Another Planning Blog…

Ben & Jerry’s are going fair trade – and, to celebrate/advertise that fact, they’re committing to 100 fair trades… a nice little idea… follow it on Twitter and FaceBook or go direct to the site here…

From the marketing info, the thought is this:

“Every day from now until Fair Cone Day on April 27th, fans will be invited to bid for the daily prize by submitting what they would do as a fair trade in return for the item on offer. Trades can take the form of a favour, a stunt, a funny video, a good deed or an achievement – whatever they think is a fair trade! Bidders need to be prepared to complete their trade by uploading a picture or video of themselves doing their trade to the 100 Fair Trades online gallery. There are lots more brilliant prizes up for grabs including a Journey Latin America holiday for two people to the Fairtrade producer country, Ecuador and a Trek America Tour to the East Coast of America, including a visit to the Ben & Jerry’s Vermont Factory!”

There’s also a great quote from Jerry Greenfield:

“Fairtrade is about making sure people get their fair share of the pie. The whole concept of Fairtrade goes to the heart of our values and sense of right and wrong. Nobody wants to buy something that was made by exploiting somebody else.”

I’m here – a love story in an Absolut world…

This is fascinating – a movie supported by Absolut, shot by Spike Jonze.

With a campaign around it that does lots of interesting stuff…

Starting everywhere, but including…

1. A trailer:

2. A book:

3. A window display:

4. A web site:

5. A blog:

And that’s just what I’ve seen so far…

It’s content – it’s interesting – it’s got a star director to pique your interest – but I really love that they’re surrounding it with communications that get you involved and intrigued.

Got a bit delayed posting this, but saw two new ads from BBH and Saatchi & Saatchi in the Brits awards show… Couple of nice bits of work, both in the same sector…

Firstly, this one for Visa:

Secondly, this one for Barclaycard:

Which comes with a nice YouTube channel… pictured above.

In the pursuit of a social networking strategy for the brand I’m working on, I’ve been digging around to see what other brands are doing and trawling for information, learnings, advice, etc… And I thought I’d share the five key things I learnt.

While you’re thinking about it, also look at what Umbro have done, because it’s superb and we all like a good case study for reference.

Just in case you’re expecting something else, I was working on defining what a brand should do in the world of social networks, including the likes of Twitter, FaceBook, Flickr, Bebo, MySpace, YouTube, Blogging, etc…

My six main learnings were this:

Be consistently present – don’t ‘dip in’ and then forget to update

If you don’t continue to build your presence, you quickly find that you’ve got a lot of online properties that look untended – it’s the social media equivalent of a derelict shop with some old products in the window. Or a silent guest at a dinner party.

Have personality – probably through a person

One of the major failings of brands who go onto social networks is that they do so on ‘transmit.’ They send out missives like PR releases and expect people to lap them up. In reality, if you talk like a stiff, formal brand and don’t listen in return, you’ll be treated like a bore at a party.

A tip I got was to focus on who does the socialising more than what they’re going to say (although that does come later!).

Be generous – but only on occasion

About a third of people claim to follow brands because of the free stuff they get, which is pretty fair really. Who doesn’t like free stuff? But, if all you do is hand out vouchers and competition prizes, you’ll end up stale still. Make sure that you give away things that are uniquely available through this channel and do it with spontaneity. Make it a treat. Don’t let your social networking sites become your discount outlets.

Fit in, rather than trying to force-fit

Seems obvious really, but there are two huge traps here.

The first is to try desperately to get people to come to your newly created social networking site, rather than building yours on Bebo, MySpace, Facebook, etc… Why? Facebook has 350 million people. You have none. Build it where people are, not where you are.

The second mistake is to go into an environment and treat it by your rules rather than the rules of your host. Don’t. Just because you put your feet on the seats at home, doesn’t make it OK in a cab. So I’m told, anyway

Offer different stuff for different people

Not everyone wants to take part in a competition, write a poem, create music, design a new football boot, spot differences; or vote on other people, and other peoples’ creations. But lots of people do like all of these things.

So, find lots of different levels of involvement and lots of different things for people to get involved with. And don’t put everything in one place. Spread the joy.

Start something, but let other people build on it

The best brands and people are opening up and letting others build on what they started. It doesn’t have to be ‘user-generated’, but let people add to what you’ve got and make it better or change it a tad. It’s part of this ‘letting go of control’ thing that’s going on.

You could start by adding to this…

Repost: First posted at WARC Blogs

It’s time to upgrade from propositions as our holy grail of strategy and briefs.

I know you want to keep them, because they’re familiar, pithy, sometimes single-minded (at least, the good ones are), they form the central part of the strategic brief and you’re probably quite brilliant at finding the right one. Also, frankly, a well-crafted proposition is the strategists showpiece – an opportunity to encapsulate your strategy in a soundbite worthy of Oscar Wilde (or maybe Edward Bulwer-Lytton if you really know your stuff).

The problem is, propositions belong in a world where marketers and advertisers find messages. Things to say to people. Brilliant things that will change hearts and minds, but messages nonetheless.

Yet the world of brands has changed. The most effective brands are finding ways to share beliefs with their audience, to involve them, to engage them. And, although that can involve telling the audience something, it often doesn’t.

Don’t misunderstand me – I’m not trying to say that we should abandon traditional media, which seems more obviously geared to deliver a message. Absolutely not – all media can be effective beyond simply delivering a ‘message’. Nor am I suggesting that the communications world has gone digital, leaving ‘messages’ behind. It has, but not to the absolute demise of everything else.

I believe we should be looking for “thoughts” – organising principles that can gather together the stuff that a brand does, shares and tells the audience. We should be digging for experiences, stories, beliefs, opportunities, utility, and so on – things that people can relate to, pass on, use, get involved in, or simply enjoy. These thoughts can still be expressed with the same single-minded, pithy, quotable brilliance, but they’re not propositions – and they don’t propose ‘messages’ we will broadcast to our ‘target consumers’.

I’m challenging the assumption that we’re looking for messages to give to people – and, therefore, that a proposition is the strategic goal. Because a proposition demands a message – at the very least, you could argue that it demands action, which is still too restrictive.

I’m suggesting we ditch the search for a proposition and start looking for what a brand does with/for an audience, not just what it says.

What do you think?

Repost: First posted at WARC Blogs

Right now, there’s a massive shift taking place – it’s being discussed online, in agencies and with clients. As the media channels fragment and the internet provides the forum for debate, the messages about every brand being discussed by the general public can begin to seriously outnumber those ‘paid for’ by the brand itself. A Harvard Business Review blog article written by Andrew McAfee described it as shedding the “illusion of brand control” which I like as a way of thinking about it.

This call for brands to become comfortable with this loss of control – to release the draconian grip on ‘the brand’ and let it go – is a good call. Allowed free reign, we can then provide events, engagement and more for people to become attached to our brands and they will go forth and spread the good word far and wide. Hopefully.

The simple premise is that positive engagement will lead to positive commentary. And it comes with a realisation that relying on outbound messages alone won’t build a brand like it used to. But it isn’t a shift from one to the other – it’s a merging of the two (or more) different forms of brand communication. As ever, reality is far more complex and muddled.

And, within this muddled world, brands need to keep their heads. I fear that too often the baby has gone with the bathwater – if we can call strategy a baby and traditional creative campaigns the bathwater, that is! But, so much of the interactive work out there seems to lack a sense of purpose, some consistency of behaviour and a degree of stated belief. In other words, it lacks strategy.

All this change should mean that strategy is more important than ever – the more promiscuous and varied we have to become in order to connect people with our brands, the more crucial it is that we do so with direction.

We’re not looking for a message, though – we’re looking for an organising principle by which the brand behaves. That can be applied to all activities.

The point is that strategic purpose is crucial to getting all these connections right. And being consistent and recognisable. Which means that strategists and the surrounding companies that aid with strategic direction should become more important than ever. Bring it on!

This is a repost – first posted on WARC blogs

It’s that time of year and I’ve just sat through what may be the entire set of ads (it’s hard to know when you’re only watching them online)… However, it’s slim pickings this year, I think. There’s plenty that’s good. But there’s few that are truly great. And there’s a lot more stuff I’ve seen before than usual – good use of YouTube inspiration for dramatic animals on Carmax and one that looks superb unless you’ve seen the UK Vauxhall Corsa ads (Kia). Which is a shame, because that would have made my top 5 otherwise. And it’s part of the reason that a top five ended up being more of a “top 3 and some other stuff”…

1. Coke – two superb spots this year. The Simpsons one is my favourite, albeit borrowed interest (well used, though). Sleepwalker is beautifully done too.

2. Deutsch come out of the gate swinging with a great spot for VW.

3. Monster.com’s Fiddling Beaver from

Backed up by the online fiddling beaver (elf me style)…

And then some other notable stuff…

Bud Light had 4 solid spots – Stranded is my favourite, but they’re all good.

Hyundai’s ode to paint. Don’t know who did it, but it’s captivating.

And, finally, GoDaddy.com… and the uber-effective strategy that is suggesting you’ll see more at GoDaddy.com (a ‘call to action’ that I’m guessing works!).

Interesting video from R/GA talking about what they see as the “way forward” – it may not all be right, but they’ve definitely got some interesting points…

Lovely idea – you can only apply if you live in the US, but there you go.

Allegedly, they took their Superbowl budget and spent it on this. To quote from Mashable: “That could be changing. For the first time in 23 years, Pepsi will not have any ads in the Super Bowl. Instead, the company will be spending $20 million on a social media campaign it’s calling The Pepsi Refresh Project.”

Which means they won’t be producing anything like this… how times have changed in 13 years!

Some great new work from W+K on Target – as pointed out to me by the rather talented Mr Cossell in London.