I love this ad. Not because it is expensively produced, glossy or particularly clever, but because it is so simple and made me smile. The end line backs it up perfectly and for a brand to deliver values that are achievable (the feeling, not the log rolling) is a god place to be. What they are claiming is that this product won’t change your world completely, but it will make you feel a little bit better.
I’m off to buy some now and then look for some logs to dance around on.
The Haka has always been something I have watched with fear and admiration, but today in the final of the Rugby World cup, I saw it for the first time as a brand marker for New Zealand. It shows their power, their determination and their ability to stand, miles from anywhere else in the world as a distinct nation, that is proud of its roots.
If you were going to write a few rules about a brand, they would be simple.
Do things well
Mean them, ie live your values
Build on your roots
Be differentiated.
They seem to have done all of these rather well here. And to be honest, it’s the first time I have ever seen anyone respond to it like the French. What a brilliant advertisement for the country and the sport of rugby.
call me a cynic if you wish, but I am not a big fan of this rather smug new identity for British Gas. Here’s the old one.
There’s not a lot wrong with this. It says what they do, or rather what they did. Their business has obviously diversified and they need to move away from their obvious reliance on fossil fuels and the harm they bring to our planet. So they’ve changed it to this.
I don’t have a particular problem with the identity. It’s fine in fact. decent typo and a subtle shade of green has been snuck into the logo. Good work team.
But the strapline. ‘Looking after your world’. Behave.
What a bunch of trite shite.
How are they looking after our world, by dragging tons of gas out and burning it?
Straplines are always a difficult issue, but this one is on the verge of vomit inducing. If it was my job, i’d drop it and quit the pretence before everyone does an emperors new clothes as soon as they have an issue or heaven forbid an accident and they make the word a little bit worse for us.
I’ve just had it pointed out to me by my mate and long time Creative colleague Darren Fisk, quite how similar the new British Gas identity is to the Age UK identity.
If you look at the background to the brand that was designed by the fabulously named Kitcatt Nohr Digitas (it’s that sort of name that made me want to join the industry) and watch their intro video about how they developed the brand, you can see it’s built on real values, that matter. I think it’s worth watching Paul Kitcatt talking about it here (even though looking at the viewer numbers, no one else has actually bothered):
I’m slightly embarrassed to say that I caught a few minutes of the Pride of Britain Awards and saw an amazingly inspirational teacher – Llew Davies – who won the Teacher of the Year Award. They showed him in his classroom with his pupils who clearly love what he does and how he does it.
What caught my imagination was his enthusiasm and individuality. I love the fact that he cared enough to think about things, look at teaching from the child’s persepective and then went on to name the teacher who inspired him when he was growing up.
It reminded me of the William Arthur Ward quote.
“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”
It will be many years before we see quite how big an inspiration this brilliant teacher has been to the kids, but I suspect that there will be some brilliant teachers, some amazing scientists and some inspiring people coming straight from his classrooms.
Thanks to Steve Peake at The Guardian for the image. You can read their article here.
I have loved this Rugby World Cup so far and have been getting up early on a Saturday and Sunday morning to watch the England games. Watching England at football World Cups’ is normally a pub based sport, so seeing the rugby without a drink opens up a whole new way of watching the game and is highlighting the difference between two of our national sports in exceptional clarity.
So what does the rugby brand have that football really needs, if it is to remain as our national sport of choice?
1. Respect. It’s being spoken a lot in the game of football, but never lived. The level of dissent in football is horrific and can be seen every saturday in kids games up and down the country.
2. Ref’s with authority. Related to the above, but the refs are exceptional, make very few mistakes, rely on their ‘fourth official’, have linesmen who help and do see things and manage a game beautifuly.
3. An advantage rule worth the name. In rugby, the advantage has time to work through, or it comes back to them. It’s a genuine advantage and penalises those who break the rules.
4. Players who care. The England Rugby players look and act like they are genuinely proud to be there. Name one player on the football side whose proudest moment is pulling on his England shirt, other than maybe David Beckham?
5. Players who think about the consequences. During a rugby game, there are fists and fights all over the place. At the end of the game, they are all hugs and hapiness. It’s incredible to see and wonderful. If football could breed better losers, they’d have better winners too.
6. They admit when they get it wrong. Tindall has been a proper fool. No doubt about it, but he did confess and not try and put a press gagging superinjunction, to try and hide it. Getting all the bad news out fast is always the best solution in the long run.
7. The management are more honest too. If their team have been dreadful, they say so. Who believes most of what the football managers say in their post match interviews? It was amusingly refreshing to see Neil Warnock after QPR’s 6-0 thrashing to say they were awful and got thrashed – But he is a rule unto himself and always has been.
So what does this say for the future of the rugby and football brands?
To me, it says that rugby is on the way up as it is a brand built on sustainable and real values. Football is built on money. when this stops rolling, or even slows down, there will be massive casualties and many fans walking away.
Looking at the number of kids on a rugby training pitch these days, i’d be very surprised indeed if it doesn’t become an even bigger participation sport than it is today, into the next generation.
I’m not sure what it says about the Jack Rabbit beer brand or it’s brand values, other than the fact that it is a beer aimed at lads, but I did actually laugh at the end.
I do think that it is funny enough to help establish this as a world renowned beer. Whoever did it should be proud, you have an excellent, world-class and brave client.
I love the irony of this.
KFC in the US are vowing to help Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) by donating a full dollar to the charity when someone buys one of their $2.99 half-gallon drinks.
Wow, that’s really generous isn’t it? A third of the sale price goes to charity.
But there’s a problem.
Each of these half-gallon drinks contains over 800 calories. Calories as we know, are a major contributor to obesity in any age group and in children in the US it’s a real and growing problem.
Brands like to hang out with other brands as there is generally a values overlay. Both do well from each other. But to try and link to a health related charity with a drink that contains 56 spoonfuls of sugar has to be one of the most crass attempts at buying grace for the brand.
If I ran the JRDF Charity, I would tell KFC to stick it and milk the hell out of the PR opportunity it created.
Thanks to Death and Taxes for the image.
VW ads were one of the reasons I joined the design industry. I always thought they were brilliant, even when I was growing up – way before I understood the power of branding, brand values and the actual effect they were trying to create with the VW = Reliable link.
So here are a few ads. Starting with my favourite of them all that is a new US ad.
And then followed by the oldest one I could find. This was written by David Ogilvy – My all time advertising hero and writer of the most influential advertising book of it’s day called ‘Ogilvy on Advertising‘.
When you consider the age of this ad, it is remarkable how many of the visual cues are still used today by the latest generation of VW ad designers.
And then one from the 80’s era of shoulder pads and visible wealth with Paula Hamilton as the star of the show
Then a more recent one again that is quite clever and funny, but showed how they were playing the quality and reliability theme out. Maybe to the point of doing it to death.
This is a guy called Paul Bennett speaking at the Economist Conference and it as changed (again) the way I look at things.
His four words:
People
Authenticity
Service
Simplicity
Can be applied to any business in any field. If you get them right, you can create a clearly differentiated successful business and a successful brand.
Stick with it as he does come across as a bit superior and has one of those funny mid Atlantic accents. There are a few more killer points that come across to me too.
1. Play well with others. We will achieve more by working as a collective and working together.
2. Be transparent and listen to feedback. If you have things to hide, customers will see it and tell others.
3. Look for people with passion behind the eyes.
Just brilliant simple stuff. There must be a part two as it does end a little abruptly though.
Part two
It took a while, but I found it, so here’s part two
I’m a bit of an Apple fan and believed they could do no wrong, but their battle with Adobe over Flash is killing them slowly and by a thousand small steps.
I don’t want Flash on my iPhone as I agree it may well slow it down even further, but I do want a browser that works.
I have had so many hanging pages in the last few weeks from Safari that I have completely switched to Google Chrome as my default Browser.
There have been a few of the most committed fans getting twitchy. Not least Tim Garratt when he got stiffed over his .mac account.
I do use Firefox as one of my browsers, but only so I can keep my shared Google calendar open as it uses a different user name and password to my other accounts. Maybe it comes back to connections again, but I never really connected with Firefox.
But Chrome is good. It is now much faster than Safari, allows clever plug-ins and seems to never crash. Even with sites that have Flash embedded on their front page.
Is Apple losing their grip? or is Safari due a major upgrade.
If you want to see a brilliant Google funded experiment with the power and processing of Chrome, have a look at this site. Put in your home Postcode, wait a few minutes and sit back and enjoy. The first few minutes are dull and then it will stagger you.
Johnny Lyle's new brand thinking 