The real experience of brands

Do some brands have a particular time rather than a position? I believe that many brands will take a large degree of equity from the time and place in which they were experienced, rather than how and why they were experienced. Therefore the way you usually feel at the time you consume a product or service will act as a ‘frame of reference’ and have a disproportionate effect on how you feel about the brand.

For example, my associations of Greenpeace are with the Glastonbury Festival, and therefore share the stage with lukewarm festival-strength cider, hallucinative experiences and Radiohead.

In a similar vein, the only time I ever buy the Economist – and I’m sure I’m not alone in this –is when I go on holiday. Therefore the frames of reference are of the excitement of new experiences, lounging on a sun bed or snuggling by a warm firm in a ski chalet. (N.B. the time between my holidays is usually enough to forget what a grossly-opinionated and bias publication it is).

Both of these examples bring back positive memories and in turn reflect positively on the brand with which I associate them.

Now I’m suggesting that brands have the power to create these frames, but it’s an area that we should consider when trying to find new insights and recognise in our communications. In direct response communication, the way consumer feels when they view brand messages is exceptionally important and at WPN we will always take this into consideration when developing campaign strategy.

Waking up the words

We’ve got lazy with words and it’s costing response. There was an otherwise good banner for a life insurance company that ended with ‘Get a Quote’. Consider the man or the woman on the famous Clapham omnibus. Quote? Someone saying something? What can it possibly mean? What they meant to say was ‘find out how little it costs’. Would have worked better, I strongly suspect.

‘Click here’ is as bad. Why? What happens? Why should I bother? Where’s the benefit?

And I’d be rich if I got a fiver every time I wrote ‘without obligation’. But I’d be richer still if I did a lot better. What can it mean? It won’t cost you anything? Send it back if you hate it? You won’t get pestered? Any one of these would be better, I suspect, than the dead words so familiar to our dear readers.

It’s too easy to lapse into copywriter’s jargon.  A recent charity mailing had the immortal ‘I’d like to give…’ at the top of the donation form. ‘Like’? I doubt it. What they meant was something like ‘The plight of this person has moved me so much that I’m compelled (think about it – like?) to do something about it. Here’s my £10 and I hope you’ll get it there quickly.’

Come on writers. Wakey wakey.  Act now.

The role of role models

I noticed that a new series of Undercover Boss starts this week. It’s a great concept for a programme. A boss whose charisma, vision and passion helped to forge the company, stepping back to the shop floor to see whether those values still reign true. In doing so a human face is put to the brand and, much like celebrity endorsement, all the characteristics of the boss are overtly associated with the brand.

Look at some of the UK’s top brands whose business model relies on what we at WPN call business critical response (by that we mean a company that cannot exist without a steady stream of marketing response), and you will often see a larger-than-life leader that exemplifies their brand. For example, the no-nonsense, unapologetic approach of Michael O’Leary, the soft, customer-focused attitude of Johnny Boden or the pure, environmental image of Liz Earl.

Having a likable spokesman is especially valuable for direct response brands for the simple reason that any piece of direct mail requires a sign-off. Consumers aren’t naive enough to assume that a company CEO personally wrote to them, but on some level, receiving marketing associated with them will have greater impact.

Adapting a brand image will often take years and millions of pounds worth of investment. However, in adopting a spokesperson who represents the business, you instantly inherit all the charm and charisma of that person. Rather than developing a brand position, a leader can have an opinion and stand for something, which I believe is far more powerful than any brand manifesto.

There is an obvious risk, however. If a true business icon puts his/her foot in it and acts out of turn, the whole business will suffer (taxi for Gerald Ratner!)

A company’s staff is its lifeblood, and its CEO is the living embodiment of everything that the brand represents. I think more companies should recognise this and be brave in pushing a spokesman into the limelight.

Facebook pitches social TV to the world.

Facebook has to move with the times to survive, it must grow just like any other up and coming web based service, and it looks like they are going to give their best shot, by taking over our TV’s.

Andy Mitchel, the SVP of Strategic Partner Development at Facebook, has said very recently…

“If you look at the program guide [as it stands now], you’re trying to figure out what to watch among five hundred channels. It’s really hard. But think about a program guide where you see what your friends are watching, that changes the experience. ”

With the likes of Samsung already leading the way with TV applications, and TV internet crossovers, its only a matter of time before we get to see what our friends are watching on TV. Whether it be live as its happening, with live forum style commentary chat or just as a like button on peoples favorite shows.

But does it end there, what about the world of advertising… How long will it be before you like a brand on your laptop or smartphone and then see your own or your friends face endorsing the very same brand live on TV.

Twitter analytics

Everyone seems to be getting their knickers in a twist about Twitter analytics at the moment. Both Wired and The Economist have run hefty articles on its potential power recently. It’s easy to see why; a company in the States has just patented an algorism that assesses all tweets about new box office films. They claim that they are able to predict with 98% accuracy the takings for every one of the 24 films tested.

We all know that people now display their thoughts, hopes, fears and aspirations online. As such, many companies, organisation and governments are now turning to blogs and social networks for answers to many of the questions usually assigned to analysts, economists and indeed, planners (the most intelligent of all!).

Real world events such as consumer confidence, product demand and political voting can apparently now be accurately predicted. So powerful are thoughts and sentiments expressed in the online world that a new discipline – gracelessly named “infodemiology” – has sprung-up.

The potential for direct marketers is huge. I believe the rise of mobile monetisation and the ability to buy where you want, when you want will simply add another layer of behavioural analytics, making the insight provided by Tesco Clubcard feel as relevant as basic socio-demographic segmentation does now.

The trouble is such analysis requires a great many people with Oxbridge mathematics degrees (and the hedge funds are hoovering all these boffins up in their forecasting departments) and sadly, it would seem we are still a long way off decent sentiment analysis software.

Creative Responsibility

There are obviously many ways you can generate response creatively – there is a plethora of different consumers insights and emotions you can tap into. In direct marketing it’s often easiest to appeal to consumers’ fear, naivety or confusion. And as such, there are unfortunately far too many unscrupulous businesses and advertisers willing to do so in order to entice consumers to spend money on a product or service they don’t need. We’ve all seen them; they are those lowest common denominator, no win-no-fee-style ads that plague daytime TV. They simply act to exacerbate the negative reputation that direct response TV often has.

I saw a perfect example of this last week when I was off work for a day with a dreadful bout of man flu; day time commercial breaks now seem to be full of ads offering to claim a four figure refund from mis-sold payment protection insurance. However, the FSA (unusually for them) have gone out of their way to act in the consumers’ best interest and ensure that claiming back PPI insurance is as straightforward as possible. Yet, companies will still typically charge more than 30% commission on refunds that could have been claimed with the minimum of fuss.

We recently worked with our client, Which? and Barclays Bank to dispel any confusion in the market place about the rights of consumers to claim PPI compensation. It would have been very easy to bamboozle our audience with financial jargon in an attempt to gain attention. However, the brand image of both organisations would have suffered enormously and we therefore, took a no-nonsense, simple approach.

Financial aggregators and comparison sites have provided a new creative benchmark, which proves that financial services ads do not need to stick to the traditional DRTV conventions to be highly effective. There is now no excuse or justification for ads such as this.