Dazzle Ships

Orange Old Spot

I guess I am what would be technically called a "heavy cinema goer", going at least every month on average. I had previously thought that this might explain my increasing annoyance every time Mr Dresden & his sidekick Elliot appeared on the screen in yet another one of Orange's "don't let a phone ruin the film" spots. But naturally being a consummate communications practitioner I am wary of "sample size of one" insights. And you've got to give credit it Orange/Mother - their cinema work has been a case study in building long term brand association. As explained in their recent APG Creative Strategy award entry.

But as a punter? Correct me if I am wrong but surely these spots have become just plain annoying now? This really came home for me last weekend in my local cinema. The auditorium was pretty full, and when Dresden appeared (this time with Juliet Lewis) there was an audible groan amongst the cinema goers. And no doubt for those who didn't groan were influenced by the groaners, making the feeling that "perhaps these are a bit tired now" spread.

Just goes to prove that sometimes nothing beats a bit of first person involvement in the experience a brand is creating, however well perceived, researched or audited the communications or creative strategy is.

Angus

Your brand here

So it looks like product placement in the UK is finally going to happen, after years of behind the scenes campaigning by broadcasters and the marketing industry. Broadly speaking, this is good news. It will provide a much needed injection of cash into the TV production industry and intuitively the inclusion of real brands may make TV shows more believable in the public's eyes. It always was a bit odd the way the patrons of the Rovers Return or Dog in the Pond would just say "yeah pint of lager please".

In reality product placement has been happening for years on TV in the UK. The traditional model was for brands to make their products available to TV production companies as free props to use in their shows. For example a major motors brand would supply all vehicles for use in a soap for free, saving the production company a lot of money which can then be spent on improving programming. As a model this seemed to work as it kept placement choice in the hands of the TV producer, and their editorial principles. What's new is that the broadcasters are now likely to be able to monetise this process.

But how is this actually going to work? The assumption seems to be that this is great news for struggling broadcasters like ITV. This assumes that the incremental investment goes straight to their coffers. But will this work? For one this would suggest that broadcasters like ITV can simply sell placement deals as if they were traditional sponsorship packages, and instruct the companies producing their programs to now accept much more aggressive product placement. This may work in some instances, for example with smaller production companies and in house programming, but not universally. Production companies are increasingly powerful entities no longer beholden to the broadcaster. Arguably the larger and more commercially minded of these (e.g. Endemol) will cut deals directly with the advertiser, cutting out the broadcasters.

And for those placements which the broadcaster can control, surely programming integrity will suffer as brand inclusion would move from being the elective choice of the production company to a mandatory instruction from the broadcaster. Surely no one would want this integrity compromised to the extent is in the US, or on the big screen. For the worst case example, three words: Die Another Day.

More broadly this all seems like too little too late if it is intended to help for a broadcasters like ITV. Ofcom has tentatively valued the additional revenue at around £35m over 5 years. Given the TV market slumped an estimated £277m in the first half of 2009, an incremental £7m a year for five years is really a drop in the ocean. Surely Ofcom should be focusing on instigating more structural changes to the broadcasting industry?

Angus

Familiar waters

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If this is the case, then looking at the latest marketing effort to come from Coca-Cola for Vitaminwater, Pepsico (and we) should be flattered to the point of blushing.

A facebook app monitors buzz around the web to create a top ten list of flavours. The more a favour is talked about, the more likely it will make the final top ten. Consumers will then vote for a winner which will be put into production, and have the opportunity to design the label and create the flavour name.

Getting consumers to decide upon the new flavour for a brand is a nice idea. A nice idea that has been done before. The similarity to Walkers 'Do Us A Flavour' campaign is immediate and striking. The label design part is an addition, although this too owes a debt elsewhere, in this case to Jones Soda.

The Walkers DUAF campaign was built upon a bedrock insight - that Walkers' consumers care about and have a real interest in flavours of Walkers crisps. Hence why people were invited to submit their flavour suggestions and did so to the tune of 1.2 million entries.

Do people care enough about the flavours of Vitaminwater for this idea to fly with this brand? Only time will tell I guess. It's not obvious exactly how the list of flavour candidates are being arrived at. Web 'buzz' is all well and good, but with reference to what? Is it the occurrence of mentions for ingredients that might be suitable for a drink, e.g. mentions of 'black cherry'? If so, this feels totally disconnected to the brand, it's just about people saying words in completely different context. Or, are there a set of flavour candidates that they're looking for mention of in relation to Vitaminwater? If so, who came up with those candidates? Not the consumer it would seem.

It slightly feels like some web 2.0 juciness masking a rather more vanilla implementation of an idea.

Asking the consumer to get involved with brands is a good idea, where the involvement taps into an interest that already exists. For FMCG in particular, we need to be careful that we do not project interest onto consumers when it doesn't really exist. Otherwise we end up with a load of brands asking consumers to 'get involved' when they simply don't care enough to do it. Cue a consumer backlash at worst, or ongoing apathy at best.

I don't know enough about what consumers think about Vitaminwater to know whether this campaign falls into this trap. Let's hope that it is a success and further demonstrates that FMCG marketing can inspire consumers even more than a great TV ad alone can.

And then we at team Walkers can smile at the fact that the idea worked again.

-- Alex

A brief off an animal

 

Peperami have recently ended their global relationship with their long time ad agency, Lowe. In place of this they have launched a worldwide competition to find ideas for their global ad campaign. Open to all-comers, the winner gets $10,000 and the kudos of their idea becoming a global campaign. Being run through the Idea Bounty community the brief rather worryingly asks for people to "crack the TV and Print ad". But let's not get hung up in the whole debate about needing media neutral ideas, not just TV scripts etc. Hopefully what Unilever (Peperami's owner) are aiming for is a bunch of new ideas to try and create news in the category, vital in FMCG. Interestingly, the downloadable brief cuts out the usual Unilever deep dive into brand planning, instead relying on the strength of the Peperami brand as it stands as inspiration to brief the would-be creatives. It actually directs them to the brand's consumer-facing website by way of inspiring them.

This has sparked considerable debate amongst the advertising community. Is it an admirably innovative approach to advertising ideas or money-saving exercise by Unilever? Is $10,000 enough? What do Lowe think?

Well for a start, this is not a new idea, it's all been done before at least once in the UK anyhow, for another FMCG giant. However the global scale of this move is what should be applauded for a company the size and nature of Unilever. And who says innovative approaches don't save you money? And as to how Lowe should feel? They should be proud that the strength of their 15 years of work is such that it gives an organisation the size of Unilever the confidence to put this in the public's hands.

Other brands could indeed follow suit. Arguably any brand which has a really established and clear identity could do the same. Marmite anyone? Any why not run a hyrbid model where a communications agency would steer the overall brand structure and briefing whilst crowd-sourcing the actual execution. What better way than that to keep in touch with what's relevant to those you're targeting?

Angus

Murdoch's out to get your auntie

James "son of" Murdoch has really got it in for the BBC. Delivering the recent MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival he levelled charges of Orwellian market distortion in the way that the license fee subsidises the corporation, calling the BBC "chilling" and equating their purchase of the Lonely Planet as "an egregious expansion of the state". His hyperbole has certainly stirred people's emotions, mostly against his company News Corp. The BBC's Robert Peston getting quite literally involved in a slanging match over dinner.

Essentially, it seems like Murdoch is motivated by News Corp's recent public struggle to make money in the brave new "free" media world - particularly online. Murdoch singled out the way he sees the BBC's online news content as skewing the market and making it hard for other providers (ie Sky/The Times/The Sun) to monetise their journalistic content. This just seems to compound the idea that "old media" practitioners like News Corp seem either unwilling or unable to adapt their business models to reflect what the internet has done to the traditional journalism model.

News Corp's struggle to support loss leading enterprise is naturally being accentuated by the wider economy and subsequent slowing of ad revenues. But this drive to monetise their online properties raises a broader question about the role of organisations both like the BBC and News Corp in the journey to a Digital Britain in 2012. If Murdoch's wish was granted and the license fee was cut, News Corp's uninhibited commercial interests could really threaten those of the public. This could lead to a beleagurerd BBC not being able to compete as strongly in online journalism, meaning News Corp would be able to start charging more aggressively for access across their sites. This would fundamentally change the nature of news access in the UK, and be contrary to the aim of a Digital Britain where universal broadband should mean universal access to information.

In Edinburgh Murdoch argued for the need for plurality in the marketplace. This does make sense, but this needs to be plurality in the broadest sense of public and private sector involvement, not just letting the free (commercial) market decide. The very existence of competition between public and private enterprise has to be the best way to ensure the communications marketplace is shaped with both the interests of the public and enterprise in mind. And this is vital in the journey to analogue switch-off in 2012, by which time the communications landscape will have fundamentally altered.

Angus