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Truth In Advertising

At what point does a brand putting its best foot forward step over the line that separates hyperbole from deception?

Giving Keira a couple of extra bra sizes for King Arthur promo material will surely put more bums on seats, but--and call me a killjoy--it does constitute false advertising.

And does $3.19 and 9/10ths of a cent for regular really fool anyone? (I’d like to see Mobil make 1/10th of a cent in change).

All levity aside, these everyday marketing half-truths further erode consumer trust and inure them to marketing messages at a time when receptivity is already at an all time low.

Summer Hours

I know real bloggers are supposed to write every day, but this one wants his weekends back.

Henceforth householdname.com  will be a Monday to Friday post.

Enjoy your weekend!

Headline Analyzer

The troubling thing about this site is that there obviously must be clients out there who'd trust a computer to judge emotions.

More troubling still is that if your headline can be analyzed by a software program then it must already have been written. Ergo, it's not original.


American Marketing Institute

Advertising 101

Here's a set of idea generation steps I've compiled over the years––it's worked for me, may it do the same for you:


1. Hit the internet. Read every link to the product. Get to know the product better than the client’s most loyal consumer.

2. What has the product currently got that we can use? Is there a name, logo, brand, benefit, already established that will give us some direction? What can we build upon? Let’s bring non-category thinking to this category.

3. What does the competitive advertising look like? Get examples––put them on a big board. Do a visual audit. Where are they going and why?

4. Start with a great strategy.

5. Every purchase is an emotional purchase. How does the brand make you feel? Take a moment to think about it, then craft ads that create an emotional reaction.

(Consumers increasingly are seeking comfort and connection from brands. Emphasis has moved from what the product does––the golden age of unique selling propositions and product demonstrations, to how the brand makes you feel––the soft sell. As Bob Lutz, GM head of design says, “These days when everything mechanically in a car is great, design becomes a huge differentation. The interior assumes a bigger role because it's where the customer lives. A thoughtful interior will provide huge long-term owner satisfaction. Cars and trucks are marginally about moving people from A to B. A $2000 used Cavalier will do that. Vehicles have become expressions of our identities. If you don't meet people's psychological needs, you're dead.”)

6. Keep all first thoughts. Try to find the cliché…then get as far away from it as possible.

7. K.I.S.S.

8. Give the brand a distinctive voice and tone. When you zag you get noticed and take leadership position in the category.

9. Put the product at the heart of the action and weave it into the narrative.

10. Advertising doesn’t exist in a vacuum. What is topical and vogue right now?

11. Is the idea exactly on strategy? Is it "client buyable." Effective advertising means no one else could substitute their brand in a spot for yours.

12. Blow it out! Print, TV, billboards, interactive, environmental, mailers, T-shirts etc. Does the idea work in all media?

13. Make the audience think they're more intelligent than you are, and they'll thank you for it.

14. Tell your story with honesty.

15. Does it pass the cool test?

16. Be entertaining. Do I like it? Will it sell? Is it new?


And as a client once said to me, a great product sells itself so just get out of the way!

Coulda Woulda Shoulda : Zippo

A stunning media buy perfectly executed: thanks to Mayor Bloomberg all the smokers are out on the sidewalk.

Site 'O The Week : Sprintsweets

Paying homage to Picasso's light drawings Sprint let's you write a personalized e-card in light, then fire it off over your cell.

Pablo would have approved: "Good artists copy; great artists steal."

Sprint Sweets

Do You Have A Cool Walk?

 

 

I was walking down the street with a female friend some time ago and we ran into an acquaintance––a young guy sporting a pressed seventies Pierre Cardin look.

        "That's a cool look," said my friend.
        "Thanks," he replied, just as another guy sauntered past behind us, "But that guy's got a cool walk."

We both glanced over and chuckled with aknowledgement, probably that same chuckle you just had. Because you know exactly what he's talking about:

Some people have a cool walk...and some people just don't.

John Travolta was cool-walking down Broadway in Saturday Night Fever. You wanted his walk; we all wanted that walk. Tony Manero's stride said "I'm sexy as hell, ten feet tall, and bullet-proof."

Laban Movement Analysis––first developed by Rudolf Laban in the early 1900s--recognizes that the way we move both reflects and influences the way we live our lives.

In Bonfires of The Vanities Tom Wolfe painted a character as walking "with a pumping gait known as the pimp roll" and if you take a moment to watch any sidewalk you'll see it.

Urban kids aren't born walking like that, it takes years of practice to refine that street swagger.

Hmmm, perhaps a sneaker company might want to claim 'cool-walking'--seems every kid wants one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Golden Rectangle

I was wondering why the photo in my previous post of Bannister breaking the four minute mile had such power––aside from it being the world-changing event that it was––and then it hit me: the figures are by chance aligned along the spiral of a golden rectangle.

The tail loops through the primary point of focus--the runner--and ends on the secondary point of focus--the bespectacled reporter in the cap.

Golden Rectangle In Art, Architecture, And Music

The Four Minute Mile

The four minute mile.

Athletes had been trying to achieve it since the ancient Greeks.

All the experts said it was impossible: our bone structure was wrong; wind resistance too great; lung capacity inadequate.

Then one man came along and proved all the doctors, the coaches, the naysayers and the countless men who'd tried and failed before him all wrong.

On May the 6th 1954 on the running track at Oxford University, Roger Bannister ran the mile in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds.

Just forty-six days later a second athlete broke the four-minute mile. And the following year, many more.

What happened? The human body didn't suddenly improve, but the human spirit did.

As Bannister recalled half a century later:

"No longer conscious of my movement, I discovered a new unity with nature. I had found a new source of power and beauty, a source I never dreamed existed."

He was in what today we rather less eloquently call 'the zone.'

Talent You Should Know : The Bitter Girls

The Japanese photographer Jyune--a.k.a. The Bitter Girls--uses a Canon EOS 20D and a TS-E45mm lens to achieve her "Lilliputian" series of photos.

Her world-as-diorama are achieved by tilting and shifting lenses--hence this technique is commonly called tilt-shift.

The technical bit (I think): the axis of a lens is normally perpendicular to the film so changing the angle between axis and film by tilting the lens standard backwards or forwards is called lens tilt; this also alters the depth of field. The focus can be shifted so that any plane can then be brought into sharp focus.

The Bitter Girls

© 2008 The Bitter Girls

Site 'O The Week : Hema

Here's a website you might want to add to your shopping list. The Dutch retailer Hema have made even the most mundane household products come alive.

Mouse over the blue cup and watch the mayhem unfold.

Hema

Annals Of Naming : Cartier Tank Watch

Charlie Chaplin said "performance is all about entrances and exits," so if you've got a new product to sell you'd best enter with a bang and have something to say.

Louis Cartier had a vision: to design a wristwatch that was both rugged and beautiful (today we call that dissonance). In 1917 he introduced the "Tank" and it went on to become his most famous model.

Drawing inspiration from First World War battle tanks he designed a face that was a square on a rectangle. The sketch above illustrates the evolution of his thinking.

My personal preference is for brand names that are either strongly rooted in a product's design or describe the product's benefit: Papermate, Walkman, Mothercare come to mind.

Tank does both.

It simply means that every time someone mentions the name they're reinforcing the brand's objectives and values––it's free advertising.

Even the name Google has its roots in logic: a googolplex is the number 1 followed by one hundred zeros.

But the Goog is the premier search engine––its algorithms aside––because to Google is a verb whereas to Yahoo is not; it's just not nearly as pronouncable.

How important is a strong name? One of Charlemagne's grandsons named himself Charles the Bald. I'm guessing we'd all rather follow Alexander the Great into battle.

Person Charlie Chaplin;

Right click for SmartMenu shortcuts

Before They Were Famous

The question you must ask yourself dear art director/director/client, is that if you'd been at a casting session in the early eighties and Billy Bob Thornton had walked in, would you have picked him for the callback?

Would Juliette Lewis have ended up in the circular file?

Laura Flynn Boyle's talents buried under a bagel?

What about Woody?

Ahhh, perhaps Vince Vaughn might just have made it out from under that bowl of M&Ms into your soda commercial.

We've Been Hugged

Treehugger.com––America's 11th most read blog according to Technorati––has blogged us.

The comments range from optimistic to pessimistic:

"This is fantastic. A non-judgmental, not-inflammatory message that will potentially see millions of people," to "please raise my taxes to pay for more currency pointlessly destroyed."

To add your voice, click here:


Treehugger.com

Save The Honey Bees

"Imagine a world without honeybees" the headline on this new Häagen-Dazs website asks us to consider.

By 2018 we won't need to imagine, for as the UK farming minister Lord Rooker told the House of Lords recently: "If nothing is done about it the honeybee population could be wiped out in 10 years."

Sadly for the bumble bees the exact cause of colony collapse disease is unknown, but it has already spread to most US states and last year cases were reported in France, Germany and Italy.

So Häagen-Dazs––who have more than a passing interest in their survival: no bees means no fruit flowers means no fruit––have stepped in to help raise awareness of the problem.

In a move that bandwagons numerous other greening brands, Häagen-Dazs have decided to sell social responsibility first, and strawberry ice cream second; for this they deserve our support.

 

Help The Honey Bees

 

 

Site 'O The Week : Red Interactive

Red Interactive make a bid for electronic immortality with Red Universe, their award-winning multi-player avatar site. Log on to create your own alter ego and chat with other visitors. (Your arrow keys move your character left and right, even make him fly).

Website as resume.

ff0000.com 

Big Blue's First Tagline

This one word slogan developed by IBM founder Thomas J. Watson began appearing in IBM offices, plants and publications in the 1920s. It was eventually cast on wood, stone and bronze as a desk ornament and was for many years the name of the monthly employee magazine.

That ThinkPad perched on your lap can trace its lineage back to Watson's motto.

JetBlue Pre-Flight Safety Tips

A proposed tagline for JetBlue was "People Flying People." It was foolishly rejected for the message couldn't have been more appropriate: this is the sole American airline that humanizes the flying experience and understands the importance of preserving the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of its passengers.

(Across the pond, Virgin Airlines embraces this philosophy: "I'm not in the airline business, I'm in the entertainment business," says Branson).

I thought "actively managing the customer experience across all points of contact" sounded like marketing spin until I witnessed the male flight attendant on a recent JetBlue flight deliver this pre-takeoff speech:

"Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, please direct your attention to Samantha. She’s single. If you date her you get a free flight. If you marry her you get free flights for life.

In the unlikely event I become your cruise director place the lifejacket over your head, then fix your hair.

Inflate jacket only when in the water. The light comes on automatically...that's so the sharks can see what they’re eating.

If we experience a drop in cabin pressure, stop screaming. If you’re flying with children, pick the one you like best and place mask over their head.

This is a no smoking flight…if you’d like to smoke please step outside.

Our flight time to LA is six hours and fifteen minutes. Your cabin staff hope you enjoy your flight today."



A round of applause and we were all on vacation already.

Superfly

Photo © 2008 GettyImages

Talent You Should Know : Laura Letinsky

Laura Letinsky believes gravity is a law to be broken; the objects in her compositions teeter on the edge of planes, creating a dynamic tension that fills each frame.

Truly, it takes hours to make a still life look this random.

Monaco Reps

© 2008 Laura Letinsky / Monaco Reps

Best Spot Of All Time : The Guardian

John Webster, the recently deceased British copywriter--and one of advertising's greats alongside Abbott, Hegarty, and Saatchi--penned this script for The Guardian newspaper in 1986.

"Point Of View" is a masterpiece of economical writing, pacing and execution. At first we think the skinhead is out to rob the businessman, but confounding stereotypes we see him save a life.

More than twenty years later I can still recall from memory the copy delivered in the resonant tones of Sir Ian Holm:

 

An event seen from one point of view gives one impression.

Seen from another point of view it gives quite a different impression.

But it's only when you get the whole picture you can fully understand what's going on.

That's not an ad, that's a life lesson; indeed so compelling was this commercial that it was shown in court by a defendant who claimed the witness had only a narrow view of the crime he was being charged with and thus not in command of all the facts.

The verdict: not guilty.

 

Point Of View