Thank you for being unashamedly “inspired” by a similar brand in an adjacent category. And for demonstrating that sometimes the simplest and best ideas are in sitting right before our very eyes – or rather just a couple of aisles along down at the supermarket.
Whilst I may not necessarily like the ad, it certainly does standout – which is no bad thing when launching a new proposition…just ask Barry Scott over at Cillit Bang.
Thank you for showing us how to play to and piggy-back an existing, well, establishing unit of meaning – in the form of the Best of Both descriptor, which directly leverages all the hard work that Hovis have done establishing their Best of Both sliced-bread proposition.
And thank you for creating a potential new code with the Yellow cap. It remains to be seen whether you can make it yours and yours alone…or whether the proliferation of colours (purple or orange for the, albeit multi-brand, 1% Fat milk) will prove to be too much for consumers.
Thank you for allowing me to indulge in a spot of flippancy with your #LoveItHateItNameIt personalised pot promotion.
It turns out that moustaches, like you, are polarising.
Thank you for reminding me that polarisation is a good thing, to be sought and championed, at the expense of lowest common denominator positioning which, by seeking to appeal to everybody, ends up failing to motivate anybody.
For brands, the middle-ground is often the most treacherous. No danger for you, as featured in a previous blog here.
I should also acknowledge the wise-words of a former client, Alan Martin, who once told me, “When you hear the word “polarising” in a debrief, sit up and listen…because something interesting is going on.” Amen.
And thank you for not only being the kings of limited edition innovation, but also senior royalty when it comes to licensing. Where others talk, it appears that you do.
Low cost, incremental, big impact, new-news. Lovely.
Thank you for Please Spam Responsibly #holidayspam…despite not being a sophisticated, or even engaged, social media user (especially on holiday), it makes me smile every time I see it.
The combination of Social Proof (one of Robert Cialdini’s 6 key principles of influence), and the satirising of both social media behaviour and language (tanningfails and #livelikealocal) brilliantly bring to life what could have been a fairly functional claim.
Now I don’t know whether or not that’s a genuine point of difference, representing a truly innovative aspect of your overall service package and pricing plan (vs. EE, Vodafone, O2 etc)…but because you’re claiming it in such a differentiated way, it might as well be. It’s what people will remember you for.
And thank you for casting Michael Buerk to do the voice over. What a perfect choice, given his newscaster and 999 history. He delivers his lines brilliantly.
As he did in this wonderful, much written, complained and probably tweeted about ad from Marmite:
Also, thanks for reminding me of the principle that brand architecture should help your consumers and hinder your competitors.
I get it that the natural tendency when innovating and creating new categories is to create new brands – or sub-brands in your case – to show that you’ve got something new.
For sure, you need a signpost to the shiny new toy. But right now, I’m just a little bit confused.
Whereas over on the other channel – who I should also be thanking in the same way I’m thanking you – I pretty much know what’s what.
Thank you for your “world-famous, award-winning, best-selling, original steam-free milk frother” – it’s making my new-for-February-waste-fewer-resources-i.e.-time-and-money-at-Costa initiative a deliciously satisfying synch.
Thank you for being a stand out example of kitchen-gadgetry.
I love kitchen gadgets because two things that I enjoy experiencing – genuine innovation (i.e. the solution to an unsatisfactorily met need) and design (mechanical, ergonomic and aesthetic) – so regularly come together in a highly pleasing fashion. Just take apple corers…
Of course, many kitchen gadgets fail to live up to their promise and are in the back of the cupboard before you can say “Yes chef” – but a quick inspiration-safari to a Kitchenware store before an ideation workshop never fails to deliver a couple of starter-for-10 ideas.
Thanks again Aerolatte – yummy and Costa-busting frothy decafs all round!
Thank you for appealing to my weekends-are-for-doing-stuff aspiration and for giving me a right laugh with your latest advert.
Insightful editorial theme for January too.
Of course it’s nice to have nothing planned and to do nothing from time to time, but doesn’t life feel so much better when things are being done, ticks are being added to mental do-list and new challenges are being tackled?
Even if badly. And especially in January
I think so.
And thank you for helping yourself to the emerging cultural code brought to us by Breaking Bad (middle-aged-man-in-white-underpants-with-shoes-still-on) to convey Ian’s chaotic unravelling.
Thank you for breaking the mould and doing something different.
Toy advertising – of which I am not a fan in principle, but have seen a fair amount of recently thanks to Channel 5’s Milkshake – is so samey, so formulaic and let’s face it, so nauseating, that when you popped onto our screen on Saturday morning with something that was different, I actually watched for the entire 60 seconds.
My instinctive response to 99% of toy adverts is a straight ‘no’, thereby maintaining my idealised vision of myself and our children as not the weak-minded types that resort or succumb to pester-power (which of course is not the case, but it helps to pull the wool over one’s own eyes from time to time).
But because you did something different, because you didn’t try to win me over with the sickening glaze of pink sparkles, glitter and girls with bunches bleating “Oh yeah! in American accents that my daughter loves but I hate, you’re now in my consideration set.
Well, I say that. On account of this ad, I’ll be more than likely visit your website at some point in mid-December. Which I guess is, for you, a result.
Thank you for giving us the best line of advertising copy so far this year: “Carpe Diem. It means Grab the Frisbee“:
Whilst Be More Dog has given me a good old laugh, for which I’m grateful, it does feel a little bit “off-brand”. Where are the bubbles? Where’s the blue sky? Where’s the water? After all, you’ve spent 10 years establishing those codes, why go and throw them all away now?
But hang on a wee second Mr Brand Purist. (Not quite sure why I’m referring to myself in the third person here, nor affecting Scottishness…but anyway.)
As it happens I’m coming up to the end of my 24 month contract with you. And even after nearly 4 years with you, we don’t have much of a relationship.
You send me monthly emails telling me how much money you’re going to take from my account.
You send me texts informing me that I’ve got through my monthly 100mb data allowance – which seemed loads 23 months ago, but now just seems pitiful – and would I like to Bolt-on some more for only £3?
You send me PRIORITY Moments texts announcing concerts and other stuff, 99% of which don’t interest me, although are still worth receiving if it means I can get early dibs on Coldplay tickets like I did last year. (Barclaycard did the honours this year helping get my mother-in-law and I to Hyde Park to see The Rolling Stones.)
My current plan is to switch to EE (formerly Orange who I switched from to you to get my first iPhone), get a nice new shiny iPhone (possibly hanging on for the iPhone 5S rumoured for an October launch) and then get my home broadband through them too (with a nice new shiny router).
I’m fairly certain I can be bothered.
But this Be More Dog thing has piqued my interest. OK, so there’s no bubbles, but as your Priority Moments is not bad, I was intrigued to check it out. Which I did.
Hmmm. This O2 Refresh thing sounds good.
And there are the bubbles. Ahhh, that’s better.
And O2 Tu Go sounds kind of interesting.
So on-brand bubbles or off-brand cats and dogs but no bubbles, Be More Dog has alerted me to some service and product innovations that you’re offering that otherwise I would not have known about.
So perhaps you can thank Be More Dog for retaining me as a customer for another 24 months. Perhaps. No switch to EE. No hassle. New phone for me probably on a more expensive contract.
Thank you for taking a near perfect and insightful product concept (for Ultra Gold Screws) and turning it into a beautifully executed advert that’s wonderfully nuanced in terms of its targeting and that celebrates the emotional benefit (i.e. pride) around which you’re building your brand.
Thank you for your insight (“We know when you take pride in your work. It’s the details that make the difference”) which demonstrates your deep understanding of your target consumers.
It would have be so tempting to have gone down the road of a self-fulfilling product insight (e.g. “Isn’t it annoying when your screws don’t go in smoothly?) but you’ve gone for a brand and category insight that operates at a level above the product category. Bravo!
Thank you for successfully targeting both tradesmen and keen DIY-ers. Fundamentally, both groups want to do a job that they’re proud of, although for Tradesmen there’s the added incentive of wanted to be paid and recommended whilst for DIY-ers there’s the satisfaction and economic advantage in not having to call in a Tradesman. You manage to tick both boxes especially with the line “A range of screws, fit for professionals”.
Thank you for your product description – lots of lovely benefits and Reasons to Believe in there. And for visualising both the insight and the benefits so beautifully. Accuracy and precision like that is what every tradesmen and DIY-er aspires to.
Although you’ve done it before, so it’s no real surprise.
I love the close up shots. The dust. The pencil. The Chisel. The drill.
Just as M&S did to food a few years back – with their much parodied food-porn ads (It’s not just food, this is M&S food) – you’ve turned DIY into an object of visual desire, something to be admired, celebrated, ogled. Something to be proud of – i.e. playing right into the sweetspot of your brand positioning…(we’re proud to put) our name on it.
Personally I think that M&S’ recent food work is a vast improvement as it has the same emotional out-take but without the overt Nigella-style food-pornification element…and the scope to be parodied so extensively.
Thank you for working in collaboration with a celebrity…as opposed to just using their image in the hope that some of their kudos will rub-off on you.
Spot him? He was in there. Near the beginning. Your brand ambassador.
Nice, light touch that.
It would have been so easy to think: Who’s a famous glasses wearer? Ah yes. Heston Blumenthal! Let’s do a deal with his agent, bung him some dosh and get him to wear some of our glasses in an ad. Job done.
But you’ve been so much smarter than that.
He’s baked-in. He’s part of the brand. He’s one of you. His creativity and innovation are your creativity and innovation.
People are fed up with contractually obliged disinterested celebrities faking their brand loyalty. We all know that they’re doing it for the cash. And we’ve all got used to it. It’s OK. Even if it does make us feel like mugs.
The difference between your relationship with Heston and Santander’s recent “effort” with Jenson Button, Rory Mcllroy and Jessica Ennis is inspiring and depressing in equal measure…
Now I suspect that Santander is trying to be ironic. Rather than have celebrities act appallingly badly, why not have them deliver their lines in such a wooden and dead-pan fashion that there can be no mistake that they’re doing it on purpose?
(Was this a hasty creative change once Jenson, Rory and Jessica appeared on set and their limited acting talents became apparent? Actually I think Jessica’s interpretation is pretty good…which cannot be said for the other two)
Viewed through that lens, the Santander ad is quite funny. But I’m not sure people will pick up on the irony if it’s intended. They’ll just think that Santander is the bank that spends loads of money on celebrities because they’ve got loads and the boss likes Formula1 and Golf…and feels like he should balance things up by having a woman in there too.
Think the irony-radar may also have been faulty when this was made, but it’s a good laugh.
Well, they were only just out of the ’80s I suppose.
Thank you for being an iconic brand that’s on the move.
Too often category leading iconic brands rest on their laurels, failing to capitalise on and leverage their equity – they’re known for being good at one thing and that’s good enough for them.
But not you.
You’re not satisfied with being the category defining grey-pot-with-white-gunk-in-it-that’s-good-for-nappy-rash-and-some-other-stuff-too and I thank you for being a great example of a brand that’s not just sitting back, comfortable with business as usual.
I want to thank you for your new ad, the very clear takeout from which is that you’re no longer just a nappy rash brand, but now a brand for all sorts of everyday skin scrapes and scratches.
Aside from being a clever little parody of that famous scene from Jaws (a reference which I suspect might be sadly lost on many people), this ad states very clearly that you’re no longer just for babies’ bums.
Of course people have been using you for much more than nappy rash for many years (i.e. as an antiseptic healing cream) and indeed your packaging has said as much – Eczema, Surface Wounds, Minor Burns, Acne, Bed Sores etc.
But it’s great to see you embracing and making a virtue of these alternative usages and applications.
And it’s a notable change in direction from what you’ve been communicating in the very recent past, which firmly consolidated the perception of you in the Nappy Rash trench.
Secondly, I want to thank you for your recent innovation.
A bold but logical step into an adjacent category and of course leveraging all of Johnson & Johnson’s skincare expertise…I don’t know what ProDerm Technology is, but it sounds good, just what my kids need.
And thank you for taking on a triple innovation challenge
Going into a new category (sun protection)
With a new format (sunscreen mousse)
Requiring consumers to adopt a new consumer behaviour (as in “Wayne, will you ask the nanny to mousse baby Klay, ‘cos I cannot reach from my sunlounger?”
I admire your courage and self-belief.
And thank you for your previous innovation – a skin care cream.
Thank you for broadening your frame of reference, overtly going after a new target consumer and underlining that you’re about so much more than Nappy Rash.
If it had been me, I would have done the Mousses first and then the Skin Care Cream, but that may be being overly strategic and purist about things.
No doubt you had loads of adults using Sudocrem anyway, so it made sense to develop a product specifically for them, the chances of picking up new users and incremental volume significantly outweighing the inevitable cannibalisation effect.
And who doesn’t want incremental volume?
I do have a slight question mark in my mind about what sits at the heart of the brand at the masterbrand level – the big idea that ties it all together and sits above the Antiseptic Healing Cream, Mousses, Skin Care Cream sub-ranges, but I suspect that will come in due course and I’m looking forward to it.
Thank you for describing – with an apparently irony-free straight face – the huge, massive and vociferous global outcry to the planned restrictions on the new Xbox One as ‘candid feedback’.
Well that’s one way of putting it…!
I mean, come on.
‘Candid feedback’ is what you should have been seeking BEFORE you announced one of your biggest strategic innovations and competitive plays of the decade, not gathering once the shit has hit the fan so spectacularly after the event.
Have you not heard of market research?
It’s when you talk to your consumers and explore how they might react to the sorts of things that you’re thinking of doing.
One focus group, just one focus group, with one tiny sub-segment of ‘gamers’ would have told you that restricting the sharing of games, restricting sales of pre-owned titles and requiring daily online authentication might not have been such a hot idea.
The last ‘game’ (as in computer game) that I played in earnest was Snake on my trusty Nokia 3210, c.1999, but even I could have told you that such a fundamental change dictated so prescriptively was not going to go down so well.
But I am being purposefully facetious and doing you a disservice.
Of course you did market research. Of course you did.
But I suspect you only heard what you wanted to hear.
I think you were seduced by positive responses to intriguing new features such as the ability to access your game library from a friend’s house.
I think you only heard the things that fitted with your strategic vision for a new era of digitally-centered console gaming with a forward-looking approach to games distribution, inspired by iTunes and PC gaming service Steam.
I think you were listening too hard to the games designers and publishers who are (understandably) sick of losing out to piracy and second-hand sales.
In amongst all that noise I think you forgot to listen, to properly listen, to the people who are actually going to go out and spend money on your stuff. The gamers.
But having said all that, thank you (and I’m thanking you on the behalf of the ‘gaming community’) for putting things right.
Sure it’s an embarrassing U-turn, a humbling climb-down, an admission that the other guys (namely Sony with the PS4) got it right and you got it wrong. (Oooh, their gloating must have been vexing for you.)
But the important thing is, you’ve put things right and all is not lost – and you’ve got until November to make it seem like none of this ever happened.
Thank you for being a brand that is genuinely – and I mean actually, properly, really, stuff-the-rest-of-you-wannabes – entitled to call itself innovative.
99% of brands aspire to be innovative and many of those make the pointless error of putting the innovative word on their brand definition format, often more out of hope (if I say it enough times, it will come true) and corporate wishful thinking than any real inherent innovative DNA.
But you Swatch – The Second Watch. No. You, you’re different.
No doubt you have flinched at the minor inaccuracies of the countless case studies that have been written about you over the years, but what a complement it must be to have people describing you in such flattering terms – the saviour of the Swiss Watch industry, no less – over and over again. 350million units sold and counting. Wow.
Thank you for taking the fight back to the rampaging Asian digital offerings back in 1983…they were doing some pretty funky things back then.
Thank you for being a brand of my childhood. My first Swatch was acquired c.1987…still works perfectly today and has been joined by an eBay-fuelled set of companions.
Thank you for staying on the innovation treadmill, producing new and different collections every year: Maxi Swatch, Pop Swatch, Scuba, Chrono, Automatic, Loomi, AquaChrono, Irony, Solar, Access, Skin, Irony Scuba, .beat, Fun Scuba, Fun Boarder, Swatch Jelly in Jelly, Swatch Chrono Plastic.
Thank you for being collectable…as it happens around 95% of your watches are not right for me – but 5% are (the dark, non brightly coloured ones) – and that still gives me loads and loads to choose from.
Thank you for being innovative in everything you do – packaging, retail, limited editions, collaborations, associations. And yet remaining true to your core – a relatively inexpensive fashion watch that you can wear to reflect your mood or say something about yourself.
These days Apple, Innocent, Netflix and Method are the knee-jerk case studies – but what about you? Has there ever been a more innovative category rule-breaking brand? The perfect case study.
Thank you for making me slowly recoil from my TV in a way which only usually occurs when I’m watching Embarrassing Bodies or David Attenborough when he’s got the snakes on – I didn’t think that a brand would be able to manage that, but you have done it with your truly hideous “Scrunch or Fold” campaign:
Some people (aka total nutters) may think this is “brave”, but I think it’s awful.
I mean really very, very bad indeed.
W. T. F. are you on, dudes?
Cadbury’s Creme Egg “How do you eat yours?” was fine – all pretty jovial stuff.
But “How do you wipe yours?” (which is in effect what you’re asking people) is not. Not at all.
And you want them to bother going online to Vote for their preferred method?
And who the hell “scrunches” anyway?!
Just because some people that you paid to talk to you in a research group – or more likely depth interview – told you about how they configure their loo paper before commencing upon the dreaded but unfortunately necessary act, DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE REST OF US WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT!
Puppies fine. Other people’s @rse wiping tactics. Not fine.
And talking of people, what an abhorrent bunch of grotesque caricatures you have chosen to represent your heinous conundrum.
I pretty much hate them all, but the Martini sipping lady is the worst of all.
In the words of one blog I read she’s “a character straight from hell, a woman so depraved and overly sexualised that she even tries to turn wiping her arse into an erotic escapade.”
And please don’t give me any “all publicity is good publicity” / “think of the column inches” / “we’re trying to create a debate, some buzz around the brand” / “we’re trying to break down barriers and taboos” nonsense.
Noise should not be confused with music.
On a different topic, your Andrex Washlets product, as a concept, make sense to me.
A flushable baby-wipe for grown-ups. OK, I get it. And no doubt there’s a decent market for this type of product.
Terrible name incidentally (the previous incarnation Andrex Fresh was infinitely better) but I can get over that.
But you seemed to have totally lost the plot again when it comes to the communication. The Clean Campaign “journey” – fronted by Dawn Porter and with its very own YouTube Channel and Facebook page – is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Words desert me.
Please, please can I never ever go in the Washlet Wagon. Ever.
Dear Braun,
Ned says thank you 