The Wall Street Journal Superbowl 2007

Another one of those "if I don't keep this here, I might not keep it anywhere" posts. I was interviewd, with Jill Applebaum, for the Wall Street Journal coverage of the 2007 Superbowl. The game itself is on a Sunday, but we were shown the ads and interviewed on the Saturday at the WSJ offices in downtown Manhattan. I remember it being very cold and very windy

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Advertising Super Bowl Advertisers Play It for Laughs --- Anheuser-Busch, Nationwide Seen as Hits With Humor; A Big Fumble by Flomax
By Suzanne Vranica 1,809 words 5 February 2007 The Wall Street Journal B1 English (Copyright (c) 2007, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

Slap-happy men, a celebrity bad boy and a feel-good Coke ad won the game within the game during Super Bowl XLI, impressing ad-industry pros and consumers, and showing once again that humor is the best way to grab viewers' attention during the gridiron classic.
Anheuser-Busch Cos., in particular, produced a series of ads that resonated among a group of ad executives and consumers who talked with The Wall Street Journal after seeing the Super Bowl ads. Among the most popular was a Bud Light spot, crafted by Omnicom Group Inc.'s DDB, showing a string of men slapping each other. The ad was "one of the favorites of the game," says Greg Yeadon, a 28-year-old student at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management in Evanston, Ill., who was watching the game with a group of 36 students and faculty.

"It is something I can imagine catching on like other Bud ads have in the past, like the 'Whassup' stuff," says Kristi Bridges, creative director at the Sawtooth Group ad agency in New Jersey, referring to the popular Budweiser ads that ran in 2000.

Despite the standouts, this year's Super Bowl ads overall didn't live up to the hype surrounding them. Even a surprise CBS Corp. promo managed to outshine some of the big-spending advertisers. The spot showed Indianapolis native David Letterman, wearing a Colts jersey, and Chicago resident Oprah Winfrey, sporting a Bears jersey -- snuggling on a couch. "It is one of the best things I've seen so far," says Christopher Celeste, a 41-year-old who works at a technology startup in Cleveland.

About 90 million viewers in the U.S. were expected to watch the game on CBS, an audience far bigger than any other television broadcast attracts. Advertisers paid as much as $2.6 million for 30-second spots, confident that viewers would pay special attention to the commercial breaks. More than half of U.S. adults who watch the Super Bowl do so as much or more for the commercials as for the game itself, according to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive Inc. for Hanon McKendry/The Brand Consultants.

While Anheuser-Busch is an old hand at producing winning Super Bowl ads, Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. catapulted into that territory for the first time with an ad starring Kevin Federline
-- wannabe rapper and singer Britney Spears's soon-to-be ex-husband -- as a worker in a fast-food joint. The idea: Be prepared with an annuity if life throws you a surprise blow. "I loved it. Insurance and pop culture together -- now that's an accomplishment," says Jon Bond, cochairman, Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners. Interpublic Group's TM Advertising created the ad.
Successfully tying into the country's obsession with celebrity, Nationwide's ad managed to generate millions in free publicity over the past three weeks.

Early polling on WSJ.com had Coke ads and Bud Light's classroom spot leading the pack.
Coca-Cola Co., returning to the Super Bowl after an eight-year hiatus, was the clear winner of a much-anticipated matchup with its archrival and prolific big game advertiser PepsiCo Inc., ad executives said. "Coke was brilliantly done --superb," raves Christian Barnett, an ad executive at Brand Buzz, a unit of WPP Group's Young & Rubicam.

Even though Coke's ads have aired in recent weeks on Fox's "American Idol," and lacked the advantage of surprise, they still captured the attention of advertising experts and viewers last night -- good news for Coke, which has struggled with lackluster advertising in recent years. One, made to look like a videogame, showed an ominous looking do-gooder character passing out Coke to the people he meets while the other whimsical spot reveals what happens inside a Coca-Cola vending machine. "It made me feel good," says Steve Archer, a 52-year-old vice president at a financial firm in St. Louis, Mo. Both spots were crafted by Wieden + Kennedy.

In contrast, PepsiCo's ads promoting Sierra Mist brand were seen as generally missing the humor mark, though one, featuring a man with a freaky-looking beard comb-over, did leave some chuckling. Pepsi sponsored the half-time show.

User-generated ads -- those created by consumers, rather than ad agencies --created a buzz. Maybe the biggest winner of the night was 21-year-old Dale Backus, an amateur filmmaker who won Doritos' contest for a member of the public to produce a Super Bowl commercial. Doritos are made by Pepsico's Frito-Lay.

In the latest example of how the user-generated content trend has swept Madison Avenue, Doritos revealed the winner publicly only when the ad aired. The high quality of the spot, featuring a guy getting into a car accident, had some on Madison Avenue a bit nervous. "It's kind of scary that a consumer can come up with stuff that good," says Simeon Roane, executive creative director at the New York office of Publicis USA, a unit of Publicis Groupe.
Doritos seemed to agree. Yesterday, the company announced that the top five finalists in the contest would run on national television through March. The company also decided at the last moment to air the runner-up in the contest -- a funny ad showing a supermarket checkout girl
- during the Super Bowl broadcast. Also tapping into the user-generated phenomenon was General Motors Corp.'s Chevrolet, whose ad originated with an idea proposed by Katie Crabb -- a freshman at University of Wisconsin. But the spot was a bit more polished than that of Doritos, because Chevy's ad firm helped to produce it. The commercial featured a group of girls in a Chevy HHR, a retro-style miniwagon, enjoying watching their car being washed by a group of half-naked men who can't seem to take their hands off the car.

All Super Bowl advertisers, though, had a tough task trying to drown out Anheuser-Busch, which aired a total of nine ads for Budweiser, Bud Light and Bud Select. The brewer's Super Bowl ads are routinely among the most popular with viewers and this year was no exception among the group of advertising executives. Among the spots generating a positive reaction was one heartfelt spot featuring a dog making his dreams come true and another funny ad showing a game of rock-paper-scissors. Another spot showing Latino comic Carlos Mencia teaching English to a room of immigrants was a particular crowd-pleaser.

"I love the spot, it was hysterical," says Holly Ross, a 39-year-old who was watching the game in Cincinnati.

One spot that is likely to generate much water-cooler discussion today is Mars Inc.'s ad for Snickers, featuring two mechanics sharing the candy bar -- in what is a somewhat bizarre spin on the famous scene from "Lady and the Tramp," where two dogs simultaneously eat the same strand of spaghetti.

"Its very funny but also disturbing on so many levels," says Mark DiMassimo, CEO of DiMassimo Goldstein in New York.

General Motors won the battle of the automotive titans. Its ad, via Interpublic's Deutsch, featuring a robot that dreams about losing his job, got high marks from advertising executives for using a different approach to the typical car ad that shows cars speeding around curvy roads. Many said the ad was "epic" but some predicted the spot would rub certain viewers the wrong way. "How many folks in Detroit were put out of work because of robots?" asks Rob Feakins, president and chief creative officer of the New York office of Publicis USA.

The hype surrounding Super Bowl ads has raised expectations of viewers about what they will see -- making it difficult to please audiences. And overall, this year's crop of ads fell a bit short. "The game is better than the ads for a change," says Michigan State University advertising professor Bruce Vanden Bergh. Ad folks blame the lackluster output on the larger number of marketers who jumped into the game late in the process and either ran ads that had been seen before or ran new ads that weren't designed specifically for the Super Bowl. "If you are going to pay that price tag, you better go big," Mr. DiMassimo added.

Honda Motor Co., for instance, ran two ads that have aired before. Revlon Inc. jumped into the game only in recent weeks, producing a new spot starring singer Sheryl Crow -- but one that wasn't designed specifically for the Super Bowl. Some ad executives gave the company credit for entering the male-dominated arena --its ad promoted a new women's hair-coloring product.
Also disappointing were several advertisers that have previously scored big in the Super Bowl, including FedEx Corp., Careerbuilder.com and E*Trade Financial.

FedEx, which scored strongly last year with an ad set in the Stone Age, this year went for a moon setting. But the ad, created by Omnicom Group Inc.'s BBDO, didn't measure up. "It was a big ad but it doesn't pay off," says Brand Buzz's Mr. Barnett. "Last year's dinosaur ad was so much better." Still, the package-delivery giant didn't entirely flame out.

Another ad that exaggerated the saying "it's not what it seems" managed to get some points. The spot was "amusing and fun," says Jeff Kling, executive creative director of the New York office of Havas SA's Euro RSCG.

Also drawing some grumbling this year was Careerbuilder.com, the online job site jointly owned by the newspaper publishers Gannett Co., McClatchy Co. and Tribune Co. It has pleased viewers in recent years with Super Bowl spots showing offices where monkeys sat working at desks, but this year the company left its monkeys behind in favor of such spots as one showing office workers fighting hand-to-hand over a promotion. "Where are the chimps?" says Mr. Roane.
But the biggest fumble of the night come from Flomax, the prostate drug from Boehringer Ingelheim Corp. The spot, which described the drug's side effects as including a "decrease in semen," showed men competing in a bike race. Ad executives questioned whether such ads should run during the Super Bowl. "Call me a prude but there are kids watching the game," says Mr. Feakins.

The company is required to list the drug's side effects in ads. The drug maker recognizes the personal subject matter in the spot and told The Wall Street Journal last week that it elected to run the commercial late in the game to avoid younger audiences.

The Best Place To Work

Le Chateau de Touffou is one of the best places to work I know. I have had the good fortune to go there twice to work and both times have been magical. It is not the grounds and the magnificent architecture and art or the sense of history, but the long meals (4 course lunch and dinner, with wine that go against modern day work practices) and most importantly Madame Ogilvy who has lived in the chateau for almost 40 years. It is her home and that it is a home makes all the difference to people's ability to get on with one another and to work productively, at least in my experience. Every company should have one (or for smaller companies, a slightly less grand one).

For the full set of pics, click here, and go for the slideshow in the upper right.

War and Peace

It's a monumental read. I started in February when we were in ski-ing in The Alps and it has taken me almost until our summer holidays to finish it. There were periods where it was unputdownable and other periods where it was almost unpickupable. My favourite storyline/ character set were the Old Prince, Prince Andry, and Natasha. There was real verve and pathos in that story, especially when Andry was dying.

The big idea in the book? That history isn't just about the story of the leaders, and leaders are not the makers of history. It is the stories of many many many people and that history is created by movements beyond individuals. And if history is that way, so is society in the present.

The huge array of characters and the length of the book reinforce that. It is the stories of the peasants and the infantry as much as the story of two kings. (Look at the thickness! Here it is compared to my Mac Book Pro)

I have read War and Peace and Anna Karenina in the last couple of years. My grandmother gave them to Jill and I went we got married and it was for her that I embarked on them. To my mind the climax of Anna Karenina is one of the most gripping pieces of fiction I have ever read. I preferred it as a novel to War and Peace, though the themes developed in War and Peace are more interesting to me.

Brand Design

Some notes I made on brand identity and brand design that I wanted to keep a hold of:

"In its earliest form, when animals were branded with a hot iron to demonstrate ownership, the resulting mark was to give the animal a distinguishing and recognisable identity: in this case identity meant ownership.

The way we talk about brands today has evolved but they still need a distinguishing and recognisable identity.

We often talk about having a differentiating idea at the core of a brand but that core idea still needs a differentiating identity; a way to bring the idea to life.

In today’s fast paced, multi-media, multiple branded world sensory shortcuts that carry meaning are more important than ever. The most obvious of these in the branded world are the visual cues: the associations with a logo, the power of colour, the rich meaning of visual brand equities. But, increasingly, smell, touch, sound and the ‘feel’ of a brand space or brand experience are part of a brand’s identity.

What brings all these elements together is the notion of brand design. We believe that great brand design is fundamental to having a great brand. And the philosophy of design runs deep, deep into the DNA of the brand and is manifest through every expression of it. Think about Apple. Their identity is expressed through brilliant, coherent design again and again. Across products, packaging, website, retail environments, communications, time and geographies."

Article In Design Week On Blogs

Excuse a little bit of self-indulgence. The truth of it is, if I don't put it here I don't think I will have a record of it in a few months time!

Design Week
Blogs rule, but watch the rules
09th July 2009 By Christian Barnett

Blogs are a great way to promote your consultancy. Christian Barnett offers some advice on setting one up.

A good blog can inspire its readers and galvanise a community around it. And though it is possible to get one up and running in the time it takes to read this article, having recently launched our ‘Making brands beautiful’ blog I wouldn’t recommend it.

The most important thing is to work out the purpose of the blog. Many blogs fail because they are rudderless, leading to a never-ending series of ‘what we/I did today’ posts. State your blog’s objectives _ consider things like ‘to give the “outside” world a sense of what it is like to be “inside”’ (check out http///wklondon. typepad.com/), or ‘to give the chief executive a platform for his/her views’ (http:// designthinking.ideo.com/) or ‘to showcase great work’ (www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog).

It may be worth having someone on the project team quickly set up their own blog. The best way to do this is to go to one of the free blog-hosting sites, like Blogger, Wordpress or Typepad, and just set one up. It takes five minutes. Get used to the mechanics of posting - try posting a picture or a short film, and think about how you generate content. Spend some time exploring competitor blogs - what are they doing? Is it arresting or interesting content?

You will also need to work out how your blog will be organised. If it isn’t easy to navigate around, people will not stay. Think about the type of categories you may have, how much of each post will be displayed on the main blog page, what widgets you may have, and so on. The blog also has to be designed - think about things such as width of copy, choice of colour palette, font and type of imagery. The question of the blog’s relationship to the website needs to be given some thought, too. It is also at this point that you may need a little bit of help from experts to host your blog. They can help tailor the navigation and design to your specifications.

Finding compelling content time after time is a challenge. Of course, the blog’s objective will guide the content, which is another reason to get the objective clear and empowering. The best blogs seem to have a fairly conversational, rather than corporate, tone - they don’t waste time, and they are prepared to stick their neck out a little in terms of stating a point of view or making interesting connections.

Giving posting rights, especially in a group with more than 50 people, requires a little thought. It could result in chaos to give all company members posting rights in one go. We learned that the best way to get people posting is not based on hierarchy, but on ‘bloggers vs non-bloggers’.
Put simply, some of the older ‘digital immigrants’ in the consultancy were not as blog-savvy as the younger ‘digital natives’. The lesson is to find your natural bloggers and let them lead the way.

We also put a short training session together so everyone in the consultancy was able to do some posting. It meant we were able to spread out the enthusiasm to post - having a glut of posts all at the same time is almost as bad as having no posts, so the ideal is to have a steady stream.
It is worth going live internally first, to give the blog a test run and see if you are able to generate the right content sufficiently often.

You are then ready to launch externally. By now, people should know the type of content, how frequently they need to post, how to tag it to get it up the search engine results, and such like.
The level of ‘ta dah’ surrounding any blog launch is up to you. It could provide a nice platform for some marketing activity, or you could let it grow organically as people find it through searches, online word-of-mouth and the like. It is cheap, though time-consuming, to market a blog in the blogosphere using links, commenting in other’s blogs places, building an online presence via Facebook and Twitter, and so on.

Don’t forget to set up an analytics programme to measure blog activity. Google analytics never cease to amaze me with the depth of information. You can find out which posts get the most visits, from which geographies, the percentage of new versus returning users, and so on. It is a really valuable, and free, feedback loop.Allow a couple of months for the entire process. Unlike the five minutes it takes to set up the one-person blog, you need time to get everyone on board. But a good blog is worth it. It gives a real insight of what your consultancy is all about.
We found that it was a great way of showing where we found beauty in all its nuances to reflect our consultancy philosophy.

Good luck.

Posting notes:
Have an objective for your blog
Don’t ‘police’ content - it should be fluid and conversational
Get your blog right internally before you share it with the outside world
Try to enjoy posting, so it doesn’t become a consultancy chore

T-Shirts To Convey Feelings

Hmmmmmmmmmmm!

Crusty Bread, Wine and Cheese

Difficult to beat it. After a long week, I can't think of a better way to wind down with a little indulgence. The only thing I would do is to exchange the dinning room table for a outside wooden table by a French rural retreat.

Taking Something Out

I have been feeling a little stodgy of body and musty of head recently, and wondered if I could feel a little lighter in both areas by changing my diet.  So I radically cut down on diary and bread intake. It worked. But there was an interesting side-effect; I started eating much more 'creatively'. Rather than just grab a nearby sandwich, I thought about what foods might go together to create a meal. And though it took longer to get my lunch during the week, my lunches started to get more interesting, varied and satisfying. 

The third Peter Gabriel album (Peter Gabriel III or 'Melt' as it is now know) contains NO cymbal hits. Apparently, Gabriel insisted on this to the drummers used on the album.  When you don't know that it feels like something is missing, but you aren't quite sure what it is. Though what is missing is replaced by things which are more inventive, for example the 'grated' big drum sound that Phil Collins used extensively in the 1980's was created for the first track on Grabriel III, 'The Intruder'. Listen to the album. Knowing what Gabriel took out increases the appreciation of what is already a great album. 

In Sao Paulo the Mayor declared an end to visual pollution ie out of home posters and billboards, and signage over a certain size, as he believed it was taking over the town. One effect of the ban was that brands became more creative and inventive in their public communications, using street artists, deploying brand equities in an intelligent and dramatic way, using brand colors to full effect. It is worth having a look at this post, on the Coley Porter Bell blog for some more details.   

Perhaps one way of being more creative is to take something away, or remove one part of the equation. 

A Revelation In Every Cup

Green Mountain Coffee. Great company. Great marketing team. Wish them great success.

Here is TJ in Ad Age's CMO column.

The Signalbox Experience

Just to complete the trio of 'experience' posts, here is the St. Albans signal box. Apparently, it is the only restored signal box (in England) that is still on its original site. It is being restored by a group of local enthusiasts and it is open for the second and fourth Sundays of each month. We went in and got a very enthusiastic volunteer show us how all levers work: 

Unfortunately, he wasn't able to control the real trains on the real track so we had settle for a pretend scenario of a pretend train coming down the track in order to press buzzer, ping bells and pull and push levers. Perhaps that was a little virtual after all!

For more details on the St. Albans signal box click here.