Lately the role of narrative in advertising and branding is getting a lot attention. This is a natural progression as brands struggle with the need to create content and conversation in the digital world instead of broadcasting a benefit driven message through the airwaves. Social media, games, and digital experiences all seem to make more sense when driven by a story.
Earlier this year, I began screenwriting. Like many who endeavor to accomplish this, I had an idea for a story that I felt just needed to be told. The experience led me to a few realizations: story is just as important to brands as it is to film, stories have always been one of the most important way humans communicate, and all stories begin in the same place — with a hero.
So, this post is all about asking the question, “Who is your brand's hero?”
Many brands will try to convince you that the brand itself is the hero. The recent work for Allstate, starring Dean Winters as “Mayhem” is a great example of this. Mayhem rears its ugly head and Allstate saves the day.
Sometimes the benefit takes on the role of the hero. Benefits are usually abstract, so fictional characters come in handy here. Work for Old Spice, Captain Morgan and Dos Equis all rely on characters that embody the qualities of the product benefits to fill the role of hero.
Casting the people who use the product as the hero is another popular approach: Smart, savvy, and cool families drive a Honda.
Sometimes the customer is the hero. But the customer is not the end user. Hallmark is great example. “When you care enough to send the very best” is a message all about making the person who gives the greeting card the hero.
If you have other approaches or thoughts about narrative and brands, please share.
And if you’re interested in writing a movie script, I highly recommend working with the team at Script Pipeline. They are incredibly talented people with an amazing track record.
—Bernard Urban
It seems that the long-tail conversation coming out of the ad community’s analysis of the Super Bowl spots is all about strategy.
First, let me say kudos to any brand or agency that had work run during the game. It’s a big accomplishment to be part that tradition and for sheer participation, I sincerely tip my hat.
That said, my immediate reaction to the work was to ask: “Is the Unique Selling Proposition dead… and whatever happened to advertising creative based on benefit?”
In my opinion, without naming names, you could take the logo off most of the work and shuffle them around and still end up with a spot that made literal sense for another brand. I thought the Chrysler spot was for Cadillac and still have the Bud spots confused with the Doritos work. I felt like every brand was claiming to be coveted by aliens, to revive deceased ancestors or somehow play a role in a series of epic Hollywood-style explosions. The work was insanely high on production value and sadly low on Unique Selling Proposition.
Without a sound strategic underpinning, three values that most modern advertising claims to perpetuate can’t manifest themselves:
Relevance
Brand Equity
Authenticity
I don’t think I am alone in this sentiment.
Peter Krivkovich has a similar take over at AdAge. And this comment hit home with me from a Facebook post on AdFreak’s “Battle of the VW Ads: ‘The Force’ vs. ‘Milky Way”
“…I don’t give a crap who sang the song ‘Pink Moon’ … point being it’s the idea behind the commercial. I prefer the Milky Way Cabrio ad because it brings out the advantages of actually driving the vehicle… The Darth Vader ad is cutesy, just sort of sells Star Wars.”
Today, Ed Cotton has a post on Influx about The Brief. He’s asking some great questions, that -- I have a hunch -- may be in part inspired by yet another Facebook conversation which he and I commented on, discussing the seeming lack of strategy behind the Emniem/Chrysler spot. In his Influx post, Ed cites Jon Steel’s book “Truth and Lies in Advertising” – a book that I think a number of agency folks should be ordering from Amazon sooner than later.
Personally, I think the brief still lives, it’s just that the number of people who know how to write an effective brief based on insights are few and far between in the modern ad agency. —Bernard Urban
That’s good news for top brands and great products.
Pundits talk about how stressed Americans are about the future, and that’s true. Yet one outcome that may be good news for premium brands is that the U.S. dollar itself—due to its real or perceived scarcity—is very valuable to consumers right now, and they want to spend it on things they think have real value. A recent Nielsen study showed sales of high-end Greek yogurt trending up, not down, in this recession. That’s because if a consumer thinks money is scarce, the last thing they want to do is waste it on a bad experience, even as it pertains to yogurt. And that’s equally true on higher-ticket items, which is why the very desirable iPad is going to sell very well this season.
The downside of how valuable the dollar is to consumers is that they don’t want to spend it on credit card interest payments. The AP-GfK poll on consumer debt shows that more than ever, consumers are planning their spend so that they can afford to pay either in cash or as soon as they get their bill. But we’d argue that means that there will be less impulse purchasing and more budgeted spending. If so you’d expect to see more research behavior, and indeed, Yahoo reports that online shopping is up more than 900% right now—we think that’s people doing lots of homework before they get their wallets out. In this environment, it’s good to be the leading brand, and especially to have built a great online reputation.
—Victoria Else, Director of Strategy, Gigantic
Finally Friday! A few things we're loving today:
Just over the horizon, beyond publisher’s recent popular tactics of Paywalls and Apps lie more strategic approaches to evolving publishing into the 21st century.
Content as Brand.
This might be a difficult idea to grasp in a world formerly dominated by the celebrityesque personas of editors, writers and photographers. However the time has arrived for publishers to re-build their titles as strong cross-platform brands. Why?
Apps and Paywalls themselves are a primary reason. If parity content can be found in other venues for free, the value of a brand needs to justify the cost associated with implementing these tactics.
What drives brand value for publishers? Based on our recent research: both trust in the quality of the content and expectations for a superior experience. Publishers are in a position to build upon this legacy with a superior reader experience, because readers expect that familiar resources can provide them with increased value.
Content as Experience.
Because of the trust they create, strong brands provide a foundation for experience. Advocates of free content cite its ubiquity and short shelf life, ignoring the value of content that is kept and savored. Great publisher brands have a big advantage there. Yet, the opportunity to shape a more valuable brand experience around content remains largely untapped. Again, according to our research, preferred user experience can be driven primarily with personalization and added dimensional value.
Imagine being able to select only the cable channels you view in your cable package. Or the ability to only see automotive advertising when you are in the market for a new car. Or imagine logging in to a Condé Nast portal where you can personally tailor your Vogue experience to include: the September issue delivered on high quality paper and custom bound, with the balance of the year’s issues streamed your iPad, a curated shopping experience at Neiman Marcus and tickets to the Fall Shows at New York Fashion Week. A self-selected, year-long, Vogue-branded experience that you’ll gladly pay significantly more than $1 an issue for.
Too good to be true?
Sound overwhelming, if you’re a publisher? We think it’s the future and one example we can point to is luxury publisher Monocle. Aside from a suite of free iPad apps (both print and video), it’s flourishing as online digital content, a premium printed publication and a curated shopping site. And it has highly successful retail stores in London, Hong Kong LA, Tokyo and New York. These experiences drive interactions and value for users. Of course, though, this kind of experience can only be effectively built on top of a well-developed brand.
It’s been a while. But be sure; our love is still strong.
This week’s love:
Beyond
personal branding, Dunbar’s number and the mobile phone pictures of the crème brule
you ate last night lies the realm of the new social media narcissist. It seems
we’ve entered a new age of narcissism—where blatant self-promotion on social media
sites has become standard behavior. Psychologist, Mike Leary argues that social
sites, like Facebook provide opportunities for well-adjusted people to unleash
their inner narcissist. Leary notes that “[Facebook] is a self-presentational
vehicle. It's a little bit like advertising.”
Ironically,
this trend comes at a time when brands are attempting to evolve to a more
human, engaged and caring tone within the realm of social media. Certainly everyone
has a reason for partaking in social media; whether it’s to promote a personal
or profitable brand, to stay connected to friends and family or simply remind
the world how awesome you are.
Maybe it
is time ordinary people take a different cue from brands and work on figuring
out how to be more, well, human?
Photo from State Library of New South Wales, via Flickr. Blog post contributed to by Cassandra Morello, Gigantic Intern.
So here’s our iPad post. Let’s begin with a quote that’s in
our BrandFlux presentation which sums up how humans become familiar with and
process new ideas:
“When confronted with something new; people often only reference
what they already know.”
Naturally, there’s a lot of discussion going on about what the
iPad isn’t, how it possibly disables
creation and lacks some basic laptop functionalities —all observations based on
comparisons to the familiar. So it’s not hard to understand why some of the
early content created for it, mimics familiar content formats as well. (Take a
look at “Time Magazine’s app, for example.)
Thinking past what it isn’t and envisioning what it could be
(and most likely will become) seems more exciting to us. At its heart, it is
simply a wonderful content delivery platform. Video, text, photos all served up
in a portable sexy package that just works. So while griping about USB ports,
cameras and other missing—but realistically forthcoming features—we believe
that it’s more important to think about how it’s time for content to evolve.
Dramatically.
Love it hate it, the iPad is going to push content to become:
- More
Snackable: Compelling concise bites of sticky content are the future—whether
they are free, or behind a paywall, created by brands, publishers or crowds. Users attention spans are not getting
longer, but the need for information continues to grow exponentially. The
Executive Summary is the rule of thumb here.
- More
Interactive and Less Linear: Sure a blog post or a tweet with a link or two are
more compelling than those without. But what happens to content when what has
been primarily a two dimensional experience can become multidimensional? The GQ iPad app has some great features,
but it still feels very linear and was dominated by ads, which also felt
linear. We wanted to see more video, things like interviews with writers,
behind the scenes peeks, and a navigation that was more browsable and less
formal. However, kudos to GQ and Gilt for jaw-dropping, super sharp
photography. Any commercial photographer should see the iPad as a potential
boon to that challenged industry, finally a screen that rewards
photo-professionalism.
- Connected and Manipulated in Different Ways: What lies beyond cutting, pasting and linking? What lies
beyond keyboards and mice? We look to the iPad’s larger touch screen as an
impetus to move beyond the limits of the conventional. With this in mind, the
device becomes a compelling platform as a Sales Force Automation Platform or
Mobile Presentation Tool. It’s a different kind of place to connect users with
content and ultimately allow users to connect content in different ways.
As usual, we’ll end with questions about whether your brand
or publication is taking these ideas into consideration when thinking about how
it is developing content. It’s clear the immediate future will demand more from
that content than what is expected of it right now.
It seems the age of overshare is upon us. Mobile games like
Foursquare, Gowalla and Rummble have given way to Blippy, which allows users to
share information about events like iTunes downloads, Amazon purchases or even
credit card transactions.
A recent article in the Financial Times offers:
“‘Oversharing’ is set to be the web’s biggest trend this
year... Taking their cue from Twitter and Facebook, a raft of online services
are emerging to help people share yet more personal information online.”
From a brand perspective this opens an entirely new chapter
in social media, mobile and digital engagement. How will your brand adapt?
Photo via Felipe Bachomo on Flickr. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
This week we are in love with this augmented reality project from Tokyo. It's great proof of concept for the utility of mobile devices interacting with location based data. After you watch the video, stop for a moment and think about how your brand could use technology like this to connect with customers.
N Building from Alexander Reeder on Vimeo.
