The meaning behind the message

Advertising and branding are, at one level, fairly obviously about getting people to part with money. At the same time, however, they play an important part in wider culture – reflecting the values, myths and ideals of different societies and often helping to shape them. If businesses can understand the symbolism of communication and the way in which readers interpret it, they are surely destined to be more effective and successful enterprises. Alfie Spencer, Head of Semiotics at brand insight consultancy Flamingo International, talked to 108th Street about how he helps companies navigate the complexities of the modern world.

Flamingo's lead semiotician, Alfie Spencer








108St:
Can you sum up semiotics in a nutshell for people who aren't necessarily familiar with the concept?

AS:
I typically say 'the analysis and interpretation of cultural materials to answer brand, advertising, marketing and content challenges'. Which basically means that I use cultural theory and the analysis of cultural texts in a business environment, mostly in order to help with brand building and communication.

108St:
This isn’t the typical kind of market research that everyone’s familiar with, is it?

AS:
The consumer's own voice has been primary within research. The industry is set up to find out what people think and what they do. Semiotics addresses issues the other way round; we don't think first about the consumer, but about the world – the 'cultural software' - that surrounds the consumer and how meaning works in that world. And we aim to control meaning more precisely and build brands that are more culturally relevant (and therefore more successful).

108St:
Is there a danger that by debating the symbolism of advertising, we elevate it to a level it doesn't actually deserve? Could we be reading too much into something that’s essentially ephemeral?

AS:
It strikes me that the real pomposity in our industry comes at another point in the process, where we start thinking about the 30-second TV commercial or broader campaign as an act that's emerged from sublime creative imagination. Advertising is interesting, but it's not as interesting as feature films or TV programming itself, or visual art or music (all done 'properly'). Brands are interesting, however. Too much emphasis gets put on ephemeral pieces of communication, and too little on the connections between the object, the mythology, the narratives, the experiences in the fullest sense, that a brand can create. I think that the industry needs more rigour and precision in its thinking, less fluff and in that sense, debates about 'symbolism' etcmight be useful (if conducted properly).

108St:
When you look at advertising from a semiotic perspective, all kinds of meanings may start to emerge. But what if none of these meanings were actually intended by the brand which is the source of the message?

AS:
In the kind of interpretation and analysis that I do, we're not really interested in the relationship between the producer/maker and their 'intentions' and a text/item of communication. We're interested in the relationship between the piece of communication and the cultural world it is a part of – at various levels, depending on what the challenge is. I don't, for example, think that the 'meaning' of a particular ad is contained in any one person's head – least of all the creative. As far as I'm concerned, the people involved in making an ad (numbering into the hundreds, I'm sure) are just vehicles of a culture speaking to itself, and that's my starting point.

Of course, it may turn out that a particular ad doesn't use the right codes or structures to achieve what everyone wanted it to – and it's often my job to find out what went wrong, and how it could be put right in future creative work. Buthow that is done is an art – a craft practised by the very talented people in ad agencies etc. And my small role is to show how that is working, and which levers to pull to achieve certain things… the way that it can be done, to give everyone more space and more opportunity to make a great piece of advertising, or a great piece of packaging, or build a great brand from the ground up, ideals and all.

108St:
Isn’t semiotics just a luxury though, for large brands with limitless budgets?

AS:
Quite the opposite – we're a very cost-effective solution with limited budgets on certain kinds of challenge. And increasingly, everyone is coming around to the real truth in my line of work – which is that often it's more important, in certain circumstances, to give your brand real meaning inside a culture, and communicate as effectively as possible within a culture, than it is to understand the precise workings of a consumer's life. You're often better off spending the money on semiotics to find out how you should talk to your audiences, rather than spending lots of money characterising in ever greater detail who your audience is and what they think about you.

108St:
Do you find that elements of your work are duplicated elsewhere? In the marketing departments of large corporates, for instance?Or in planning departments of advertising agencies?

AS:
Not really, but good planners, good creatives and smart clients get this stuff intuitively. In those situations, I just bring the conversation together with, hopefully, a little more precision and clarity than if I wasn't there – because I'm analysing and interpreting day in day out and know about loads of different categories and what's happening in the culture more broadly. It's interesting that no one really replicates the semiotician's role – because often planners and other agency folk aren't given the time to.

108St:
Are you ever frustrated with the compromises between your academic role and the commercial imperatives of clients?

AS:

Not really – the academic humanities are having a bit of a rough time of it at the moment. Naturally, there are things I dislike about the front line of consumer capitalism. What I try to do is to bring together what's good about being in the 'market' so to speak, all the time trying to create the space for the freedom and curiosity of the academic world. I'd hope that that will end up as a 'best of all worlds' situation, but we haven't got there yet. The real truth is that everyone is compromised somehow – anyone who thinks they aren't is just lying – and the question is how you negotiate that and how you protect what is valuable. My academic commitments mean that I do better work for my clients – more rigorous, more careful, more daring. And the market forces me to work at a pace and with actionability that I think actually makes my work clearer and more intelligent. It can be a vicious or virtuous circle depending on which way you look at it.

108St:
Where do you stand on the 'advertising is dead' debate?

AS:
It depends what you mean by advertising. I think it's a question of losing the battle and winning the war. The 30-second TVC is probably dying, but the idea of a brand – the really big story in all of this – is here to stay. It will grow and grow and grow. And brands communicate; indeed, they only exist in their communication. When a brand communicates, that's advertising. So advertising will flourish. But I don't think it will have much to do with interrupting Coronation St. in the future. And that's a good thing.

When TV advertises itself

Creative inspiration: Emanuela Denti helps to drive Viacom's European trailer output for MTV and other brands

On a couple of occasions over recent years, I’ve had the pleasure of working with the Viacom team in Milan which creates promos for world-famous brands such as MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central. As part of a new series of 108th Street interviews, I caught up with producer and art director Emanuela Denti who has a wealth of experience in conjuring up the trailers that keep us tuned to the TV. It was a chance to talk telly and to get her perspective on the creative process.

We’ve all grown up with TV promos and idents, which in many ways act as the glue that holds our favourite programming together. It’s easy to see how we can so often take them for granted. They’re an ever-present feature of televisual life, but they’re difficult to categorise. Not an integral part of the shows we enjoy, but not really part of the commercial breaks either.

Emanuela Denti was someone who actually took notice of the promos as a child and was impressed by just how creative they could be. Following a period in production at MTV, in which she worked on fashion and music shows, she’s now right at the heart of a busy creative team, producing a wide variety of trailers to tight deadlines for Italy and the wider European marketplace.

“I was always struck by the way in which promos successfully combined music, words and images,” recalls Denti. “The catchier the promo was, the more my curiosity was aroused. Today, I’m trying to do very much the same thing: make more and more people curious.”

Creating this sense of curiosity isn’t always easy when you’re dealing with a show that’s already been around quite a while. The parallel here is perhaps with ad agencies trying to reinvent a familiar brand and give it a new twist, but time pressures, budgetary restrictions and copyright issues can often be more intense in the world of TV trailers.

“We’re still waiting for a 72-hour day,” Denti jokes, “but we always try to do the best we can. When you’re thinking of ideas, you always need time to work in teams because, in my view, the best ideas always have more than one parent. When the time scales get too tight and people don’t have the opportunity to work together, it can be very frustrating. The danger is that the creative solutions are less powerful and innovative.”

Denti is particularly proud of her work for the MTV Gold Rock Legends strand, as she was able to apply a creative solution to what she felt was a pretty tough and predictable brief. With little money to play with and legal red tape meaning that she couldn’t feature actual video footage of musical artists for promotional purposes, she produced a visually striking piece in which the ‘legends’ were transformed into the kings of a card pack. It’s the kind of clever side-step and lateral thinking that’s often needed in her line of work.

But what about the challenges of working across Europe for multinational audiences? International marketing communications is a notoriously perilous business. Could it be that brands such as MTV transcend national boundaries?

“We live in a very connected world,” agrees Denti, “but the tastes and habits of MTV viewers are still very different, so the main challenge is always to create products that have a quality and an international effectiveness and, at the same time, give that wink to the local flavour.”

Short plays the long game

Harvest time: Indium Corporation's Rick Short has been ahead of the curve with B2B social media and is reaping the rewards.

Running training courses with marketers on a regular basis, one of the most frustrating misconceptions I encounter is the idea that social media doesn’t have much application in the B2B environment. Blogging, tweeting and Facebooking are all very well in consumer-facing businesses, so the argument goes, but quickly lose their appeal if you need to communicate with professional audiences. One company which has been proving the critics wrong is Indium Corporation – a materials supplier to the electronics and semiconductor markets. Their Director of Marketing Communications, Rick Short, spoke recently to 108th Street about the successful strategy they’ve adopted.

At first glance, Indium Corporation seems an unlikely social media player. Headquartered in Clinton, New York – but with a presence as far afield as the UK, Singapore, South Korea and China – the business provides the solders, fluxes and other materials that are so vital to circuit board assembly. In fact, a trip to their website would tell you that this description is only really scratching the surface. Their engineers and technical experts make a lot of stuff that is pretty obscure to most of us, but vital to making the world go around. By and large, it’s fairly remote to anyone who isn’t also a card-carrying member of the engineering fraternity.

The company is fortunate to have Rick Short on board – someone with a reputation for early adoption of new communication technologies and a serious approach to delivering results. Short is also one of those extremely rare creatures: a technical expert who just happens to be gregarious and a natural in the social sphere.

“Very early on,” he tells me, “I not only saw that social media could be extremely powerful, but I also realised that the barriers to entry were low. Time to market is critical in situations like this. I knew that the only advantage I had was to be an early adopter. And that was my inspiration for the work we’ve been doing.”

He was helped in his mission by the fact that Indium – ever since its birth in the inauspicious Dust Bowl era of the 1930s – has championed the idea of conversation. “Back in the day,” he observes, “social media meant discussing technology face-to-face at a conference. We truly are a team of engineers and technologists having conversations with other engineers and technologists.” Short observed that in the modern era, the engineers in his business grew up with those engineers who worked for his customers. They had been to high school together. They were college roommates.

“My target audience of engineers are much more comfortable with my engineers than they are with anyone from marketing communications,” says the MBA-qualified marketer, whose work has been featured in numerous textbooks. “When I figured all of that out, I knew I had to turn my company inside out and put my engineers nose-to-nose with my target audience, full-time and exclusively. That’s how the idea of “From One Engineer To Another®” was born.”

Although it’s trademarked, the concept to which Short refers is more than just a campaign slogan. It seems to represent the whole corporate ethos of Indium Corporation. In practice, it has led to a number of really interesting social media initiatives – including a team of expert bloggers who answer queries, solve problems and generally chew the cud with their client-side counterparts.

Short is scathing about ‘the would-be puppet masters’ who try to control social media or vet the content generated by their colleagues. He understands the importance of maintaining a reputation, but firmly believes it’s a company’s actions and results that the audience hears.

“Stop with the Wizard of Oz style attempted manipulations and trickery,” he says, “and get with transparency and authenticity. It is really hard to convert a shy, reclusive technological genius into an interesting, transparent, social media star. I don’t bother. I seek out people who naturally enjoy engaging with others. To them social media makes perfect sense. Fish swim, birds fly. Don’t fight it. Use it.”

Does this mean that marketers can simply let social media run its own course? Short accepts that there are boundaries.

“I occasionally remind certain individuals on my team to stay clear of anything that feels like commercialism. Ad-speak is so ingrained in us all that it is easy to drift there. And, rarely, I have to remind people to be sure to carefully guard corporate secrets. Scientists love to share, so sometimes they get a little over-enthusiastic. My team are all very skilled, careful, and responsible, so my role is miniscule in this regard.”

It’s a little hard to see how Short has achieved corporate buy-in for his extensive social media activity though, which includes the YouTube videos, Facebook and Twitter presence we’d more normally associate with a retailer or lifestyle brand. In what must be a fairly conservative sector, doesn’t it all seem a little rock and roll? Short’s clear focus on ROI is what tips the balance.

“My mantra is ‘content-contact-cash',” reveals the Indium director. “That’s where the rubber meets the road.” He sees his lead generation work as focusing on the ‘contact’ part of the equation, although he recognises the absolute importance of content too. “Without content, you’re just a blowhard,” he argues. So, in addition to the predictable online metrics of visitor numbers, page dwell time and so on, Short has been gathering clear evidence that strong content drives the type of peer-to-peer discussion that ultimately leads to sales.

Where is Indium Corporation’s social media strategy likely to go in the future? Rather than give the easy answer and start reeling off vogue websites and mobile apps, Short is realistic. “Social media has settled down with regard to platforms. Right now I see progress occurring only in nuanced ways. So, the face of our programmes will remain unchanged for the foreseeable future.”

See Indium Corporation’s innovative approach to social media at first hand by visiting http://www.indium.com/blogs/ or search for the business on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter.

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.

Tweet, watch TV and play your Xbox. While you read this blog.

The future of advertising in a morning. It’s a big ask, but I guess time is money for a lot of the leading executives who attended the seminar organised by the Westminster Media Forum on 31st May 2011 in London. We had a good mix of broadcasters and media representatives at the Royal Society in Carlton House Terrace, as well as people from creative agencies and leading brands.

Stephen Adshead of Plum Consulting led an interesting discussion of targeted advertising via set-top boxes, which is a clear challenge to the traditional ‘linear’ model of communication in broadcast media. Although many of us naturally worry about privacy and the extent to which brands can get inside our heads, Adshead raised the valid point that the technology could also help to protect people. We could, for instance, use data to block messages about fast food to houses with kids. Counter-intuitively, the technology that seems to be a regulator’s nightmare might turn out to be the nanny state’s best friend.

Microsoft’s UK Managing Director of Consumer & Online, Ashley Highfield, talked about a campaign for Lynx, the feisty deodorant brand which is known as Axe outside the UK. He made the point that we are going well beyond basic demographic targeting now. We can gather data on whether the typical male user is watching the TV, using a PC or playing on the Xbox at particular times of the day and target messages accordingly. Click-thru rates on the Microsoft-owned gaming platform reached an astonishing 20%. Even angels would fall for statistics like that.

A new directive from the EU threatens the ability of marketers to use online cookies to track consumers. Unsurprisingly, Microsoft favours industry self-regulation here and we were told about the anti-tracking opt-in that exists in the latest versions of the Internet Explorer browser. The software giant would rather focus on the possibilities presented by the first ads using voice and gesture commands, due to arrive as early as this autumn. Not to mention a Britain which is 100% digital – allowing advertisers the same online reach that they have long had through television.

Television, incidentally, isn’t doing too badly if you listen to Channel 4’s Mike Parker, who heads up the broadcaster’s Strategic Sales & Commercial Marketing operation. He is buoyed by econometric studies which demonstrate that TV is a key driver of online activity and notes that age-old programmes such as BBC’s Question Time have been given a new lease of life through realtime commentary on Facebook and Twitter. And as Sarah Goldman from UKTV entertainingly noted, no one goes home to watch the internet.

I suppose it could be argued that the real future was represented by Mark Slade of 4th Screen Advertising. While mobile is a surprisingly small advertising market at the moment in terms of spend, it’s also one of the largest growing and will probably be pushing a value of £1bn by 2015. It’s clearly also going to be an important part of what one tweeting delegate described as a ‘surf ‘n’ turf’ approach to media.

If there’s one conclusion I’d draw from the commentary at the event, it would be that the years ahead won’t be dominated by any one particular medium. TV won’t disappear. It will adapt to integrate and interact better with other digital, mobile and gaming platforms. If any ‘traditional’ medium is under threat, it’s probably print, but even the old-fashioned newspaper has its stalwart defenders. Lawson Muncaster, the MD of London free sheet City AM, gave a bullish defence of the 300 hours of journalism that his staff pack into a 10-minute read.

Maybe that’s the world we live in today? I can be leafing through City AM while playing on my Xbox and tweeting about the latest instalment of #bgt. Will there be room for attending conferences?

Watch out for commentary on 108th Street from the Westminster Media Forum's seminar on The Future of Advertising. I'll be attending the meeting next week in central London, which will bring together speakers and commentators from leading brands and agencies with key policy makers.

Great piece of ambient advertising for a company which doesn't allow its chicken to arrive on people's doorsteps cold. Simple, visually striking and effective. McCann Erickson, New Delhi.

Props to the old skool guerrillas

I'm looking forward to giving a couple of evening lectures this week at Chelsea College of Art & Design to students from University of the Arts London and French advertising school Sup de Pub. The topic is guerrilla and ambient advertising and I'll be making the point that we're actually standing on the shoulders of giants.

As well as talking about the adventurous marketing antics of people such as 19th-century circus entrepreneur Phineas Taylor Barnum and Sir Thomas Lipton of tea and infusion fame, I'll be delving into some antiquarian literature. I was recently reading the classic text by Henry Sampson on the history of advertising, which was written in 1874. That's right. Written in 1874. He talks about the problems created by flyposting and has a section on the stencilling of marketing messages on pavements. Unsurpisingly, Victorian police and magistrates started taking a dim view of this kind of guerrilla activity.

With the help of H G Wells, Mr Sampson would have felt right at home if he'd transported himself to 2011. According to the San Francisco Examiner, the City Attorney of the west coast town is currently pursuing Levi's for their sidewalk graffiti on behalf of the Dockers brand. Perhaps there really is nothing new under the sun?

Chinese trainers sold to a suspicious American market. Nice creative work and an interesting commentary on the shifting balance of power between the US and a nascent superpower.

Interesting approach to financial services marketing from British high street retailer, M&S. The overtly feminised creative is designed to demystify insurance, credit and investment products for the typical shopper. But when does cleverly targeted and imaginative communication become patronising?

Interesting ideas from Dentsu and design gurus, Berg.

How would the French save Gordon Brown?

I'm a great believer in giving my students some difficult tasks. It helps to separate the men from the boys or, very often, the women from the girls. Or, in this particular instance, les dames from les filles, as the class in question came from Sup de Pub - the leading advertising school in Paris.

The brief I gave yesterday morning to a group of would-be account handlers and planners was to save Gordon Brown from catastrophic defeat with just 24 hours of the British election campaign remaining. They only had a few hours to work on a problem that would frustrate even the most seasoned admen and political pundits.

There were a number of interesting ideas for tactical media, including the distribution of Oyster card holders at London tube stations tracked on social media such as Twitter and Foursquare. We had a lengthy debate as to whether such giveaways constituted a bribe under electoral law. To my shame, having stood on a couple of occasions as a parliamentary candidate, I was a little vague on this point, but thought we were probably on dodgy ground.

Creatively the strongest campaign idea was one which used iconic British buildings as a metaphor for the economy. We saw Tower Bridge crumbling, with a warning that you shouldn't dump the architect of the recovery at a critical moment. The argument was that we could change the building to reflect a local landmark in key marginal constituencies, which I thought worked very well.

Strategically, there were even braver suggestions from other groups. Recognising the gaffe-prone Gordon Brown as a source of many of Labour's problems, some suggested creative work which had a strong 'mea culpa' theme. Or we could go a stage further - removing Gordon Brown from the equation entirely by admitting publicly that the election wasn't about just one man. It was about everybody else. Coming hot on the heels of Labour Ministers' calls for tactical voting and a Labour candidate suggesting Brown was the worst-ever Prime Minister, the strategy had a plausible, if rather desperate, feel to it.

One thing's for sure. It's always good to get the impartial observations of outsiders on any advertising campaign. And objectivity is often in short supply when it comes to elections.