Dear Brittany Ferries

Dear Brittany Ferries,

Thank you for the line “Curiosity – it can lead you anywhere” – what a wonderful, life-affirming sentiment. And as such, a highly compelling emotional space for a brand to occupy.

“Stay curious” has got to be one of the greatest pieces of advice that any parent can give to their child. I hope I can impart that in spades to our children.

And thank you for reminding me of France in the summer.

Ooh how I love a summer holiday with my family in France.

The hell of Lyon 645km, the disruption of having stop at every other Aire de Service, the nightmare of where’s the bloody peage ticket got to, the uncertainty of did I just get flashed by a speed camera and will it recognise my British number plate and the panic of Jane the SatNav lady losing the plot at a crucial approaching junction.

It all pales into insignificance and turns to joy as the memory does its stuff, replacing the short-term pain with a golden haze of loveliness.

Golden haze of loveliness well captured Brittany Ferries.

And thank you for reminding me of one of my favourite ads of all time, which incidentally I wrote about here:

Makes me blub everytime – and not even DIY SOS can do that.

Thanks again.

Ned

Dear VW

Dear VW,

Thank you for embracing a perfect slice of 80s kitsch with your recent ad from the States, inspired by A-ha. As a child of the 80s, the visual reminder (I’ve heard the song countless times on the radio since the 80s, but not seen the video) makes me smile:

In general, “commentators” seem to be be a bit down on retro stuff, with the latest wave of 80s nostalgia getting it in the neck from many quarters…

But I never understand why…

People – i.e. real people out there in the real world, not those that sit at laptops dreaming up articles and news “features” – love a bit of nostalgia.

It makes us feel good to reflect on the past and reignite those positive feelings and memories.

So why knock it?

I suppose that it could be argued that nostalgia and all things retro lack dynamism, modernity and a sense of progression.

But there’s loads of that going on. All around us. All the time.

Why not just enjoy both?

Anyway, thanks to you VW, and thanks also to The Why Factor, my current favourite podcast from BBC World Service – the edition on Nostalgia is well worth a listen…

Thanks again

Ned

Dear Audi

Dear Audi,

Thank you for showing us, through two recent adverts, how the same fundamental brand property – power – can be executed in drastically different ways.

First up you gave us the new R8 V10:

I love this ad for many reasons:

• Product as the unashamed, unapologetic hero
• Clear Audi branding, from the outset
• Beautiful cinematography
• Focus on the engine reflected by the neat Evolution on the outside, Revolution on the inside strap line
• Unmistakeable out-take out from the ad: the R8 V10 is an uber-powerful car, capable of a menacing roar and, literally, spitting fire

But now you’ve given us the new RS6:

I’m not so sure about this:

• There’s a lack of product and Audi branding until the very end – more of an issue on first time viewing and next time I see the ad, I will know it’s for Audi and the emotional relevance will begin to build, but what if there isn’t a next time?
• Although I’m a big fan of metaphors, I don’t think you’ve picked the right one here, for a UK audience at least…perhaps boxing is more aspirational in the US than in the UK, but here I suspect that the RS6’s price tag will make it more relevant to senior City-types who are looking to get the family and labrador down to the weekend house in illegally good time – and those types tend to be more into the Six Nations, shooting and fishing than boxing
• Whilst the Power from a less obvious place strapline works with the metaphor of the boxing referee, I’m not so sure it works with the product – even “de-badged” an RS6 is a pretty bling car and is noticeably different from a standard Audi A6…back in the day, an RS6 could justifiably be described as “the thinking/family man’s Porsche” and back then Power from a less obvious place would have worked but nowadays with all those highly distinctive RS styling features?

• And even though I don’t think we are supposed to envisage that the ref is leaving the boxing ring to step into his RS6 and drive home – it’s what he represents that’s more important than who he is – he’s still the hero of the ad and therefore it’s impossible to disassociate him as a driver of the car…which somehow doesn’t feel likely
• Also I’ve got doubts that an emotionally led expression of power (as opposed to the functional expression of power of the R8 ad) is right for the target audience. If a person is considering spending in the region of £80k on a car, in all likelihood they’re an actual or closet male motor-head. And that means they want to know about engines, horsepower and the like…does that person really worry too much about being “less obvious”? (They’re already being less obvious than the Range Rover / Porsche Cayenne brigade after all)

Thanks again Audi. Even though my real world head says VW, but my financially liberated heart would say Audi every time. R8 for me. RS6 for the family. A3 for the imaginary au pair / nanny.

Ned

Dear VW

 

Dear VW,

I know I’ve thanked you time and time again on this blog, but you just keep on delivering and so I have to keep on thanking you.

I just love this recent instalment, despite the – unnecessary in my view – voiceover towards the end:

Thanks VW.

Given the greatness that has gone before, I was actually pretty underwhelmed by your ad for the New Golf, as from a car advertising perspective it’s pretty undifferentiated.

Water splashing over a gleaming car, blah, blah, blah. But frankly it doesn’t matter.

I still want one and that’s because the brand and the product are so strong.

One run of the mill ad is not going to undo years of brilliant brand building.

I spend a fair amount of time on the M40 and I regularly find myself musing on the topic of cars, usually triggered by the words “and now it’s time for Thought for the Day”, but often just because there are cars, well, everywhere.

My musing involves weighing up the pros and cons of different models, assessing new designs, considering the relative merits of different headlight configurations and styles. Building profiles of different manufacturer driver types. Wondering whether people buy white cars because they think it the safest colour or because they (sub-consciously?) want to look like a cast member from TOWIE.

I know, I know. (It’s a long drive)

But anyway, one of the questions I ask myself is if I had to pick one brand of car for the rest of my life, what would it be?

It would be you VW.

Right now – and money / parking no issue – it would be:

• 5-door Golf for the school run (wipe-clean leather seats a must)
• Touareg for family outings and when it snows (4×4 seems compulsory where we live)
• Either 2-door Golf or the latest Beetle (sportiest one available) for the commute (I’m edging towards the Beetle and generally, hairdressers are nice, so that’s fine)
• Classic Splitscreen Campervan (souped-up) for holidays / festivals and generally looking cool (would need to start going to festivals)
• Classic Kharman Ghia (convertible and souped up) for the one sunny day of the year (when the kids are somehow being looked after by someone and for the hell of it).

 

 

Would accept a variety of colours but my preference would be black.

Thanks VW

Ned

Dear VW (once again),

Dear VW,

I know, I know, I’ve thanked you before and easily more than any other brand (here), but I just have to thank you again for your most recent Polo advertising – which is absolutely brilliant:

With an unhealthy dose of un-insightful garbage out there, it’s such a joy when brands like you manage to do something that actually connects with real people. Me being one of them.

OK, I am somewhat biased.

I’m the Dad of a daughter – which means I do and fully anticipate doing all those things in the ad.

(Including – and most importantly for you – buying my daughter a Polo in the future.)

I’m a big fan of yours anyway.

And I tend to well-up when watching DIY SOS, so it’s not hard to twang my heartstrings.

But nonetheless, the ad is a wonderful thing and it doesn’t matter a jot that it’s similar to the John Lewis ad about which I posted when thanking Bupa here.

No doubt you’ve seen the latest dancing animal drivel from Volvic Touch of Fruit and shared my exasperation at the total lack of reality:  gallingly made-up / fake summer mountain scenery; CGI dancing squirrels & hedgehogs; generically good-looking (poor acting) couple straight from the pages of Getty Images…

Ugh!

Thank goodness you’re out there VW, doing your stuff so brilliantly and so insightfully.

Thanks again VW.

Ned

Dear Heinz

Dear Heinz,

Thank you for showing how ethnographic research can come into its own with your Heinz Beanz fridge packs.

It’s perhaps not as “hip” as real-time online co-creation (effectiveness yet to be proven in my book), so thanks for showing that poking about in actual people’s real fridges can be a wonderful source of genuine insight – that can be applied to both innovation and communication.

Yes it’s a simple idea, but the best ones often are.

And thank you for taking a little poetic license with the execution. Baked beans in a Toby Jug? About as likely as some of the “tuning” on show in yet-another-in-the-fantastic-and-never-ending-line of VW ads from a few years back:

And thanks to both you Heinz and VW for choosing such great soundtracks. Especially the VW track.

Mawkish and macabre as it may have been, thinking back to Simon Bates’ Our Tune feature (Radio 1, mid-80s), brings a smile to my face. As does Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo & Juliet for which Nino Rota’s Love Theme should, um, perhaps more properly, errr, be remembered.

Thanks again

Ned

Dear VW

Dear VW,

Thank you for introducing us to The Bark Side – your Superbowl 2012 teaser (over 7m+ hits on YouTube already) – and for putting a big smile on my face this morning:

(Big thanks to Andrew G. for sending me the link.)

For The Bark Side to make sense, I think people really need to have seen this (49m+ hits), from last year:

…which I thanked you for here.

(I also thanked you here, here, here and here…You seem to have earned a lot of my gratitude!)

Also want to thank Lynx (Axe) for using the “teaser” technique for their latest foray (this time, literally going after women) into the market, Lynx Attract…which officially goes on sale in the UK today.

Nothing will ever be the same again is quite a bold statement.

The Lynx Brand Key will probably never be the same again, might be a little less ambitious – just to start with anyway…

Thanks again

Ned

Dear Volvo

Dear Volvo,

Thank you for opting for green as the colour code for your eco sub-brand.

For some reason, Blue has emerged as not only the colour-code but also the naming-code for “eco” in the car category.

There’s VW’s BLUE MOTION:

There’s Mercedes’ BLUE EFFICIENCY :

There’s BMW’s EfficientDynamics which is blue whenever you see it:

And it’s not just the Germans.

Hyundai have given us the BlueOn:

And the Toyota Prius’ – who perhaps got this whole blue thing rolling with their Hybrid Synergy Drive logo – is unmistakably blue too:

The irony that you – Volvo – went with the blindingly obvious option in green, but have managed to achieve differentiation by so doing, is strangely pleasing.

So thanks for making me think about the old premise that brands should “zag when everyone else zigs”.

And thanks for making me think about the semiotics of colour. I’ve got to get my hands on a book about that…it will improve my dinner party chat no end.

And finally thanks for helping me formulate a little hypothesis that blue has been adopted by the car industry so whole-heartedly as the eco-colour, because they are all dreaming of one day producing a car that runs on water, for which the colour would have to be blue.

Let’s hope they can.

Thanks

Ned

 

Dear VW (once again)

Dear VW (once again),

Thank you for your recent and sterling advertising efforts – the blogosphere (and 30m YouTubers) seem to agree that you were the hit commercial of the SuperBowl Ad merry-go-round, and I have to say, despite my heavily favourable disposition, I wholeheartedly agree. Thanks to my friend Andrew for sharing this link with me:

And please say thank you to your designers for staying away from the sparkly fairy christmas tree lights that we know you could be drapsing all over yourself like an over-excited 18-year-old on their first trip to Halfords. Your certainty and pride in not being an Audi is admirable, not to mention a very tangible representation of a decidedly sensible brand portfolio strategy – I would expect nothing less.

 

Thanks VW Group.

Ned

 

Dear VW (again),

Dear VW,

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

There are so many more reasons to thank you – in addition to when I thanked you for your wonderfully simple and enduring VW Polo positioning here, and when I thanked you for your Split Screen Bus here –  that I’ve decided to show my gratitude by dedicating a series of thank you posts to you.

In my humble opinion, you deserve all the praise I’m going to dish out.

First up it’s your Golf – aka Rabbit in some of the further reaches of the globe – now in its 6th generation.

As it happens, I’ve just bought a second-hand Mark IV Golf (as predicted when I was thanking Renault for their Megane Experiment here and here), and whilst I fully recognise that we’re still in the so-called honeymoon period, once again I’m exceedingly happy.

So why did I go back to a VW Golf so confidently? Well I think it’s because of the perfect brand storm that you have so expertly created and crafted in my mind over the years, which is made up of 4 principal elements:

1) A consistently simple Brand Promise of “Reliability” – ingrained into one of the dark recesses of my brain the indelible phrase “If only everything in life was as reliable as a Volkswagen” is alive and kicking, no doubt thanks to ads like these:

2) Unflinching product performance and delivery (in my experience) against that Brand Promise – in 4 years of previous Golf stewardship, I never had a major problem…just reliable, economical, fast and stylish motoring – perfect.

3) Celebrating the past, but keeping the message fresh, by making it real and humanising the brand:

And my most favorite – and human – of all:

4) Those 3 little letters – need I say more? (TDi sounds a bit like GTi, so that’s OK)

Plus the fact that everywhere you look you see someone driving a Golf. Cialdini’s principle of Social Proof in action once again.  Vicars, Mums on the school run and rude-boys who spend their every last penny on pimping their rides – they all look happy and comfortable to be driving a Golf. Just like me.

So thank you VW for your Golf – you’ve created a brand that I feel both strong affection for and admire in equal measure.

Ned

Dear VW

Dear VW,

Thank you for keeping the concepts of “strength” / “robustness” / “durability” so consistently at the heart of your Polo brand – and for delivering against the promise so convincingly…in the crowded “small-hatch” segment, you stand out and stick in the mind, above all others.

I have had the pleasure of regularly driving 3 VW Polos during my  “career” on the road, and despite the slightly dodgy colours (1 mustard yellow, 2 Cigale Blue…which actually means purple…one of which I still drive occasionally), never once have I had cause for even the remotest concern…in relation to the cars at least.

I like what you’ve done with the most recent iteration of the positioning as it builds on the theme, but takes it in a new direction:

I just love this one from a few years back – it’s sublime:

And this one makes me laugh every time:

This one was banned – fairly unsurprisingly – but like many things that are slightly uncomfortable and shocking, no doubt it did the viral rounds nicely:

Thanks VW Polo for getting me from A-B safely and thanks to you and your agency DDB for being such consistent brand guardians.

Ned

www.volkswagen.co.uk

PS – And thanks again for your classic air-cooled vans which I blogged about here – one day, one day…