Jingle Wars - why some ads work and others just annoy the hell out of you

I’ve got great memories of being a kid, singing “My dad picks the fruit that goes to Cotteeeeeeeeees, to make the cordial, that I like best!”.

There’s something magical about a great jingle. When a catchy lyric goes beyond background music and entrenches itself into popular culture (“I feel like Chicken Tonight, like Chicken Tonight”) it generates a sense of brand loyalty that can linger for years after the original ad campaign has come to an end.

Fond childhood memories = emotional connection = brand loyalty

Almost any child of the 80s would remember some of these classics:

·         “Aussie kids, are WeetBix kids. Aussie kids, are Weet-Bix-kids!”

·         “Decore de de Decore de de... As I shampoo my hair, I really love, my Decore…”

·         “I feel like a Tooheys, I feel like a Tooheys, I feel like a Tooheys or two!”

·         “You can tella Wella woman by the way she wears her hair, you can tella Wella woman anywhere”

·         “One day, you’re gonna get caught. One day, you’re gonna get caught. One day, you’re gonna get caught with your pants down” (Holeproof Underdaks)

·         “Every day, in a million ways, every home needs Harpic!”

And even earlier, these beauties were getting stuck in people’s heads:

·         “We’re happy little Vegemites, as bright as bright can be”

·         “I’m Louie the Fly, I’m Louie the Fly, straight from rubbish tip to you” (Mortein)

·         “I like Aeroplane jelly, Aeroplane jelly for me!”

Whether the advertising world was distracted by the advent of computer graphics, or consumers had simply outgrown the naffness, jingles went out of fashion in the late 90s. That’s not to say that there weren’t jingles in the late 90s, but just like TV theme songs, they needed a break.

Now that late Gen-Xers and early Gen-Yers have turned into adults with money, jingles are back!

In the last fortnight, two ads in particular have caught my ear.

In common they have a distinctive soundtrack, the colour red, and a focus on price. But boy oh boy, have they made distinctive impressions on television audiences.

On one side of the equation you’ve got the latest installment in the Coles “Down Down” campaign, and on the other, you’ve got “Robin da Hood”; a quirky integrated campaign from Virgin Mobile.

The good, the bad and the tone deaf

Twitter went mental last week with hashtags such as #stopcoles and #downdown trending, and not in a good way. It was apparent that people were not impressed – in fact, by and large they were appalled – by the rework of 1964 hit Downtown by Petula Clark. Coles has taken a well-known song, mangled the lyrics (to me it seems they made them up on the way to the shoot), and selected an ‘every day woman’ to shout each line while colleagues with big red fingers dance down the aisles of a supermarket.

Above all else, the lack of tunefulness of the Coles ad star is what seems to have caused the most offence. The Good Guys have been using a similar concept for a few years, except their singing is in tune and the lyrics rhyme. That adds up to a memorable jingle. And that’s effective.

Coles, however, is arguing that its current ad campaign is effective. I agree that recall will be high. People will be well aware that Coles prices are “Down Down”. Will that make more people shop at Coles? I say yes – at least for now.

I do question, however, the longevity of the campaign’s success. This campaign, which began about a year ago with a less-annoying jingle, focuses solely on price. The promise is “Prices are down, and staying down”. That’s an awfully big promise. For how long will prices stay down? Can I expect that I’ll still be able to buy a loaf of bread for a dollar in a years’ time? Will price cuts come at the expense of other desirable supermarket qualities such as quality, produce freshness and customer service? What impact will these low prices have on farmers?

My fear for Coles is that campaigns focusing on price alone will start to lose impact very quickly. Prices can’t get much lower than what they are currently advertising. It’s very hard to promise that “prices are down, and staying down”, when they’re at rock bottom already. At some point something will have to give. Prices will have to go up. And uh oh… Coles will break its promise.

Maybe Coles isn’t interested in long term customer loyalty. What do you think?

The skinny bloke in the red tights with the self-styled mullet

Virgin Mobile has gone all medieval with its latest campaign, and I love it. The first time it came on in my house we all stopped talking to watch the TV. The branding wasn’t in our faces. It was non-existent. As we followed Robin da Hood on his journey through Sherwood we wondered “What the hell is this ad about?”. Right at the end we found out it was for Virgin Mobile. Is it going to make be switch mobile phone providers? Not right now. Does it cut through the mountains of telecommunications jargon about caps, bonus credit, free-talk, off peak, blah blah blah? Yep.

The campaign goes across all media. The messages are consistent and the characters are thoroughly entertaining. People are invited to engage with the campaign on a whole new level. The key messages are softly woven into the campaign touchpoints, unlike the Coles ad where the key messages are screeched at you as if you’re at a rug warehouse closing down sale.

The danger of this is that the key messages might get missed all together. Recall of the campaign might be high, but what good is that if people can’t remember the company or product being advertised? I must admit that after seeing the ad for the first time and marveling at the level of detail the creative team went to, I actually thought it was for Vodafone!

The advantage of this campaign, however, is that people are willing to watch the ad again and again, and will be more accepting of further installments. By this stage, brand recall will be high too. And as long as Virgin Mobile doesn’t stuff up and let customers down, the campaign should be effective – long term.

Will either of these ad campaigns permanently etch themselves into our brains? In 20 years from now will we be able to recite all the lyrics? Pfft. I don’t think so. In the short term though, both these campaigns are effective, but for different reasons. I’m really keen to know what you think. Which is the better campaign and why?

Until next time,

Gem.

Know the real you... and never compromise

It's tempting to try to please everyone, especially when you're just starting out.

In an effort to build a customer base, you talk yourself up and say "Yes we can!"... to everything. When a potential customer asks what you do, you rattle off a long list of activities that you can do, including some you may never have tried, but might if someone asked.

While it may work for some, the problem with this approach is that instead of building a strong brand, you risk mixing together a whole lot of ingredients and ending up with a big bowl of beige.

How will anyone know who you are (or who your business is), if you don't? How can you build a brand without knowing the one single thing that will make you stand out from the crowd?

You can spend a lot of money with an agency defining your unique selling proposition, elevator pitch, positioning statement and even coming up with catchy slogans and taglines... and if you've got the money I strongly recommend you go through this process. But if a few days in a swanky advertising agency meeting room (or 'creative space' as some would prefer to call it) is not an option right now, then start off by asking these questions:

• Out of all the things my business can do, what things do we do best?
• Out of those things, what do we do better than any of our competitors?

And now that you've picked that thing... why the hell would anyone care?

Stop thinking about products and services, and start thinking about problems

"Gee, that sounds negative," I sense you thinking... but bear with me. The point of trying to build a brand is to provide potential customers with an emotional connection to whatever it is you do. What gets people emotional? Problems.

So now ask; why would someone use my product or service?

Just say, for example, you run a salad bar in a food court.
Why would somebody buy a salad? Because they want a healthy meal.

Then start laddering:
Why would they want a healthy meal? Because they want a healthy diet.
Why would they want a healthy diet? To look good and feel great.

So suddenly you're no longer selling salad. You're selling aspirations: good looks, fitness, energy!
Your customers may be a niche group, but they'll never go anywhere else in the food court.

If you can find one specific problem that you can solve better than anyone else, you're in business.

Know what you stand for and never ever compromise

Once your customers have an emotional connection to your brand, do not disappoint them.

Breaking a customer's heart is the worst thing you can do for your business.

It's like a teacher making spelling mistakes on a student's report card. It's like Jamie Oliver bringing home McDonalds for dinner. It's like Tiger Woods cheating on his wife (oh wait, that one really happened -- and look what it did to his brand!).

Never let a customer lose trust in you. Never stop solving their specific problem.

Back to our salad bar example. Just because one bloke comes up to the counter and says "This would taste better deep-fried," doesn't mean you should start selling buckets of greasy, unidentifiable chicken pieces.

The customer is not always right, especially not if they are going to jeopardise your brand.

Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should

While sifting through a mountain of junk mail the other day, something caught my eye: a flyer for a local business that was an Indian restaurant-slash-'homewares' supplier. The top of the page pictured a bowl of curry. The bottom of the page had a number of porcelain toilet suites on special. I laughed out loud. I don't think I'll be a customer there.

Diversification is a popular risk-management strategy. It can be scary to put all your eggs in one basket. Diversification is fine from a business perspective, perhaps, but don't mess up your brand.

Customers are a simple lot. I don't mean that disparagingly. What I mean is that an emotional decision is made faster than a rational one. Having a strong brand with an emotional connection helps customers make good decisions (or in the very least makes them feel like they've made a good decision). Complicating things just turns them off. Customers have better ways to spend their time than to try to understand your business. They want to see that you understand them. Don't waste their time.

If you need to diversify, do it secretly. If you're a salad bar owner who wants to start selling fried chicken, then buy a different shop in the food court. If you run an Indian restaurant and you want to branch out into plumbing supplies, then for goodness' sake, print a separate flyer.

Lessons in branding from the Royal Wedding

Love it or hate it, everyone seems to have an opinion on Will and Kate's wedding. It was highly scrutinised the world over -- even more so than Charles and Diana's.

Anyone who has ever organised a wedding knows it's a big job, but every detail in Friday's Royal Wedding was controlled to the nth degree for one big reason: this was the Royal Family's biggest branding opportunity in three decades.

Sure, there was a lovely couple who wanted to be joined in holy matrimony -- and I have no doubt that Prince William and Kate Middleton are completely in love -- but this was more than a wedding: this was an event that will turn half-hearted republicans back into monarchists (at least for a few days), and at the moment, the Royal Family needs all the support it can get.

In my opinion, the Number One rule for good branding is consistency. It's all about managing expectations and the Royal Family has been very particular about giving people what they want. So let's look at a few aspects of the Royal Wedding to see what we can learn.

Sticking with tradition
Let's start with Kate's dress. I was expecting something a bit more modern and understated, but I should have known better. Instead of the white halterneck gown with a floaty a-line skirt that I was envisiaging, lace sleeves and a long train emerged, ultra elegant, somewhat conservative, and reminiscent of Grace Kelly's 1956 wedding dress. It was fitting for the occasion, tying in with a traditional ceremony -- and it's not like they couldn't afford the extra fabric! It was flattering but didn't flaunt Kate's figure. Her slim physique has been both praised and criticised, but Kate's wedding dress quelled the body image debate. She looked stunning, and nobody could deny it. The dress was big, but not as big as Diana's. If it was any more daring, it would have been compared to Diana's and that was something the Royal Family, and no doubt Kate herself, wanted to avoid. Kate was also rumoured to have wanted flowers in her hair, but acting on the Queen's advice, wore a crown. It was more important for a non-Royal to look Royal.

Sticking it to tradition

So there's the traditional Royal brand, and then there's the new Royal brand. Princes William and Harry are adored because they appear more down-to-earth. Marrying a commoner (although there is nothing 'common' about Kate) reinforces this modern, edgy version of royalty, so it was fitting that there were a few modern touches in the Royal Wedding. Kate arrived in a Rolls Royce, instead of the traditional carriage. Their vows were fairly traditional, but there wasn't a sign of the 'honour and obey' clause. The freshly-married couple drove off in a 1969 Aston Martin, driven by Will, and decorated with streamers and L-plates by Prince Harry. Prince Harry and Kate's party planner sister, Pippa, also organised a disco-themed reception in Buckingham Palace so they could all dance the night away. Young, fun, modern. It was all about identifiable aspects of normal life making the Royal Wedding more relevant to the public, and thus increasing the popularity of the monarchy.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge

Choosing new titles for Will and Kate wasn't just a matter of plucking a name out of the air. Now, I don't know anything about how this works, but it looks like there were a few options available including Clarence and Sussex. The Royals had to avoid anything with a negative connotation, no matter how outdated that connotation may now be. According to Tim Ross (The Telegraph - UK), the last Duke of Clarence had been "been subject to speculation over his sexuality and mental capacity", while the 'Duke of Sussex' simply "sounded too suburban". Neither of these options (among others) would do. The decision to go with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge was the right one, in my opinion, because of all the positive attributes associated with Cambridge such as education, sophistication and tradition. It's also apt because a previous Duke of Cambridge, Prince George, married his true love (a commoner) in 1847, although the Royal Family never officially recognised the marriage. If you're really into this stuff, read Tim Ross' original article.

The hot bridesmaid
Let's face it, Kate's younger sister, Pippa, looked amazing and the Middletons couldn't have found a better opportunity to thrust her into the spotlight. Overnight she became Britain's most eligible young woman, even though she's not single. Pippa's dress -- which could have made a lovely wedding dress itself -- showed off every inch of her figure, and yet somehow she stopped short of upstaging her sister. Pippa's name quickly became one of the highest-trending topics on Twitter and it was entertaining to read the speculation about a possible romance between her and Prince Harry. As much as Pippa and Harry would make a cute couple, and the Middletons are as good as royalty now anyway, such a pairing will never happen (or at least the Royal minders will make sure we never hear about it if it does). It would just be too weird for two brothers to marry two sisters. The Royal Wedding has done wonders for Pippa's public profile and even if she does wed her current boyfriend, the publicity will be very good for her party planning business. She was her own business card.

Comic relief

Apparently sticking a ridiculous hat to your forehead is the latest in Royal fashion. With the official wedding party looking so beautiful, it was up to Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson (the one dressed as a Smurf) and even Posh Spice (who looked like she was going to a funeral) to provide audiences with a well-deserved belly laugh. Nobody could have predicted that Beatrice, in particular, was going to turn up with an elaborate papier-mâché door knocker on her brow, but at the same time, everybody eagerly awaited the worst-dressed list. With guests dressed like that, even Camilla Parker Bowles escaped unscathed.

The aftermath

Footage of a verger cartwheeling down the aisle of Westminster Abbey was a nice follow up to the Royal Wedding. Let's face it, he probably got a bit of a dressing down for being 'disrespectful', despite a representative from Westminster Abbey publicly defending him. In the real world though, who doesn't love a cartwheeling verger? Religion will also benefit from this spontaneous (or ingeniously set up) act.

It's so easy to be disappointed when an actual event doesn't live up to the hype, but thanks to meticulous planning, there has been almost no criticism of the Royal Wedding at all. Perhaps the Queen has quite a marketing brain under that lemon hat.

Until next time,
Gem.

Welcome to this brand spanking new blog

You may have a business.
You may have a logo.
You may have a sign out front.
You may even advertise.

But do you have a brand?

When many people think about branding, they think of the visual aspects: logos, slogans, advertising, staff uniforms. They're all important, but a brand is more than all those things.

We live in a heavily commoditised world. So many products and services, so much choice. If you sell a product, or offer a service for a price, YOU must differentiate yourself. Everyone thinks they're unique (and I am no exception) -- but without a good brand you just end up being a different shade of beige.

A whiff of something wonderful

Have you ever stood in front of a supermarket shelf pondering which washing powder you should buy? Do you go for the one with enzymes or optical brighteners? Do you choose 'Ocean Fresh' or 'Summer Breeze' scent? Do you choose lower residues or environmentally-friendly packaging? In the end, like most people, you will choose a brand you know - a trusted brand.

It probably wasn't the product itself that determined your choice, but it wasn't the logo or the packaging design either. And, if you mulled over your decision long enough, price probably never came into it. It was the feeling that brand name gave you. Something warm and fuzzy, safe and secure. You probably thought "My mum used this washing powder", or "This company has been around for ages", or "I don't want to risk using something different". It's probably all true, but that feeling you get when you choose that brand is based on emotion, not logic. And, when you wash your towels, hang them on the line and then take them back down again, that washing powder will -- in all likelihood -- live up to your expectations, and reinforce the feelings you have about it.

Nothing shatters a good brand faster than a bad experience

So now that you've made your washing powder decision, what would happen if you got home, opened the pack, and instead of sweet-smelling powder, the box was filled with something that smelled like vinegar? You notice a little starburst on the box saying "New environmentally-friendly scent!". You trust the brand so you use it anyway. After the washing machine has finished you open the lid and see that the powder hasn't dissolved at all. It's now in big clumps all through your clothes. It won't come off. In fact, it's taken some of the colour out of your favourite T-shirt. So now your clothes are ruined, and they stink like vinegar. You take a closer look at the pack. It used to be 1.5kg, but now it's only 1.3kg. Now it's a rip off too!

Had you chosen a new brand, and this had happened, you would think "I should have stayed with the brand I trusted". But this was your brand. It betrayed you. You are angry. You want revenge.

The next time you are at the shops you choose a different brand. "Suck on that!" you think to yourself.  It's going to take a lot of convincing to get you to change back to your old brand now.

This is what it's all about

It's so easy to make big branding mistakes -- and some of the biggest companies in the world have done just that. But it's also easy to create a good brand, and keep it that way.

I'm not going to pretend that I've got 50 years worth of experience in FMCG marketing. The experience I do have is practical. This blog is about my observations of good and bad brand moves. It's no-nonsense. It's not going to cost you a lot of money.

I hope you enjoy the journey.

Until next time...
Gem.