Everyone has 5 love brands.
Bob Kupbens (VP of marketing and digital commerce at Delta) says there are only five brands that a consumer could ever love (love brands), and that airlines aren’t usually one of them.
Delta probably isn’t one of your love brands.
These love brands, he points are, are essential to one’s life.
Mulling this over, I started to think of what would be my five love brands. And there’s definitely an airline on it.
1) Virgin Mobile. I brag about this service whenever I get the chance. Love their products, love the package options, and love how hassle free it is to have this service.
2) Virgin Atlantic. Best flight experience I’ve ever had. I’d fly any Virgin airline any day…unless Delta was cheaper.
3) Chevrolet. Note, I’ve never even owned one, but I want to own one and eventually I’m going to own one.
4) Target. The shopping experience at Target is unlike any other in a department store catering to the “price conscientious” consumer. According to Bob Kupben, this is definitely a love brand. When people hug you at parties because you work for a company, it’s a pretty good indication that it’s a love brand.
5) ???
Kupbens spoke at the Ad Age Digital Conference in April, and shared Delta’s aspiration to improve their digital initiatives to help propel the airline into the “love brand” territory. I’m curious to know what most people would consider their love brands, and if they can name more than a couple (I still can’t quite think of what my fifth one would be).
As far as Delta becoming a “love brand”, it will take more than advertising, which is why the airline is also focusing primarily on improving their operations. This is a key element I feel some companies overlook. You don’t get on the “love brand” list by appearing to be better with the best advertising, media buys, and one-trick-pony tactics. It’s great that consumers love your commercials, but what do they get when they walk into your establishment. It’s good for a company to give back to a community, but is it done only to show how “involved” with a community you are, or is there an actual interest in helping a community that is unrelated to a company’s bottom line?
Becoming a love brand is done by changing the way a company operates, so that the brand consumers interface with on a regular basis is consistent and delivers on the brand promise. I’m hopeful that Delta will be able to become a love brand for many. I love flying Delta. It’s cheap enough, clean enough, and I’ve never had a problem with them.
…Maybe that’s my fifth love brand.
3 things wrong with the Mountain Dew racism controversy.
Last week, Mountain Dew was accused of putting racists commercials done by Tyler, the Creator on the internet. The spots (which depicted a battered woman and a police line up of black men) were quickly removed. In the same course of action, Pepsi cancelled Lil’ Wayne’s endorsement with the brand for his past lyrics being both misogynistic and insensitive to a pretty racist incident in American history.
There are numerous reasons why the entire situation as a whole is wrong, but probably only three that are important as it relates to advertising and social responsibility.
1) Questions need to be asked about a spot or product before it is released to the public. There should be a responsible person (or group) reviewing creative as part of the screening phase before it’s churned out to the masses.
This person (or group) would be responsible for asking questions like ”Will someone find this offensive?” or ”Can this be reasonable construed as culturally insensitive by the group being portrayed?”.
The first question is the most important. In the US, there’s a massive portion of the population adversely affected in everyday life by pesky things like racism and misogyny. This being the case, it amazes me how much is released to the public without having gone through some stage of questions when portrayals of individuals in those affected groups are used.
Without asking questions and knowing the society we all live in, products like Oreo Barbie are harmlessly made, and ads portraying negative stereotypes are given the green-light. Honestly, the only time it’s appropriate for stereotypes or negative images of women are during PSAs intended to stop both problems. Neither of those things should be used as the basis for humor in advertising.
2) Artists (particularly men) who dabble in the finer aspects of inappropriate content probably shouldn’t be used to endorse brands from the get go. This statement is a tricky one. Using a celebrity (especially an entertainer) to endorse a brand or product is a lucrative decision. It could equate to the perception that your brand is, for a lack of a better term, “cool”, among that celebrity’s fan base which could ultimately lead to those same fans buying your product/service.
However, there’s always a “pros and cons” list to be considered when using any celebrity. Celebrities (athletes included) are human. Humans mess up, express unfavorable opinions, and sometimes creatively express thoughts that are inappropriate to many a great deal of people. If those humans mess up while endorsing a brand, the perception of the brand is put into jeopardy. While morality clauses do exist, you can’t guarantee that athletes aren’t going to use steroids, or that they won’t murder their wives. In fact, these things actually make a good case for using fictional characters as the face of a brand like Kool-Aid man, the Jolly Green Giant and The Pillsbury Dough Boy. Their behavior is predictable and controllable by the brand and no one else (unless they one day become sentient creatures).
- Lil’ Wayne has his endorsement with Pepsi cut.
In Lil’ Wayne’s case, he was caught in a maelstrom of controversy involving two topics he unfortunately covered (pretty inappropriately) in a song. His creative was brought to the forefront when Mountain Dew was trying to distance itself from those two topics, so Pepsi made the decision to cut ties with the artist. It’s important to note that his endorsement deal was cut after the perceivably racist spot was shown.This is important because of the third point:
3) Ignorant creative shouldn’t be made in the first place…For advertising. It’s one thing to have misogyny in music. That’s freedom of expression and everyone has a right to it, no matter how harmful it is. Lil’ Wayne is actually one of the few rap artists that I like, but like almost all rap artists (not to be confused with conscious hip-hop), he says some pretty misogynistic things, albeit to some pretty good beats. This doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be able to have lucrative endorsement deals, but it also doesn’t mean that those same harmful themes should make their way into the marketing communications for a company or brand. That’s just socially irresponsible. This concept can be explained by the following set of statements:
-Eminem (who rapped frequently about violent acts toward his wife) in a Chrysler commercial = Acceptable.
-Eminem in a Chrysler commercial portraying violence against a woman) = Unacceptable.
Having a controversial brand endorser is one thing. Making controversial advertising is another thing entirely.
There are other issues at play here. Like, can ads truly be seen as perpetuating racial stereotypes if they’re created by members of the societal group being adversely affected by those stereotypes in society.* However, this post is only about how the recent Mountain Dew controversy was wrong in the world of advertising and marketing communications.
And given that I’ve seen at least two pieces of creatives come out of shops dealing with suicide and women being kidnapped in the first four months of this year, I doubt this is the last offensive event that happens in advertising in 2013…unfortunately.
*The answer is yes.
Technique should = solution, not just interesting application.
In elementary school, I had a ruler printed with lenticular and dinosaur images. When you moved it, it gave the illusion that the dinosaur was moving. I thought that was pretty cool.
But that’s where the opinion on lenticular stops now: Pretty cool. I don’t think I’ve ever found a particularly useful application of this method, but it added an interesting element to printed pieces. That’s not to say that lenticular prints have under or overused. It just means that I as an individual hadn’t found a use for them other than to make something “more interesting”.
So then I saw this use of lenticular for fundación anar, (which is “The Foundation of Helping Children and Adolescents at Risk”, an organization based in Spain) on Brand Flakes for Breakfast, I thought the technique was finally being applied in a useful and beneficial matter. Kinda like code.
Upon further investigation, it seems like this print technique has been used before to promote child welfare/safety in this “Children see things differently” outdoor campaign from the Netherlands.
Snoep means “candy” in Dutch. Dishwashing tablets don’t taste like candy though.
Creative done by Amsterdam ad agency Lemz.
This highlights an interesting tactic that can prove to be helpful in communication/advertising decisions. All too often I feel that certain techniques (print, interactive, social, etc) are used just for the sake of using them. Though I started this post with my opinion of the dinosaur moving on the ruler with “pretty cool, but nothing else”, that lenticular use is somewhat strategic because it’s a product tailored to kids. Kids like “pretty cool” things, and will ask their parents to buy those products for them. Making it toy or child tailored product “most interesting” may not fall into the category of “useful application”, but it is not without it’s marketing reasoning.
It seems like the best use of certain techniques and tactics occurs when the application is to the actual benefit of the user and solves a problem, like what Fundation did.
And you know what, I’m all of sudden wondering if lenticular is best used for children all around. Hmmm.
How does your agency retain their talent?
I like to think my agency has done a remarkable job in retaining me. And I’m quite the catch 
A new film from Arnold Worldwide will focus on the talent retention/management crisis going on at ad agencies.
How is your agency fixing this crisis?
The movie is scheduled to air during Cannes. In the trailer, one statistic highlighted is that 90% of ad agency employees (the ones who participated in the study of course) state that they have to learn things on their own. And here I was thinking I was the only one.
Here’s my thought on that statistic: I’ve been self taught for so many years that I just consider it normal. In college, I taught myself design programs for classes, though I did learn alot from mentorship at my job making print ads. When it came to working at the ad agency however, I was given very basic instructions. Things like this person needs to see this, this is how you input your time, and here is the list of clients. Most everything else was me figuring out how to execute day-to-day functions as well as involving myself in longer term strategic plans.
A previous boss of mine (who was terrific in every sense of the word) was the account services director, and while they were available for questions, it was pretty much known at my agency that this is very much a “figure it out for yourself” world. It’s not something I was shocked by, and I didn’t have reason to complain (too often). I feel that this “independent” path can build character and can help mold individuals into strong assets for any company in the future.
Or, it can lead them to seek other employment, which is what 60% of the participants in the study said they would do within twelve months.
If you go into any situation with the right attitude, I’m of the mentality that you can make most situations turn to your advantage. If you’re learning the job on your own, take the opportunity to OWN helping others when they join the company. You can turn everything you learned on your own into an opportunity to show others you are capable of teaching and helping others. And, you can show your company that you can hit the ground running without help. You may stumble from the lack of assistance, but if you can persevere you can prove to be a great asset.
This is all my opinion based on the fact that my history has been taking the independent path and figuring out how to make clients happy, work with different creative types, and knowing what to do when a client’s upset. I have almost always in my professional career had to learn things on my own, but never really saw it as a reason why I’d be considering leaving an agency. My agency isn’t entirely a “figure it out for yourself” place, but even if it were, all I would see is an opportunity to show that I can still help my agency grow (and clients happy) but teaching myself how to do so.
That being said, would love to see the film. This is obviously a problem in the industry, and I’m interested in seeing how others think. Especially on the account side.
5 ways account team members can make themselves stronger for an agency.
Often, I feel that when people think of advertising, they think of creative folks. Rightfully so to be fair I think. When I see a commercial, I don’t think “Wow, that account executive did a great job of maintaining a relationship with a client and knows the brand so well that they were effective in help build the strategy leading to this tactic.” This doesn’t happen.
Ever since I studied advertising in college, there was a huge emphasis on creative thinking. Maybe I took the wrong classes, but even in the real world I’m finding a veer towards mentoring and guiding the creative team in the ad agency. This is extremely important, but where do members of account staff go to be “cultivated”? It’s weird to feel as if the creative team is the ad agency’s “favorite child”.
Said the creative team to the ad agency.
The answer for me is a mixture of absorbing as much as possible from account management and keeping up to date on what’s going on in the ad industry as well as my client’s industry. As far as learning from account management, maintaining relationships and contributing to long term strategies is of course easier when you’re surrounded my experienced individuals. But that “mentorship” isn’t full time, so one should always bolster their on the job learning (and their own previous experience) with an ongoing thirst for knowledge. Blogs from other individuals in the ad game and industry sites/publications add tremendous insight on how to handle situations, how to handle yourself, and how to bring as much value to the agency and your client.
A few publications I’ve read (and actions I’ve employed) include the following:
1) The Art of Client Service – A couple of years ago, my account services director gave me this book. I still turn to it from time to time to gain insights on this account services path.
And it is indeed an art.
2) The Red Papers - A member of senior management sent me information on the Red Papers done by Ogilvy after seeing that I had a strong interest in social media. The Red Papers are done quarterly by Ogilvy, and while the focus is not exactly account services, it empowers professionals on the the account service side of advertising. Immersing yourself in everything going on in the industry helps you understand what can work in the future for your client, and what may not.
3) Blogs on leadership, business and the ad industry - I go to quite a few blogs on business and the ad industry. This includes Business Week, AdWeek, AdAge, and other broader sites like FastCompany. I’ve posted before on blogs/twitter accounts that are interesting to follow.
4) Google alerts and your client’s industry publications - You should set up a Google alert for all your clients. Anything that happens with your client should be sent to your inbox so that you can know everything (or as much as possible) going on with your client. If you’re client is in making wooden tables, your should immerse yourself in carpentry publications and blogs. If it’s dairy farming, you should probably learn as much as possible about the entire dairy farm process.
5) Build on relationships with everyone you work with at the agency. And be nice! - I found a really great statement on a blog (StrongBlogs) by a programmer in Canada. “ It’s All Personal, Not Business. You aren’t in a Michael Douglas (Wall Street – or any other movie where he plays a corporate jerk) movie. What you say and do does impact people.” This is a TRULY important fact in the ad industry and any business to be honest. I think we’ve all worked with our fair share of jerks, but that under no circumstance means that we should conduct ourselves in a way that is demeaning, mean, or just plain terrible for others.
This list isn’t the end all, be all. However, these are some tools that account members should have in their tool belt. This list doesn’t cover how to work on delicate or somewhat difficult clients, but that is an interesting topic on which I will post about.
Sharing ad agency high-jinks with the world.
Recently, I wrote about how the hashtag #agencylife blew up on twitter with quips on the inner workings/nuances and annoyances that occur at most ad agencies.
Here are a few other people telling it like it is in ad agencies and the ad world.
A creative’s life isn’t all glory. It’s dealing with short timelines and people who ask you for a solution to a problem, and then begin to critique to the solution to the point where it’s not a solution anymore. Or dealing with people who think ideas are a dime a dozen, as demonstrated here:
Frustrated creatives unite.
Animated gifs that express the angst and anxiety colleagues have for projects, client direction, and one another.
How creatives feel when their idea is “improved upon” by clients.
This isn’t an ad agency blog and it doesn’t talk about high-jinks, but Marian shares her expertise on the evolving world of social media. Or, the “BS of social media” as she puts it. A good “break” reading I think.
Enjoy.
For the love of Pantone.
This is for the print lover inside of me.
Interestingly enough, I would never want to take these out of the box.
Why stop at underwear? Pantone should be in every facet of my life. Even candy.
#agencylife has made me laugh all day.
@Adland and @Kidsleepy have been raining agency life truth all day today. From quips on creative team antics, to industry culture.
Gems like this:
If you work at an agency (or dream of what it’s like), today’s hashtag will enlighten/refreshen/sadden/amuse you.
The day isn’t over yet: #agencylife
McFail or McFake: Arnold Worldwide creating this mental health parody for Big Macs.
So apparently Arnold Worldwide created an ad making light of mental health for McDonalds.
McFail. This apparently ended up on a train line in Boston. But something isn’t adding up for me.
Adweek.com reports that this ad for McDonalds by Arnold Worldwide was seen in actual execution. An apology from McDonalds was obtained, and Arnold Worldwide admitted that this ad slipped through the process of checks and balances at the agency. I’ve also seen another website report the story.
However, I’m a bit skeptical of all of this. It may seem like another agency faux pas like JWT’s gagged girls mistake in India, but the difference is large. For JWT, it seems like an art director leaked a concept of work online. For this alleged McDonalds mistake, this ad would have had to go through so many rounds of approval (internal and client) and trafficked out of the agencies. I’m not saying mistakes like typos or incorrect line spaces don’t happen, but this particular piece of creative does not seem at all likely to have made it out of the agency at all.
Clues that this may be a fake ad:
1) The funny dots around the text. I don’t like this at all, and this screams photoshop.
2) The phone number. What creative team nowadays would think of putting a phone number on advertising in lieu of a special URL they created for the campaign or hashtag? I’m thinking none.
3) If it’s fake, then why is there a woman with a smartphone obviously taking a picture of it? I’m not sure, but it could be that if it is a fake, whoever created it wanted it to seem real so they placed the fake creative into the smartphone.
4) Agency process. As an account executive, I manage thousands of projects. All of them go through the agency process of internal review and client review and traffic and traffic proofs and so many other things that people who don’t work in agencies probably wouldn’t be familiar with. That process prevents ad mistakes like this.
Those clues and my thoughts about this may seem a bit “conspiracy theory” like, even for agency brethren. However, for the reasons I stated it just seems unlikely that this was trafficked out of an agency. Especially one like Arnold Worldwide.
I’m very interested in knowing if others think this creative was fake.
The boob-job of social media: Bought twitter-followers
To my genuine surprise, reportedly 71% of Lady Gaga’s twitter base is paid for.
On the one had, it looks like you reach a lot of folks. On the other, isn’t the whole point engagement? I’m thinking “paid for” twitter followers don’t do a heck of a whole lot than inflate your numbers.
Sold! To the buyer who really doesn’t want to engage with anyone and is kinda missing the point.
For some, the numbers game is a lucrative or psychological one. Celebrities, may need to seem extremely popular to avoid becoming the subject of gossip saying their popularity is on the decline. Fine. However, if you’re Lady Gaga with way too many people adoring you (for reasons I don’t understand), you shouldn’t need any “padding” for your situation. Nonetheless, padding will always help. The more followers she has, the more records she can sell (potentially). And the more followers she has, the more willing others are willing to follow her (potentially).
When the “paid-followers” question is posed for bloggers like myself, or others that work to actual influence and engage with the public, how does paying for followers help? In a sea of people putting money toward plastic surgery (or buying followers), people who work on their personality rather than physical attributes (working on providing quality content and joining relevant conversations instead of inflating numbers) may last longer and get more out of the actual engagement that twitter allows for.
Would I ever spend money to twitter followers? I think I would have to answer that question in the same way I would answer the question would I ever spend money on plastic surgery. It may be easy for me to say because I’m not a celebrity or politician. I would rather people choose to follow me based on what I tweet about, not for how many people already follow me. It may be a slow climb to 1million followers (if Twitter is even around that long for me to get to this number), but it would be a genuine climb. In a world of phonies and spam, I’m thinking genuine work will bring genuine followers.
