There is much ado about the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, so here at Grip we decided to get a little regal and delve into the mystique of the modern Royal Family and examine their brand.

The wedding of Prince Charles to Diana Spencer in 1981 was by all standards a worldwide spectacle, attracting an estimated global viewership of 750 million. With the waning popularity of the Royal Family, the wedding exhibited regal pageantry to a generation that questioned the very purpose of the monarchy. The Royal Family – and their brand – were as revered as any time in history. The admiration of the Royal Family wouldn’t last for long though, as Prince Charles’ scandalous relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles and subsequent divorce from Princess Diana served to do as much harm to the Royal Family as his 1981 wedding had done good.

The tragic death of Princess Diana again fixated the public’s attention on Buckingham Palace. The Royal Family was slow to release a statement and the Queen was especially criticized of being cold and unfeeling in the wake of Diana’s death. Elizabeth II contended that as Diana and Charles were divorced, she should not receive a royal funeral and the responsibility for the services fell on her family, the Spencers. Charles intervened and Diana’s funeral received the royal treatment but despite this, the Queen’s approval rating plummeted as she became the stoic foil to the loving figure that was Princess Diana. 71% of Britains felt that the Royal Family had acted improperly and that Diana’s example was a better one to be followed.

With the impending pomp and circumstance of the 2011 Royal Wedding, we have seen a surge in media and public attention to the Royals. However, 35% of Britons say they are wholly uninterested in the Royal Wedding, with just as many saying otherwise. Those who dismiss the monarchy as an archaic figurehead are still pitted against an expected viewership in the billions. The allure is seemingly undeniable for some.

So a quick poll for those on this side of the pond (and perhaps even those and various other sides): what, in your opinion, is the state of the Royal brand?

And although there’s pain in my chest
I still wish you the best with a…
Forget you!
Oo, oo, ooo

The DJ reads the song title with a snicker – same as every other time.

People have grown to love Cee Lo Green’s chart topper because of its Motown sound, catchiness, and most of all, because it’s called F*ck You.

Initially, I approached this article with the belief that swearing was a few years away from just being another set of words. How wrong I was.

Cee Lo’s song is a significant example of the mainstream embracing profanity. This was a song played most frequently on top-40 radio stations, used in trailers for romantic comedies, and performed live on shows like The View. The fact that the song title was changed was acknowledged across the board.

Once upon a time, profane material would not be aired. It was non-negotiable. With movies, it fetched a hard-R rating. With literature…if you live in the southern States, you may still have only heard about Catcher in the Rye.

At this point, profanity has become such a fundamental part of the lexicon that it’s almost strange for it not to be included in our entertainment. Words like ass, bitch, balls and asshole are now part of plenty of television shows, while “shit” can be heard in select programming like Sons of Anarchy.

The other, more frequent tactic is the bleep. Once a form of safeguarding content, this too has been commandeered to slip profanity past the censors.

Being in advertising, I shy away from using certain words as I assume they wouldn’t be publicly accepted. How wrong I was. In fact, Diesel based an entire sneaker campaign around it, using the slogan “not for running, but great for kicking ass”. There’s also Levi’s “Not all asses were created equal” print campaign, which caused less of a stir than Old Navy’s use of the word booty in their TV ads. Diet Pepsi (a brand as mainstream as they come) ran this ad over three years ago. And rounding off the disproofs to my initial theory, we cannot forget the still-running Frank’s Red Hot “I put that sh*t on everything” campaign.

It’s easy to believe that this flagrant use of profanity will nullify its impact. However, as much a part of the lexicon as it has become, there will always be those who describe the buttocks as an ass.

I regularly find myself around my friends and their kids. It has taken an immense amount of work, but I can proudly say that I (usually) don’t swear around them. This type of self-censorship is fundamental to maintaining friendships, as parents will only let you drop so many f-bombs around their impressionable little ones before you are no longer welcome, and rightly so.

Here then is the sacred ground where profanity is still profane. Diesel’s key demo (judging by the tone of their marketing) has seen it all. So, probably, have Old Navy’s. Parents value the family-friendly environment, and that is non-negotiable. Where bleeps and mild swearing is taken as cutting edge with Levi’s and Frank’s, it will always be unwelcome with family-friendly programming.

In 1987, NWA released Straight Outta Compton, a record so violent, profane and misogynistic, it was flagged by the every single interest group – including the FBI. Back then, mild profanity did not exist. The title track was re-written, free of any profanity, but maintained boasts about murder, hatred of police, and severe misogyny.

Most impressive was the re-tooled line:

So what about the girl who got shot? Yah!
You think I give a damn about a girl?
I ain’t a sucka!

All NWA had to do was remove the profanity, and their lurid, ultra-violent tales were cleared for air.

Switching on BET, there are hip-hop videos where entire verses are silenced. Knowing who Rick Ross is, I don’t need his lyrics to tell me he’s a former (and apparently current) crack dealer, whose very essence is built around violence.

We can’t censor context. Levi’s got away with ass because it’s still used in a cutesy way. Ice Cube wishes to inflict terrible things on yo ass, and no replacement word changes the violence of that act. 80s standup comedians like Andrew Dice Clay and Eddie Murphy used extreme situations and profanity to shock their audiences. Watching their material now, I am much more shocked at the comfort with which they hurl racial and homophobic slurs.

Depending on who you ask, language, violence and sex in entertainment is a mark of dystopia. However, it could be argued that the use of profanity in advertising does not denote being on the social train to hell, but rather our collective chilling the &@$% out.

April 13^th was a big day for both fashion brand Burberry and the English alt-rock band Keane. Being a big fan of Keane, I was delighted to discover they performed as part of a huge fashion / digital extravaganza to launch Burberry’s flagship in Beijing, China. The theme: “Burberry, Britishness, music and technology in China.” All live-streamed online.

A couple aspects of this pairing moved me. Whereas I initially found the pairing of Burberry and Keane a little odd, it dawned on me that Burberry is much more than those (ugly) tan umbrellas and scarves. It’s actually a very progressive fashion brand on a quest for global domination. Couple that with the fact that Keane is probably the hottest band in England and you have a union that makes sense. Two examples of the best of England transported to one of the world’s most vibrant cities.

Then there was the sheer magnitude of the event. While I missed some of the pre-promotion, I couldn’t help marvel at the scale. As floor-to-ceiling video walls showed images of the fashion label’s latest collection, virtual image technology was used to project life-like holograms of models among actual models on a real-life catwalk. I loved the fact they took 4D projection outside the realm of building projection. It was a novel, futuristic mingling of the virtual with the actual.

And of course, there was the fabulous Keane concert which closed the show. Mind-boggling was the clarity of the broadcast. It beamed live to web on burberry.com and keanemusic.com as well as streamed to 50 Burberry stores across the globe. Private parties were held at each location.

The cost must have been staggering. The rational for the showcase was clear. Spending on luxury goods in China is forecast to grow from £6.2bn in 2009 to £17bn by 2015, and Burberry wants a big slice of that. But was it worth it? And if it is (secretly, I think yes), I hope some of our own Canadian companies take notice. A good combination of creativity, technology and live events are worth the time and investment. We can’t bore people into buying our product. We need to dazzle and delight.

Disagree?

2002 – It was a chilly December evening. The night’s euphoria was a mix recently completed exams, imbibed spirits and anticipation of the upcoming holidays. Ours was a group who’d been close since grade school. We’d been together since childhood and were now becoming adults together. With hectic schedules, it was also getting more difficult for us all to arrange being in the same room at the same time.

I remember the music that played, what I drank, and who sat where. I remember the room lit by candles and Christmas lights. Conversation started in individual pockets, and expanded to include everyone. It shifted back and forth, occasionally turning into impromptu games of listing off activities nobody intended to actually do. A great party means never staring at your watch. You are aware of its impending end, but the good times keep rolling.

At some point, someone noticed the computer was on.

“Hey, have you guys heard of ebaum’s world?”

Within a half hour, people had exhausted their knowledge of ridiculous online videos. The room had been filled with a new, awkward silence.  Since then, Youtube has given us more of these sorts of videos than we know what to do with. The periods of group video-watching have gotten longer, and are the Achilles heel of great parties everywhere.

Imagine this sobering (and totally scientific) stat: 1 in 3 good times die as a result of YouTube consumption. Catching up with old friends? Wait! There’s a video of a cat that thinks it’s people! Celebrating some sort of milestone? Someone has transcribed a Bhangra video incorrectly – but to hilarious ends! Fight as you may, every party now comes standard with harbinger of this madness, thanks to Youtube: unapologetic murderer of innocent parties.

Advertising can be pretty unremarkable. In most cases, it serves its short-term purpose and then fades into the ephemera, relegated to the ad graveyard with thousands of other web banners, magazine ads and radio spots. Try as we might, this constitutes a large percentage of what we work on every day.

Occasionally though, if you work really hard and manage to seize on a resonant cultural idea, advertising can bring about positivity and good in the world.

Dan Wieden of Wieden+Kennedy has mentioned that the agency’s  long-standing “Just Do It” strategy for Nike was initially given a “lukewarm reception” by Nike marketing execs. After the campaign was approved, the slogan took on a life of its own. People inferred their own meaning from the slogan and it became widely applied to everything from physical fitness, to charitable acts, to going back to school. It underwent a transformation from a tag for running shoes into a life-affirming truism. An advertising campaign helped conjure noble ambitions from people.

DDB Amsterdam’s “Fun Theory” for Volkswagen presupposed that positive cultural and environmental change could come from making tasks fun. And it worked. The initiative amassed 19 million YouTube views for the client while managing to get people to make healthier decisions for themselves and the environment. An advertising campaign affected people’s behaviour for the better.

“Earth Hour” became a massive global event but it was initially a campaign launched by Leo Burnett Australia and their client, World Wildlife Fund. At its peak, Earth Hour involved over a billion people in 129 countries – the largest mass participation event in human history. It was a clarion call to go without the obtrusive convenience of electricity for a global cause. And it was sparked by advertising.

While the opportunity to make this level of impact is a holy grail for most advertisers, it exists nonetheless. Reading and writing about them is a reminder that one simple insight can shift the tides of opinion in the best possible ways.