Just for the fun-of-it
There has been plenty of debate over the years (some of it with readers commenting on this site) about the validity and value of brand gestures that do not have an immediate and specific selling proposition. In many ways this represents the difference between the crafts of advertising and branding.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Speed Camera Lottery.
Idea: Rewarding Speed Limit Signs – Submitted by Kevin Richardson (USA).
Can we get more people to obey the speed limit by making it fun to do? The idea here is capture on camera the people who keep to the speed limit. They would have their photos taken and registration numbers recorded and entered into a lottery. Winners would recieve cash prizes and be notified by post. Better still, the winning pot would come from the people who were caught speeding.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s a great example of a brand gesture from the folks at Volkswagen. Unlike many brand gestures, where the communication objective of the experience is directly related to the proposition and positioning of the brand, Volkswagen’s funtheory.com plays on the outer margins of brand communication. As Volkswagen describe funtheory.com: ‘This site is dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behavior for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or for something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.’

As we’ve evolved as a society in the way we absorb and interact with brands, the way audiences respond to brand messages has changed. Twenty years ago the extent to which you could build market share was directly related to the budget you had available to invest in your above the line advertising campaign. The world has changed. Traditional advertising techniques and channels have become part of the way brands need to communicate to connect to their markets, but not the only way. The catch-cry is ‘Integration’ – integrating a campaign of brand messaging – some hard, some soft, some using traditional mediums, some using new or fresh mediums. And as the way we connect with our audiences has changed, so-too has the messaging itself.

No-longer can brands focus on the offer – what we want you to do or buy – they must also give people a reason to buy that is non-functional, a reason to want to buy.

The process of creating emotional connections – the truer and deeper the better – requires a subtly, complex and multi-dimensional craft of which attributes such as engage, delight, interact and share are most defining. This brand gesture campaign from Volkswagen is a sweet example of just that craft.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Fast Lane – A Funtheory Follow-up
Following-on from their funtheory campaign – VW have created some more brand-driven frivolity with these great brand experiences dedicated to everyone who enjoys speeding life up a little.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The fast Lane campaign is integrated through VW’s Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/volkswagen?v=app_122484447791278

If you’d like to chat about creating a reason for your customers to want to buy your products or services, why not give us a call.

David Ansett, Brandamentalist
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Designer of Brand Gestures

Last month the latest Nike Stadium location opened its doors – the Bowery Stadium in New York City.
Nike Stadiums reflect the trend of many brands (especially those in retail) towards what we call soft brand messaging. Unlike traditional advertising whose function is to deliver a sharp proposition that communicates a specific offer, soft brand messaging is all about giving people a brand experience to create a positive emotional bond with a brand. Brands we care about, brands we believe are a reflection of the way we wish ourselves to be seen own a distinctly unfair advantage when it comers to making conscious and unconsidered buying decisions. Whether buying a $5 burger to a $500k sports car, when it comes to the heart ruling the head, those brands we love hold the whip hand.

The Nike Stadiums serve as ‘creative salons’,  where art, sports and customer community experiences sing together in harmony with the Nike brand voice. The first installation in the Bowery Stadium is called ‘Order and Progress’. Order and Progress is a celebration of Brazilian soccer through the eyes of the NYC creative community. Opening night featured the premier of a multi-media piece entitled ‘Everything is Practice’, a short film with Spike Lee directed by Jake Sumner and photography by Nabil Elderkin, as well as a piece by Brazilian born, NYC raised creative Allen Benedikt. With the ‘Stadium’ concept, Nike have created a community forum, rich in brand personality, and perfect for brand storytelling.

The basement serves as another creative salon but with a more functional purpose in mind, with a real locker room stacked along an entire wall. The space was created as a hub for New Yorkers involved in local sports programs. Serving as an inspiring meeting place, the traditional locker room is flipped on its head with an explosion of paints created by artist Jack Greer. Along the other wall are illustrations by Gianluigi Toccafondo titled ‘Heroes of Speed’.

At an all important functional level, the space will be the new home of the Bowery Stadium sports programs, including the NYC Bridge Runners, Goodtimes FC soccer league, NRF, and the WNW – don’t you just love those sports acronyms. At the heart of this Nike brand experience the emotional benefit intersects with the functional benefit, which is where the strongest emotional bonds are created.

Nike’s Bowery Stadium opens to the public Thursday to Sundays from 12 to 7pm, at 276 Bowery in Manhattan. Check it out if you’re in town – BYO gym gear.

If you look after brand spaces that could do with a good dose of emotional connection, get in touch – the conversation will be as valuable as it is enlightening.

David Ansett, Brandamentalist
For daily updates of our brand thinking, follow me on Twitter
Brand Designer

We found-out about this on a cool little web site called High Snobiety.

Recently on a trip to Europe I had the pleasure of hearing a presentation by American author and strategy consultant Joseph Pine on authenticity in branding. Pine has co-authored several books in the brand space. Namely the ‘Experience Economy’ and his more recent offering simply titled ‘Authenticity’.

Pine believes that people increasingly evaluate the world in terms of real and fake, based on their own views of what is and is not authentic. ‘Real’ is important for many consumers because of the role brands play in confirming their desired or perceived self-image.

But distinguishing between real and fake is not always easy. At a recent brand workshop we were conducting with a regional wine and food group in country Victoria one of the participants, a successful micro-brewery operator, was bemoaning the fact that the very large commercial breweries attempt to position some of their brands as artisan inspired boutique beers. It makes it tough for the ‘real’ artisans when the big commercial brands mimic their boutique cues.

Joseph Pine raised a few axioms that he thinks is relevant to authenticity. Firstly, he believes if you are authentic, then you don’t have to say you’re authentic. Related  to this is it’s easier to be authentic if you don’t say you’re authentic. Secondly, if you say you are authentic, then you better be authentic. Thirdly, and interestingly, he believes it’s easier to render offerings authentic, if you acknowledge they are inauthentic.

Heritage and years since having been established is frequently used as a way of claiming some sense of authenticity. It for this reason the I loved the two retail offerings pictured above, I came across in Berlin. To a large extent they apply Pine’s third axiom and claim their authenticity by poking fun at their years of establishment.

Peter Singline
(Real or Fake….?)

Over the past month ‘Mo Bros’ around the world have been growing facial hair to support men’s health while raising awareness of prostate cancer and depression.

Since its humble beginnings in 2004, when only 262 Mo Bros’ registered, the annual Movember campaign has been a huge success raising over AUS$60 million globally.
This year more corporate sponsors have got in on the act with Heinz’s ‘The Big Red Movember’ tomato sauce, Krispy Kreme’s ‘Moughnut’ and Grill’d Burgers who helped
feed those hungry Mo-growers for free.

Every day it gets more difficult for brands to reach their target market and companies must create new strategies to connect with consumers like never before. One of the more successful strategies is for brands to associate themselves with a popular and relevant cause.

Grill’d’s strategy was to support all the Mo Bros’ who raised $25 or more, rewarding them with delicious, free ‘made with love’ burgers. Over 13 days during Movember, they fed 11,000 ‘Mo Bros’, donating over $350,000 worth of burgers to the cause. It was a smart move for the Grill’d brand to align themselves with a powerful brand like Movember, who connect with a shared target market. It is a complimentary brand partnership. Not only did Grill’d align their brand to a cause and raise the profile of Movember, they cemented their own brand as socially responsible.

Cause branding is an effective strategy to establish emotional relationships with your target market. The Grill’d and Movember partnership has differentiated Grill’d from their competitors and positively impacted their brand.

As a designer working in a brand agency in Melbourne, I admire Grill’d for aligning itself with such a worthy cause. As a chick who can’t grow a ‘mo’ I watched my hairy lipped workmates munching on their free Grill’d burgers through Movember with much envy.

If you’d like to talk to us about identifying the right cause with which to align your brand or anything else brand-related, why not give us a call.

Cassandra Gill, Design Director.

100% Barcelona
Recently I spent a week in Barcelona attending a learning university with a few hundred of the worlds most exciting entrepreneurs. The event was held at a spectacular, but typical business-style hotel in the Port District. The day the event finished, I switched hotels as I was keen to immerse myself in a richer vein of the Barcelona experience. And where better to stay in order to do that than Casa Camper.

I have to admit from the outset that I’m a brandaholic. I’m addicted to brands with soul, authenticity and rich, unique personality (sounds like it could be a description of Barcelona itself). I’ve been a Camper fan for some years. Camper make shoes, but they’re not just another shoe company. Camper fuses design, materials and marketing to create a brand story that is movingly summed up by two of their mantra-like positioning lines: ‘The Walking Society’ and ‘Imagination Walks.’

Welcome to Casa Camper
Over the years I’d come across their hotel in Barcelona; Casa Camper and loved the boldness of that as a brand gesture. Imagine a brand that launches a hotel as part of their brand building strategy. A couple of years ago, VW followed suit with their Hotel Fox in Copenhagen, launched to promote the release of Volkswagen Fox. Recently Camper opened a second Casa Camper in Berlin, underscoring the ROI benefits from what might seem like an outlandish branding activity.

I spent two nights in Casa Camper and thoroughly enjoyed the detail and vibe of the brand experience. Casa Camper may be run as a commercially successful, 30 room boutique hotel, but it is uniquely on-brand in many dimensions beyond what you would expect from hotel accommodation. Yes the hotel was every-bit as comfortable as I’d desire, but the experience was more akin to spending 48 hours in several wonder-filled chapters of brand story telling.

I stayed in a suite – which was huge, with walls painted in camper Red. The lounge area had a hammock which could be stretched-out in front of the french windows to the balcony. My afternoon siestas in the hammock as I snoozed to the sound of Barcelona life below my window were among my richest of my memories, and facilitated for me by my ever-warmer friends at Camper.

The electronic key came tucked-into the front of a Camper pocket guide to Barcelona. Every single element of the experience reflected the Camper brand visual identity and spoke in the playful and adventurous Camper brand voice.

At check-in I was offered iPod cables for the stereo in my room, the safe in the bedroom is large enough for a laptop and has a power point inside, and the in-room wireless broadband is free. The guests at the hotel spanned from mid-twenties to mid-sixties, but all with a similar sense of style and adventure. Camper seem to have a very clear picture of their target market and an understanding of the extras that are meaningful to them.

Instead of in-room bar fridges, Casa Camper has a cafe open all day and into the night. The cafe is stocked with hot and cold drinks, sandwiches, salads, fruit, yogurt, deserts, baguette, ham and cheese, nuts, chips et. al. which along with a cooked breakfast came included in the cost of the room.

The hotel itself was located dead centre of Barcelona. Everything in the city was in walking distance, as shown on the huge ‘walking map’ of the city on the wall near reception. In the surrounding neighborhood a growing flock of cool cafes, independent music and edgey fashion retailers are springing-up – testament the strength of the Camper brand, it casts a culture changing halo over the surrounding streets and laneways.

Dream of Boldness
As brand gestures go, Casa Camper is a bold one. Few brand managers or brand owners think big enough to conceive of this type of statement for their brand. But just because a brand gesture is bold, doesn’t mean it needs to be a budget black hole. Few above the line brand campaigns could deliver the ROI of the two Camper hotels, nor could they be created for the same cost. And arguable no TVC could ever have the impact on a city that Casa Camper has on Barcelona and its visitors. We’re not talking about a remarkable moment, we’re talking about a memorable experience – and that is something far deeper and longer lasting.

Clearly not all brands can afford to think as big as opening a hotel, but the rewards are clearly there for those who dare to dream. I would implore all brand owners to think about how they might dream a little bigger, think a little bolder and conceive a gesture for their brand that could in it’s own way create a remarkable experience for their clients and customers.

If you think a bold brand gesture is just what your brand needs, we’d be only too happy to have a chat about where the opportunities may lie. Why not get in touch.

David Ansett, Brandamentalist.
If you’d like daily updates of our brand thinking, you can follow me on Twitter here.

I got home one evening recently and I had 4 envelopes in the post box. They were all pretty much the same size, but there the similarities ended.

The first envelope was plain, brown and unaddressed, except for the ominous warning ‘To the Home Owner’. The second was a plain white window envelope addressed to me. The third had the brand mark of my mobile phone provider and the fourth the logo of the travel agent we went on holiday with six months ago and carried a message ‘Exclusive offers and packages for our VIP customers’.

So I took out my ‘stethoscope’ and  listened for a brand heart beat from each envelope.

Envelope 1 – no, dead ,dead,dead – I didn’t even bother to open it, life’s too short.

Envelope 2 – for a moment there I thought I detected a beat…. I opened it but my level of expectation was set at ‘likely to disappoint’… my spirits rose briefly though, it was from my car dealer reminding me that it was time to get a service… but there was  no offer and the model listed was the wrong one. The brand was briefly resuscitated but died in the ambulance.

Envelope 3 – now there was definitely a sign of life. I have a great mobile phone, I’m always after the latest models and I’m on the top plan because I need all the bells and whistles – I like the brand because it makes me feel really cool. Uh-oh! The letter screams out ‘ Pre-paid plans from $29 per month’… as I switch off the life support.

Envelope 4 – The brand is alive and well. This is a really smart pack. With a family I’m looking for deals and yet I still want to feel important. I open it and the brand heart is still pumping strongly. The letter references my last holiday, the detail is correct, it makes me an offer at the same hotel, and at the same time of year, and there are similar offers at other hotels and destination types. This is really smart marketing combining direct marketing and brand skill sets — even more to be commended because travel and tourism is such a competitive market – I’ll buy a similar holiday this year to the one I did last year, but unless I’ve fallen in love with the travel agents brand I may go elsewhere. This is brand in the hand.

The lessons here may seem simple, but they are the basis of bringing your brand to life when you communicate to your customer.

1. Be smart about using what you know about your customer ( your data) to make them feel special and to demonstrate that you believe you have a relationship with them, that is alive and well. This will have a positive effect on their loyalty to your brand.
2. Be smart about using  your values, personality, look and feel (your brand) to emotionally engage the customer —  they came to you in the first place because they liked your words, deeds and how you looked.

Now go and check the pulse of that communication you’re about to send out — is it saying things about you, you don’t like — or missing out on saying something you really should be saying ?

Please note no brands were harmed in writing this blog — if you’d like to get a better understanding of how to get your brand message delivered effectively to your customers — give us a call.

Malcolm Harvey

The Michelin Man – Sumo or brand icon
Just recently the Truly Deeply studio invested in some more character (not that we don’t have enough already) for the space we spend more than 9 hours a day in. We purchased an original statue reproduction of Michelin Man,  that used to be attached to a compressor. To be honest at first I thought the statue was ugly, but there was something in the way the icon stood with such confidence and conviction that grabbed me. It felt like we had a new member joining the Truly Deeply family. My thoughts were summed up by Pete, a Brand Scientist, who sits next to me at work;

“It may look like a sumo wrestler, but its a brand logo that has stood the test of time”.

Pete’s words stuck with me and I found myself asking, what is it in Michelin’s history that has allowed the Michelin Man brandmark to be so enduring? History is not my strong suit, but I was sufficiently stimulated to do a little digging.

Back in the day
The Michelin Man, otherwise known as Bibendum, was created in 1889 by brothers André and Édouard Michelin who took control of a rubber business in Clermont-Ferrand, France. According to the company’s official history, a bicyclist came to their workshop in 1889 with a flat tire. Pneumatic (inflatable) tires had just been invented by John Boyd Dunlop the year before. Pneumatics provided a much more comfortable ride than the alternative solid rubber tires, but they were subject to punctures. In fixing the flat, the brothers discovered that the customer’s Dunlops were glued to the rims, making patches extremely time-consuming. They soon developed and patented a detachable pneumatic tire that could be repaired in 15 minutes.

Bibendum was created by a talented poster artist Marius Rossillon, but the idea was really born in the minds of the Andre and Édouard. A stack of tires resembled the outline of a person. Édouard said to Andre: “Look, with arms, it would make a man.” A little imagination and the Michelin Man was born.

The changing faces of the Michelin Man
Bibendum has changed numerous times over the years. At times probably loose guidelines, at other times clever adapting to the market context. The Bibendum character is flexible enough to allow the Michelin brand and its personality to continue to evolve while keeping an iconic and highly recognisable mark. As a logo it has the power to stand alone. It does not require the Michelin name to be attached. See the logo and you instantly know who is communicating to you. Like Nike, Apple, BP and Shell, Michelin has cemented it’s own iconic status in peoples minds.

Much more than a logo – Personality plus
“He’s much more than an advertising tool or corporate logo,” said Édouard Michelin, the company’s chief executive and the great-grandson of its co-founder. “He has lived through the whole history of the automobile. That gives him a status beyond any other type of corporate logo. He’s alive. No, really.” When Édouard made this statement he was exactly spot on. The Michelin man is alive. He exudes personality and emotion. You cannot help feel a sense of connection with him.

Street Cred
The true sign of a brand that has hit its mark and beyond is seen in street art and pop culture. The Michelin Man is seen throughout popular culture as a logo you can have a bit of fun with. Street credibility pushes beyond the suits and traditional marketing. When a logo is seen as touchable and personable by youth, it has the capacity to be re-energised. It ads to its relevance and enduring nature.

Michelin Man – Pumped Up
Those brands that take a flexible approach and imbue their brand with loads of personality over time can become cultural icons. Brands that become part of popular culture operate at an even more lofty position in the hearts and minds of consumers.

The Michelin Man provides us with lots of lessons and if you would like to chat about how to apply these lessons to your own brand, get in touch.

Tim Wood
Creative Genius

NEWS
News in that the Michelin Man to be given a makeover. Click here to read more.

Daniel Goleman’s new book Ecological Intelligence
tackles the task of providing consumers with a simple but comprehensive process for understanding the environmental and social impacts of the goods we consume. He advocates ‘radical transparency’. A system whereby all the right technical boffins are harnessed to rate the environmental and social impact of a product at every stage of its life from raw materials to waste disposal. Once rated, product packaging can carry a relevant rating device communicating to the world its virtues or otherwise. In addition web sites like www.goodguide.com will play a critical role in communicating to consumers the merits of one product compared with another.

Goleman makes the assumption that once informed consumers will make purchase decisions that are in this planet and society’s best interests. Unfortunately, this where things get a little more complicated (yes even more complicated than actually rating all the products and services). Just about every category that we get to work in on in a branding sense we encounter the same feedback – consumers are interested in environmental issues, but for the majority only if it does not cost them in some way. Give me more environmentally friendly housing options, but don’t charge me more. Give me a more environmentally friendly car, but please don’t make it look daggy or reduce its performance. In consumer land best interests so often boil down to self interest. In a marketing sense it is important that brand custodians understand the environmental band width of their customers, as for many it is very very narrow. It is gradually widening but it is a slow journey.

In B2B markets there is a more urgent push. Business self interest is starting to play out with the growing focus on carbon emissions. Some of the heavy weights like Wal-Mart are also pursuing a stronger environmental pathway, stating in July this year that it wished to create environmental ratings for everything it sells. However, if they have success in introducing their own rating system we run the risk of multiple rating systems and a diluted consumer outcome in terms of understanding and buy-in.

Certainly Daniel Goleman had a best seller and a winning concept with his book on Emotional Intelligence. However, it is also a great example of ‘self interest’ at play. How does one get on in this relationship driven world….yes some degree of emotional intelligence helps. Take two tablets a day (just kidding)! But ecological intelligence that may take a little longer to have its moment in the sun, certainly from a consumer perspective.

Pete

On a recent trip to NYC I came across a guy who had decided that instead of begging for small change that he would be better off delivering customer value. For an investment of one dollar you had some one you could curse, someone devoted to your every desire to get what ever you needed of your chest. And if you were feeling particularly angry with the world, you could invest $50 and have the privilege of kicking this guy in the nuts, and he promised not to kick back. It was a very interesting value proposition, but what appealed to me most was the fact hat he actually had a value proposition, he had put a dollar figure to it and he had developed a communication strategy with his signs to communicate it.

So let me ask you. What is your personal brand value proposition, what is it worth and how do you communicate it? Personal branding is about taking responsibility for understanding and developing the things that are going to build your fame. What is that you wish to be known for in the hearts and minds of those stakeholders (employers/clients/media etc) that will ultimately determine the shape of your future from a career perspective?

Personal branding requires individuals to consciously make decisions about how they are going to differentiate themselves. What attributes will become their signature expressions of who they are, and how they offer value. What personality traits will define them and enhance their appeal to those they most wish to connect with.

One of the most profound changes of the last decade or so is that each person today is now the architect of their own career. You can no longer rely on a corporation to take care of you and accept responsibility for your long- term career success.

Having just witnessed the retrenchment of one of our clients, an amazingly loyal and long serving employee, from a very large and successful organisation, I was once again reminded of the fact we are all operating in a very dynamic talent market. And surprise surprise, there is only one person responsible for the value that you offer to that market.

‘You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend or not’

Novelist Isabel Allende

If you don’t have dreams and work towards them, all you will get is someone else’s dreams and unfortunately some of those being handed out quite frankly suck!

Define your dream and then define your personal brand, as that will ultimately prove to be your
dream machine.

And of course you always have a fall back position – you can always become the go-to-cursing person in your home city. But make sure you do it better than the guy in NYC, as he told me he is thinking of franchising internationally!

Pete

The brands we choose reflect how we see ourselves
Each day we make thousands of conscious and sub-concussion decisions about the brands we wish to include in our lives. Our choice of which brands we choose to connect-with is often a reflection of how we see ourselves and how we wish the world to see us. Some of these brand associates are more overt than others, but when mapped as a whole they create a sense of personal brand identity. ‘Brand Mapping’ as we call it forms part of the Insights process we use on our commercial projects. Brand mapping helps us to immerse our thinking into the lives of target markets our clients’ brands wish to connect with truly and deeply.

Here’s my brand map for Monday 03 August. Try creating your own brand map, or have some of your closest clients and customers track theirs – the results are guaranteed to be interesting. Send us your maps, we’d love to see them too.

Dave.

Brand Map 03 August 2009