Archive for the ‘Brand Promise’ Category
Do You Miss Old Ads?
Me Neither
Once upon a time just showing smiling people next to a bunch of stuff was enough. I don’t miss this advertising technique. We’re still attracted to great piles of stuff, of course. It’s just that now we demand to be romanced. We want the stuff we buy to move us up to the next hipper rung on the status ladder. Or we want a word from a Steve Jobs-like character to tell us what the cool people care about.
Still, we’re in the season where just showing a pile of stuff is probably strategy enough to get us to open our wallets.
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Corporate Voice Meet Shiny Plastic Food Tray
“No, you know what, screw it, we love it man.”
Recent conversations set me to thinking about corporate voice. Clients uniformly want to be heard with bold authority but then the lawyers and regulators find the [fresh/spicy/freaky] copy and emasculate it with sharp strokes.
But let’s not just point at lawyers and regulators, let’s admit that bold is a dangerous position. Bold words might fail. Or be seen as stupid. Bold words may pin me to a promise: uncomfortable!
Voice has always taken courage. Being heard has always been a risky endeavor. Especially when what you have to say goes against the grain. Think Elijah calling fire from the heavens. Think John the Baptist nailing the authorities as vipers. Think Richard Branson. That’s right: He of the airlines and music and phones and whatever else his Virgin Group encompasses. He of the bold statements. Maybe Sir Richard Branson is no Elijah or John the Baptist, but his company did produce this airline tray mat, which is at least a tiny voice crying in the wilderness of corporate voice.
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Image credit: Kirk Livingston
3 Moments of Unexpected Joy in this VW Spot
“Was that me? Was I singing?”
Building in order of sheer happiness:
- Joyful Moment #1: The soundtrack. I’m not sure who this is but it reminds me of the Moody Blues and so the late 70s/early 80’s come rushing back in all their triangular, puffy-shouldered wonder.
- Joyful Moment #2: When our man mouths the lyrics and they dance. Love it!
- Joyful Moment #3: “Was that me? Was I singing?” That guy nailed it. Let’s have more corporate meetings with that guy.
GC/BC says the idea has been done before. I’m sure it has. But I can’t stop watching it. And I feel more favorable toward the power of German engineering.
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Via GC/BC
PostScript:
Well—I’ve been schooled. This entire concept is lifted from the 80’s band a-ha. Here’s their official Take On Me video. I vaguely remember the mid-80s. One thing I was not doing was watching MTV. So I missed it. Whatever: now I’m all caught up.
Oy! Getting a history lesson from advertising.
What next?
Copywriting Tips for English Majors #8: Work Past Your First Thought
Instant believability is a must + clowns are not a message
This ad is like a DVD scratch that hits at the climax of Inception: all plot and story get stuck and there is no movement forward.
Copyranter offers a mini-lesson in copywriting from this ad from Kazakhstan. Too many times we go with our first gut idea without knowing how the pieces fit. When the pieces do not precisely fit the message is lost.
Check out Copyranter’s list of questions/thoughts about the ad.
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Via copyranter
A Stage for Prince and a Grave for Tiny Tim: What Music Says About Minneapolis/St. Paul
Minnesota Theology of Place: Live Performance Matters in the Twin Cities
If one were rooting around trying to sort what values and practices make a place unique, music would be a good start. Jon Bream, music critic for the StarTribune recently wrote about why Minneapolis/St. Paul has become a home away from home for many rising musical stars. Bream cited four very different artists/bands (Dawes, Brandi Carlisle, Eric Hutchinson and JD McPherson) and noted how audience turn-out in the Twin Cities fuels these artists. Mr. Bream commented:
The key factors are open-minded audiences who love live music; a variety of venues that help artists build a career, and support from radio and other media.
The Current, of course, is a vocal apologist for the new music that grows outside the mainstream (and often, eventually, moves mainstream). I would argue the Cedar Cultural Center has been doing that same good work for years and years. Then there are the high profile, historied venues like First Avenue that have helped audiences and artists form connections. There are many more, of course.
A few days back I wondered aloud what a theology of place might look like for Minnesota. I cited all sorts of influences that would speak to that question. 
Developing a theology of place is to look at a community from a perspective unfamiliar to most of us. It is a perspective that begins with a commitment to belief in God and then wonders what God is doing in that place, among those people, through their history. It’s a deeply rooted sort of activity: digging down and back to find out who did what and asking what they thought when they did it. And then asking how what they did affected others. And also asking how their belief structure enabled the outcomes before us.
To be intensely local for a moment, what would a theology of place look like for the Twin Cities—just starting with music? Bream’s observation of how audiences love live music fits with the general interest in theater in the cities. Apart from the Guthrie, there are dozens of small theaters in the cities that are producing memorable performances. Does a population that welcomes new music and new artists and helps support dozens of very small theaters mean we like the notion of “live performance” and see it as a way to connect with each other? Maybe we like to see our meaning made right before us—because we know that an audience is part of the meaning making.
Maybe the notion of a fondness for live performance accounts for the 20,000 people who showed up in St. Paul’s Lowertown last weekend for Northern Spark. And maybe our love for live performance accounts for the bike and craft beer cultures that are all about connecting (this year’s Artcrank pulled in an overflowing crowd).
Not that we’re unique in these things—but there’s something happening. As a curious person and one with belief in God, I cannot help but wonder what it means—even as I rejoice in the vibrant commitment to connection.
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Can you tell the truth if your form is a liar?
Herzog & Morris & Searching for Sugar Man
The politburo of Kirkistan recently made its way through two documentaries. One paved the way to fully appreciate the other.
In Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary, Director Pepita Ferrari set documentarians Errol Morris, Werner Herzog and others in front of the camera to show and tell how their work is entirely biased toward telling their story.
Why would anyone expect otherwise?
Except there is something about the documentary form that shouts “objective”—which turns out to be a profound misdirect. Some documentarians are not above setting up and staging shots in their passion for telling their story. This should surprise no one. And it is neither wrong nor a misrepresentation—depending on how the documentary is billed. As always: caveat emptor. And this: sometimes the story is true though not all the parts actually happened. Fiction writers lead with this all the time (the preface to Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried comes to mind).
Ferrari’s film was a perfect set-up for Searching for Sugar Man. This is an unbelievable tale of a washed out 70’s era Motor City singer/songwriter who helped foment revolution in South Africa—but who never knew it. This film exhibits breathtaking storytelling, with the paradox gripping you from the first scenes. It’s also a history lesson in how apartheid fell. I won’t give away the end except to say it is one of the sweetest stories I’ve heard in a long time.
How about taking in a documentary this weekend?
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JC Penney and Advertising for the Brave
Honesty as a marketing technique? Nah—that’ll never catch on.
They say desperate times call for desperate measures. That might explain why when some wiseacre proposed honesty as a communication tool, the JC Penney marketing honchos bit.
The result is memorable.
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Via AdFreak
Pope Francis Tango: Simplicity, Poverty, Rigor
Messaging that Walks Then Talks
I’m not a Roman Catholic sort of guy, still I find myself drawn to the early descriptions of this tango-driven, Argentinian man-for-the-poor Pope. His actions—catching a crowded mini-van to dinner, hoisting his luggage while paying his hotel bill, crowding into elevators and stairways with everyone else—illustrate some new thing. This new thing looks closer to people and sympathetic rather than distant, academic (in the fusty, out-of-touch sense) and authority-driven. The Roman Catholic Church remains an immense hierarchy with all sorts of problems, but this new thing looks positive.
I like that he wants the organization to get back to evangelism. That seems like he is peering into the right well, looking back at the roots. If he had asked me about repositioning the church (still waiting for the call), I could point in no better direction.
Of course, all sorts of bad, coercive, manipulative, openly evil things have been done under the guise of evangelism. But at its best—and it gets hard to strip away the muck accumulated over centuries—Christ’s message of redemption carried by people who are themselves changed, is transformative.
So. Bravo for pointing back to the roots, Pope Francis.
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Image credit: John Stark via Frank T Zumbachs Mysterious World
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