Camera Brands To Die For-A Photo Shoot With A Difference

Think again when someone says they would like to take a shot of you with their new camera this Christmas.

In the quest to grab our attention and make sure that brands stand out from the crowd creative people certainly come up with some amazing ideas. I reckon that has to be the case in the following YouTube.

For me its either one of those full of deep meaning metaphorical stretches that supposedly wheedles away at your sub conscious and modifies your buying behaviour or it is simply so self-referential as to be meaningless for most of us. What do you think?

Would you die for a digital SLR brand?

Thanks to Adrian Wood Photography for sharing this.

Event Management: The Essentials

One of the most high profile aspects of an enterprise’s customer facing activity is Event Management. I remember going to the Paris Air Show once and being amazed at the scale and size of the exhibition stands, some of which included a full sized Patriot Missile system! Get an event right and it makes a huge contribution to the reputation of the organisation and it serves as a platform for making and reinforcing relationships. Given the importance of Events it is often surprising how the responsibility for their management is delegated (dropped on?) members of staff who have limited experience and expertise in really leveraging the event opportunity.

Philip Crowther and John Perry colleagues of mine at Sheffield Business School have developed a short two day course on Event Management Essentials. Whilst events, as we all know, might be a fun day away from the office, they have a serious and important role in the overall competitive strategy of any enterprise. They cost alot of time and money and a return on that investment is required. For some that might mean quick win sales, for many the returns are likely to be less to instantaneous and perhaps more qualitative. Either way understanding more about how to make your event more effective has to be a good thing, doesn’t it?

Is A Brand Sorcerer Driving Your Business?

The CEO of any enterprise will no doubt ask themselves the question “who am I delegating responsibility for my organisation’s marketing to?” Like kings and leaders through the ages they are sometimes drawn to mystics who profess powers of understanding and influence. There is a type of marketing professional that might be described as The Sorcerer’s Saussurer’s Apprentice.

Their platform of managerial knowledge and experience is the study of signs and their meaning.  Semiotics.  This field of knowledge is interested in ‘The Sign’ and ‘The Signifier’.  The Symbol and its Meaning.  It is grounded in philosophy’s Linguistic Turn, and the evolution of post modern thinking about the nature of world and how we understand it. Rich territory for a Brand expert. After all that’s what Brand means isn’t it? A sign.

Knowledge from the arcane world of Semiology underpins communications studies and in its turn (sic) this knowledge underpins marketing communications management.  For people unfamiliar in its workings, semiotics is a beguiling subject that offers an explanation of how and why people respond to communciation. It is a short step from explanation to normative prescription.  From this is what seems to be happening to this it what you should do.

The Saussurer’s Apprentice knowing there is a difference between Brand Sign and Brand Meaning offers the magic of being able to change the meaning of any sign.  S/he will Re-present re-position the image and language associated with your brand. With special incantations (more commonly known as straplines) and mystical symbology (more commonly known as a brand identity) the Saussuer’s Apprentice will give reassurance where there is fear and uncertainty and after all we all know that fear sells.

I fear my competitors. I fear my loss of revenue. I fear my inability to compete.  Miller Heimann call this ‘being in trouble’, and being in trouble is a mind set that is open to a sales pitch. The charlatan smells trouble. S/he recognises and seeks out the ignorance of others because s/he can be sure that there will be no critical thinking and probing of  ideas.  S/he is skilled at seeking out the fears of the powerful because they need new ways to control an uncertain destiny.

“Once upon a time in the Land of  Aitchtoo-Oh the ruler was becoming worried, he wanted an heir to the throne but no one wanted to marry his daughter the princess. She was known throughout the world as the Ugly Princess.  In the eyes of the King his daughter was a symbol of  beauty, the prettiest and most attractive person in the world. This is not what his subjects thought,  and there wasn’t a Prince in the world who could bring themselves to ask the King for her hand in marriage. An uncomfortable reality was beginning to dawn on the king. His daughter was nothing like the beauty he believed her to be.

One day the King heard of a Sorcerer who was travelling the land. He came to to King and told him that he was wise in the ways of the mind and that he had a magic spell that would make his daughter irresistable to anyone who saw her.  “I will pay you handsomly” said the King. The Sorcerer cast his spell. The Kings daughter became known as the Princess of Magical Dihydrogen Monoxide Land. “We need to get rid of any association with Aitchtoo-Oh” he explained. “A fresh start requries a fresh name, something that conjures up mystery, a sense of the unknown. A new name a new beginning.” The sign had been re-signified. Anyone who saw her would fall instantly in love with her beauty and charm. The problem was solved. A Prince from the faraway kingdom of Adland married her and they were all about to live happily ever after (as people always do in Adland) when the spell wore off. The Prince saw that he had married the ugliest princess in the world and was very upset.  The Sorcerer hadn’t told the King the spell wouldn’t last. Furious at being made to look a fool the king sent his soldiers looking for the Sorcerer and they never found him. He had simply disappeared in a puff of hot air.”

Gulf of Mexico – America’s Magical Waterland

The brand challenge facing BP runs deeper than any logo and strapline.  These examples come from a post titled Rebranding the BP logo.

As subversive rebrands they reflect the perceptions of some important stakeholders. No matter how BP would like their brand to be thought of their brand meaning is owned and controlled by others.  These logos shed light on how brands are really built. They are built on performance and experience.  Yes they are creative, they are eye catching and salient and they are grounded in a reality. Until the tragedy of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill BP could make the case that it acted in accordance with the green sunflower eco-friendly promise, and the power of its public relations machine could successfully rebut any counter claims. However no PR department packed to the roof with gurus could  put a positive spin on destroyed livlihoods, managerial gaffes, and ruined eco systems.

How will  BP overcome their brand challenges? How will they ‘reposition’ their brand. Reiss and Trout called this task the ‘battle for your mind’.  How will they persuade the people of Louisiana and Florida to think differently of them? Will the board of BP decide to invest in a new logo and strapline? If you were running BP what would you decide to do?

Positioning and its marketing cousin re-positioning are pieces of marketing jargon.  Part of a lexicon that often generates more heat than light.  Words used to impress.  The words frequently imply a capability to change people’s minds. What is rarely mentioned or explained is that like many marketing concepts positioning and re-positioning have two connotations.  One implies an almost mystical and hypnotic  capability to transform how people think. Imagine if it could do that! (wink)  The other is a strategic management task that makes real changes to products and services; the essence of the value proposition.  When brands are truly ‘re-positioned’ they are tangibly moved away from one status towards  another through direct action on product and service attributes (qualities).

BP is re-branding through decisive management actions. Senior management changes, effective capping of the leak, financial compensation, and changing its working practices. It is on a journey of moving its brand away from the current negative perception that many people have as Black Pest towards something in time more positive. Something actions can do and Sophistry can’t. Unless of course you take sophistry to mean genuine,  profound and educated managerial insight.

Some Interesting Marketing Guru Observations

“Branding is a topic that can turn a room full of marketers into a herd of experts…owning a brand is like having an orgasmatron, that machine in the film Barbarella” cited in Marketing Payback – Prof Robert Shaw and David Merrick

“I’m not saying customer awareness and brand equity are not important metrics…so before I hand someone £10 million to spend on advertising, I want to see fact-based analysis demonstrating the economic benefits”
Sir Roy Gardner CEO Centrica and non executive
Chairman of Manchester United 2004

“Most firms…prefer to fumble around in the dark. It’s easy to see why: fumbling has a lot going for it. More adventure, creativity, more
surprises and more fantasies. But you may not like what you see when the lights go on”
Tim Ambler 2003 – Marketing and The Bottom Line 2nd ed.

“Do you want fine writing? Do you want masterpieces?
or do you want to see the god dammed sales curve start
moving up?”
Rosser Reeves cited in Ogilvy on Advertising

Deacon: “Dry land is not just our destination, it is our destiny!” Dennis Hopper Waterworld – 1995

Norfolk Broads Brand Guru Dilutes Marketing Credibility?

One of the intellectual games that marketeers love to play is the ‘Brand Management’ game. Like most conceptual ideas, games like this manifest themselves in two broad (sic) forms. One form is based on a deep grasp of purpose and intention and the second is based on flimsy ‘word smithery’

The BBC report today that “Brand Strategy Guru” Simon Middleton has…now wait for it…a new logo and a new “toolkit” of images and slogans to transform the perception of the Norfolk Broads. This will be done by describing the Norfolk Broads as – “‘Britain’s Magical Waterland”. No wonder the role of Marketing gets such a bad press such as Nigel Richardson’s Telegraph article. Perhaps there are some branded golf balls and pens available too?

Pick up any decent book or article about the notion of branding and it defines it as a complex notion that communicates a promise a value. Something that taps into the values and aspirations of customers, clients and consumers. Something that represents meaningful benefit.

How on earth does the notion of ‘magical waterland’ do any of these things? Why the abstraction? Why not convey precisely what the Norfolk Broads do for people? I totally agree with the feelings of local residents that the whole idea is ridiculous and arrogant.

So what do the Broads ‘do’ for people – help them relax? get away from it all? explore culture, history and heritage? what are the signs and symbols – the waterways, the wildlife, how do the Broads make them look and feel? healthy, happy, great parents? Whatever the answers I don’t know for sure, but somewhere in there will something better and more meaningful than ‘Magical Waterland’

off the top of my head…

The Norfolk Broads:

Places Peace and Pleasure.
Timeless beauty. Time for you.
At your pace.
Space to breathe. Time to think.

…and not a magician in sight

What would you suggest?

Prince Edward Sells Death Benefits of Duke’s Award

One of the pillars of the Marketing Concept is the idea of selling the benefits of your product or service. Benefits relate to the value that the purchaser or user gets from using what is offered.

The recent observation by HRH Prince Edward that there might some allure in the risk of death from participating in the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme is a fascinating case study for several reasons.

The first has to be the lesson it gives to us all about the speed and reach of the digitally connected world. The reputation of any brand can be affected in an instant. Brand identities that have been meticulously crafted over years can be undermined in the time it takes to say something careless.

The second lesson is that there is always a difference between what is said and what it means. As Bandler and Grinder have noted “The meaning of communication is the way it is received”. Whilst the Prince thought he might have been conveying a dark sense of humour his remarks were unlikely to have been heard as ‘funny’ by relatives of Duke of Edinburgh Award participants who had died whilst they were taking part on the scheme.

The third lesson is never confuse an ‘advantage’ with a ‘benefit’. Product and Service advantages are what the seller assumes are appealling dimensions of what is offered. The Prince seems to have ‘fast forwarded’ from a hunch that the demanding and thrilling aspects of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award means that risk of death is a good thing. Oops.

Clearly what has happened is an unfortunate turn of phrase. I’m not sure that Death could ever be construed as a ‘benefit’ when selling products unless you are an arms dealer. I think the Prince is quite right to highlight the appeal of thrill-seeking, and that the DOEA organisers are right to emphasise that the award is about developing individuals as safely as possible. The prospect of challenge and risk must figure as one of the key psychographic choice factors of the target segment who are likely to join the scheme.

There are clearly personal experiential and transformative benefits associated with the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and these should be emphasised. The transformative and beneficial effects of Death is perhaps a more challenging ‘sell’.

Find out more at Duke of Edinburgh Award