Are brand manuals toast?

Fit for a Queen: Allied Bakeries rename their Kingsmill brand in honour of Elizabeth II

Many marketers in recent decades have found themselves employed as ‘brand guardians’ – responsible for policing the dangerous felony of inconsistency. Armed with bibles that feature big red crosses through badly stretched logos, they watch out for any errant employee or supplier who has strayed from the straight and narrow.

The explosion of social media over the past few years has undermined the power of the brand cops. ‘User-generated content’ is pretty uncontrollable, after all. If someone designs you a whole new colour palette or shoots a parody of your recent TV commercial on the back of a bus, there is very little you can really do about it. Even when content online is defamatory or infringes your intellectual property rights, you probably have to think twice before taking further action.

The more confident a brand is, the more it rolls with the punches. Rather than react defensively, the guardians embrace the idea that people may want to interact with their business in ways that were previously thought undesirable or impossible. But the confidence can be taken to another level still. I’ve long been fascinated by brands which are so self-assured about their status and position in the market that they are prepared to play with their own identity.

In the branding manual, you have one logo. Ok, you may allow it to be reversed out or rendered in black and white where needs must, but there are clear rules involved. That logo is never going to be more than 4mm from the right-hand-edge of the page and it’s always going to look fundamentally the same. But what about Google? The search giant regularly creates ‘doodles’ which play with its very identity. When you’re a $multi-billion business that’s so certain of your supremacy in the age of the internet, you don’t worry that your logo has effectively disappeared for the day and been replaced by an interactive Moog synthesiser.

One of the most recent examples of this phenomenon I’ve uncovered in the UK is tied up with the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. The savoury yeast extract Marmite has renamed itself Ma’amite in Her Majesty’s honour. Allied Bakeries’ bread brand Kingsmill, meanwhile, has transformed itself into Queensmill.

In the latter case, the graphic design provides an element of consistency, of course, but there’s no mistaking the bravery and chutzpah involved. The name change may not be in the brand manual, but I suspect it helps to shift bread. And ultimately, that’s surely what the brand identity is designed to achieve.

A creative campaign which really delivers

I've seen some other nice promotions for the TV show Alcatraz - including the creation of dummy cells in a pop-up prison in London - but this elaborate exercise by Leo Burnett in Spain is particularly inspiring. The attention to detail with the art direction is very nice, right down the trays on which the mock jail grub is served. In the UK, these guys would get themselves right at the front of the phone directory as AAAAAAAAlcatraz.

No grizzling about this bear: ingenious creative for Tipp Ex from Buzzman

The creative in this campaign is truly breathtaking. It's hard to know where to start in terms of the number of boxes it ticks.

First of all, there's the sheer breadth of ambition. So many different videos set in so many different timezones. Second, we have the interactivity. Many brands believe they are doing social media simply by making use of video sharing sites such as YouTube or banging a page up on Facebook. Here, the aim is to 'gamify' the social experience, so that people have fun playing with the videos rather than simply playing them. Last, but by no means least, there's the relationship back to the product. They avoid a sledgehammer approach, but they don't ignore the fact that there's a commercial purpose to the communication.

The thinkers at French interactive shop Buzzman certainly know how to erase the creative competition.

Advertisers follow the money. But at what cost?

I've lectured a fair bit on the growth of the advertising markets in the so-called BRIC economies. One thing I'm always keen to impress on students is that there are potential brakes on development in the emerging giants, despite the massive investment major advertising groups have made in recent years.

Some of the obstacles are structural - the shockingly low literacy rate in India, for instance, particularly among women - while others are political and cultural. From January 2012, the Chinese have announced that they will ban ads during TV and film dramas which are longer than 45 minutes. In a television ad market which GroupM estimates to be worth over Rmb200 billion (more than $31 billion), such decisions are going to hurt financially. They will also strike a blow to creatives looking to compete on an even playing field with their counterparts in Paris, New York and London.

What justification is given for the ban? According to FT reporter Kathrin Hill, it's all about the Communist Party trying to 'assert control over the country's increasingly commercial media industry'. In other words, this is one of the most explosively productive capitalist economies in the modern world, but it's still notionally run by people who condemn the whole capitalist ethos.

Advertisers love the central planning and infrastructural investment which the Chinese government champions. Outdoor media giant JC Decaux, for example, has benefited hugely from the expansion of the Shanghai metro and the associated increase in middle-class passengers. But, to steal from Lenin, there's always a danger that it's one step forward, two steps back in a country which may not have a clear consensus about its ultimate destiny. Authorities in Beijing have been trying, over the past year, to control ambient advertising - particularly for luxury goods which stimulates demand among an audience as yet unable to afford them.

There are certainly huge opportunities ahead, but advertisers need to be prepared for setbacks too. After all, we live in interesting times.

How to take the plunge with social media

One of the advantages of running workshops in marketing communications is that I get to meet a very wide range of interesting people from a diverse range of sectors. There's no doubt that the sessions are always a learning curve for me, as well as for the people who sign up.

Earlier this week, I met a representative of the British Heart Foundation - a charity known for its pioneering research and campaigning work in the field of heart health. They also seem to be ahead of the game when it comes to the successful and innovative use of social media to communicate their message.

It would be wrong to pretend that BHF is a small organisation. Through fundraising, legacies and its retail operations (as well as some public funding), it raises the equivalent of $185m a year. On the other hand, it's not a Nike, Coca-Cola or Shell. From my conversations, it's taking the world of social world very seriously though - making sure, for instance, that people are on hand to answer queries on platforms such as Facebook in real time and that medical expertise is on tap to tackle even technical questions on people's conditions and treatment as they arise.

BHF has made one of the big psychological leaps that many businesses fail to achieve with social media. Success requires investment. That means investment of time, staff resources and money. People who dip their toes in the water will often complain to me that they can't see the return. But a little half-hearted tweeting is no kind of strategy. It may be fine for an individual who uses the microblogging network for fun, but is hopeless for an organisation using it as a mass communication tool. No one expects to run successful advertising or direct mail campaigns by devoting a few minutes a day to them. Social media is no different. It's hard work, I'm afraid.

Further evidence of BHF's forward thinking in this arena can be found in their current 'mend a broken heart' campaign. The charity's scientists have identified the fact that zebrafish have the capacity to regenerate their heart cells and it's hoped that they'll be able to conduct more research into these unique biological properties. The thinking is that humans may, eventually, be able to heal their tickers in the same way as their aquatic friends.

If you go to the BHF homepage, it's possible to enter an animation of a water tank and create your own zebrafish who swims around with a message. At the time of writing, there are over 5,000 fish in the nicely designed virtual pond - each one a potential supporter or donor. Embedded video gives background information on the campaign and it's possible to involve your friends via Facebook, where the charity's page is liked by over 100,000 people.

The neatness of this particular package comes down to its strong thematic content, high production values and genuine sense of involvement. There's actually a reason to visit. Unfortunately, with so many other brands, there just isn't.

So hats off to the BHF for making a splash. My only question is this: why exactly are the zebrafish suffering from heart failure in the first place? Perhaps a lifestyle change is in order.


The science in black and white: a BHF boffin explains the importance of zebrafish to research

The death of the QR code

Who needs QR codes when augmented reality is advancing like this?

With friends like this...

Businesses are usually delighted when we endorse their products and only too happy if we provide them with free publicity via our social networks. It seems somewhat strange, therefore, that French fashion brand Lacoste and the iconic American brand Abercrombie & Fitch have both recently been in the news for trying to stop people wearing their clothes.

The problem for Abercrombie was that one of their most high-profile ambassadors turned out to be none other than Mike 'The Situation' Sorrentino from reality TV show Jersey Shore. Strangely, the Italian-American's image didn't fit with the values the Ohio-based lifestyle brand wanted to project. The spat is now at a stage where The Sitch's lawyers are reported to be involved.

Abercrombie's problems are put into perspective, however, by the PR embarrassment haunting Lacoste. Every time that spree killer Anders Behring Breivik travels to court in Norway, he seems to be sporting the apparel favoured for so long on the French Riviera. You may think there's not a lot the brand managers can do about it, and you'd be right. According to news reports, they've been reduced to pleading with the Norwegian police to find the crazed gunman an alternative outfit.

These two related stories demonstrate the international nature of brands, of course, but also reveal something quite important for advertisers and marketing communications professionals. Brand owners have always deluded themselves about the extent to which they are in control of their property. In 2011, with instant communication, 24-hour rolling news formats, social networking and the ability of people to publish anything they like online, the consumers are firmly in the driving seat. If we leave them to their own devices, they can potentially warp and misinterpret our message to the market place. Yet if we intervene, the ensuing public relations fiasco can quickly overwhelm us. Now, that is a situation.

Lovely ambient ad for BlackBerry PlayBook captured in Manchester, UK, last month.