Long Play

ChinadoII

Late in the afternoon last week for no apparent reason the phone started ringing off the hook with work things. So I dragged my sorry rear into the West End mainly to get off my well honed reclining-position as earlier I'd been sucked into responding to Robs post to cover my partially exposed butt on brand values. Frankly I was close to bailing out Stateside for an overdue meetup, but a combination of a delayed reply that I've been waiting on, filed in 'the dog ate my emails' folder, and a sudden offer to get stuck into some charity rebranding tipped me over to taking on a gig on that meant a 4am start the next day up in Glasgow doing groups. These included in the afternoon, some young men who don't necessarily think too much about being electronically tagged while keeping a curfew - yeah Punk Planning my friends.

So far its been an exhausting but eyeopening experience and since the kickoff I've also covered Cardiff, a small mining village in the county borough of Caerphilly as well as Sutton Coldfield near Birmingham and Gloucester today. I should wrap up in a few days time but until then I've started to ask myself if the idea of an open source C.I development methodology might be an effective way to meet the objectives of keeping a very disparate bunch of people that range from local government, charity workers and young folk in need of a helping hand onboard and 'buying into' a process which one guy memorably articulated as 'reeking of insincerity' when referring to the the way 'brand' talks.

Here's the deal; most of the people that I've spoken to are really sceptical of anything that relates to marketing and the reason for that is they actually do stuff rather than waffle on about it like a lot of us ad tossers do. Its also increasingly evident that as with any change management a shiny new badge can be a reasonably useful point to coalesce around for a new direction. The reality is that unlike that rare and mythical beast called a proper brand (people getting mugged for Levis in 80's Moscow and ditto for iPods in the 3rd millennium) they probably will never be more famous than say top of mind prompted-recall within a specific charity segment, even if as I have discovered time and again since last Thursday they are off-the-richter-scale for complexity in stakeholders and financial solutions. Not to mention diversity of projects and doing a lot of hands on work.

I'm probing some architecture, platform and proposition dimensions that are not far removed from interrogation of (deep breath) third party projection of the meaning-of-meaning for say deprived young'uns with low attention spans - you get my drift? OK I'm exaggerating a tad, but that whole brand personality malarkey isn't moving mountains for me if people have to think about it. I mean personality is surely something people can spontaneously remark on and unwittingly have, acquire and possibly nurture. Surely its not something that can be scored from the nearest council estate corner gathering, and falls neatly between say a "chav" brand and one that "tells you what to do" as one group earlier today outlined when discussing those "Just do it" people. I guess I'm taking shots at some of the FMCG navel-gazing research gigs I've had to oversea in my time. But there is some overlap with whats going on here.

So in the interests of suggesting a kick-ass methodology for a participatory media process that embraces uncertainty and welcomes the digitalocracy of the web I thought I'd run the idea past you folk in case anyone else has thought about the idea of opening up the development of identity architecture real-time on the web. The immediate pluses for this method are that everyone gets a say and feels that they have been part of the consultation process, one or two egos/agendas don't hijack the process as invariably happens when settling on a least contentious communication platforms. Any thoughts? Is this taking 2.0 a bit far? Could it all go peaches up or as I really suspect, the P.R from the process could be worth considerably more than a years communication budget, given that nobody has ever done it before and that somebody will surely be extremely upset about the loss of control - which is a good thing in my book.

Other than that there are a quite a few other things kicking off and I'll leave you with the best post for ages. If any of you wannabes want to know what planning is about then check out this slice of action that absorbs people of our stargazing ilk who can't ever help stop thinking - albeit in my case pretty uselessly. It also gives me a chance to use that picture of ChinaD0II that has been lurking on my desktop before I dig out some of the great podcasts I'm still gagging to tip y'all off about.

Is Smirnoff Full of Shit?

shaolintiger

Rob Campbell of cynic - a conversation starting company has called me out on my previous post and quite fairly suggests that Smirnoff are only interested in the purity of their distillation process and not the purity of the environment that we live in. I still live in hope that what we are seeing may well be a small but nonetheless tectonic shift in the future of branding values.

I'll be very disappointed if its a case of greenwashing as has been extensively documented by my esteemed colleague and one of the smartest planners in the business John Grant, on his ace blog Greenormal. But it remains to be seen if Diageo, the parent company of Smirnoff is to use this as an ignition point for their brand. Otherwise it would only be appropriate to add the usual film disclaimer at the end of the commercial that: Any characters and incidents portrayed and the names herein are fictitious, including any resemblance to the issues raised in The Stern report relating to climate change where the polar caps melt and large statues will be covered in water because of our reliance on fossil fuels, best dramatised with the use of oil rigs in advertising.

I think I need a stiff drink now!

Get over to Robs blog for some of the best conversation on the net. He's the future of marketing communications and is fearless about his beliefs, even if that means he has to go right to the top.

Purity Values - The Connection Between Deepwater Horizon & Vodka

I remember vividly Mary Stow at HHCL & Partners urging me to push really hard on the VALUES of the clients we have in advertising and I've carried that important lesson with me for many years. All too frequently many 'wannabe' brands share only one common tangible value and that is shareholder return, or chasing money in plain language if you wish. There's nothing wrong with making money and indeed wealth creation has many positive effects, but if that's the raison d'etre for an organisation, it practically sweats from the pores of their executives and makes a squelching sound from the carpets of the boardrooms as we make our way about the C-Suite.

I've been saying to a bunch of communication thinkers around London that in an age of ubiquitous product parity, a legitimate (and possibly the most powerful differential) for a brand to leverage are its values. In the absence of any values there's not much to really talk about and this may well explain why so much advertising is rubbish. Its just talk.

The area that gets me most excited is the potential for brands to STAND for something and I can think of no finer example than this terrific commercial by JWT London with Digital by AKQA for Smirnoff Vodka. Of course its about purity but by reminding us of the dumping ground that we have made of the oceans Smirnoff are implicitly obliged from now on to take an interest in the purity of the seas, lakes and environment. An obvious value for a brand claiming to own purity. This is a good thing in my book and a reason to insist on the Smirnoff label from hereon because I'm interested in brands that have values - particularly ones that are about the environment as I've mentioned back here. Enjoy this well crafted commercial and thanks to Scamp for provoking a post out of me that has been simmering for a long time. I hope Diageo start to live up to some of their epic responsibilities with this type of advertising and begin to think about some branded utility, otherwise I'm back to ordering any old Vodka & Coke. They do after all taste the same with a mixer. Heresy, but the absolute truth nonetheless.