branding – Page 20 – Johnny Lyle's new brand thinking

Nike Ad with Tiger and Earl Woods

A few months ago when the Tiger Woods scandal first started to unfold, I wrote a piece about what the brands he was associated with would do, how they would react and which would desert him. You can read that here.

I was a bit inconclusive as to how the brands he hangs out with would react. But it appears they have decided to stick with him and embrace him for all his faults. This ad is an amazing one and must be unique where our fallen hero doesn’t get to speak, but rather stare slightly sheepishly into the camera whilst his late father asks him if he has learnt anything.

I watched the US Masters coverage last night on the BBC and I have to say that I was surprised to see that he seems to have been well and truly forgiven (or have they just forgotten?) by the US golf watching community. He was cheered by men, women and children as he played every shot and entered every green.

Maybe Nike have made a brilliant decision in sticking with him, but I guess the result on Sunday night will be the biggest single decider as to whether he is back for good. Me, I’m cheering on our boy Lee Westwood, with a firm support for the elegant Ian Poulter.

Updated

I’ve thought about this a lot since I first wrote it yesterday and watched more of the excellent BBC coverage again last night. I have to say, that I am slightly put out by Tiger Woods and his approach to his own brand. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that this is something of a desperate attempt to keep ‘in’ with his sponsors – but at any cost. I know how hard it was when I lost my own father, so for Tiger to literally sell his own father’s voice for the benefit of one of his sponsors is pretty low and shows the depths to which he will stoop to make money.

Augusta is a bubble. A micro climate where reality is suspended. A place where they’ll spend $80m on their practice area to create the perfect golf environment. Tiger has been the king of Augusta. Few of his peers can hold a candle to his performances on this course. His closing day is normally better than the field by a mile.

But yesterday was Seve’s 52nd birthday and he was my golf hero, before the brands took control of the players. He stands for individuality, fight, courage, respect and outrageous shot making. Tiger can claim the last, but the respect for even his father – who he claims was his hero and mentor – at the behest of his sponsors has gone – and I don’t see him ever getting it back.

Maybe the American public haven’t noticed this yet, but this is the beginning of the end for me. Not the affairs, the lies or even the car crash. Once you lose respect for yourself, your days as a brand icon are numbered.

brand values, branding

Domino’s Pizza six fingered box model

I’m all for a bit of clip art here and there. I’ve used it myself on this blog occasionally. But to use it as a central part of your box design is a disgrace for any brand and Domino’s should be seriously embarrassed about this. It sends all the wrong signals. Eating pizza is already known to be a pretty unhealthy pastime, but now we have clear and clinical proof that it makes you grow extra digits, people will be leaving them in droves.

Domino's Pizza is bad for you as it makes you grow six fingers on each hand

branding

New Labour poster Campaign – Step outside Posh Boy

In what would be a quite remarkable brave new poster campaign to position Gordon Brown as the tough kid of politics, the UK Guardian today showed this new poster. If they have the nerve to run it, it will win them the General Election. I know it’s an April fool, but I still think it would be brilliant if they actually ran it!

New Labour poster for Gordon Brown - Step outside posh boy

I wrote a few weeks ago about how much harm the David Cameron retouched posters had done for his reputation and subsequent chances of winning the UK General election, and this could be the perfect riposte by Labour. It has always been the Conservatives who have utilised the best Ad agencies and as such, the best work, but now Labour and Gordon Brown are playing them at their own game and actually winning.

branding

The Bic Brand – a brief history of amazing brand consistency

Bic logo

Bic is one of those brands that is easy to belittle or even ignore. As they are doing most of their work in the lower end of the markets they address, it is easy to overlook them as a real brand. It’s a shame they don’t own their own domain name, but at least the existing owners do offer a link to their site.

But they are a real brand revolutionary. They have been delivering brand consistency since they formed in Clichy, France in 1945.

But I’m going to put my reputation on the line and say that I think they are a quite remarkable brand and many others could learn from them and what they do.

If I was going to summarise their brand values in a few words, I would describe them as Orange, practical, simple and functional.

None of their products seem complicated, all seem to work very well for what they are and all offer tremendous value for what they do. They haven’t been chasing upmarket like others and as such, haven’t lost their way in the process.

I was in Barcelona airport a few weeks ago and my eye was drawn to a Bic Phone. A bargain at 29 Euro and it came fully charged and with 12 Euro of credit on it. Even better was the fact that it was linked to the Orange Network! It looked like a good little phone and in an emergency (or an Ashley Cole) would be a good way out of trouble.

The Bic Phone – an orange disposable wonder for the philanderer or terrorist

So what else do they do?

They still have their pens, but these are increasingly nice to use and don’t seem to be as orange as they once were.

Bic Orange pens – the staple of any pencil case

They also still do a great line in lighters. Looking at their history, these were introduced in 1973 and still seem to dominate most newsagents counters. Again, lots of new colours and styles have been introduced, but they are still a sensible, functional purchase that few could regret.

And perhaps their most famous emergency purchase was introduced in 1975 (they were pretty productive years for the Bic design team!) and is the Bic Razor. I was forced into using one the other day by having left my own in our holiday house, and it was actually okay. I was expecting to have my face lacerated like a dog had been gnawing at it, but it was a nick free shave.

Bic Razors – Orange, simple, cheap and effective

I know Bic won’t be everyone’s cup of tea as there is simply no Kudos in owning Bic, but as a brand man, I see an awful lot of bad brands out there and the Bic logo, the Bic product offering and the whole Bic brand ethos seems to have remained quite remarkably stable since they first started.

I wish them many more successful years.

branding

Wireless Electricity – or WiTricity – An old idea made new

One of my team just pointed me towards this as a new TED video and I have to say I was totally enraptured with it. The opportunities for this are absolutely endless. The biggest issue we ever have with any technology is the number of wires that come with it. On our recent holiday to Andorra, half my hand luggage seemed to be full of plugs, wires and different little gadgets.

The technology itself is not that new, just this commercial interpretation of it. It was actually proposed by Nikola Tesla over 100 years ago!

This has the potential to safely end all of this hassle or wired connections and the sooner we see it commercially, the better. ANy brand that can launch the wireless charging phone has to be onto a winner. The wireless TV would be fab (I already have a few wireless radios – but they still need to be plugged in to charge them!), but trying to find wireless surround sound speakers that don’t need constant charging is something I have been looking for, for years.

branding

The best TV ad of 2010

I’ve just seen this article written by Champagne Jane on the Purple Circle Blog and I love it. In my opinion, this is the best ad of 2010 (so far).

We were at some awards a few years ago when the team at Specsavers were robbed of the gold and Grand Prix awards for their previous ad called Collie Wobble. I was so incensed that they didn’t win (probably because they were a in house team rather than an agency one) that I went and told them and also told the judges that we wouldn’t be entering their awards again unless they got their judging criteria sorted.

These guys do consistently brilliant work in building their brand and their powerful strapline and should be applauded for it. So for those who’ve forgotten it, here’s Collie Wobble.

Andy Hanselman, branding

Original ideas are becoming rarer – But design needs originality

I read a great post from my friend Brian Cray earlier today about how sloppy designers are becoming in their thinking when it comes to design. It’s a great read and you can see it here.

It got me thinking.

Last month I wrote a piece about Branding in a recession, which you can read here

Later that very same day, someone took the whole article and cut and pasted it into his own blog, which again, you can see here.

His thinking was soooo unoriginal, that he didn’t even bother changing the title. Yes he credited me for it, but does Google really know which is the original and which is the duplicated content that it will mark you down for in SEO terms?

The same happened to my mate Andy Henselman in one of his excellent Slideshare presentations. Here’s his original

and here’s the uncredited copy by some Albanian shyster.

I’m also a big fan of the work from the extraordinarily rude guys at COPY©UNTS. They have made it their business to uncover lazy ‘creative’ work where it has literally just been lifted from other peoples original thinking.

And to top it all, I was sent an SEO proposal from one of my clients today and it read slightly awkwardly. I didn’t believe it was original, so I cut and pasted a few strings from it, only to find it was ALL stolen from an educational site on the web about SEO strategy. Oops. I naturally told the client, so they won’t be getting any work, anytime soon.

For designers, SEO experts and anyone in a vaguely creative industry, you have to have original ideas. It’s the only barrier to entry we have in our imperfect worldwide market, where everyone has access to perfect information.

My business partner Mich Slack wrote a piece about this in response to the Glasgow Commonwealth games identity, which you can read here. But at least in that case, the designer had made some effort to change the overall look and feel.

It’s hard enough to retain credibility in this industry when your peers will undercut you for the price of a beer, but the sooner these people are kindly asked to leave it, or forced out by more discerning clients, the better.

Long live original thought, long live original design and long live clients who can tell the difference.

branding

Ok Go video for ‘This Too Shall Pass’ as good as their ‘Treadmills’ video?

In my opinion, it’s not quite as ground breaking as ‘Treadmills’ was when it first launched back in 2006, but it’s still brilliant.

EMI won’t let me embed the video for ‘Treadmills’ for some reason, but you can see it here:

It is one of those brilliant firsts that has been copied by many but so far not equalled by anyone in terms of originality.

But you can see their new one here for ‘This too shall pass’. The production is just brilliant and great fun, like a giant game of Mousetrap on acid.

I don’t know much about the brand of the band Ok Go, but i do love their video work and i’m now off to get a listen to some of their other music. If it’s half as coool as their videos, I think i’ll be a new fan.

branding

The Sandpit – By Sam O’Hare – The most stunning piece of tilt shift work i’ve ever seen

The Sandpit - Short film about life in New York

The Sandpit from Sam O’Hare on Vimeo.

Not much more to say really, other than the fact that I saw it on my Mate Tim Garratt’s blog and loved it so much I had to share it even further.

If you want to see how he did it, have a look here.

branding

Why David Cameron is losing the lead for the Conservatives

I don’t want this article to be particularly political, but want to review the presentation By David Cameron of the Conservative party from a branding and advertising perspective.

Branding is about getting your message across clearly, consistently and most importantly, honestly. It’s an expression I use quite a lot, but the more you advertise a bad product, the faster it will fail. Now we are seeing much more of David Cameron and his policies, it seems that voters don’t quite like what they are seeing.

David Cameron had a very privileged upbringing, there’s no doubt about that and in theory that shouldn’t stop him from understanding the public. It’s his pretence of being ‘down there with the kids’ and struggling like the rest of us that is positioning him as something he isn’t and may be the reason that he has thrown away a huge lead in the polls.

The recent poster campaign for the Tories, presented a picture of David Cameron that was so far removed from the true picture, that it was ridiculed from day one. It was all things airbrushing, that at first, I thought it had to be a spoof.

David Cameron, Year for Change campaign poster - in al its terrible airbrushed glory

Here’s the ‘original’, showing a ludicrously airbrushed image of him. He is just presented as too perfect to be ‘one of the people’ quite why he needs the treatment of a Vogue model (albeit done very badly) is beyond me and prompted a response from one of my design peers with a brilliant open forum for people to be able to design their own version of the poster.

I just love this particular one, which is so clunkily comped that it makes a mockery of the ‘original’ image and the message of truth and honesty that it was trying to portray.

If the Tories go on to throw away their lead in the final vote and we end up with a hung Parliament or a Labour victory, this poster campaign will have to take some part of the blame.

In the same way, in 1979, the very famous ‘Labour isn’t working’ poster was credited with having a huge part in winning the General Election for the Tories.

Labour isn't working poster for the Conservatives from the 1979 general election

Who says advertising doesn’t have an impact?

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