June « 2010 « Big Orange Slide

Unnatural brand disasters

June 17, 2010 by Miranda Voth

The 2001 British Petroleum brand redesign was a big step in the right eco-direction. Realizing that petroleum had become increasingly associated with evil things, the company condensed its company name to BP, and adopted the tagline “Beyond Petroleum.”

Naturally, the logo underwent a transformation too. The green and yellow “Helios” is intended to represent the “progressive, responsible, innovative and performance driven” aspects of the company, and its deep concern for finding energy that is “affordable, secure and doesn’t damage the environment.”

At the same time, BP was doing something many oil and energy companies were not: advertising. To tout its progressive and eco-friendly initiatives, humourous ads aired during FIFA and other campaigns to spread the word about their green programs. All around they had a good thing going, considering the nature of the company. Until now.

Since April 20, 2010, oil has consistently poured from a “sea floor oil gusher” into the Gulf of Mexico following the explosion of the BP Deepwater Horizon rig. BP, who had worked so hard for their relatively clean image, is now a burdened brand with the colourful title of “largest offshore oil spill in US history.”

For weeks, BP wasn’t transparent about the damage this error would cause to the environment. And after weeks of downplaying and denying, BP finally acknowledged what it had done.

After 45 days of oil spewing into the Gulf, BP CEO, Tony Hayward went on Fox News in an effort to regain the world’s trust in BP. Rather than coming across as sincere, his abject apologies for BP’s role in the environmental disaster, and its subsequent ability to clean up the Gulf, seemed to lack genuine empathy. And in an age where any communications misstep ricochets for months, Hayward’s closing remarks went viral: “There’s no one who wants this thing over more than I do. You know, I’d like my life back.”

Whoops!

Let’s take a step back, BP, and consider what TO DO and NOT TO DO in a communications crisis. Three suggestions:

#1: Take responsibility for mistakes made. It’s the only way to showcase a responsible brand.
It was reported BP ordered clean-up volunteers and workers not to wear respirators on site because they created a bad visual in the media. A month later, workers on the BP spill cleanup duty are reporting flu-like symptoms. Hayward claimed the symptoms were from food poisoning. Clearly, they all ate the fish on the flight out there.

#2: Don’t downplay the situation.
BP shut down journalists from taking photos of the devastation as well as tried to stop satire Twitter accounts (@BPGlobalPR) from tweeting with BP’s name. Bad, bad, bad.

From BP to Tiger Woods, it’s been proven time and time again that the truth will out eventually. Lying will not keep your stocks and liabilities from falling apart.

#3: Show, don’t tell.
Give journalists access to see the clean-up plan in action rather than shutting them out. In a lose-lose situation, the best thing BP could have done for the brand is show the steps it’s taking to improve the situation beyond a blithe press release.

Regardless of the many huge and unforgivable mistakes BP made in the last month two months, it had the chance to turn bad press into a slightly more positive showing of their efforts, but didn’t.

The questions I’ll pose to you is:

Do you think companies should have a communication plan in place for disasters?

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How StarCraft made me a better producer

Culture

June 16, 2010 by Jacob Karsemeyer

When I was invited into the StarCraft 2 Beta two months ago, I accepted with mixed feelings. I’ve played the original StarCraft obsessively for a decade, and it has eaten up more than its fair share of time that could have been put towards something more . . . productive.

To compound the issue, I had just embarked on the daunting task of hunting for a job.

While I was excited to take part in the Beta of a game I was looking forward to, I knew that all the Zerglings in the world wouldn’t get me a job. But after a few weeks of carefully balancing the two, I landed myself an internship here at Grip Limited as a Producer.

With no experience in project management of the scale that goes on at Grip, I found myself looking to past experiences to try to find some insight into the daily tasks I would be taking on. It was a surprise when I realized that it was StarCraft, the very thing I thought would impede my job hunt, that ended up being my most coveted tool.

Let me just state that again for impact.

StarCraft 2 – a video game – has helped me be a better producer.

How, you ask? If you scratch a little bit beneath the surface, you’ll see the two actually have a lot in common. The most important aspect of either is the effective management of time and resources – replace marines and zealots with designers and programmers and StarCraft becomes a training exercise in the fundamentals of production.

A StarCraft player starts out a game with a standard opening. They allocate their resources to the most imminent task, gathering minerals, a necessity that precedes all other tasks. Once those resources have been gathered, it’s the job of the player to determine the most effective allocation of those resources.

Bad StarCraft players, like bad producers, operate in a stasis, making the same decisions every game without considering external factors. A good player continuously observes his opponent so that they have as much time as possible to react to their strategies. Whether you’re on B.Net playing StarCraft, or in your office, you never want to be caught off-guard by some unexpected problem knocking at your door. The more aware you are of the nature of the potential problems you might face, the better you’ll be at mitigating the frustration they cause you.

The composition of your team is also an important consideration. StarCraft is designed around the “paper-scissors-rock” mechanic, where each unit is strong against some things, but weak against others. Units that can win you the game in some situations will get eaten up in others. Conversely, some team members in a creative agency will knock certain types of projects out of the park, and then fall apart trying to complete others. Understanding the capabilities of your resources and what situations they perform best in can save you a lot of time and energy.

World of Warcraft (WoW) players have long trumpeted the professional benefits of high-end group play and managing a guild, but I think it’s time we turn our sights to StarCraft. By avoiding the monotony of WoW, StarCraft allows players to focus on an important workplace skill: tactical deployment of resources to maximize efficiency and minimize the negative effects of the variety of inevitable problems that come up.

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The Facebook Effect

Digital

June 15, 2010 by Dave Hamilton

A new book by David Kirkpatrick called The Facebook Effect landed in stores last week. I haven’t read it (yet) but the New York Times, in its review, excerpted a paragraph that caught my attention:

“Members of Facebook’s radical transparency camp, Zuckerberg included, believe more visibility makes us better people. Some claim, for example, that because of Facebook, young people today have a harder time cheating on their boyfriends or girlfriends. They also say that more transparency should make for a more tolerant society in which people eventually accept that everybody sometimes does bad or embarrassing things.”

So, what does everyone think? Will social media exposure make us better people?

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When grown men cry

Culture

June 14, 2010 by Bob Goulart

With World Cup upon us, it’s hard not to get caught up in the fervor of it all, especially for marketers. It’s easy to see why when you consider the data:

In 2006, 715.1 million people tuned in to see the Italy/France final. The cumulative audience for the tournament was 26 billion. That number is expected to be the same this year in the 214 countries where the tournament is broadcast.

What’s not accounted for in those numbers is the the level of consumer engagement online leading to and during the month-long tournament. It’s a rare occasion to engage a global audience. Sure the numbers are incredible, but more important, the engagement is deep. Beyond being the most popular sport in the world, this particular event ignites national pride in a way that brings grown men to tears.

So powerful are the emotions that the tournament has united warring factions within countries to support their national teams.

To many marketers, leveraging tribal affiliations on a global scale is like shooting fish in a barrel. This year, as in years previous, marketers race to get on the World Cup bandwagon – serving up patriotic messages to hungry fans. Some of them so beautifully shot and so powerfully narrated that they bring viewers to tears.

The big question is, are they creating messages that endure?

Will all marketers get the credit, respect, and ultimately business results they hope for out of their media, production and sponsorship dollar?

It’s too early to tell, but my guess is no. There are lessons from previous tournaments that many have chosen to ignore again (just as they did in 2006 and 2002):

The first lesson is credibility.
Aligning your brand to soccer with an official or unofficial sponsorship does not necessarily buy unconditional love for years to come. If you’re in the soccer apparel business, that’s a little easier to do. But even so, Nike works pretty hard at being the key “unofficial” sponsor beyond creating one of the best spots of the tournament. (“Write the future” has 14 million YouTube views and counting.) Nike’s World Cup Facebook platform “The Chance” will give 100 players the chance for training academy contracts in the UK. This and Nike’s constant commitment to soccer online (Nike’s Master Control app) and offline (Nike soccer camps) will help in their quest to be the most credible soccer apparel brand in the world.

So what if you don’t make cleats and kits. One can argue that Carlsberg’s decades-long commitment to club soccer has granted them the credibility to deliver one of the most loved spots in support of the English national team. No easy task when you remember that Carlsberg is a Danish brand, and Denmark is in the tournament.

The other common error is brand link.
Leveraging patriotism and the love of the game without a relevant brand link is risky, especially when most advertisers chose to create spots featuring the same excited fans cheering for the same famous players. It gets difficult to remember who’s who.

If it’s insightful, beautiful or funny enough (watch Visa’s football evolution) the discussion at the watercooler and blogosphere may yield the brand link marketers hope for. But that’s an expensive gamble.

Pepsi’s “Oh Africa” spot features obligatory refreshment shots and players wearing tribal-inspired Pepsi jerseys. Unfortunately, this kind of product placement is both contrived and, thanks to the jerseys, patronizing.

What’s missing is a real link between story and brand. The better example in the category is Coke. The History of Celebration plays beautifully to Coke’s “Open Happiness” platform, and is a far more genuine expression of the joy of the game.

Last, another common error is the overwhelming lack of originality.
While I love the epic stories of battles on the pitch and expressions of patriotism, they often feel reminiscent of World Cups past. Nike did a beautiful job of reinventing dramatic player footage to create not only the most downloaded spot of the tournament but the most downloaded video of any campaign in its first week.

Adidas and “The Quest” is a far less original take on the drama of the game, but it serves as a driver to what seems like a robust Facebook app that allows viewers to predict game outcomes and win prizes.

Their more original take on soccer comes in the form of a delightfully surreal and amusing spot for their aptly named “Originals” brand. Cantina 2010 seems like a creative brief gone awry as it mashes soccer, its Star Wars Collection and signed celebrities like Beckham, Beckenbauer, Snoop Dogg, Ian Brown and Daft Punk in a retelling of the Star wars Cantina scene. Not a soccer jersey in sight and yet it may end up being one of the most talked-about videos of the the tournament (2.6 million YouTube views and counting and it airs June 12 in the US and UK).

It’s certainly the most unusual.

While there will certainly be some big marketing wins coming out of the next month, I fear many have scrambled to get into the game without considering how best for their brands to engage consumers. Tough for unofficial sponsors. Arguably even tougher for official sponsors who need to see a return on the additional $125 million they pay for the right to be called “official.”

At that price, a miss at the world’s most-watched sporting event is enough to make any marketer cry.

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How to get ahead in advertising: Part 1

Strategy

June 11, 2010 by Ian Mackenzie

What separates advertising’s rock stars from its chair warmers? And what does it take to get to the next level? Over the next few weeks we’ll be asking marketers who’ve made their mark their thoughts on getting ahead.

Today, Grip Partner, Creative Jon Finkelstein weighs in:

1) True or false: results trump all reasonable shortcomings?
Hummm. I’d say Trulse. Because it sort of depends on how you come at it. Results are king, don’t get me wrong. We’re in the demand-generation business. And when we sell our clients’ wares, we all win. BUT results at all costs can also be creatively crushing. Like, you can write a great offer on a paper bag and if it’s marketed to the right person at the right time with the right offer, then BINGO. It will work. But is it “wow”? Would you show it to friends? Do you feel fulfilled? Maybe none of that matters. I changed my answer. Results wins.

2) Are there any common qualities you’ve seen in people who go far in this industry?
Yes. Drive. Determination. Curiosity. Passion. You really need to love this business. If you’re not engaged, you won’t get too far. Those who really succeed make themselves invaluable to their agency.

3) How do you feel about the idea that people should dress a level above their current pay grade?
Only if they’re looking to date someone who makes more. Of course, maybe it matters if you’re on the account side. But take a look at some of the most successful creatives. Jeans. T-shirts. Turtlenecks.

4) What’s the downside of ambition?
Some people can be royal pains in the ass. It’s great to be ambitious as long as you do it with respect. Being on a CD’s heels all the time can have the inverse effect. Also, make sure your ambition is wanted. Don’t step on toes.

5) From a career perspective, how important are writer-art director partnerships?
I like the idea of having many people in a department that work well together. I think more and more it’s becoming less important. BUT, it’s sure great to have someone you work well with every day.

6) How important are awards to getting ahead?
Very. They get you noticed. They get your name in magazines. Which means CDs and headhunters can find you. Awards also give you credibility. And that’s a good thing.

7) If advertising is a young person’s game, any tips for managing a successful career into your golden years?
Own the agency. Colour your hair. Get cosmetic surgery. Or keep fresh. Go to conferences. Don’t eschew technology. And see question 2. It still applies.

8) Scenario: you have a job, but aren’t moving forward. You’re out of ideas. What do you do?
Watch TED. Go to TED. Take a vacation. Watch YouTube. Read a book. If all fails, maybe you should be happy with what you have.

9) How much effort should someone put toward intangible cultural contributions to an agency?
I think this is a great question. I think some people are great at this. It helps keep staff happy. It’s great for the agency. And, as I said above, it makes you invaluable. That said, don’t spend more time on this than what you’re paid to do.

10) What’s the secret to looking like a star in a brainstorming session?
Participate. So often junior staff ask to be included in brainstorm sessions. Then they don’t participate. If you take up space in a boardroom, speak up. Remember, no idea is too stupid. Only silence is.

11) True or false: the more integrated you are, the better positioned you are for success?
True. And remember, integration isn’t necessarily structural. It’s a state of mind. Think multidisciplinary. Act multidisciplinary. It’s way more fun anyway.

For more thoughts on this topic, check out our four-part How to get a job in advertising series.

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“This is actually happening.”

Strategy

June 10, 2010 by Warren Haas

See that quote hanging up there in the headline? That’s the main thing I remember thinking during my first day as an intern here at Grip.

Having spent the past eight months as a student in the slightly intense postgraduate Advertising Copywriting program at Humber College, I hadn’t really stopped to think about what an internship would be like.

As a student, you put pretty much all of your energy into making your portfolio as good as you can, as quickly as you can. You don’t have time to think about all of the things you might be expected to do as an intern, because all you’re thinking about is getting to the point of having an internship. And if you’re not spending all your time thinking about new campaigns for your portfolio, then there’s a chance you won’t even end up getting an internship.

So once I was able to sit down at my desk and appreciate that I was in a real agency with real clients and real briefs, I was kind of terrified. (Some of my coworkers might have noticed this by the mumbling noise I gave in place of “hi” for the first few days.) It wasn’t that I was doubting my ability to work as a copywriter. It was because I realized that when you’re an intern, the work you do really matters.

You’re no longer crafting your own strategies and trying to sell RC Cola with Vanilla Ice. You are writing for clients who are expecting to be sold on a great idea. You can’t just take a brief that isn’t working and start over — you can’t even think about that — you have to meet what the brief asks for.

I was told by some of my teachers that you lose some of your creative freedom once you leave school, because you can’t just write anything you want. While that may be true, I’ve also found that working on ads at an agency is a challenge unlike anything I experienced in school. In my opinion, finding a way to say something new and unique while still meeting the requirements of the brief takes just as much creativity as giving yourself a blank slate to state the benefit of a product in the most outrageous and provocative way.

Besides, you can still write plenty of headlines with puns. Just don’t show them to anyone.

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The “What” versus the “How”

Strategy

June 8, 2010 by Harvey Carroll

More and more, I am convinced that, as an industry, we are becoming overly focused on the “How” at the expense of the “What.”

Grab any industry magazine, read your favourite blog or eavesdrop on marketing types at your local coffee shop and you’re sure to find the conversation squarely focused on how we need to speak to consumers.

It usually goes something like this: TV is dead. The world of digital is upon us. Consumers don’t want to be advertised to anymore. (Did they ever?) Brands need to leverage social media. We need more one-to-one conversations. And so on.

Listen a little bit closer and you’ll hear the conversation dive even more tactical: you need a Facebook “Like” page. No one will ever see that 30-second ad now that kids are not watching TV anymore. How can we use foursquare to define our brand experience?

Look, there’s no denying that the world our consumers live in is changing rapidly, or for that matter, that how we speak to them as marketers needs to change. The issue I have is that, as an industry, increasingly we seem to be jumping to solve this “How” before we spend the right time determining the appropriate “What.”

For brands to be successful, they will need to deliver on a consumer need in a consistent and powerful way. They will need to differentiate themselves and provide consumers with a reason – be it rational or emotional – to choose them over the plethora of other options out there. Brands will need to be rooted in a value that motivates consumers to take action and make a choice to embrace the brand. This is the “What.”

While the “How” can determine the speed, and to some extent, the degree of success with which consumers take this step to embrace a brand, it really needs to start with a compelling “What.”

As the world gets ever more fragmented and the lives of our consumers get busier, we as marketers will have to do an even better job of finding those insights that allow brands to resonate with these distracted consumers. In this environment, a powerful “How” can go a long way but not far enough to make up for a mediocre “What.”

We often hear that a great idea executed poorly yields a poor result. Equally, a poor idea executed flawlessly also yields a poor result.

In that race to find the latest and greatest “How,” don’t forget to take the time to first build a compelling “What.” Trust me, your consumer, and ultimately your brand, will thank you.

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Like selling salt to a french fry

Strategy

June 7, 2010 by Curtis Westman

Sodium is having a bad PR year. In Canada, the federal government has recently announced a plan to reduce the amount of salt in processed foods by 30% over the next six years. There has been a lot of controversy since the decision, with many people arguing that the six-year timeline is too generous. Meanwhile, in the United States, Michelle Obama and the Institute of Medicine are pushing the government to take similar action.

In the U.S., though, the flavour-enhancing compound isn’t taking the news lying down. Cargill, the main supplier and only producer of a uniquely shaped salt crystal called “Alberger Process” salt, is fighting back with a PR campaign of its own.

It’s not easy competing for fans against Michelle Obama, but Cargill has a few tricks up its sleeve. The first, of course, is that their brand of salt is the most prevalent in the American fast-food and fast-casual restaurant sectors, which are two of the biggest earners in the country. The second is that they’re backed by renowned celebrity “food scientist” Alton Brown.

In November, Cargill produced a video starring Brown, better known for his Food Network show Good Eats, called Salt 101. In the video (available here), he espouses the glory of adding salt to foods you might not imagine, including desserts and beverages. This is nothing new, of course – salt isn’t meant to be the overpowering aspect of these dishes, but rather is most versatile at enhancing flavour in small quantities.

The brand war of salt versus the world raises some interesting questions, both in terms of how the compound is being marketed and how it’s impacting our health.

Are Cargill, and by extension the processed and fast-food industries, trying to brand sodium as healthy, or are they just pandering to the fast-food consumers who have become addicted to salt?

Alton Brown is by his own admission not a chef; he teaches television viewers about food, and he does so with honesty and panache. But he also markets himself as a “food scientist.” Aren’t the real “food scientists” working for the Institute of Medicine? Is he a spokesman or a shill?

The health industry accuses the salt industry of using these marketing techniques to obfuscate information and to keep the salt status quo. In my eyes, they’re both guilty of doing this – a better solution for the American government would be to moderate the amount of sodium-rich foods served to Americans in general, but they would never consider such a drastic solution. That’s because raising the quality of food Americans are eating instead of demonizing single high-profile ingredients (like salt, trans fat and high-fructose corn syrup) would wreak havoc on the already unstable economy.

It would be unsellable.

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A ride back down The Slide

Culture

June 4, 2010 by Big Orange Slide

It’s good to be GripLimited.com. In its short life (it’s just 10 weeks old!), it’s been awarded (FWA), Tweeted, blogged, Facebooked, loved, hated, praised and pored over. Today, it has landed another honour – this one from the discerning folks at Communication Arts: it’s their “Webpick of the Week.”

Here at Big Orange Slide, we wanted to make sure the place was neat and tidy for people who’ve followed the circuitous route from CommArts.com to GripLimited.com, and who now may be seeing Grip’s official blog for the first time.

To wit, a few of our greatest hits:

• Hitching your brand to a star – by Steve Rhind
• Blowing the lid off the colour cartels – by Patrick Robinson
• Digital versus Traditional: The great agency debate – by Dave Hamilton
• Augmented reality? No longer lame? – by Matt Rogers
• Social media in healthcare marketing – by Holly Broome and Ravi Dindayal
• Brand like Batman – by Ian Mackenzie
• The death of business books, blogs and articles – by David Chiavegato
• To be a client (again) for a day – by Harvey Carroll
• Elements of surprise – by Leilah Ambrose
• Six marketing lessons from the King – by Michelle Davey
• Rebranding Canada – by Curtis Westman
• The digital “why?” – by Jacoub Bondre
• I believe . . . Canada can do better – by Randy Stein
• Social alienation – by Jon Finkelstein

Or, you can’t go wrong just scrolling down to see how it’s unfolded in “real” time.

Please enjoy The Slide responsibly. And come again soon.

(Also, you can follow us on Twitter: here.)

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How to get a job in advertising: Part 4

Strategy

June 3, 2010 by Ian Mackenzie

A job in advertising. For people trying to land their first (or second), getting there can be much less than half the fun. Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been asking ad folks who hire their thoughts on getting in.

Today, Grip Partner, Creative Dave Hamilton weighs in.

1) How can one person rise to the top in sea of similarly qualified applicants?
Good looks.

2) What’s the biggest mistake you’ve seen a person make while trying to get a job in advertising?
Fist fighting.

3) What do you look for in a resume?
Generous margins.

4) What do you look for in a student writer’s portfolio?
Hope.

5) Once you have a job, what’s the best way to make sure you keep moving forward in your career?
Laugh at the old guy’s jokes.

6) Any other thoughts on getting a job in advertising?
Careful what you wish for.

For more thoughts on how to get a job in advertising, check out Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of this series.

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