richards group gave home depot some discipline

Home Depot used to be big time. Sure, it still is in terms of turnover and position on the Fortune 500, but there was a time when people were simply Apple-style passionate about shopping at Home Depot. And to work there, that was even better.

Bob Nardelli, now running Chrysler into the ground, shook the place up, moved away from some of the core tenets that made Home Depot great and left the place worse than it was before he got there.

If you know anyone with Home Depot connections, you know that he’s not exactly an Atlanta favorite.

Nardelli is out and now it looks like Richards Group, Dallas, is going to be out as well. As AdPulp reports, Home Depot is working with consultants as it prepares to put all aspects of its half-billion dollar communications business into review.

From a creative advertising perspective, Richards Group did functional work:

Retail is always challenging to advertise for, though Target is an example of where smart thinking and creativity can break through, and Home Depot’s ads always left me thinking that there was an opportunity missed. Especially in Home Depot’s heyday, when there was so much passion about the brand that was just never taken advantage of.

Balancing that out to some extent is my love for the Home Depot jingle/music bed.

Every time a Home Depot spot ran, I immediately knew what brand it was for even if I wasn’t looking at the television, and the homey, Americana sound fit perfectly into the idea of Home Depot helping the common man build his home and achieve the American Dream.

Richards Group and Home Depot marketing were disciplined about building the brand on the back of this memorable tune and sticking with it long enough for it to become ubiquitous and instantly memorable – which in this day and age of brand managers bouncing around from here to there like Hollywood starlets, each wanting to put their own special little stamp on the marketing, it saying a lot for their rigor and focus.

And it is the reason why, though the spots won’t ever win any awards, I like them.

It’s smart, disciplined advertising.

wpp’s new name for project davinci

WPP’s new agency created just for Dell, the former Project DaVinci, has been officially named Synarchy…noting the vague similarity to anarchy and having the tickle of a memory from a history class long ago in my head I looked up the word to see what it meant, exactly.

The short definition is “rule by a secret elite.”

If that doesn’t just define most ad agencies, especially huge, faceless and leaderless conglomerations like Project DaVinci/Synarchy, then nothing does. In the case of Synarchy, which does not have a CEO yet, the elite that is running the place is even more secretive than usual…which is making recruiting an issue.

Anecdotally, a number of people that I know were willing to keep an open mind about the place pending who ran it (advertising is all about your connections, and if your guy is on top then it makes sense to fall in with him). But there is nobody running it. So they are staying on the fence. As are, based on the challenges Synarchy is having in staffing out, a lot of other people.

So who are the cabal in charge of the synarchic Synarchy?

Living up to the awful name, it’s a secret.

(There are additional meanings to the word, including a connection to European fascism through Vichy France. Which is nice.)

cadbury goes wacky with its marketing

I know that I shouldn’t do another post on Cadbury Schweppes because cheap publicity is what they after (and it doesn’t come cheaper than me), but yet again the marketing folks there have done something that I just can’t ignore. Even though I really want to.

In USA Today yesterday, which I read as I repurposed it into packing material for my move, had a short snippet about Cadbury “going wacky” with their marketing.

According to a press release last week that referred to the UFO-like lights over Phoenix in late April, the lights were hostile aliens “here to eat us” and that “the best thing to do to appease these creatures” is give them 7UP. Worst case: “They’ll have something naturally delicious to wash us down with.”

First of all, this whole idea is not funny. It is the anti-funny. It kills funny with a blunt instrument and then cuts up its body and distributes it in wax paper to members of funny’s family.

Second, this marketing plan includes only a PR blast and a shipment of 7UP to “possible alien landing sites” in Phoenix and Orlando…making it completely irrelevant to, um, anyone in terms of being interesting or offering an incentive immediate purchase.

According to USA Today, Sean Gleason, head of the team that dreams up the tongue-in-cheek reactions, says it’s been a cost-effective way to get his brands noticed. “We don’t have the budgets that the big guys do. We have to make every single marketing dollar work even harder.”

I am not sure how a crazy stunt supported only by PR will maximize return on your investment, especially with your average 7UP consumer who is clearly not reading USA Today or the PR Newswire.

I do know, however, that it will get a blurb in USA Today. That is great insofar as it lets people like Sean Gleason show off to his affluent white male business friends who would never in a million years put down their Vitamin Water or Scotch for something as plebian as a 7UP but do respect the fact that yet again Mr Gleason was covered in the newspaper…it’s just not going to sell any more 7UP.

Neither is the Guns N’ Roses stunt. Or, for that matter, any other crazy stunt that results in some limited PR coverage and a blurb for Mr Gleason in USA Today.

These things don’t sell soda.

They also don’t build the brand. Nor do they get your brands noticed because your target isn’t reading USA Today or PR Newswire or the Business section of the local paper that has two sentences about advertising once a week. And ridiculous one-off stunts certainly don’t change preference or create an impulse for consumers to buy now. They have no effect on consumer behavior.

But, again, they do get Sean Gleason a mention in USA Today.

expedia and the kingdom of bad movie promotions

A friend of mine is getting married this summer and, of course, the wedding is going to be in a place, southern California in this case, that requires a flight. Not that I particularly mind, but I kinda do. It would be much more convenient if he were to just get married in Midtown Manhattan. Even southern Connecticut would work.

At any rate, I was poking around the travel sites and clicked over to Expedia where I saw this example of terrible creative:

Having heard the rumors about how difficult Lucasfilm and Harrison Ford are to work with, I can only hope that Expedia and their agency Wunderman were forced into the ridiculous silhouette image of Indiana Jones that looks like it was done by my sister using MS Paint.

But the creative is not the only complaint about this program.

I hate, hate, websites that have interrupters like this that pop up onto my screen. I know that there is a skip button, however by the time that it popped up I had already partially filled in the destination area on the left and the has to sit, irritated, while this crap played on the screen. It is the anti-utility and no amount of sweepstakes promotion will make me feel okay about the time lost to this.

Additionally, tying in to a movie like Indiana Jones is a really bad idea for Expedia:
1. Everyone is doing it. Kellogg’s, M&Ms, Snickers and Burger King are all partners and they are sure to outspend Expedia. If anything, consumers will think that your messaging is their messaging.

2. It won’t drive short-term volume because, so far, there is no way for consumers to find out that Expedia is involved with the movie than if they go to the Expedia site. At that point, a sweeps entry is unlikely to convince consumers to buy from them if their price isn’t comparable to, say, Travelocity.

3. The “Summer of Adventure” promotion is a nice theme that fits with a travel company, but it isn’t differentiating. Any travel company could say that, just like any company can tie in with this movie, just like this is a bad idea.

4. If it’s not a price promotion, people don’t care (at least online). People go to sites like Expedia to look for price deals, not for a chance to enter a sweeps. Yes, there are some travel deals that are on sale (including places like Montreal that have absolutely nothing to do with Indiana Jones), but with all the Indiana Jones messaging, that gets lost. If the goal is short-term sales, just tell me that it’s a huge summer sale. If the goal is branding, there are better and more differentiating ways to do it than throwing money at Indiana Jones and a washed-up Harrison Ford.

killing the snapple brand softly

Snapple use to be a fun, innovative brand. It had great advertising with the Snapple woman, Howard Stern loved it and it seemed primed for bigger and better things…then it was sold and sold again and under the aegis of Cadbury Schweppes, it seems, to paraphrase one commenter, primed for sale to Coke or Pepsi.

Where to start? Maybe at the dated, still-not-redesigned packaging for the core product:

This is the best part of their product line-up because, though old, at least the design and logo are recognizable as Snapple. Especially the logo. There is a lot of equity in that logo…equity that the brand is stepping away from in their new Juice (that isn’t 100% juice) product:

Crappy vertical Snapple type, no more blue or red, no oval around the type. Completely forgettable. Oh, and still on shelf next to the base product…and next to the new Antioxidant Water product. Not only is this clearly a Glaceau knock-off, not only is it late to the game, not only does the label look like a cheap sales sample because of the heavy paper and crappy glue, but it has a different logo than the above products even though it sits on shelf next to them:

Let’s finish it off with the fourth product in the Snapple line-up. Also boasting a different logo treatment, the new Tea products actually taste good, but still have to sit on shelf next to the other Snapple products even though it looks nothing like any of the others. This is Branding 101. Snapple fails:

Maybe if Snapple had a bigger budget they could pull off creating all of the sub-brands as separately branding entities…but that’s a stretch. Not even Coca-Cola strays too far from the fonts and colors that make products identifiably Coke. They do that because it makes sense, because consumers want recognizable brands and products and because if they are going to spend a shit ton of money to build a brand they don’t plan to throw it away with a product design that doesn’t connect to the brand they have built.

These packages are atrocious not because they are bad designs, though it doesn’t really help Snapple’s case that they are, but because consumers driven to buy (or driven to passive preference) via advertising end up on shelf not knowing what the hell is going on.

To top it all off a little Plano-based birdie tells me that Cadbury Schweppes’ in-house production and pre-press shop Group 360, which brands itself as a digital asset management and workflow solutions shop and whose in-every-way-horrible website tells you all you need to know about the agency’s design capabilities, is going to be handling the base Snapple packaging redesign.

Not a bad gig for a bunch of low-rent studio artists and totally fitting for what the brand has become.

It’s just too bad that it’s gotten this far.

penta water primed to relaunch the brand

When I was a kid I remember marveling at people who would pay money to buy bottled water. It just didn’t make sense to me that people would shell out for otherwise free water simply because it was in a bottle. You could put it in a bottle yourself if you wanted!

I still don’t really get it, especially after revelations that much of the bottled water market is tap water in attractive packaging, though I do buy Poland Spring once in while.

When one of my friends started telling me about this new bottled water Penta, which is around $45 a case (compared to $4.99 on deal for Poland Spring), I thought that he was completely crazy.

Apparently, Penta is specifically engineered as ultra-purified antioxidant water with no additives that hydrates better and provides better antioxidant benefits than even antioxidant fortified water because of some scientifically-proven process. At $45 a case it better.

Circle One of Norwalk, CT is, as reported in Brandweek, currently completing the $4 million campaign that will be the brand’s biggest to date.

Even though functional waters are hot right now, Circle One has their work cut out for them. The high price point, intangible benefits and the fact that Coke and Pepsi are throwing their weight into the segment (which is good in some ways because it builds the category, but bad for obvious reasons) make it a challenging time to relaunch the brand.

At least they already have one brand loyalist in my crazy buddy and he isn’t shy in singing Penta’s praises.

It’s a start.

virgin america launches new campaign

Virgin America, a JetBlue-like new airline that currently flies to five American cities, is rolling out its first major ad campaign. San Francisco agency Eleven is responsible for the largely out-of-home launch campaign.

The campaign will target markets where the airline flies or will soon fly, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, CA, Seattle, Washington, D.C., Las Vegas and New York City, will use the brand’s eleVAte tagline on all pieces and is designed to differentiate the brand as one that is fun.

In addition to outdoor and print advertising, radio promotions will offer the chance to win concert tickets in Virgin America markets.

I wish the brand well, though there are serous misgivings over the positioning. Fun? Flying, even at its very best, is never actually fun. It can be tolerable. It can be surprisingly short, easy or even comfortable. But it can’t be fun (unless it’s your first business trip and you’re not yet jaded by the whole thing).

That said, I wouldn’t put anything past Virgin. They, with their Virgin Atlantic brand, are one of the few airlines with strong branding and they clearly get this whole marketing thing.

So they get the benefit of the doubt.

fake paparazzi & the cult of the amateur

My morning perusal of AdPulp has revealed a shocking Time magazine story called “Your Own Personal Paparazzi” about, funny enough, regular people who hire fake paparazzi to follow them around and take pictures of them for the low, low price of $1,500 a night.

As AdPulp says, it’s okay to be grossed out.

We have clearly reached a point in our culture where we have shifted from a people that prize self-control to a people that prize self-expression and, to paraphrase the story from Time, if your self-expression isn’t documented, if you don’t have people asking who you are, then you simply don’t exist.

This is the cult of the amateur.

It is part and parcel of the move to consumer-generated content that, while occasionally of a certain parity in quality to professional work, is mainly of a fascination because it is not professional. People like CGC not because it is good, but because it is novel. It is like a brand-subsidized talent show for amateurs. This American Idolization of advertising degenerates professional content at the expense of consumer feeling that “one of us” made this and that, as with American Idol, it’s just as bad as if we were to do it ourselves.

People will do anything for their fifteen minutes and, de-coupled as their fifteen minutes has become from actual talent or achievement, even pay to have a fake fifteen minutes that includes only confused bystanders thinking that those people might be of minor, unrecognizable “importance.”

It is a sad indictment of our culture, but it also provides an opportunity to marketers.

The opportunity isn’t so much to do more consumer-generated content. CGC is, by its nature, limited in effectiveness because it isn’t professional. Rather, the opportunity is for brands to jump onto the “I wish I were important and am willing to pay for the veneer of looking like I am to the other poor saps who care about that sort of thing” bandwagon and position their products as the true differentiator of status.

And, since status these days is only that people care who you are, not that you have done anything to deserve that, brands are uniquely positioned to take advantage of this trend.

brands can be friendly, but can’t be friends

There has been a lot of talk from advertising-types, what with the Facebook advertising hoopla, that people do not want brands to be their friends. Adliterate puts it well here:

People may be brands but brands are by and large not people.But just because a brand has a personality doesn’t make it a person.

And I want my relationships to be with people not businesses. Sure that can be the people in those businesses but not the business as a whole.

Brands that try to worm their way into social media, that try to position themselves as your friends are doing the wrong thing. To quote Tangerine Toad:

Consumers aren’t looking for more friends…we’re looking for is authenticity. That means you tell us the truth. Admit when you’re wrong. Don’t treat us like criminals. And talk to us when you have news.

“Telling us the truth” means you’ve got to stop trying to pretend we’re not consumers and you’re not sales people. Because we both know that’s not true.

Brands, you know what I want this holiday season? I want value on good products, ideally from brands that have good, creative advertising. But I would be fine with just good products.

So don’t waste your time trying to be my friend. I already have friends. Real people friends that I can talk to, shoot the shit with, blog about after changing their name and actually have a back-and-forth real relationship with. And, except for that one old college friend who tried to get me to join some Amway thing, there is no pressure to buy anything from them to show my allegiance. Which is nice.

Instead of making a splash in social networking, spend that money on R&D, on design or even on your ad agency (especially if it’s the one I work at).

That is where you’ll find those incremental sales you’re looking for.

bird’s eye is tastier than frozen food corp of america

I am getting caught up from the holiday which means, contrary to the expectations of my boss Bozo the Clown, that I am reading all the blogs that I slacked off on reading while I was away. Which means that I have spent considerable time over at AdScam, where George Parker is wondering “what’s in a name?”

“It really doesn’t matter what you call stuff, as long as you spend a shitload of money behind it. Can you image someone saying to a client, you have these wonderful frozen foods that we will promote as being fresh, nourishing, tasty, etc. And, we’re going to call them “Birds Eye!” Is there anything you would be less likely to put in your pie hole than a fucking bird’s eye?”

He brings up a good point, and I was just wondering the same thing last night as I was on Amazon.com…why name a bookstore after a South American rainforest? And why would I go there to shop before I would ever consider something like books.com?

Beyond the amount of money spent to drive my preference for Amazon or Bird’s Eye or any other random brand name over another, more straightforward one, I suspect that people want something a little offbeat.

Books.com or cars.com or Frozen Food Corporation of America all sound more downmarket than, say, Amazon.com or Edmunds or Bird’s Eye. Brand names differentiate and give people something to identify with…and sometimes, in the case of frozen foods, I may not actually want to be reminded of what the company does.

I do, however, want an original and not overly descriptive brand name.

I will love the brand for the product it provides and the branding around it, not the name itself.

I have no real reason why this is (give me a break, I am just back from vacation). But I would love reader thoughts on this…