Brand Driving

I spent an enjoyable Sunday mourning driving the new Alfa Romeo spider at Stoke Park. Brand driving days are not new but as a way of moving prospects from 'cool' to 'warm' they are very effective. Slick invitation process leading you to a comfortable environment, piles of Sunday papers, plentiful food and a stack of cars to drive. Hopefully this leads to a warm fuzzy feeling about the brand. Well it worked for Jake (11) but his father was perplexed. Why when trying to impress all things Alfa, do you have the majority of the demo cars in any colour other than evocative Alfa Red? most of the spiders were in fact, in very bland silver. Also on a day when details really count, why not hire Italian staff for all the meet and greet stuff. The agency behind the Alfa TV work KROW are here, not sure who organised the direct work.

Update on 2006-10-11 14:04 by Philip

Forgot to mention it is the Italian agency Armando Testa who recently won the global Alfa business. For evidence of the real passion within the brand look at the new 8c here. Although Sniff Petrol had a rather telling comment on its name here. Still on all things motoring just seen this Bently ad via Cool Hunters. Belongs in the file 'If you can, why not'

OK, it was us.

During the summer, kelvin (a rather brilliant writer) and myself went to The Bushmills distillery in County Antrim**, We were working on the relaunch of 'Bushmills Original' and needed to get closer to our subject (!) While wondering around the distillery buildings we came across this skip. A bit of childish retouching later (thanks Stu Wilson) and heh presto an internet myth is born!

** = A rather fab area of Ireland. The Harbour Bar in Portrush serves some of the best Guinness I've tasted. They also have a photo of a drowned elephant on the wall - its a long story. 

Kilmarnock

  

Spent yesterday in Scotland on business. Nice cows and didn't rain that much.

Free Charts

Trying to breath life into a rather dry Power Point** presentation yesterday, came across this simply inspired little device for making charts.  Produced by the Huffington Post, it ranks blog posts into graphics. (i.e. Heat only just more important than the Hoff, also 'Shouting' loads more popular than 'flip charts') Pointed out by the excellent metasurface who used it to compare food stuffs with political groups. Hezbollah losing out to a bag of Taco's, but Hamas managing to hold there own against a bowl of Hummus

 

** = Actually the web is awash with advice on this very subject. The 10 slide rule here. But my favorite by far is comparing Darth Vaders slides with Yoda's. Thanks to Garr Reynolds of Presentation Zen for that.

Scrap books good

Just come across this fantastic blog: Ace jet 170. set up by a graphic designer in Belfast. A collection of found type and graphic images. (seen via typepads featured blog section - normally the preserve of 'fudge fairy' makers in Baltimore)

Scrap books are the great guilty secret of creatives and compulsive hoarders. This book 'inspired' was plugged by Russell Davies recently for the same reasons.

Are we losing something with digital scrap books like mobile Flickr and del.icio.us etc. There is a certain randomness to turning the pages of an actual scrap book pondering inspiration that the ordered neatness of tags misses. The balance of course is to use both.

Creative inspiration is so random at the best of times, (interesting view here from Greg Turner-Rahman) I am cautious of digital scrap books. mind you having seen the amazing Delicious Monster software, I have a certain secret geek need to see all my CDs/DVDs/Books pictorially catalogued. I just know i would never get round to doing it.

   

Soichiro Honda

This quote formed part of the F1 exhibition I saw last weekend. It reminded me what a top chap Soichiro Honda was. Having spent a number of years working on the Honda account you get used to reading about him, but it's a great story of bloody mindedness, engineering prowess and cheap dentistry. read more here. In the first few years after W+K won the business. A number of quotes were used on large banners at the motorshows of '02/03. The cavernous NEC was full of bombastic corporate over statement, and here was a brand (the former Eastbourne chariot) trying to shake off its past by introducing the thoughts of a man exposing failure as a means to succeed. Outside of sports cars (Colin Chapman, Enzo Ferrari) passionate single personalities are not felt within modern automotive brands. Recent Honda films both broadcast and online make Soichiro's influence and achievements much easier to understand.

When we pitched for and won the Honda DM business ('02), I used an anecdote about the Honda's first F1 car the RA272, and how as a child I had lusted after the Tamiya kit of it, I knew it was different I just didn't know why.  It took awhile to 'get' Honda in the way W+K did, but when I did it was like unlocking the mystery of my childhood fascination. Direct mail gave us the wonderful opportunity to explain the legacy of Soichiro. In doing so we avoided making bland models* sexy and grey plastic interiors* desirable. We extended the themes W+K had begun but completed the story with invitations to visit a local dealer. This fab recent piece encouraged owners of older Honda's to return to main dealers.

** New models like the Civic address this.

You can download the award winning APG W+K Honda presentations here. (click 'downloads' +scrowll) also ex-W+K planner and fab blogger Russell Davis talks about Honda here.

Stencils? just say no.

    Youth marketing short cuts part 4. Stencils = street cred. Wrong. Banksy's work has spawned so many imitators. marketing agencies do really need to move on. Or at the very least there creative departments be issued with these new T.shirts.

Typography** and live music are both in very rude health at the moment, with such a vibrant resource, stencilled fonts as shown above really won't do. There's a bunch of flyers in your local pub that will  be more arrestingly new than these.

yes, yes, I do realise it was only last week I was praising the 'Children of men' poster, but that was before I considered the above and the Dirty Sanchez movie et al. 

** = scroll down 4 for the myspace masterpiece

Just add water

New corporate developments talk about the harmony between public and business use. The reality is often a sterile environment that actually amplifies the difference between those high up in glass towers and those being blown around in stone clad canyons at there base. The new More London Riverside. Looks rather dull from afar but has really sweet human features at ground level, namely a stream running down one side and water sculptures like this at the main entry point from the tube and train. Just about every one I saw today either brushed there hands along the side of the sculptures or skipped across the stream with a smile. That has to be  a better achievement than how many Starbucks/Cafe Rouge/AllBarOne/et al are signed up at opening. If you do get a chance to go inside 2More Place, the view is stunning. Visit London on the 6th floor, have  a corner meeting room that looks out over HMS Belfast and Tower Bridge. The spare floors below are being used for a fair amount of location filming. I believe so far an intriguing mix of Andrew Marr and Footballers wives.

Web 2.0 v Pubs

Like so many I've banded the phrase web 2.0 about in meetings with a slightly hazy idea as to a definitive meaning.

Steve Rubel has attempted a very simple one here, and the following comments posted kinda nailed it for me so web 2.0 is "Sites that derive there value and growth from the actions of there users" or to put it another way, a decent pub. 

So rather than clogging up message boards with convoluted technical dictates, just remember; web 2.0 = The Bread & Roses.

Sorry

Just re-read yesterdays post, bloody dull, sorry about that. I guess the key message was that: the best festivals are chaotic, noisy, messy and filled with the air of unpredictability. Where as most brands despite what they'd like to project to there audiences are not any of the former.

The  added disappointment is the general lack of creative innovation coming from the marketing agencies that are responsible for seamlessly blending brand / festival / audience.

For the moment I won't list best / worst. However this year I have noticed some grand work, with fab ideas coming from the following agencies: Iris, RPM, Cake. 

UK Festival inc2

     Neil Boorman wrote a piece in this weeks Time Out (page 123) about the nature of corporate sponsors and there behaviour having matured over recent years. (he also plugged his brand burning event, which i'll skip but Russell Davis does that proud here) Neil is right most festivals this year were pretty full on 'brand experiences' BUT they had (on the whole) cleaner loos/better security and managed capacity compared to five years ago. A few other thoughts.

Most brands still do little to really imbed there values with the audience they have spent so much money attracting. The exception is Innocents Fruitstock where every detail reinforced the attitude of the brand. -Including leaving 'thankyou' tags on peoples bikes.

Southern Comfort had pretty much the same event presence as previous years (Big Chill/Bestival) but ran with some great new ads and promotions in the run up.

Carlings Reading/Leeds events caught the mood of the year with out any technology or branding gimmicks, For them an added bonus was Muse playing out of there skins at Reading, causing a mini stamped the following week to ebay for the bootlegs. Compared with the ham-fisted V festival Virgin brand antics, I imagine the Carling boys are feeling pretty smug.

Ben & Jerry's had a second go at there Sundae event, which with a £5 ticket price was always going to be oversubscribed. They did host an extra day to cover demand, but value is a precious thing and with such cheap tickets most punters had had enough mellowness and were heading for the bright lights of Clapham High Street long before the end.

Proportions

 

Alfonso Cuaron's new film Children of men starring Clive Owen has some great typography in the publicity. BUT who ever laid the ads out only works in landscape format. The DPS is great, looks new and has the feel of an 'event' movie. The single page portrait however is a mess of type. To much information trying to say to many different things. Plus the dark tint at the bottom means you lose the futurist feel of the DPS. In fact the portrait ad reminds me more of historical conflict like Enemy at the Gates.

Full colour broadsheets

Since the upgrading of print technologies for broadsheets there has been a steady improvement in the use of colour in ads. I am quite taken by the  subtle use of full colour bleeds. These two appeared in yesterdays Observer. both really stood out, not by being shouty but simply disrupting there host environments enough to catch the eye. An added bonus is readable body copy on both.

Working Enviroments

I am working from two different new offices this week, An intriguing view of contrasting attitudes to ways of cultivating creative thought. Russell Davies rather excellent blog covered similar thoughts recently. I feel every creative task could do with a slightly different environment so therefore any designed space will compromise. (That said I am going to spend a day in a Scottish field with a herd of cows next week, hopefully to resolve a number of rather specific creative challenges. ) Recent experience does prove that when agency directors spend large amounts of time with floor plans its a sure sign territory and not new ideas really matter. This weeks experience has made me consider a top ten of all the places I've worked, which I'll post soon, If I can really be arsed I'll put any pics I can find to prove a point about some of the grimiest places produce the best work, while the anodyne wide open spaces of a new build hi-tech curtail some of the wilder flights of fancy. Might also be something to do with the atmosphere created by in-house catering versus the pub over the road. The former producing lovely food at a subsidised rate, but the latter encourages more robust creative critique.

UK Festival inc

Been a rather big year for music festivals and there sponsors. I am supposed to be writing a bit on the future value of such activity . But this picture amused me no end. The Ben & Jerrys ice cream festival on Clapham Common. Does not matter how high the fence those Mr Whippy chimes are going to pull the punters.

 

Dad, blogs are dull.

This mourning Alice was at pains to point out how dull blogs were compared to the interactive nature of sites like Bebo. While a digital migrant like myself has got very excited by web 2.0, Alice and her chums have swiftly zoomed through Habbo Hotel (fab graphics and a funky office in Islington) via Bebo, swerved Myspace to MSN messenger. Even Jake's fallen for one, bit like Habbo but with fat penguins. Anything that gets you excited has to be good, its just that Alice considers interactive community sites as a base level function. Far from exciting. So an emotional divide by age and experience? Not that important but its interesting that most senior marketers fall in to my camp. These the very people trying to influence the emotions of a youthful audience.  post by Jason Oke here. sets out 5 key bits of advice on a similar subject. Jason's post is on part of the Leo Burnett Canada site, which if you have't seen it is really rather good.

information is king

I may be really late coming to this blog, but Seat Guru is fab. Just what bored salesman should have done all along rather than surf cheap porn in the departure lounge. If blogs are about opening up information for all to use this is a great example, now if you can overlay the events from Air Babylon (location of dead body storage & Air crew high jinks) you really would fly informed.

Blogs and life

So Blogs may be the home of the over ego'd and under employed but they do present most brands with the dilemma of 'should they shouldn't they' With so many comments about the postive nature of digtal feedback. Do you go subtle and just seed a workers/company forum that becomes public by stealth or do you take out ads proclaiming your brand at the for front of web 2.0 with its new interactive feed back/up load/rate my CEO features. I suspect most brands are bumbling slowly into some kind of understanding that consumers enjoy the freedom and anonymous nature of online feedback. Rather than just a  'design-your-own' short term promotional campaign. Great article on both here. It is far to easy to list bad corporate blogs so instead a bunch that are all trying in there own way to shift brands along.

Honda

An unfinished brand? Honda. In this case the incomplete story is the appeal. I really enjoy there bravery. Most automotive marques shout at you with an arrogant confidence that there brand is just fine. Everythings sorted and within this years model line-up is a car designed just for your needs. The work that appears in the UK for Honda comes from a different angle, more a questioning approach about the process of design and function. Not some twaddle about parking sensors shot against a winding mountain road . This is truly amazing as it was not to many years ago when all the brand wanted to talk about (rather sheepishly) was reliability and safety. Neither bad things but not subjects that were ever going to make me consider the brand was aimed at anyone else other than an uncle from Bournemouth. Honda make just about anything with an engine, which does make them fab engineers with a slightly shaky reputation for visual aesthetics. In Japan and the US there are models that do counter the grey plastic reputation of 1980's Honda's. More here. I rather like this inconsistent global approach it even extends to there web presence. Later when I have more time I'll expand with more examples of  fluid/solid brands.