Branding, Identity or Logo! What Is It Really?

Isn't It Time We Decoded Branding Correctly?

It is a great, huge disgrace that the word 'Branding' has been so overused in recent years. More and more agencies (small and big alike) and clients tout the ‘Branding’ word about as though it were going out of fashion… which of course, some people would like it to do.

But the fact is that many of these so-called proponents of Branding simply don't understand what a brand is, or how Branding works. Branding has come to mean very little to a lot of people, largely because it is so regularly misunderstood, and is used so vaguely and liberally. The word 'Brand' is often used interchangeably (and incorrectly) with words like 'identity' and 'logo', and clients who simply need a visual identity are tempted to request a Branding programme because, quite simply, it's been the buzzword of choice for the past couple of years.

A brand is like a unique individual personality. It is the sum of a great many parts, and is made up of an elusive set of characteristics and traits, all of which combine to provoke an emotional response from anybody who comes into contact with it. A person's personality is made up of their attitudes, their values and their beliefs. And the way we perceive someone's personality is influenced not simply by what they say, but by how they say it, what they wear, what they look like, how they behave and more.

The subtleties of perceiving someone's personality are just as evident when it comes to perceiving an organization or their products and services. People have personality traits, organisations have brand values. But they are the same things. Think about Pepsi, Apple or Porsche and the chances are you'll have a fairly similar view of each of them to the guy next to you. This is no accident. These brands have been carefully and skillfully managed to be consistent – wherever you come across them.

A brand can be a valuable business asset, increasing loyalty and revenue from customers, increasing share value and reducing staff turnover, whilst at the same time paving the way for future business growth and roll-out of related but separate sub-brands. Get it right, and your business can flourish. Get it wrong, or mistakenly think you are creating a brand when you are simply designing a logo, and you will be back at the drawing board much sooner than you wanted.

When Ford bought Jaguar, its physical assets were estimated at only 16% of the total value, and when Vodafone, the world’s largest telecommunications company bought Orange its physical assets were estimated at just 10%. The purchase values were therefore largely the result of an intangible set of assets which an accountant might describe as 'goodwill'... and which we would simply call the brands. Vodafone has since bought over many brands including most recently Hutch in India for similar reason while Tata Motors took over Jaguar from an ailing Ford in 2 June 2008 for around £1.7 billion.

As soon as Branding sorts out its identity crisis and is recognized to be more about personality and culture than a simple logo and typeface, the world will be a better place - not just for brand-driven agencies, but for clients and business the world over. Like it or loathe it, 'Branding' as a concept is here to stay, so isn't it about time we started using the term quite correctly?

Jargon Idiolecture

Why is that Lawyers and Accountants speak a strange language?

Had a bad day with my lawyer today and it was my auditor yesterday. No, nothing wrong with them – its just I cant understand the weird language they speak.

It seems that most professionals (like lawyers, accountants, doctors, engineers..) are to blame for developing a complex vocabulary entirely or themselves. Partly, I suppose, to give themselves an resourceful way of talking to each other and partly to sound intelligent but then they forget that the rest of the world hasn't really seen their odd glossary of terms… yet we have their inexplicable jargon imposed on us.

To their timeless credit, lawyers and accountants especially have developed an industry based almost entirely on their own language that only their fellow brethren can comprehend - with lengthy unpunctuated sentences, bizarre unenglish terms and over formal lingo. Needless to say, this means we have to pay them (or law/finance book publishers) simply to decipher what exactly each of them is saying!

Well, the point here is that it's incredibly refreshing to see some brands that are brave enough to realize that simple communication has a much broader appeal, and is genuinely more practical. You should never have to read anything more than once. And speaking in an strange, multifarious or formal tone of voice will not guarantee you project yourself as more gifted or erudite than your competitors.

The evidence is out there and it still feels new, but it's basic common sense – talk as people talk. Explain complex issues as you would to your pal at the pub, and it'll make far more sense than if you try to jargonise and embellish what you're saying with fancy terms.

Anyway, gotta scoot now. Gotta run some ideas up my laptop before my client’s personal assistant locks diaries with me. Hope this didn’t sound too jargonish to you!

Starting A Online Venture - Here's Your Recipe For Digital Sucess

Websnacker’s Top 10 Rules for Launching the Perfect Online Venture

With the stupendous success of Facebook, Twitter and hundreds of other online success stories that you keep reading these days; sure, big ideas seem great but how about some practical tips for successfully building and launching a digital venture? Here are top ten rules derived from my and my team’s collective experience at my creative firm.

Rule 1 - Always Work as a Team: Assemble an integrated project team of business, creative and technology minds to develop the corporate vision and work requirements then see them through to actual implementation. True innovation comes from active, multidisciplinary collaboration so focus on it.

Rule 2 - Anticipate Change: From the outset, the entire team should be ready, know and accept that requirements will naturally change and evolve. Flexibility should be the core team value. Challenge your team to imagine the unexpected a few steps into the future and how they would handle it.

Rule 3 - Communicate Openly: Issues always arise on projects, particularly with new technologies and high visibility. Openly raise the issues, present alternatives and work as a team toward resolution.

Rule 4 - Don't Reinvent the Wheel: Leverage existing products and tools where appropriate but keep the product mix to a manageable minimum. Don't try to deliver all functionality at once.

Rule 5 - Phase the Process: Imagine it (informed brainstorming), define it (prioritization, scoping and design), and do it (implementation). Phase deliverables, test them with the audience, then iterate and refine. For each phase and deliverable, know what you're going to do, when you're going to do it and what it's going to cost.

Rule 6 - Reward Your Team: It all comes down to human beings working together. You won't hesitate to tell your team when something's wrong, so don't forget to reward them when something's right. One of the best rewards is simple and low cost: genuine recognition. Stand up and recognize them among their peers or to a broader audience and they’ll love it.

Rule 7 - Get to Market: Beat the competition. Offer incremental features and functionality over time. The sooner you can deliver, the more time you will have to build brand loyalty. Deliver "good enough" now and continually improve upon it. Think IPod or the IPhone.

Rule 8 - Market and Promote: Whether you're launching a consumer web site or an online web store, you need to let people know how and where to find you, and why they should bother. Branding, marketing, social media and viral promotion are key. Plan for this from the start.

Rule 9 - Measure Results & Improve: Technology permits you to capture incredibly valuable information about who is doing what on your site. Continually analyze and use it to inform your next steps: marketing strategy and tactics, interface and content improvements, functional enhancements or architectural changes. Keep improving.

Rule 10 - Select the Right Partner: Select a creative/marketing partner who can help you solve the whole problem and sell it to your audience. Incorrect branding, marketing, advertising and public relations can all impede innovation and time-to-market but with the right partner, you can get it right. (Hint – try us)

This ain't the magic formula but it sure will take you on the right road to success! All the best.

Digital Playgrounds of the New World

Child's Play and Advertising

Quick! What do you remember about Saturday or Sunday mornings when you were a kid? Chances are, if you grew up in the 70s or later, Saturday and Sunday morning meant cartoons. And while a weekend sunup might have meant cartoons for you, it meant direct-hit, targeted marketing for toy and cereal companies. Bernard Loomis is known as the man who invented Saturday morning because, as CEO of Mattel, the manufacturer of Hot Wheels, he launched the Hot Wheels television show. This flawless blurring of TV show and commercial was a revolution of positively epic magnitude in marketing terms. Imagine getting a consumer's exclusive attention for 30 straight minutes today! Very good luck.

But a few weeks ago on a rainy Saturday morning, I noticed a fascinating experience at my former senior colleague’s home. His three kids (all under 7 years) and their two equally young cousins were huddled around one of the many computers at his home. The living room was completely vacant and the television was switched off. Lazily sipping a fine Nescafe blend, I asked them why they weren't watching cartoons like good little kids.

The collective force of annoyed looks was scornful. "We're playing games with other kids online." Pointing excitedly to the ever-changing screen, my friend’s daughter said, "See, if you want to chat, you type your message here. Look, I'm talking to a kid in Austria while we play." "Whoa," I thought, "After these messages, we won't be right back!"

I was intrigued. Multi-user web gaming isn’t breaking news to me, but it dawned on me that yet another precept of marketing had been rendered dead in the water by the Internet. Man, I just love that!

I sat down in the empty living room with my favorite cup of hot coffee and stared out the window, past the darkened television to the distant wet sky, and wondered just what, exactly; Bernard Loomis would do in this situation.

Marketing is shifting swiftly these days, and technology-driven opportunities are numberless. Just look at the frantic promotions that those sprawling mega-malls are employing to keep people off-line. Or checkout Airtel’s new Facebook promo, the telecom leader in India has a new promotion with Facebook that offers consumers free access to the Facebook’s mobile site in vernacular languages on their phone, a first of its kind in the world. Seems like kind of a stretch to me.

Everywhere you look, big brands are in trouble. Kelloggs, McDonalds and Ford are all examples of big brands having difficulties adapting to the new consumer-driven web economy. Back in 1969 when Bernard Loomis came up with his brainstorm, the brand was the central focus. The thinking was that if you create a popular brand, customers would flock to you. But now, consumers are more concerned with the future of their brands than the history of the brand. Yikes. This turns traditional packaged goods marketing upside down.

Then again, every fit of disorder and change presents new opportunities for those who are willing to apply some energy to their interpretations. We know that kids have moved from in front of the TV to in front of the computer, from passive viewing to active real-time interactions. There's an exchange going on, and the challenge for marketers is figuring out how to meaningfully join in and capitalize.

For Bernard Loomis, that meant creating a TV show based on his product. For today’s marketer, it might mean creating something completely new that delivers exactly what tech savvy kids are asking for these days. Poke around the Cartoon Network website and you'll see what the little kids are doing today.

So if you're a marketer experiencing that nauseated deer-in-the-headlights feeling brought on by out of control change, I encourage you to remember that chaos breeds opportunity. And if you think about it the correct way, you just might find that opportunity waiting to be knocked online (and also offline).

Demystifying Victoria's Secret

Why a Woman's Lingerie is Not Just Underwear

It’s been said that you can tell a lot about a woman by her choice of intimate apparel; presuming, that is, that she shops for these herself and that the black satin Wonderbra or skimpy red Victoria Secret thong she’s wearing under her office wear is not a gift from her significant other, or lover.

While many women won’t settle for anything less than the luxurious feel of an expensive lace caressing their hidden skin, there are those who prefer the clean, clinical innocence of pure white 100% cotton or the comforting, girlish cuteness of cartoon-festooned knickers and colorful vests. There are those, too, who opt for sensible, neutral bras and panties in fuss-free tones of flesh that never ever reveal their existence even beneath the sheerest of chiffon shirts and skirts.

As there is a somewhat indefinable line that divides the girl from the “real” woman (it has nothing to do with age), there is also a point where underwear and lingerie seem to lose their common ground.

Lingerie, Lan-zhe-ray. Not just an exotic sounding word, it also has a certain intrinsic power, able to convey a multitude of seductive imagery, associations and feelings in both the men who admire (or shy from) it and the women who wear it – or would never - of all ages, castes and nationalities.

Since time immemorial the naked, natural female form has instilled both awe and fear in its beholders, who have concurrently worshipped its voluptuous curves and slender valleys while also denouncing them as the cause of all the world’s evils. Take for example, a woman’s bosom, while being revered by men for its “fruit-like” bountifulness and respected for its maternal functioning, it has also been hidden, bound and even denied its god given beauty.

Pity the Victorian English women who fainted with boring regularity under the severity of aristocratic conventions, corseted to the point of breathlessness, constrained behind painful laces and stiffly starched, unforgiving layers.

Throughout the greater part of the 20th century, women still had to contend with a certain shamefulness associated with their under things. Brassieres and knickers, always well-concealed beneath ultra-feminine, flouncy dresses, were unattractively bulky, clumsy and chafing.

The 2 World Wars brought inevitable liberation, with ladies sassily belted in hardy workers’ trousers as they toiled on the production lines of war factories. But it was those dirty-minded French who caused all the trouble, what with their seemingly loose morals and fondness for free flowing garments. It was then, in that foreign but eternally romantic capital, that the word “lingerie” came into being. Rather than believing the female form to be better off when “out of sight, out of mind”, the French, rather, pledged themselves to framing its loveliness – like a priceless work of art - in the most beautiful of laces and ribbons, satins and velvets.

Although the true inventors of fiddly, frilly women’s intimate apparel – the kind we know and, indeed, women love today – were the French; in the latter part of the last century, they had to contend with the entrepreneurship of their newly-awakened European and New World counterparts like Frederick’s of Hollywood in 1946 famous for the ‘Rising Star’, the world's first push-up bra and La Perla, the Italian underwear and swimwear house founded by Ada Masotti in 1954. Almost 50 years on, European women still associate the La Perla label with an almost noble glamour, frequently bankrupting themselves for the sake of experiencing the cool extravagance of a La Perla bra or chemise.

In the US, Victoria’s Secret is undisputedly the best selling lingerie brand and boasts a huge, immensely popular, online shopping presence. The creator of bras with intriguing names like the “Miracle Bra” the only bra that apparently adjusts to let you create three levels of cleavage at the click of a button and the “Seamless Natural Miracle Bra”, seamless, liquid-filled cups create curves that look and feel like your own; the brand is also revered for its bevy of shapely models who grace the glossy pages of its catalogues.

In England, things have certainly changed, too. Roam the high streets of the capital city and chances are you’ll come across London’s legendary lingerie company, the delightfully named Agent Provocateur, a brand now synonymous with seduction, pleasure and the provocation of the senses. Founded in 1994 by Joseph Corre and Serena Rees, the brand offers trendy ladies a combination of serious eroticism and naughty exhibitionism in its ultra-glamorous, custom-made items. Indeed, its wicked array of kinky knickers, hosiery and strappy boudoir sandals have been snapped up with relish by the fashion editors of high street mags like Vogue, Elle and many more.

Another hip British label, Gossard, the creators of the incredible Wonderbra once caused near-riots on the streets with its no-holds-barred, £1-million poster advertising campaign flaunting the bold pay-off line, “Find Your G Spot”. Calling it the most exciting bra advertising concept ever, Gossard targeted the modern, liberated woman with a wicked sense of humor, actively encouraging the fairer sex to take control in the sack (so to speak) and implying that their ultra sexy lingerie leads to sensational results.

Maybe, they wanted to imply that Lingerie is the ultimate in female empowerment, inviting women to make use of their imagination and slip into an achievable fantasy. All of which reiterates the much-researched fact that women wear sexy lingerie for themselves and not just for mankind – men need be afraid, be very afraid!

And perhaps, while Underwear is, well, just plain underwear; sexless sounding and full of practical, good-common-sense connotation; Lingerie, on the other hand, is a word that lingers, full of pregnant possibility, on the lips, bringing a hot blush to the cheek and, often, a sparkle to the eye, as its soft-spoken syllables are pronounced.

Move aside, Naomi Campbell, Heidi Klum and Laetitia Casta - it's time for all other gals to also have some fun!

Making Advertising & Marketing Work!

This is my concluding post on Simplicity in Marketing

Why Experts Matter
A qualified corporate messaging process drives the dialog so that the visuals, language and information hierarchies are designed in concert with the product or service. Thoughtful design of content should begin earlier than many corporate executives and entrepreneurs believe. It isn’t just make-up to apply after the real thinking’s done. When experienced content designers are part of a strategic planning team, they can influence explanations for greatest success. They can provide the context to build the relationships between breakthrough ideas and the way they are expressed to the people who will buy them.

Whether homegrown or outsourced, your business needs a team dedicated to scanning for patterns and trends, and forging connections between ideas. They will also facilitate the integration across mediums that will bring together the systems, structures and processes in such a way that choices and solutions are connected, linked and cross-sold. A great marketing team is the liaison between the products of business and the minds of the consumer. It must understand both before it can serve
either.

Particularly in this tight labor pool, a competent external marketing partner can be as important to business success as financial and legal counsel. Assuming a venture has an innovative product idea and business model, a great executive team and enough financing to get traction, it still needs the packaging that will take it to market effectively. An experienced agency (like us) can provide critical bandwidth and brainwidth extensions to ensure that a company’s look, feel and messaging resonate the personality an enterprise wishes to own in the marketplace.

Blending Online and Offline Worlds
Although brands and identities must be integrated, many messages that work great in print suck on web pages. This is a topic onto itself, but here’s the top layer.

Print requires great attention to one-dimensional design and layout. Each view is a discrete canvas. Information elements are static and can explain and enhance each other predictably. Web pages, on the other hand, are a dynamic scrolling experience that place greater significance on navigational feel. Relationships between information components are fleeting.

Print can be visually stunning and still accommodate substantial text. It appeals to the eyes. Web pages are compelling for their interactive engagement as much as their content. They appeal to the hands. Why does everyone need to print stuff out? It is actually quite difficult to read online (never mind the iPads and the eReaders.)

The infinite navigational dimensions of the web, current bandwidth limitations and differing desktop environments mandate fewer and smaller graphics, shorter text and simpler typography. While effective print design is grounded in highly refined best practices, web design is still infantile, with huge upside for marketers who get the interactive value and simplicity thing figured out.

To be successful in today’s energetic marketplaces, companies must project a integrated message across all communication materials – corporate identity, packaging, advertising, promotions and web presence. Companies must quickly amalgamate all of their core messages into a single, powerfully unique selling proposition in order to convince impatient, value-minded consumers. But the approach must be optimized for the delivery channel. The implementation techniques are very different.

Why Simplicity is Paramount
Simple means clear, consistent and easy to find. It all starts with leaders who aren’t afraid to think independently. To explore and map new ways through unchartered physical and virtual spaces so that people, actions and events can be connected in creative, compelling ways. It ends with those same leaders being willing to hear and communicate truth. It involves calculated risks. It requires the insight and courage to involve communication specialists in the development of business strategy.

The leader’s objective is to build a “landmark,” not just become “scenery” in a target market. Landmarks are easy to spot, but often endure on the basis of considerable underlying complexity. They don’t necessarily have to be large in stature, but they must be unique in appearance. They are always enduring and prominent. They are obvious.

The return on simplification is huge. By providing the right information the right way at the right time, messages resonate and trigger responses that deliver actual sales and maximize valuation. By distilling content, leaders are able to spend less to build and sustain differentiated brands. Investing in a singular positive image that is optimized for each medium has leveragable impact across the company’s entire portfolio.

So go ahead: make your long, long story short and bring your brand alive.

Distilling Your Brand’s True Brew

This post is a continuation to my earlier post on Simplicity in Marketing.

Creating a Simple but Effective Blueprint
Distilling the real essence of your message is an intense process that requires quality input, an understanding of goals, analysis and tough decisions. It involves regimented facilitation, real-world testing and expert packaging. There is no magic off the-shelf blueprint that allows you to make the intricacy transparent. However, brand specialists and expert knwoledge can assist with the refinement process – providing the steering tools and structures to aid and accelerate it. Beyond packaging the ideas for ease of consumption, these objectives can enable your company to swiftly convert a business model’s strategic objectives into actionable and profitable milestones that drive momentum, orchestrate positioning exercises and test acceptance.

Most executives want their company’s marketing and advertising messages to be “stylish, sophisticated or professional ” and if possible, “clever.” too. This pasteurized checklist is at the heart of what is leading many competitors toward a fruitless state of uniformity. They’re all saying the same things and trying to lead the customer to the same conclusion.

Eager to demonstrate their “proof-of-authenticity,” many of these same executives are afraid to leave any spec for scrutiny or proof point out of their sales proposition. The extensive detail is perceived as validation. This “everything-but-the-kitchen-sink” approach is an easy way out. And, its net effect is usually the exact contrary of what was intended. This plain vanilla granularity just causes more puzzlement that doesn’t help in any sales conversion or market expansion. Besides, there is brand degeneration resulting from decentralized company silos – corporate divisions and operating units which propagate self-styled messages, positions and identities, often ill-timed, hastily designed and poorly executed.

Think Smart and Work Hard
Product Differentiation and Service Demarcation is often the result of simply noticing what your competitors have overlooked and providing that instead of everything else. Think of the Apple iPhone or Gmail. A lack of sacrifice represents unripe positioning.

If your message designs are based on what really interests people, and how they can talk to each other and make easy comparisons, you will find that you can say a lot less. Strive to find and use the language and questions that real people use.

The Truth is Out There
Let your hair down for a second: When you visualize the triumph of your business, is it based on the way things ought to be or the way things really are? The act of arranging information for simplicity then becomes an act of brand and market insight.

Amidst a flood of new age propaganda and mega-efficient delivery mechanisms, human communication is still very much grounded in some enduring truths, and the maxim that those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it is indeed one of them.

While technology is changing exponentially, the hearts of the people using it are inflexible to transform. Most of what’s being sold today as new insight is merely the rediscovery of knowledge we’ve had for centuries but perhaps not acknowledged. The trick is to admit it and leverage it to your advantage. Candor is a guiding principle and Authenticity provides understanding that transcends spin and packaging. As experience counts, you could also learn from the marketing gray hairs who’ve been through a business cycle or two.

Give What the Audience Wants
To see sales patterns and develop a marketing message that incites a desired result, start with age-old human nature, not cold corporate logic. Hence, the content of your brand message must communicate genuinely in the language of the intended audience. For a brand or image to break through the information overlaod and market sauration, it must be based on what the target audience perceives as indispensable and relevant to them. What they want to know and need. Not what you feel is imperative or exciting to them.

Technology can help and create exhilarating opportunities but it can also overwhelm us with choices. Codifying, collecting and making everything accessible in nanoseconds is less important than describing how it’s used – the application context. Instead of speeds and feeds or the rate of data, concentrate on describing your brand’s spirit and how it relates to your audience, reflecting on the people connection and your brand’s heart.

If you wish to harness technology efficiently, improvise all the time and focus on the things that happen behind the patented breakthroughs. Recognize that the real goal for the technology is for it to be as transparent and useful as possible.

Content is still the King (and the Queen too)
Content is and has always been the language of customers. And as mentioned earlier, remember to always communicate from the intended listener’s point of view, not your company’s. Start your brand messaging where employees and customers meet, work backward from their needs. By the way, cracking the code on your customers’ needs and priorities can’t be accomplished “inside”. The key lies outside your business and perhaps outside your industry.

If all else fails, revert to the inevitable and basic questions of your customer: How is your product useful to them? What value does it provide? What’s truly in it for them?

In this sense, your content should be much more than words, pictures and voices. It should evoke emotion – a deeper connect. It should be simple, insightful and compelling. And, it is perhaps Content - the one thing one can't teach a computer to generate, so there is a uniquely human dependency. Respect that. After all, the content you develop is what will help you bond with your customers and if driven right, help you achieve world-class results.

Why Simplicity is the New Marketing Paradigm

New age businesses are pumping out new ideas and knowledge at an unprecedented rate. As our recent marketing assignment for a radically new product would vindicate, the new age chant seems to be - more, better, faster, louder and most importantly simpler (think Twitter).

For marketing and design professionals, simplicity might well be the decade’s greatest differentiator. It’s the timeless power to do more with less. To be heard at all amidst the electronic chaos, let alone be clearly understood, a brand’s marketing communications must refine and talk the essential truth as plainly as possible.

Have you ever noticed how there now seems to be a “time” for every business and technology idea, and when that time comes, the idea springs into the minds of several people simultaneously? The next big thing emerges overnight. From categories like social media networks, niche portals and concepts like trending topics, social buying, to the fancy fonts and the reds and greens to prop up corporate identities. What’s up with that?

With millions and millions of people receiving indistinguishable data and stimuli, should it be any surprise that many have the same epiphanies at about the same time? This phenomenon gives overnight birth to entire industry spaces awash with venture capital and generous seed money. It also paralyzes decision-makers.

Consumer Minds are more Saturated (and Confused) than ever before.

Business information is doubling every three years. That’s about twice as much stuff every 1000 days. And, the web-centric among us are now bombarded with something like a billion different URLs. Researchers tell us there’ll be ten times that many in two years.

Let’s face it; we’re all developing internal defenses to guard against the blight of buzzwords and boilerplate verbiage. The sheer volume of media available and density of communications is making many potential customers indifferent, if not immune to even the most persuasive value propositions.

Stuff all looks and sounds the same. It’s all mission critical. It all improves shareholder value. And it’s all “e-this” and “i-that”. Even the once refreshingly clever names of techie start-ups have become astonishingly analogous.

Our adaptive brains automatically discount the predictable. The vagueness and overkill is bad news for people who need to promote and sell technology products and services. So they throw more up against the wall in fruitless efforts to see what will stick. Case in point is the scam-tainted, overvalued IPL: It was relatively easy for flush new mobile companies to drop millions of dollars for mundane IPL ads, but what will any of them really accomplish?)

Let’s Just Cut to the Chase

The solution is Simplicity. Simplicity is the result of making the intricate clear. It greatly improves the performance of information. The cost of confusion is greater than the task of making things simple. Simplicity reduces advertising and public relations expenditures.

The key to message simplicity is painfully obvious: focus. Selectively exclude messages and media, which matter less, so that attention is given to those that matter most. That’s it. You need read no further. Just as simple a concept as losing weight for cheap: eat less, exercise more. Duh.

Okay, like weight loss and fitness, simplicity is also a great paradox, an absurdity because achieving it is known to be very hard work. Intuitively obvious. Practically difficult. And sometimes, you need a little coaching to provide the requisite inspiration and discipline. So where do you start? I’ll tell you soon.

Positive Consumerism

In Advertising and Marketing, Does any one care for the Consumer?

What on earth is Psychology doing in Marketing? Psychologists are, of course, strange mortals who are treated by others with, occasionally, well-placed cynicism. Let me tell you, if you are ever trying to get rid of someone at a social gathering or are trying to make them edgy, try telling them you are a psychologist or a psychiatrist and watch them suddenly change posture, scratch their ear fiendishly and finally retreat at speed to refill their already-full glass.

But Psychology is not a black art and it’s no secret that the Marketing and Advertising world is full of psychologists, amateur or otherwise. Coming from a totally different background to most agency staff, I tend to look at things from a different point of view. And I suppose that's why I am constantly perplexed why the personal likes and dislikes of clients have such a enormous participation into the final decision making process.

You may, or may not, be aware of the expression 'Social Loafing’. This is a phenomenon which occurs when you have a large number of people working towards a common goal and, together they are less productive than they would have been if they had been working as individuals. Now, if a psychologist was to decide to conduct research into the details of ‘Social Loafing’, the last person they would ask to identify the variables that impact on productivity is the boss (or the client). This is because the boss/client will have every kind of preconceived idea which will colour their judgement. You get the idea. The objective way to do it would be either to observe dispassionately exactly what is going on or better still, talk to the people and see what they say.

So why is that the personal preferences of clients and agency personnel for that matter get built into the process that arrives as the final creative execution of any promotional marketing or advertising concept? After all, the target audience is rarely the board of directors on the client company. And when you look at the people who make the final creative decision, they all have different agendas. The Marketing Manager wants to sell something that is original and stimulating, inventive and chock full of freshness. The Advertising Agency wants to win awards and design/produce something that makes the rest of the world sit up and take note.

But what about the end Consumer? Do they really care if the advertisement/promotion is nominated for a "Best Sales Promotion" or "Best Advertisement" award? Does it matter to them if the advertisement promotion is held up as a signpost of the way in which the industry is heading? It seems to me that no many occasions it's the down-to-earth and sensible approach which wins the day. Take for example, the ‘buy one, get one’ promotion which offers an extra product free.

Added value is hardly original but, after all, the shopper buying the product, actually likes the product so what better incentive could there be than to give them more of the product they like? And before agency staffs hang their heads in despair, there is no reason why a tried and tested technique can't be give extra creative sparkle. It’s proven psychological fact that most people would choose a $50 bill today rather than a $100 bill promised next week. So maybe the creative/advertising industry should be looking in greater detail at what the consumer actually wants rather than what both the client and the agency, want the customer to want. You get the picture?

Note: At our company Ideasonic, we ensure that the Customers needs are addressed first, coupled with our creative juice and the clients requirements.