Dear Mars,
Thank you for your latest interpretation of your famous and exceedingly powerful Work, Rest & Play brand asset / code. IMHO (is it really acceptable to type that?), you’ve got it bang on for the world we live in today:
There’s lots of things that you’ve done here that I think deserve some thanks:
1) You have (finally) made sense of the connection with Football – like McDonald’s you’ve realised it’s via the “grassroots”.
Sure, the Believe bars / posters around the time of major footy tournaments are a clever idea (and demonstrate the power of brand iconography, colourways, font etc), but when combined with the Pleasure you can’t measure strapline, it all seemed just a little bit too “laddy”… A bit too Euro 96, geared towards the (rapidly disappearing) FHM, Loaded, Maxim et al mindset:
I got the principle (toplicality, versatility etc) and understand why you did it, but I’m afraid that in this iteration, you looked a bit like Gazza’s version of The Economist – to me at least.
2) You’ve shown that you’re (rightfully) proud of your past / what made you famous, but you’ve respectfully chosen to take things in a new direction. Just as with that 80s ad that I dug up when I was thanking Kronenbourg (click here to be amazed), the line between whether these are actual ads or comedy sketches is fairly fuzzy:
3) Having been brave and gone back to one of your core brand assets / codes (i.e. Work, Rest & Play), and thankfully ditching the aforementioned too clever for it’s own good Pleasure you can’t measure idea, you’re to be admired for sticking to your guns and working harder to make Work, Rest & Play work hard for you. OK you tried to make Pleasure you can’t measure work for a broad target, but it didn’t really come off, and whilst hip-hopping Italian monks make for a good ad, they don’t make for a very campaignable idea:
4) I thank you for showing us that you can – and indeed should – create a piece of brand activation from an existing brand asset. That it’s much more sensible to make more of what you’ve got than it is to going desperately chasing after whatever seems to be “on trend” at the time – something Barclays clearly didn’t think about when it created this monstrosity:
Dross. Of the highest order.Well done Mars for not falling into the same trap as Barclays.
5) And finally, thanks for helping the residents of Carperby Yorkshire and their local team and for inadvertently (I suspect) doing your bit for The Big Society,. OK, The Big Society probably is just cover for spending cuts and is unlikely to take off in the way David Cameron hopes / needs, but wouldn’t it be great if it actually got some momentum and worked?
At any rate “Another Mars project kicks off” sounds like an idea that could run and run and run…but I guess you’ll be paying for your projects, which helps…
Thanks Mars
Ned
Ned says thank you 
