Branding Archives - Page 6 of 8

💎 On the need for ads to turn viewers into accomplices (or they will be our challengers)

In his dense but thoughtful book, The Act of Creation, Arthur Koestler says this: ‘Language itself is never completely explicit. Words have suggestive, evocative powers; but at the same time they are merely stepping stones for thought. The artist rules his subjects by turning them into accomplices.’

That seems to be as good a definition as I know of the role of creative people in advertising. We have to try to turn our audience into accomplices; because if they aren’t our accomplices, they will be our challengers.

Excerpt from: Behind the Scenes in Advertising, Mark III: More Bull More by Jeremy Bullmore

💎 On the dangers of looking for formulas in advertising (you can’t be that mathematical and that precise)

In 1964, as reported by Denis Higgins in The Art of Writing Advertising, he was confronted by an interviewer trying to analyse just how and why he was such an original advertising thinker. Asked if there were any striking characteristics unique to talented writers and art directors, he said, ‘One of the problems here [in this interview] is that we’re looking for a formula. What makes a good writer? It’s a danger. … I remember those old Times interviews where the interviewer would talk to the novelist or the short story writer and say, “What time do you get up in the morning? What do you have for breakfast? What time do you start work? When do you stop work…?” And the whole implication is that if you eat cornflakes at 6:30 and then take a walk and then take a nap and then start working and then stop at noon, you too can be a great writer. You can’t be that mathematical and that precise. This business of trying to measure everything in precise terms is one of the problems with advertising today. This leads to a worship of research. We’re all concerned about the facts we get and not about how provocative we can make those facts to the consumer.’

Excerpt from: The Real Mad Men: The Remarkable True Story of Madison Avenue’s Golden Age by Andrew Cracknell

💎 On medical conditions (invented by advertisers)

In addition to the dread of auto-intoxication, the American consumer faced a positive assault course of other newly minted or rediscovered maladies – pyorrhea, halitosis (popularized by Listerine beginning in 1921), athlete’s foot (a term invented by the makers of Absorbiner in 1928), dead cuticles, scabby toes, iron-poor blood, vitamin deficiency (vitamins had been coined in 1912, but the word didn’t enter the general American vocabulary until the 1920s when advertisers realized it sounded worryingly scientific), fallen stomach, tobacco breath, dandruff, and psoriasis, though Americans would have to wait until the next decade for the scientific identification of the gravest of personal disorders – body odour, a term invented in 1933 by the makers of Lifebuoy soap and so terrifying in its social consequences that it was soon abbreviated to a whispered BO.

Excerpt from: Made In America: An Informal History of American English by Bill Bryson

💎 On writing copy for a specific person not a demographic (it should be a conversation between two human beings)

All the while I have fixed in my mind a mental picture of who will read what I’m writing.

I don’t mean “AB males aged 35-44 with a promiscuous attitude to white spirits.” I mean I think of an actual person, be it a friend, neighbour or relation, who is in the target audience.

When I see that person in my mind, I know what will appeal to them.

That way I can write copy the way I believe all copy should be written: as a conversation between two human beings rather than an announcement from manufacturer to consumer.

Excerpt from: D&Ad Copy Book by D&AD

💎 On the mistake of thinking advertising has become harder (because it hasn’t)

It’s a puzzling form of self-deception, this. Comparisons across time are meaningless. Winning things gets neither harder nor easier. The increased sophistication of your consumers, real or imagined, will affect your competitors no less than yourself. There has never been a time when advertising was expected to do anything other than work hard.

To the envious practitioners of 2040, marketing in the 1990s will presumably seem to have been a doddle. How easy, they will think, how very, very easy.

The reason it doesn’t seem so now is because it isn’t.

Excerpt from: Behind the Scenes in Advertising, Mark III: More Bull More by Jeremy Bullmore

💎 On advertisers not eating their own dog food (most people do not want to ‘join the conversation’)

Ask most marketing or advertising people if they themselves, outside of their professional life, have ever shared brand content, or used a brand hashtag, or got involved in making or editing or uploading their own experiences of a brand, or any of the other things that they often expect customers to do, the answer would be rarely, if at all. Yet they regularly expect other people to do them.

Contrary to what appears to be popular belief inside agencies and marketing departments, most people do not want to ‘join the conversation’ or take part in any interactive, two-way dialogue with brands, even in relatively high-interest categories.

Excerpt from: How To Make Better Advertising And Advertising Better by Vic Polinghorne and Andy Palmer

💎 On the only vegetable that doubles as a piece of advertising (the carrot, a propaganda vegetable)

Note. I’ve read that the carrot is to return to its roots and go purple. Generations have grown up believing that carrots are orange, but in Egyptian, and later in Roman times, carrots were purple or white. In the middle ages they were also black, red and green. They have only been orange since the 16th century when patriotic Dutch growers favoured the House of Orange.

A propaganda vegetable.

Excerpt from: The Art of Looking Sideways by Alan Fletcher

💎 On the fluidity of our buying behaviour (depending on mood and occasion)

Our ‘beliefs’ about brands are nowhere near as stable and consistent as we think. As Ehrenberg-Bass’s work with re-contact surveys has shown, individual opinions about brands are much more volatile than top-line tracking data suggests.

The overall percentage of people who agree ‘Pepsi tastes better than Coke’ might stay the same from survey to survey. But that doesn’t mean that individual respondents are answering the same way each time. Look at the data more closely, and you’ll see that people answer research questions in a ’probabilistic’ way. They may lean slightly in favour of one brand or another, but they don’t have fixed beliefs.

Behaviour patterns are similarly fluid and messy. We like to think that people divide into distinct buying groups. But look at long runs of data, and you’ll find that real-life buying behaviour is much more ’agnostic’. Buyers of premium brands also buy Own Label; low-fat buyers also buy full fat; Coke buyers buy Pepsi.

Our opinions about brands fluctuate depending on mood and occasion. And so do our brand choices. In the morning, we feel healthy and go for low fat. In the afternoon, we want chocolate.

Excerpt from: How not to Plan: 66 ways to screw it up by Les Binet and Sarah Carter

💎 On the parallels between commerce and sex (heavy users are promiscuous)

Back in high school there were people who were “heavy users” of sex. Remember them?

They often had one characteristic in common — they were promiscuous.

They didn’t just have lots of sex with one person. As we used to say, they “got around.”

The world of commerce is like that, too. Heavy users in a category tend to be promiscuous. They tend to try lots of different brands in a category. They get around.

In his book How Brands Grow, Prof. Byron Sharp gives a good example of this. Someone who is a heavy user in the fast food category might go to McDonald’s 4 out of 10 times; Subway 2.5 in 10; Wendy’s 1.5 in 10; Taco Bell 1 in 10…etc.

Excerpt from: Marketers Are From Mars, Consumers Are From New Jersey by Bob Hoffman

💎 On the misconception that slogans have to be short to be catchy (when it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight)

It is a widespread misconception that a slogan has to be short to be catchy: in fact, a few extra words are often required to create a striking rhyme or rhythm – for example, it would have been quicker for FedEx to adopt the one-word tagline ‘Overnight’, but opting for the longer ‘When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight’ gave the tag its memorable turn of phrase. The line also captured the emotional state of the package-sender – a desire for certainty.

Excerpt from: 100 Ideas That Changed Advertising by Simon Veksner

💎 On the ineffectiveness of facts as a tool for changing beliefs (explains politics)

There is a long tradition of attempting to test whether the truth changes people’s perceptions, both in academic and campaigning work, but the results remain mixed and inconclusive. Some studies show no impact at all on perceptions when we are told the correct figures, while others show some impact on certain beliefs, but not others. And some show more marked changes. In one more hopeful, recent example from a study in thirteen countries, the researchers split the group of respondents in two. They told one half some facts about actual immigration levels, and said nothing to the other half. Those armed with the correct information were less likely to say there were too many immigrants. However, on the other hand, they did not change their policy preferences: they were not more likely to support facilitating legal immigration. When the researchers went back to the same group four weeks later, the information had stuck for most – although so had the policy preferences. This fits with long-identified theories that facts struggle to cut through our partisan beliefs or our ‘perceptual screen’ as Angus Campbell and colleagues outlined in their classic book, The American Voter, back in 1960.

Excerpt from: The Perils of Perception Why We’re Wrong About Nearly Everything by Bobby Duffy

💎 On power of the placebo effect not being uniform (e.g. colour of pill)

As the medical anthropologist Daniel Moerman has documented, one of the important determinants of a drug’s efficacy is the colour of the pill it comes in. When people suffering the symptoms of depression are given the same drug in different colours, they are most likely to get better when the pill is yellow. Sleeping pills, by contrast, tend to be more effective when they’re blue.

Excerpt from: Born Liars: Why We Can’t Live Without Deceit by Ian Leslie

💎 On the power of names (why female storms kill more than male ones)

Such names matter more than one might expect. In 2014 a study by researchers at Arizona State University and the University of Illinois found that hurricanes with feminine names killed more people than those with masculine ones. This has little to do with their ferocity, which was randomly distributed, but rather with people’s reactions to them. It seems that tropical storms with women’s names are taken less seriously than those with male names.

Excerpt from: Go Figure: Things you didn’t know you didn’t know: The Economist Explains by Tom Standage

💎 On the power of a price tag (they are used as an incorrect indicator of quality)

Wine without a price tag doesn’t have this effect. In 2008, American food and wine critics teamed up with a statistician from Yale and a couple of Swedish economists to study the results of thousands of blind tastings of wines ranging from $1.65 to $150 a bottle. They found that when they can’t see the price tag, people prefer cheaper wine to pricier bottles. Experts’ tastes did move in the proper direction. they favored finer, more expensive wines. But the bias was almost imperceptible. A wine that cost ten times more than another was ranked by experts only seven points higher on a scale of one to one hundred.

Excerpt from: The Price of Everything: The True Cost of Living by Eduardo Porter

💎 On the power of a name (Paradise Island)

There is an island in the West Indies that was once called Hog Island. Hog Island was a very beautiful island, but it was difficult to attract tourists to it. Then, one day, a clever person had the bright idea of changing the name of the island and, suddenly, it was inundated by tourists. What was the island’s new name? Paradise Island!

So, don’t use words carelessly. See the power in the meaning of words and use this power to develop your idea.

Excerpt from: The Idea Book by Fredrik Härén

💎 On the lottery of pitches (I hate it / I love it)

Three main clients attended, the editor, publisher, and some bloke from distribution who kept talking about lorries and timetables! Well, he would, wouldn’t he.

We diligently went over the strategy with heads nodding enthusiastically, even the man from distribution. And then I revealed the line that captured their positioning. The Mail on Sunday: ‘Depth without drowning’.

There was stunned silence. Finally, the publisher said, ‘I hate it’. Every time I read the word ‘depth’, I see ‘death!’ This is not going well, I say to myself! No, no, no says the editor, that’s absurd. That’s what we do, provide news in depth. I foolishly think we’re back on track. Someone with a brain is thinking about this. And then he says, but I hate the word drowning. I have a fear of swimming. Jesus, I say to myself, I really am dealing with tabloid brains here. There are only three words in this line, what else can go wrong. So I turn to the distribution genius and say how do you feel about the word ‘without?’

Excerpt from: Hegarty on Advertising: Turning Intelligence into Magic by John Hegarty

💎 On how the language we use to describe an event shapes our memories (every word is important)

Elizabeth Loftus showed subjects a videotape of a car accident. Some subjects were then asked, ‘How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?’, others were asked, ‘How fast were the cars going when they hit one another?’ The average speed given by the first group was 41 miles per hour and by the second 34 miles per hour. A week later subjects were asked whether they had noticed any broken glass resulting from the accident. The presence of broken glass was incorrectly reported by twice as many of the first group as of the second: the suggestion that the cars had been travelling fast had made subjects confabulate the occurrence of broken glass.

Excerpt from: Irrationality: The enemy within by Stuart Sutherland

💎 On communications becoming more believable if they’re ‘wasteful’ (the handicap principle)

Sometimes it’s even necessary to do something risky or wasteful in order to prove that you have a desirable trait. This is known as the handicap principle. It explains why species with good defense mechanisms, like skunks and poison dart frogs, evolve high-contrast colors: unless it can defend itself, an animal that stands out quickly becomes another animal’s lunch. For a nonbiological example, consider the difference between blue jeans and dress pants. Jeans are durable and don’t need to be washed every day, whereas dress pants demand a bit more in terms of upkeep—which is precisely why they’re considered more formal attire.

In the human social realm, honest signaling and the handicap principle are best reflected in the dictum, “Actions speak louder than words.” The problem with words is that they cost almost nothing; talk is usually too cheap. Which is a more honest signal of your value to a company: being told “great job!” or getting a raise?

We rely heavily on honest signals in the competitive arenas we’ve been discussing—that is, whenever we try to evaluate others as potential mates, friends, and allies.

Excerpt from: The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson

💎 On confident branding (Renault versus Audi)

The third marker, I would say, is the most influential of all, yet hardly anyone spots it even though it is staring you in the face. This is the one that arises from Hegarty’s decision not to translate the slogan. By leaving the slogan in the original German he enabled the brand to occupy the position of being not just German, but being uncompromisingly German.

Most foreign cars in the 1980s tried to play down their foreign origins. And in order to demonstrate that their cars were “anglicised,” advertisers used English slogans in their advertising. BMW used the slogan “The Ultimate Driving Machine,” Renault in their 1992 Clio ad used “A certain Style,” and VW in their iconic Princess Diana Golf ad used “If only everything in life was as reliable as a Volkswagen.” But Audi, by sticking to their original German slogan, effectively gave out a super-confident message that their cars were German and proud of it, and that they were not prepared to compromise them by changing them in any way. If people wanted a hybrid adapted to their local market then they could buy one of the other marques, but if they wanted the real thing then they should buy an Audi.

Excerpt from: Seducing the Subconscious: The Psychology of Emotional Influence in Advertising by Robert Heath

💎 On removing anxieties about buying a product (Dr Pepper)

But weirdly, I’ve never asked for Dr Pepper in a bar because you know they’re not going to have it and there’s that mild embarrassment about asking for something they haven’t got, and feeling like a bit of a twat. However, if you ask for Coke and they don’t have it, it’s their fault not yours, the whole dynamic’s completely different. The only place that it’s socially acceptable not to sell Coke is a total health farm weirdo place full of organic produce, and even then it’s a bit irritating. They’ll have loads of those Fentimans Victorian-style lemonades, and even then it’s a bit irritating—come on, just sell Coke for crying out loud! Everywhere else has to sell Coke and it’s their fault if they haven’t got it. An aversion to little things like minor forms of embarrassment stop me from being a maximiser and asking for Dr Pepper, and I’ll always ask for Diet coke if I’m in a pub or a bar unless they have some massive sign saying ‘We Sell Dr Pepper’, in which case I would obviously ask for Dr Pepper.

Excerpt from: Rory Sutherland: The Wiki Man by Rory Sutherland

💎 On the financial value of the framing effect of brands

This framing effect of brands is not marketing hype; it increases the perceived value and the willingness to pay a premium price — even for objectively identical products. The VW Sharan and the Ford Galaxy are identical cars – both produced in the same factories – but consumers have been willing to spend a premium of €2,000 for the frame that the VW brand added. In the UK, Virgin Mobile has higher perceived network quality and satisfaction scores than T-Mobile despite the fact that it uses the exact same network.

Excerpt from: Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy by Phil Barden

💎 On the danger of relying on recall alone as a measure of ad effectiveness (unconscious familiarity breeds affection)

Research has shown that print adverts processed outside of conscious awareness shift attitudes just as much as those processed consciously. In one study, 80 subjects were exposed to adverts either deliberately (they were asked to look at them) or incidentally (they were asked to assess the layout of the magazine page opposite). Afterwards, the group were asked to rate 50 adverts and say whether they had seen them earlier. Just 11% of those who had seen them incidentally recalled the ads that had been shown, but their ratings of them as more memorable, appealing, eye-catching, and distinctive were just as positively biased over the adverts not shown as those who had been exposed to them deliberately. It appears that the unconscious mind recognizes what it has seen before and, because it is familiar, can process it more fluently, which creates the feeling of liking something more – unconscious familiarity breeds affection!

Excerpt from: Consumerology: The Truth about Consumers and the Psychology of Shopping by Philip Graves

💎 On the danger of industry navel gazing (look outside)

As I look at the advertising being produced at the moment, at least in Britain, it seems to me that much of it has been produced in total isolation from the real world. The prose style that’s used in press copy owes nothing to any other prose style except that used in other advertisements. The makers of advertisements seem increasingly obsessed by only one subject: advertisements. If this is so, then two consequences will follow. First, since the receivers of advertisements are only too conscious of the rest of the world – socially, politically, culturally, economically – then the advertisement will fail adequately to connect the advertised brand or service to that bigger, truer world. And second, imitation and lack of originality become more likely. Advertising is feeding, I think, far too much on advertising, and not nearly enough on the wider, far more interesting world outside.

Excerpt from: Behind the Scenes in Advertising, Mark III: More Bull More by Jeremy Bullmore

💎 On the importance of being interesting (not just being right)

She wants Mr. Interesting.

In the pub, who do you want to listen to?

The bloke who’s always right?

Or the bloke who’s always interesting?

Being right is overrated.

Because being right is seen as the truth.

But what is the truth?

The truth is whatever you believe it is.

And you only believe what you want to believe.

And you only want to believe what’s interesting.

Excerpt from: Creative Mischief by Dave Trott

💎 On the power of saying things simply (I’m hit)

“It’s over.” “It’s a boy.” “We’re going to win.” “He’s dead.” These are the words of big events. Because they are big you speak with utter and unconscious concentration as you communicate them. You unconsciously edit out the extraneous, the unneeded. (When soldiers take a bullet they don’t say, “I have been shot,” they say, “I’m hit.”)

Good hard simple words with good hard clear meanings are good things to use when you speak. They are like pickets in a fence, slim and unimpressive on their own but sturdy and effective when strung together.

Excerpt from: On Speaking Well by Peggy Noonan

💎 On the power of brand familiarity (friendship for the product)

Whether it is an impulse purchase like a candy bar or a package of cigarettes or an infrequent and highly deliberated purchase like a washing machine a refrigerator, a vacuum cleaner or a mattress, the biggest single thing that advertising can contribute is a friendly predisposition toward the brand—a whole complex of thoughts and emotions which give the purchaser peace of mind in the choice he makes.

We shun the unknown. We are naturally drawn to the familiar.

You might call this simply “friendship for the product”.

Your best friends are people whose qualities you like and admire and whom you enjoy being with— but they are usually people you see frequently.

The principle of frequency in advertising has long been recognized. Several great brands have been built around rigid adherence to this principle rather than through the content or power of any single advertisement.

Excerpt from: Leo: A Tribute to Leo Burnett, Through a Selection of the Inspiring Words that He Wrote or Spoke by Leo Burnett

💎 On the danger of prioritising the creative idea over the execution (the importance of craft)

The other big thing I learnt from John is the importance of craft. There is a universal fashion now to talk about the importance of creative ideas. If that means that good campaigns always have some kind of internal logic and coherence to them (even if that’s hard to put into words), I’ll maybe agree. But very often it sounds as if having the ‘idea’ is the only difficult, ‘creative’ bit, and the rest is mere ‘execution’. People respond to ads, however, not to abstract ideas: ads that exist in the full details of how they look, how they sound, the timing of the edit, the camera angles, the soundtrack, the lighting, every nuance of sets and propping and casting… and so on. If there’s such a thing as a ‘creative idea’ (which I doubt, though I don’t have room here to get too philosophical), we only know about it because of the execution that embodies it.

Excerpt from: Eat Your Greens by Wiemer Snijders

💎 On the risks of safe advertising (you’re invisible)

“An idea that hasn’t been done before might, on the surface, look really risky,” argues Bob Isherwood, worldwide creative director of Saatchi & Saatchi. “It’s an area where no one has been before. There is no precedent. But usually the biggest risk lies in ideas that are predictable, because ideas that are predictable don’t get noticed. You can’t sell anything to anyone unless they notice you. To get a boring ad noticed, you’ve got to run it lots and lots of times. If you’ve got a really original message, you only need to run it a few times. People retain the message longer and it costs the client less.”

“People think the low risk thing is not to run the high risk idea, observes Stow. “The biggest risk is to be safe, because if you’re safe you’re invisible and you waste your money.”

Excerpt from: Cutting Edge Advertising: How to Create the World’s Best Print for Brands in the 21st Century by Jim Aitchison

💎 On breaking comparisons with your competition to charge an eye-watering premium (launching Haagen-Dazs)

When we launched Haagen-Dazs in the UK in the early 90s we were in the middle of a recession. Not the best of times to be launching a luxury ice-cream brand. We positioned the brand as a sensual pleasure. We didn’t compare it to other ice creams, in fact we hardly mentioned the word ice cream. But at £3 a pot it was not only accessible, it was the most stylish pleasure you could purchase. The brand took off. Haagen-Dazs weren’t in the ice cream business, they were in the sensual pleasure business.

Sadly, over time, a succession of brand owners dragged it back to the ice cream sector. Now it’s just one of a number of ice creams fighting for attention in the supermarket freezer. Imagine where they could have taken that brand had they realized the potential of where we had positioned it – they didn’t realize we’d created a fashion brand.

Excerpt from: Hegarty on Advertising: Turning Intelligence into Magic by John Hegarty