holding her Cabinet in one hand and a cuppa in the other.

While millions view her as a force to be defined against, Maurice Saatchi (now Lord Saatchi, Chairman of the Conservative Party) explained Thatcher’s winning formula best — a secret that those of us who work in branding and advertising already know: “(She) understood that if you stand for something, you will have people for you and people against you. But if you stand for nothing, you will have nobody for you and nobody against you.

As a conviction politician, Margaret Thatcher took her stand and proved that when you do stand resolutely for something you believe in, history follows.

 

 

Noises On

Tags

Creativity, Denis Diderot, Dissent, Free society, Freedom, John Stuart Mill, Liberty, Opinion, Rebel, Rushdie, Salman Rushdie, Truth

It seems that the very reason clients choose agencies which appear outwardly professional is the very reason they shouldn’t.

Quiet corridors, collared dress codes, time-recorders, contact reports (etc.) may run a business. But they don’t generate ideas. And agencies are citadels of ideas. They were born to be loud, vibrant, noisy, obnoxious places. The question, of course, is not one of professionalism, at all. But of freedom. The freedom to voice opinions, the freedom to exchange divergent views, the freedom to flirt with danger, the freedom to come late, the freedom to wear what you want, the freedom to be all your multiple selves.

Agencies which harbour freedom (that’s freedom, not chaos) set their people in motion. And motion doesn’t come without friction. A bloody nose in the name of freedom is better than the dry discipline of a workhorse. Consider what Salman Rushdie read at the International Conference on Freedom of Expression in Washington DC in April 1992:“Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom’s existence. Totalitarian (societies) seek to replace the many truths of freedom by the one truth of power (be it secular in our case, or religious in Rushdie’s); to halt the motion of (society), to snuff its spark. Unfreedom’s primary purpose is to shackle the mind.”

Since so much of our business is about the produce of a free mind — about ringing facts with truth — it’s surprising how many agencies willingly muffle their voice with client-speak. Notwithstanding the natural tendency for agencies to please or cooperate, clients who are absolutely comfortable with the work of the minds they have hired to rock the market are doing their counterparts a disservice. Because they are dictating the rules of the game.

John Stuart Mill‘s great essay, On Liberty, explains why: “The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race, posterity as well as the existing generation — [robbing] those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. [For] if the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error.”

Agencies which harbour freedom do not preserve their freedom by pussyfooting around the opinions of others. Even around cherished beliefs. In free agencies, like free societies, there must be argument and a free play of ideas that must be allowed to collide with passion and division. A free agency, like a free society, is not placid. That is the kind of static and eventless environment dictators want. A free agency is dynamic, noisy, turbulent and full of radical disagreements. Proving again that skepticism is, after all, the Siamese twin of freedom.

At the risk of stereotyping, the born skeptics in our industry are primarily the creatives. And the creative process is similar to the processes of a free society where many attitudes rub against platitudes, where many views of the world are inflicted on, and conflicting within, the artist. And from these varying factions, the friction — the spark or work of art — is born.

Denis Diderot (novelist-philosopher of the French Enlightenment) spoke of the dispute within him between the commercial-rational and the moral-spiritual: “It infuriates me,” he said, “to be enmeshed in a devilish philosophy which my mind is forced to accept but my heart to disown.” Likewise, it is the innate disrespect creatives have — for hierarchies, for rules, for ideologies, for rank, for wealth, for inanity, for corruption, may be even for advertising — that we are capable of producing our best. It only makes sense that this fusion of positive and negative — this brand of electricity they generate — is plugged into every socket of agency life.

Like democracy, freedom’s anathema is purity. Purity of anything (opinion, orders, race, beliefs, etc.) sucks. Purity leads to wars. Which is why the exercise of freedom is freedom’s best defense. So go for it. Kick the door wide open. Raise hell. And make some noise. It’s the most professional thing you’ll do in your career.

 

Getting Laid: The Secret Behind Powerful Layouts

Tags

Art Direction, English Heritage, Layouts, Leagas Delaney, Letters, Long Copy, Postcards, Short Copy, Single-minded, Visual Positioning, Visual Strategy

My friend J — also known as J — was on holiday in the Maldives. When I received her beautifully handwritten letter of no less than 3000 words, I couldn’t believe how much fun she was having. The parties, the scuba diving, the cruises and the idyllic beauty were described lovingly in immaculate detail. I was really excited with J’s letter. Except I couldn’t get round to believing she was having fun. Because if she were, how did she find the time to write an exhaustively detailed letter? More importantly, why write to me? I only met her once, in Spain, over a Mimosa.

Meanwhile, my tutor Charles Parker — affectionately known as Charles Parker — was dying. When he sent me a postcard from his deathbed, I thought he was being ‘wicked.’ Then, when I missed his funeral and forgot to convey my condolences to his family, I was flummoxed. Because to this day, I cannot understand why the ‘wish you were here’ postcard was sent to me from his deathbed. It just didn’t make sense.

Then, during one of my ensuing crises of anxiety, it occurred to me that even though J. and Charles Parker selected the right medium (“the written word,” as someone said, “is the deepest dagger you can drive into a man’s soul”), they made a regrettable layout decision. J’s party-girl image and Charles Parker’s sincerity would have remained better intact had they chosen each other’s layouts to contain their respective messages.

Which is just the point. Letters and postcards define the two layout choices you have when you begin considering the visual direction of a campaign. It all boils down to whether you want the look of your print ads to be more visual or more verbal?

Here’s how it works. A postcard is a visually-led ad. Not always, but mostly. Big picture and very few words. That’s very, very few words. A letter, however, is copy-led. Letters have hundreds — even thousands — of words with no picture or a comparatively small visual accompaniment. A postcard is something you will send from a holiday. A letter, on the other hand, is something you might send from your deathbed. Between these two extremes of emotional experience lie the visual solutions to your ad. Which is to say, something that’s light, fun and not wholly important ought to be a postcard. The more serious it gets, however, the more like a letter it ought to appear. It’s that simple.

But whatever you do, be single-minded. Choose one or the other. Either the visual must dominate or the words. Because if there’s no emphasis, the effect will be totally lost. It’s like cramming a lot of copy beneath a big picture. An approach of ‘anything goes,’ with no regard to building relationships, will compromise your audience.

Examples? Well, there’s no hard and fast rule. But typically, lifestyle brands like beverages, perfumes, snacks, fashion and related accessories relish postcards. The images they create telegraph our fantasies back to us. But ingenious agencies have created stunning examples of postcards for brands that would normally fall in the letters category. Take the Economist campaign by Abbot Mead Vickers, London. From the once long-copy, letter ads to the revolutionary poster campaign which continues to evolve with witty one-liners against a red background. Notice: no pictures — but they’re still postcards (and it all started when David Abbott was staring at the magazine’s logo).

And so, the serious side of life is covered by letters. The financial and medical sectors, charities and lobbies, vehicle manufactures or any group that is asking us for a higher than usual investment prefer letters. But letters aren’t meant to be boring. London-based Leagas Delaney‘s beautifully crafted letters for English Heritage and Timberland Boots are part of classic advertising glory.

But isn’t a picture worth a thousand words? Why go ‘long’ when you can go ‘short’? Isn’t everybody saying that advertising today is visual and not verbal? This debate has gone on for as long as anyone can remember. But the fact of the matter is that certain propositions demand words, certain propositions demand pictures. And we must take the right decision based on the product, the market and the proposition.

Which reminds me, I have to write back to J and I can’t decide whether I should send her a letter or a postcard? You’re right: I’ll send her an e-mail.

Etched in Time

Tags

Andre Cassagnes, Etch A Sketch, L'Ecran Magique, Magic Screen, National Toy Hall of Fame, Ohio Art Company

When the inventor of Etch A Sketch, Andre Cassagnes, died on January 16 in a Paris suburb at the age of 86  — 56 years after his invention was launched to worldwide success — he left us wondering how the power of one continuous line can continue to amaze the world.

Originally named L’Écran Magique, or Magic Screen when it was first developed in the late 1950s, Etch A Sketch quickly became a household name, an iconic symbol of childhood, and a tableau of memories for generations of young men and women who used its rectangular grey screen, red frame and two white knobs like a handheld cockpit that would put their creativity on the runway and take their imaginations into flight.

Cassagnes was born in 1926 just outside Paris and as a boy worked in the bakery owned by his parents. But, according to The New York Times’ Margalit Fox, “He took a job as an electrical technician in a factory that made Lincrusta, a deeply embossed covering applied to walls and other surfaces to mimic sculptural bas-relief. One day in the late 1950s, as was widely reported afterward, (Cassagnes) was installing a light-switch plate at the factory. He peeled the translucent protective decal off the new plate, and happened to make some marks on it in pencil. He noticed that the marks became visible on the reverse side of the decal….”

Like magic, the pencil had raked through the fine, aluminum powder that clung naturally to the decal (and to everything else it touched) due to an electrostatic charge. Cassagnes spent the next few years perfecting his invention before exhibiting it at the Nuremberg Toy Fair in 1959 where the Ohio Art Company acquired its rights for US$25,000. That’s about US$200,000 today. Cassagnes not only sold the toy to Ohio Art Co., but also worked with their chief engineer, Jerry Burger, to refine the design. Where the original was operated with a joystick, the final version simulated the look of the reigning deity of the day, the television set.

Launched in the United States in late 1960, Etch A Sketch made its mark as the top-selling Christmas toy that year to having sold over 100 million sets to date. Today, it has been inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame and is on the American Toy Industry Association’s “Century of Toys” list and is seen, Margalit Fox reports, as “one of the brightest stars in the constellation of mid-century American childhood amusements.”

The technology is simple. Etch A Sketch is basically a manually operated plotter with a built-in shake-and-erase system. Just twist the two white knobs to displace the aluminum powder on the back of the gray screen with a stylus (mounted on a pair of orthogonal rails that move vertically or horizontally depending on which knob your turn), leaving a line drawing that can be erased with a quick shake. By shaking the set, the inside face of the glass is re-coated thanks to a mixture of aluminum powder and small metal beads added to make the powder flow more evenly.

In spite of being a toy box classic, Etch A Sketch surged in popularity after being featured in the first two Toy Story films. More recently, it benefited from publicity during 2012’s US presidential election where it was featured as a much publicized American political simile: Asked about changes to Mitt Romney‘s approach between the primaries and the upcoming elections, an aide compared the candidate’s campaign to an Etch A Sketch. He said, “You can kind of shake it up and we start all over again.” As a result, both Democrats and Republicans seized on the gaffe as proof of Mr. Romney’s political opportunism.

Ohio Art, on the other hand, responded to the blunder with a full-blown politically themed advertising campaign, “Shake It Up, America,” and offered customers across the country an opportunity to buy its venerable red-framed toy in a new, dark blue frame — for Democrats.

Of course, this doesn’t compare to the role “The Worlds’ Favorite Drawing Toy” continues to play in the imaginations of children everywhere. Its lines draw a parallel to a time when inventions surfaced by serendipity and not by the self-exerted and self-fashioning power of focus groups, venture capitalists, start-up buses and tech meet-ups. Which is why there is much to love in a gadget whose magic is borne from a moment of joyous inspiration and whose simple, pre-digital mechanics continue to astound and develop young minds.

 

Manufacturing Glamour

Tags

Advertising, Brand & Self Image, Capitalism, Democracy, Dreams, Envy, Fine Arts, Glamour, Happinesss, John Berger, Renaissance, Ways of Seeing

British art historian John Berger’s Ways of Seeing examined the enduring relationship between fine arts and advertising — often drawing parallels between the techniques used in Renaissance art (subject as hero, objects as symbols, mood, atmosphere) and their continued use today. Oil paintings, for instance, portrayed the lives of subjects as they already were; ads today, in contrast, portray our lives as we would like them to be. Lives that we want to have — suggesting that we can fill this gap with a transformational purchase that will alleviate our perceived inadequacies.

While proponents will explain and prove that advertising ultimately benefits the consumer, every piece of publicity (to use Berger’s word for advertising) confirms and enhances every other to such an extent that it has become a language in itself. “A language that belongs to the moment and is heard in the present tense but speaks only in the future” — a future, ironically, whose achievement it constantly defers.

And it makes the same, general proposal to each of us. It proposes that we transform our lives by buying something more. And it does this by showing us people who have been transformed and are, therefore, enviable. That state of being envied, Berger explains, is what constitutes glamour.

And publicity is the process of manufacturing glamour.

This is not to say that advertised products and services are not to be enjoyed. What it means is that to have prospects acquire the pleasures it proposes, it must first whet the natural appetite they have for pleasure. And the more convincingly the prospect is “offered an image of himself made glamorous by the product or opportunity it is trying to sell, the more likely that image will then make him envious of himself as he might be.”

And what makes the self that he-might-be enviable? The envy of others, of course. Because publicity is about social relations and not objects, its promise is of happiness. Happiness of an enviable alternative to what the prospect currently is. Happiness as judged from the outside by others. The happiness of being envied is glamour.

Strangely enough, Berger cautions, being envied is a solitary form of reassurance. Because it depends entirely upon you not sharing your experience with those who envy you. It’s like the celebrity factor: you are observed with interest, but you do not observe back with interest. If you do, you will become less enviable. And it is here that the power of the envied lies — the more impersonal they are and the more distant they seem and the more postcard-perfect they look, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power.

Misquoted purposefully, let’s just say “resignation makes the heart grow fonder.” The power of the glamorous lies in their supposed happiness. Perhaps this explains the absent, unfocused look of so many glamour images that surround us. The rich and the beautiful, after all, don’t look at you. They look over you. In other words, they look out “over and above the looks of envy which sustain them on their pedestal of perfect happiness.”

Yet, Berger enlightens us, glamour cannot exist without personal, social envy being common and widespread. Any democratically inclined (and therefore, equal) society with a capitalist (and therefore, unequal) system is ideal for generating such an emotion. This gap mirrors what publicity actually offers and the future it promises as it corresponds with the gap between what a prospect feels himself to be and what he would like to be.

By manufacturing glamour, publicity bridges such a gap not by action or lived experience, but by invoking the power of the human imagination — by advocating that a life of  “quiet desperation” (Thoreau) may be balanced with a fantasy future. A  dream that calls out to each one of us who is not yet enviable — yet could be.

And how does it get away with it? Just as surprisingly. Because publicity is essentially eventless, experience is impossible within it. Which is why, Berger explains, it is in its interest to obliterate all other senses except the act of acquiring (in order to lead to happiness) where all hopes are homogenized, commoditized and simplified into an intense yet vague, magical yet repeatable commercial promise.

The credibility of advertising doesn’t lie in its truthfulness, nor by the real or perceived fulfillment of its promises — but by the relevance of its fantasies to the lives of prospects. It succeeds because its application is not to reality but to daydreams — some instantaneous, others prolonged — but always in a constantly deferred future.

Publicity is the life of our modern, capitalist culture. And glamour is its best-selling dream.

Playing God

Tags

Advertising, Brand Custodians, Branding, Creativity, Deity, Gods, Mythology, New Pakistan, Roland Barthes, Traditions

Since time immemorial, man has created aspects of divinity as a yardstick for his own ambitions.

Inasmuch as the gods were a force to reckon with, they were also a tool used in the service of man — his ideals, his goals, his thirst for power, influence and control over his environment. A call to arms, therefore, was based on ‘the will of god,’ great calamities were ‘an act of god,’ territorial expansion was in ‘the name of god,’ and the Crusades, after all, were for ‘God, Glory (and mostly) Gold’. Without the active role of gods, man’s cultural and economic evolution would be like the WonderBra — a mere illusion.

I jest, of course. But the dynamics of creating gods is a bit like the dynamics of creating brands. Like the pharaohs and oracles of yesteryear who had an exclusive connection with the higher-ups, we have the brand custodians of today. Their job is simple: To ensure that the brand (defined here as an idea that people live by) is never abused. By policing and guarding the ‘god-brand,’ they ensured its sacred and privileged place in our hearts and minds. What’s more, each ‘god-brand’ came with its own brand guidelines. The ‘bible’ of branding gods, so to speak. The desired result was ‘spirituality’. Or what brand custodians today would call ‘brand equity.’

But omnipotence wasn’t the only thing the gods represented. Their function was also to validate and support our choices — like a celebrity peer-group. So much so, that for every human emotion, there was a divine personification: a deity whose choices and struggles were designed to inspire. And these was ‘broadcast’ through artfully branded myths. As Roland Barthes‘ Mythologies reads, “Myths may be purely fictional accounts. But they also have some relationship to natural or historical phenomena — they explain, illuminate and invest with our imagination.” We gave gods life and status because they gave us validity and credibility for the way we think, feel and act. What an important lesson for today’s communicators.

When we tap into the validating power of a myth, then we tap into the very fibre of our collective imagination. But don’t take my word for it. Just compare the gods of 2000 B.C. to the (material) gods of 2000+ A.D. the next time you chew on a Mars bar or think of the red planet (God of War), or wear a pair from Nike (Goddess of Victory), buy posters from Athena (Goddess of  Wisdom & Crafts), dress up in Hermes (God of Travel & Merchants) or spread Flora (Goddess of all that Flourishes) for breakfast. Of course, you could also dismiss this as being ‘greek’ to Pakistan and file a complaint at Aurora (Goddess of Dawn — or, Pakistan’s leading marketing bi-monthly published by the DAWN Group of Newspapers).

But the strategy today is not to tap into the power of old myths (because as any advertising person will tell you, ‘old ain’t necessarily gold’), but to create and tap into the power of new myths. Some might call this creating hype and profiting from it. But it’s more than that. It’s about how new ways of life in a post-traditional society can become ‘invested with imagination’. If new ways of life are skeletal and incomplete, then new myths can package and brand them as living possibilities. By validating the new, we automatically create the credibility the market is looking for to endorse their burgeoning choices. By inflecting choices rather than reflecting them, we can create new markets instead of competing for space on an already cramped mental shelf.

And what do brand custodians ‘mythologize’ about today? Look around. In any conversation, in any grouping of two or more persons, you can trace the threads of what it means to be living today. New myths are all around us (single parenthood, distance learning, new man, career woman, junior citizen, working from home, middle youth, virtual marriage, aunty culture, brokered dating, GT’s, home boutiques, etc.) but very few of us in the industry have captured them as branding opportunities.

But there is also a new ‘myth’ that is fast capturing and firing the nation’s imagination. Jump-started by Herald magazine, the idea of New Pakistan is a branding opportunity waiting to be romanced. Like former British PM Tony Blair’s New Britain platform that won him his first term in office, it’ll be interesting to see how New Pakistan would be branded and carried forward not just in the forthcoming elections, but by the brand custodians who want to lead from the edge.

Until then, it’s Godspeed from me.

 

The Brand is Dead; Long Live the Brand

Tags

Brands, Feng Shui, Marketing and Advertising, Old vs. New, Then & Now, Traditional Paradigms

We are living between kings.

A time when the roles and traditions we had taken for granted are fragmenting all around us. Where old paradigms are being replaced by new, more uncertain ones. Where traditional values are constantly being blurred with post-traditional influences.

Our homes, after all, are getting smaller and our lifestyles bigger. A family is not seen in a house; but across continents. Our friends increasingly provide the emotional bonds we used to associate with our clans. Our individualism is taking over our collective-conscience. Our kids are known by the mobile devices they keep (not to mention, their independent rooms). Generation-X adults have regressed and morphed with their younger, e-generation counterparts into a kind of ‘adultescent’ — where we’re adults during the week and back to college over the weekend.

Consumers lifestyles are more volatile now. When people’s lives change, can we honestly expect such a thing as ‘brand loyalty’? With no ‘job for life’ and no ‘relationship for life’ and no ‘fixed station for life,’ it makes absolute sense that ‘brand for life’ has also gone out the window.

Conventional marketing circles will call this heresy. But then, conventional marketing circles hail from an era where branding was used as a brainwashing device; where trademark, positioning and comparative distinctions drove their brands forward; where a target market was an isolated demographic that could be bludgeoned through frequency and habituation; where the (classical) approach to advertising was reflective of social trends and not inflective — so as to cause a sensation and create markets and ideas for people to live by; and finally, where convention would shudder at the thought that building brand value and shareholder value is brought about by a brand’s intangible values.

What is the world coming to?

It’s a complicated yet dynamic picture. The growing economic inequality may be a matter for politicians. But what is important for marketers is that people’s culture — their tastes and ideas, their identities and activities — is no longer predicted on a clear sense of their station in life. What is clearer is that they have a less clear sense of where they are in society (other than the middle, culturally) and that wherever they are they share many of the same influences.

Around the world, the global consumer is becoming more and more alike. Demographics like age, gender, class and religion matter less and less. So much so, people are more alike in their ideas and activities: a kind of mass middle class, so to speak, that’s devoted to quality of life and leisure — with more or less the same aspirations, ideals and goals. And in response to this, the world culture is more focused on individuals; closer to everyday life, more realistic, more informal, more ‘unbranded’ (in the traditional sense) than ever before. Which means, the global teenager who grows up to be the global, internet-worked citizen has more in common with his global peers than his tradition-age grandparents.

So what happened?

What we are increasingly finding is that brands (or rather, the ideas that brands stand for) are the new surrogate traditions. In the global society, brands increasingly play the role that traditions used to play. Traditions used to provide us with life’s governing ideas. But not any more. With the fragmentation of traditions, brands are increasingly filling the void for a way of life that makes more sense, is more ordered and (if only) comes on some pretext of divine guidance. Simply put, brands are the new traditions. Brands today, achieving popular acceptance, shape and give meaning to our everyday lives like they never used to by giving us ideas to live by.

This has tremendous implications. For starters, it implies that ideas alongside  packaged goods and services can be brands (Princess Diana; The Body Shop; Friends). It shows us that any meaningful idea that people are willing to adopt can be branded (Don’t Drink & Drive; Trade Not Aid; War on Terrorism; Career Woman). And, secondly, it shows that global society has become more ‘inner-directed’ by virtue of its place in history. From the Material 80s to the Sharing, Caring 90s, running right through the Knowledge Noughties, we have experienced a decade where the ‘post-natal’ effects of the information age (an age where we had unparalleled access to global ideas and media) is taking shape and transforming our lives.

This has resulted in a kind of emotional laissez-faire. A ‘do what you want to do’ attitude that has become the social currency for modern marketers. The reason? We, the people, can now see right through the ‘broadcast culture’ of traditional marketing tactics. But we enjoy the more meaningful, the more inner-directed, the more self-above-all-else ideas that put us alongside Feng Shui and the Little Book of Calm — unlike the aspirational badges and excesses of the past. A case of ‘been there; done that’ — if not empirically, then, at least, vicariously through the media.

It’s time for marketers to become imagineers. To transcend the confines of traditional marketing so that their brands become a way of life. Until and unless our brands don’t play a more meaningful, more universal role in our everyday lives (by giving us ideas to live by), they will continue to be an ornamental excess of the past. Of a time that reflected traditional, slow changing cultural ideas. Of a time when people bought the right brands (the right car, the right newspaper, the right fashion, etc.) to reflect their station in life.

Today, however, brands should think of being instrumental. As exciting, sensational ideas with universal reach and appeal that people want to catch, voluntarily adopt and ‘buy into’ — and not just happen to remember.

So Long, Twinkie

Tags

Continental Baking Company, Hostess Brands, James Dewar, Twinkies

Just what is it about junk food that’s so appetizing?

Isn’t ‘junk food’ an expression that belongs among trash and debris? Among the rubbished and the discarded? Yet, the irony is that because junk food is so bad for us, we really want it. Take Twinkies, for example — those golden sponge cakes with creamy filling, as it says on the wrapper, that were introduced in 1930. A treat for the Depression.

It used to be a best-seller then and is still a best-selling item for Hostess, the company that sells 500 million annually of these iconic snack-cakes made of hydrogenated oils, artificial flavors and high fructose corn syrup — all deliciously unhealthy, all parcelled up in quintessential red, white and blue packaging to conjure the glossy nostalgia of retro-Americana.

Way back then, junk food represented American indulgence as an ideal. Because a box of Twinkies wasn’t just a snack. It was also a ticket. A ticket to assimilation — for countless immigrants who were making Post-war America their home — complete with a picket fence, a cocker-spaniel named Sky, and a long Cadillac for a second car. A golden cake, more golden than the hair they wished they had, stuffed with whiteness.

That whiteness was Twinkies’ original banana filling. The inventor, James A. Dewar, a baker for the Continental Baking Company, got the idea after seeing his machines (for punching cream-filled strawberry shortcakes) sitting idle when strawberries were out of season. So he conceived a snack with a banana filling that he dubbed Twinkie, naming it after a billboard he saw in St. Louis for “Twinkle Toe Shoes”.

During World War II, when the Government rationed bananas, the company switched to a vanilla cream which proved more popular. So popular, in fact, that it wasn’t until 2005, after a month-long DVD promotion for King Kong, that vanilla sales were challenged by the original before being permanently restored to the snack’s line-up in 2007.

As a gastronomical and cultural icon, Twinkies are a staple of popular culture. On their own, drizzled with chocolate syrup, served with a scoop of ice-cream, or frozen and deep-fried in batter at a county fair, they have been immortalized with cinematic dialogue, scientific experiments, field journalism, and some astounding urban myths, each more ridiculous than the last.

Like how Twinkies remain edible from anywhere between 50 and 100 years given the 39 ingredients they use (most of them preservatives). Or how a Twinkie’s shelf life is longer than the cellophane it’s wrapped in. Or how Twinkie’s use of a chemical in its ingredients is similar to embalming fluid. Or, best yet, how they’re indestructible and even capable of surviving a nuclear war…

Of course, that’s the hype. But ask a marketer and s/he’ll tell you that Twinkies are a story of mastery of shelf life (up to 25 days for a baking good), phenomenal distribution (60,000 sold every hour), and perfect uniformity. Day in and day out. So, digs aside, these golden creamy treats are more than what meets the eye.

Even their advertising strategy was remarkable. Tucked inside comic books, generations have followed addictive ads featuring Marvel, DC and even Archie characters battling foes with tasty Hostess snacks. “You get a big delight in every bite of Hostess® Twinkies” exclaims one of them, as America’s favorite comic heroes and heroines lift Twinkies in their triumphant hands like prized bars of gold.

But the ridicule is partly a result of unquestionable success. Even in our age of health-conscious consumers, weight-watchers and fitness gurus, low-carb diets and bottled waters, Twinkies have stood the test of time — going against no less than eight decades of wide-ranging trends. May be it’s because what they lack in dignity they make up in taste. While they are an icon of junk food snacks and guilty pleasures, and while they are nutritionally worthless, they are still irresistibly satisfying — having also made the cultural contribution of shifting sweets exclusively from dessert time to snacking anytime.

So imagine the pandemonium when it was announced that bankruptcy has doomed Hostess and that it’s twilight for Twinkies and other Hostess brands. An 82-year history cast away like a used wrapper.

Apparently, the demise has been a long time coming due to labor disputes with the unions. Whatever it is, if you come across a Twinkie before it becomes a relic, make sure you pause and pay your respects. Buy yourself a box. Have a taste of its sugar-shocked, fake, buttery-ish vanilla. It will take you back. It may just taste of memory. Or just keep it around for future generations — in case the rumors about it lasting forever are true.

Forever, that is, until reality bites.

 

The Grill Room

Tags

Advertising, Bill Bernbach, Creativity, Leo Burnett, Maxwell Dane, Trailblazers

Bill: I warn you against believing advertising is a science. Advertising is an art; nothing memorable ever emerged from a formula.
Leo: I can’t give you a formula for success. But I can give you a foolproof formula for failure — just try to please everybody.

What would it be like to be caught in the middle of a conversation between Bill Bernbach and Leo Burnett? Most people don’t know this, but Bill and Leo were actually very good friends. They met frequently for lunch in New York during the 60s at Bill’s favorite restaurant at the Four Seasons where a corner table of The Grill Room hosted the conversations that revolutionized the advertising industry. While both men had opposing personal styles, their advertising philosophies were parallel. Together, they created a world of advertising that was big enough for both. And the rest of us that followed.

Bill: Let us blaze new trails. Let us prove to the world that good taste, good art and good writing can be good selling.
Leo: A small thought on a slick paper in full color won’t live. But a big thought on a scrap of cardboard will live forever.

So as we consider the changing face of advertising in Pakistan; not to mention, all that has changed in the last generation, it might be an idea to compare these giants from the advertising days of yore to prove their lasting value.

From the beginning, both Bill and Leo were copywriters who entered the Copywriters Hall of Fame on the same day. But their similarities go further. Both, for instance, were short (unless you saw them standing on their wallets). Both were kids from the streets who graduated university. Both worked in advertising. Both shared a profound love for the printed word. And, both founded their agencies within 15 years of each other.

Leo, who launched his legacy at the height of the Great Depression in 1935, was told that anyone crazy enough to open an ad agency in those days would soon be selling apples on the street. “Maybe so,” he replied, “but first I’ll give ‘em away.” To this day, every Leo Burnett office worldwide welcomes you with a bowl of apples at their reception. In 1949, Bill left his post as creative head of Grey Advertising in New York to open his agency with Ned Doyle and Maxwell Dane. “It will be known as Doyle Dane Bernbach and nothing shall come between them, not even punctuation.” It’s true. Nothing did come between them, except time.

Bill: The truth isn’t the truth until people believe you.
Leo: I have learned that the greatest single thing to be achieved in advertising is believability.
Bill: We must not just believe in what we sell, but sell what we believe in.

Both men built their agencies and their reputations by simply revolutionising the way we talk to people. They felt that to talk with people was exponentially more rewarding than talking at them. This came at a time when most advertising consisted of functionalism, featureless product claims, a laundry list of attributes and singing product strategies. Sound familiar? Both believed so fervently in the essential humanity and dignity of their audience that they were smart enough to recognise the simple fact that people aren’t stupid. “Yes, there is a 12-year-old mentality in this country,” Bill argued, “… every six-year-old has one.”

Leo: Most writers, when they become sincere, are merely dull.
Bill: Dullness won’t sell your product, but neither will irrelevant brilliance.

They were the first to recognise that logic — as the basis for advertising — is illogical. The human brain is an organ for survival so it searches for advantage, not reason: everyone wants a better life, everyone chases their dreams and everyone longs for freedom from the menial. Both men changed the course of advertising forever by realising that people make decisions based not on fact, but emotion. It’s not how they think about you, but how they feel about you that counts. Example: What do you think of your new car? Answer: I love it.

Leo: As I have observed it, great advertising is deceptively and disarmingly simple. It has a common touch without being patronising.
Bill: The real giants of advertising have always been poets — men who jumped from facts into the realm of imagination and ideas.

Back in The Grill Room, one can still hear the thoughts both men shared — locked in mortal combat against all that was shoddy, banal or second-rate in a profession they both loved. Which is why it’s fitting to dedicate the next generation of advertising to something we may have forgotten along the way.

Our ideals.

 

A Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures

Tags

Advertising, Brain, Creativity, Emotional Voltage, Imagination, Mind, Napoleon, Perceptual Reality, Rudyard Kipling, Sound, Words

Tomorrow’s reality is created by today’s imagination. And the secret formula to help us create, direct, forge, condition and ferment the future is by using the simple genius of words.

Sounds too simple? Consider a few erudite facts: If you were to dissect your brain, you will see that a considerably larger area of the brain is devoted to sound than to sight. Sight and sound are not only received by separate organs, but are stored and processed in totally separate areas of the brain. The area of the brain that stores memory and the processing of sound touches more areas of the brain than any other. In so many words, more sound touches more of life in more ways than any other function of the brain.

And here’s another insider: When you compare the ratio of our 100,000,000 sensory receptors that enable us to see, hear, feel, taste and smell the outside world to the 10,000,000,000,000 (ten trillion) brain synapses that enable us to relate new data to stored memories and ideas — or, to think, ponder, imagine, create and experience things that never took place — we realize that physical reality is a fragile and transient thing.

We are better equipped for experiences that are fully contained in the mind. Ironically, small minds would contend otherwise; they insist on making choices in the security of physical reality so they deny the existence of that which cannot be tested, proven or measured. (These are the same minds who decry the foolishness of faith in a world of science).

Which is just the point. Advertising doesn’t affect physical reality in the slightest. Physical reality is contained in the limited universe of matter and energy. Advertising only affects the world inside the mind. The world of the future, the world of the possible — or, ‘perceptual reality’ as communication theorists call it.

In fact, given the above ratio, we are 100,000 times more capable of experiencing the invisible than the visible. And the way to link the world inside the mind with the meeting place we call reality is by building a bridge with words. Some people call this bridge advertising, some call it selling, some call it persuasion. But whatever it’s called, it must be strong enough to carry a dream merchant’s dream.

Words, after all, are our history. The representation of our collected conscience. As Rudyard Kipling said, “Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” The world as we know it revolves around words. We read them, memorize them, conduct our lives by them, remember what great leaders had to say by them. Words start and end wars, affairs, companies and brands; they bring us our laughter and tears, our fortunes and trials. We are defined, refined and joined by their absolute majesty.

While most advertising clients can come up with fantastic business ideas; they, sadly, lack the words to fuel them. While a great vision or idea may carry the seedlings of change, it is the power of vivid, electric and magical words that carries an idea skyward.

In order for words to work wonders, they must be chosen for the ‘emotional voltage’ they carry. They must shock a little — for if the hearer is not jolted, you can be sure s/he is not moved. Predictable, listless and dull words can cripple an idea with potential just as easily as they destroy empires. Napoleon agrees: “Small plans do not inflame the hearts of men.”

In order for us to move the heart and illuminate the mind, we must trigger the imagination of our prospects with the energy of words instead of the stockpile of ‘professionally creative’ clichés. They may work; but they do not prevail.

Like you and me, our prospects can see what they’ve never seen, hear what they’ve never heard, and taste what they’ve never tasted (remember the 1:100,000 ratio?). Further proving Advertising 101′s claim that where the mind has already gone, the body is sure to follow.

And it begins with the word.