Open-Heart Branding

Clipping Our Wings

2009-06-29T11:15:00.004+01:00

These past few weeks, I've been flying more than usual on a mix of business and pleasure and have been forcibly reminded that air-travel has really had all the romance squeezed out of it.

Whether checking in online or queuing at a desk, stripping off and pleading innocence at security (yes, I packed my own bag and no, I haven't sneaked a larger-than-permitted container of shampoo into my carry-on), shuffling towards boarding or being corralled in a holding area, there's no end to the indignities heaped upon us when we travel.

Even when we're in the care of the airlines that sell us a romantic picture of travel, we're hectored to step in from the aisle as we heave our cabin carry-on into the overhead bins, before being subjected to a quick-fire series of sales calls (drinks, snacks, duty-free, lottery, car-hire and hotel-partners). Then it's a token 'thanks for flying with us' as we're despatched onto the runway to traipse the kilometre or more to arrivals.

Now I appreciate that the economics of running an airline, combined with the exaggerated dangers of travel, have left precious few opportunities for those who swallow us up, chew and spit us out at the far end to set a romantic mood but does the experience really have to be quite so charmless?

In fairness to the pilots, their blow-by-blow account of the flying-route does offer a throwback to a time when boarding a plane was the height of adventure, but the gallantry of the gesture seems lost on those of us who've flown more than once and have grown a little disillusioned with it all (which, judging from the recent trips I've taken, seems to have been pretty much everyone on board).

Surely there's an opportunity for one of the airlines to sell us an experience that dresses the perfunctory nature of travel with a little more than token courtesies? For a start, somebody might stop talking to us like we're unruly children, ready to break ranks and cause chaos at a moment's notice.

I find myself almost pathetically grateful when someone in charge at the boarding-gate or despatching drinks onboard shows a glimmer of humour or understanding. I'd choose to fly regularly with an airline that promised to cheer up the grim reality of commuter-style travel with a little charm.

Over To You: Any other takers for travel that goes a bit further than setting an endurance-test?

A Toucan Gesture

2009-06-21T08:36:00.005+01:00

I'm a great fan of the Guinness brand.

I like to tell my own Guinness story which illustrates the many ways in which my life has played out against a background of black and creamy white. Whenever possible, I kick off new branding projects with a (working) session at the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, which is one of the most inspiring places I can imagine to begin your own brand story.

Although I had seen some of the great Guinness ads only a few times when they ran at first (I grew up in a house without television), I could recall them in great detail many years later when I lived overseas and was waxing romantic about my home place and my favourite pint.

And I'm a great admirer of Arthur Guinness, an entrepreneur who can teach us a thing or more about doing the right thing for the communities where you do business.

So you would imagine I would be delighted at the latest Guinness campaign, which celebrates 250 years of the brand by inviting fans to 'put their signature next to Arthur's', with each signature triggering a €2.50 donation from Guinness to a local community project.

But something about the gesture leaves me cold.

Even the advertising, which has the fabled toucans flying in from all parts to their favourite pub to sign up, introduces a certain chill factor.

Am I alone in finding the flock of Arthur's feathered friends descending on the city a little freakish (and scarily reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock's Birds)? I'm all for moving things on but I'm not sure that Gilroy's iconic images can be improved upon.

It strikes me that much of the campaign borrows from Guinness' rich heritage but doesn't give anything substantial back in return. Although it may seem churlish to question a project which will have a positive impact on communities across Ireland, it feels to me as though the heart of St. James' Gate isn't really in these 250 celebrations.

I'm off instead to quietly raise a pint to the generous spirit of Guinness as I know and love it.

Slàinte, Arthur, here's to the next 250 years.

It's Your Round: Any thoughts on how we might better celebrate Arthur's 250th?

A True Customer Touch-Point

2009-06-15T19:57:00.005+01:00

Each time I take a trip to a spa for a treatment, I promise myself it won't be so long again until my next visit. We spent this weekend at Brook Lodge in Co. Wicklow where I was reminded how good it feels to slow down and take a deep breath once in a while.

Over the years, I've been lucky enough to enjoy treatments in a whole range of locations (I lived in Asia for almost a decade, when a visit to the bath-house with friends for a soak and a scrub followed by a massage was a local habit I took up with great enthusiasm). As my therapist got to work on me yesterday, it struck me that despite the step-by-step routine that each usually follows, I've never had the same massage twice. And that each one seems better than the last.

I remarked this to the woman who was treating me and she confirmed that, once training is complete, each therapist likes to develop their own signature style and moves, based on what seems to work best with one body-type or another. I asked her whether these new moves were learned from text-books or from experience and she told me that they were usually learned at the hands of another therapist. She, for example, liked to fold my arm lightly behind my back in order to work my scapula a little harder as she found the knots of tension there resisted the more usual arms-by-the-side approach.

"Often," she said, "we pick up something new from one of the therapists who's been trained in a different country. Everyone seems to have their own take on what works best. And you learn to work with your client to know what's best for them."

As I slipped into a reverie, I wondered why we don't all practise customer-care in the same way.

Whilst most transactions will follow the same routine, our customers would probably appreciate the lighter touch that comes from listening to others and reading the signals.

For me, it meant that once again I got to experience my best massage ever.

Over To You: Where have you enjoyed a different take on great customer-service?

Martyrs To The Cause

2009-06-08T06:33:00.005+01:00

I guess I shouldn't be surprised at the reaction of Mr. Cowen (Fianna Fail) and Mr. Gormley (Green) to their savaging at Friday's elections. They are, after all, the leaders of two brands that have grown further and further apart from their key customer, the Irish voter.

The term 'crucified' is bandied about quite a bit in politics but Mr. Cowen in particular is inclined to take it literally and is offering himself up as a martyr to the cause. Over the weekend, his account of what had happened saw him stop just short of raising his eyes sorrowfully to heaven and murmuring 'Forgive them for they know not what they do'.

Both leaders seem to be labouring under the illusion that they're somehow being punished for taking unpopular decisions. Yet one of the remarkable things about the past year has been the general readiness of the Irish electorate to take whatever medicine is required to cure the ills of the country. Votes against the parties in government have clearly not been a refusal to take our medicine but a reaction based on the perception that they have horribly mishandled the diagnosis in the first instance and have blundered about prescribing ill-advised remedies. In particular, Mr Cowen (who was our Minister for Finance before becoming Taoiseach) has refused to acknowledge his own part in allowing some of the more virulent strains of economic contagion in our banking sector to fester under his care.

Brand-owners who claim to listen to their customers and then dismiss what they have to say as misguided and wrong ("We hear you but, trust us, we know what's best for you") are always in grave danger of losing those customers forever. Not so deeply beneath the martyred expressions of Messrs. Cowen & Gormley lurks a contempt for the voter that won't go unpunished.

Despite their willingness to cast themselves in the archetypal role of saintly scapegoats, the triumphant, happy ending of political resurrection may not be as certain as the two leaders believe.

Crunched By The Numbers

2009-06-01T05:11:00.007+01:00

The numbers speak for themselves and it seems almost everyone's agreed that brands that increase their marketing spend during a downturn emerge on the far side in a much stronger position.

And yet very few practice what they preach.

Instead, anecdotal evidence suggests that even those companies that aren't just battling to survive have pulled the purse-strings tightly closed and are sitting on their hands for fear they might be tempted to spend foolishly.

My own recent experience suggests that this is especially the case in larger companies that employ financial controllers and I'm hearing that, even when a marketing executive is willing to offer cast-iron guarantees that an initiative will deliver a good return, funds remain frozen and untouchable. To judge from their behaviour, finance professionals in particular appear to have lost faith in their own ability to make a call on whether an investment is worth making or not.

In some ways, it's not too surprising. Following the great washing of financial linen in public that's gone on over the past year or so, even the bean counters themselves seem to have taken the view that they simply can't be trusted. The popular sentiment is that we all lost the run of ourselves during the boom and must now curb our dangerous tendencies to splurge.

Yet most of the number-crunchers I know behaved with the utmost responsibility even when a small few were splashing the cash like there was no tomorrow. But they don't seem to believe that themselves and are keeping their heads down as though they're guilty of the same serious errors of judgement that have brought so many venerable institutions crashing about our ears.

As a brand, financial services is in a bad way. The palsy that now afflicts the marketplace in general can be traced back to the paralysis of the bankers in particular. Those who hold the purse-strings are furtive, eyes down whilst they busy themselves with the appearance of utter financial probity. They want to be seen to exercise perfect judgement and so they prefer to imagine great risk even when the evidence insists that this is a good time to invest prudently in the future of business.

Someone needs to take that brand in hand and rebuild its credentials in the marketplace. Otherwise, the purse-strings will remain drawn tight in the frozen fingers of the financial controllers whilst the paralysis extends further to those who are ready to make good things happen.

Over To You: What do you think needs to be done to rebuild our confidence in those who crunch the numbers?

No, It's Not Rocket Science

2009-05-20T16:51:00.003+01:00

I attended a presentation recently where the speaker insisted that the system he was selling was technically highly-advanced. When words failed him, he resorted to the ploy of lobbing in an image of Albert Einstein and having the brilliant scientist say it instead.

The only problem was that the system being presented was by no means as advanced as our presenter suggested.

Poor old Albert Einstein.

Look at it from his point of view. You're a thinker who's shifted the world on its axis and grappled with truly complex ideas, yet worked to keep things as simple as possible ("but no simpler"). For your efforts, you've become shorthand for anything faintly scientific and in many cases quite banal. You, or someone who looks very like you, adorn pub-quiz posters, Junior Scientist kits and second-rate presentations.

In many ways, it's great to see such a brilliant mind as a man of the people, but there's a real danger that what you stand for has become devalued by the lazy use of your image to signal 'the science bit' of any pitch that demands a little concentration from the audience.

And that when it's attached to unremarkable technology, it suggests that what follows really isn't rocket-science but something quite ordinary.

Over To You: Which icons have you seen cheapened by being indiscriminately applied to a whole assortment of causes?

Heineken Fluffs Its Moment Of Truth

2009-05-03T09:41:00.006+01:00

Over the past number of months, I've been enjoying Heineken's skilful advertising around its sponsorship of European Rugby.

Walking in Dublin's Temple Bar on Friday, I was delighted to see this street-theatre tribute to its Greatness Lives On campaign (which features pivotal moments from previous cup games cast in bronze and put on a pedestal for posterity). This one celebrated the Moment of Truth at the upcoming Heineken Cup Final in Edinburgh.

But at the Munster-Leinster semi-final a day later, Heineken's sure-footed progress came to a juddering halt in the programme notes of its Managing Director in Ireland, David Forde.

Now Mr. Forde isn't alone in messing up this prime opportunity to speak to a captivated audience of rugby fans; the match programme is poorly designed and badly written and shows little improvement from the amateurish publications that used to be sold at the old Lansdowne Road venue at both soccer and rugby games thirty-odd years ago.

But Mr. Forde really should know better. After all, his brand is rightly celebrated for its original and playful advertising. Instead, his 'Welcome From Heineken' address features the hackneyed phrases of the dinner-dance host and stops just short of an announcement of a raffle at half-time.

He tells us that, "occasions don't come much bigger than the meeting of Munster and Leinster in this Heineken Cup semi-final" before going on to say that he "would like to thank the many organisations, as well as our own Heineken staff, who have worked tirelessly to ensure that everybody enjoys a great day out." His message had me turning quickly (without further ado!) from the programme to enjoy instead the pre-match warm-up of the two teams on the pitch.

What a missed opportunity! Heineken shrewdly invested in a competition which has become a real poster-boy for commercial sport and Mr. Forde prattles on like a proud parent at prize-giving. Why didn't he invite one of his sure-footed copywriters to script his address?

Like many others in the board-room (who insist on golf-outing style photographs in the Annual Report), Mr. Forde seems to believe that branding stops at the door of the marketing department. His address to rugby fans leaves Heineken flat-footed and undermines much of the great creative work with which his brand is associated.

Over to you: What other great branding efforts have you seen held up short of the try-line thanks to poor decision-taking by other members of the team?

Smelling The Coffee

2009-04-30T06:39:00.006+01:00

Here's a clever idea that's new to me and suggests that someone has woken up and smelt what's needed in an industry that's under particularly intense pressure to stimulate supply.

It seems the smart people at Julia Ross (I'll confess this is the first I've heard of them), invite a panel of temporary staff to attend their offices each morning for a breakfast, which means they're on the spot if a client calls in with an urgent request. I got a call to introduce the service and immediately pictured these smartly turned-out temps ready to gulp down their coffee and drop their pastries at a moment's notice just for me.

It almost made me wish I had a need for a breakfast temp, just so I could call Julia Ross on the hotline and have someone come to the rescue.

Over to you: What brand new thinking have you seen lately that's impressed you?

Ben There, Dunne That

2009-04-19T08:45:00.006+01:00

I've been listening with a sort of horrified fascination to the recent set of radio ads by Ben Dunne, offspring of the super-marketing family who owns Dunne's Stores.

Ben, who also runs a number of fitness gyms, has recently opened an art-gallery and insists on selling art with the same style as he's flogged baked beans and gym memberships in the past. His latest promotion is an auction at the gallery and Ben (who also insists on doing his own ads) tells us that there's no reserve price on artworks and boasts that this is how art should be sold.

These latest ads give us a clue as to why this force of business thinks he knows best, for he tells us that his own Mum gave him all the encouragement he needs when she told him, "If Dunne can't do it, it can't be Dunne."

Well, Ben's done it alright and whilst I'm slow to wish any entrepreneur a poor return for his efforts, I can't help but feel that this stack-them-high and sell-them-cheap approach to art can't be a good thing for art or artists in the long run. I know some galleries can be guilty of gilding the lily when it comes to valuing artworks, but this alternative makes for grim listening and scarcely promises cheerful viewing.

Ben might insist that a visit to the gallery will lift my spirits but they plummet every time I hear his leaden tones hawking his latest wares on the cheap.

Over to you: Do you think art should be sold like tins of beans?

Book Review: Branding Only Works On Cattle

2009-04-11T08:40:00.004+01:00

This book on branding is a peculiar animal.

Argumentative, poorly organised and with a distracting number of typing errors, it makes for a difficult read. Which is a real pity because author Jonathan Salem Baskin has a number of very useful things to say about the world of branding. But he’s the annoying boy in class, the show-off who’s so determined to make the rest of us sit up and listen that we’re in danger in missing out on many of the sharper observations he has to offer.

Baskin begins by announcing a shift in the world of branding, a new heresy to the established orthodoxy, and declares himself its high priest. However, for much of the early part of the book, it seems that the orthodoxy he’s challenging is ‘advertising-as-branding’ as practised by large agencies, rather than branding itself, which can distract from the value of much of what he has to say.

But the real challenge is his assertion, repeated throughout, that his represents a brave new world of thinking. I’m not so certain that much of his thinking is new; it’s just that those who ply their trade in the great shop-windows of the world largely ignore it. For many business-owners, much of what Baskin has to write will seem common sense.

After dismissing most of what passes for branding as useless (aha! he thought that might get your attention), Baskin proposes a new behaviour-based model instead. He argues that most branding activity is geared towards achieving results that have little to do with sales and suggests that, “corporations ask nothing of branding other than glorified name recognition”.

He accuses branding professionals of failing to distinguish between communications success and commercial failure and of resisting the only measures that truly matter for branding: behaviours that lead to sales. For Baskin, “the starting point of branding, should be the end-point of your business strategy: selling stuff”. This makes great sense, but it’s hardly new.

What is more novel is Baskin’s suggestion that “maybe branding is a structural approach to the enterprise as a sustainable, adaptable one-room branding and marketing machine”. He goes on to liken the successful brand to a swarm of bees or hive of ants “consciously alert and buzzing with behaviours”.

Now this is very interesting stuff indeed. Because he sees branding as being based around a series of events that make or break the enterprise, Baskin suggests that brands must adapt to the experiences of their customers in the same way that certain insects respond to changes in their environment. Apparently, bees and ants don’t communicate in a ‘let me tell you what I’ve just learned’ sort of way; instead, they react to the behaviours of others in their group and adapt their own behaviours accordingly. Baskin says that brand-managers must move beyond telling their customers what to think and behave instead in ways that lead to measurable outcomes.

Baskin then produces his trump card and suggests that the best way in which to interact with customers through the brand is to adopt the models used by the gamers who make and play alternative reality games. These game-plans have five elements that he thinks are relevant to brand management: Goals (or payoff), Context, Narrative Flow, Tools and Winners & Losers. He believes that successful companies are already using these one way or another and argues that for them “branding is experience, and the behaviours look a lot more like playing a game than engaging with any traditional branding campaign”.

Finally, Baskin puts down the failure of brands in the twenty-first century to the shortening of what he describes as a “brand interlude”, the period between expectations and experience. Back in the old days of traditional brand-management (which Baskin likes to compare to a séance where branding clairvoyants called out to the ether for signs that their diversions were working), it took much longer for woolly assertions to be found out. Now, thanks to the speeding up of communications, this interlude has grown shorter and shorter, meaning that brands that promise one thing and don’t deliver on it get found out much more quickly.

If only Baskin had taken his own advice and produced a book that made it easier for his readers to get to the good ideas and take action on them. As it is, this book is a struggle to read and only a few hardy souls who are prepared to see past Baskin’s clever-boy routine will make it through to the finish.

Branding Only Works on Cattle: The New Way to Get Known (and drive your competitors crazy) by Jonathan Salem Baskin

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

ISBN: 978-0470742570

(This review first appeared in Marketing Age, the magazine of the Marketing Institute of Ireland).

Tribal Lovefare

2009-04-07T06:09:00.006+01:00

Shortly after St. Patrick's Day, economist David McWilliams posted on the opportunities available to us through the extensive Irish diaspora: Going Tribal Will Save Us From Economic Oblivion. According to McWilliams, the challenge for the Irish State is reinvent the relationship between Ireland and the Irish diaspora.

I was reminded again of the power of the tribe and the connection to the homeplace last Saturday, when I went along to see the Erris Player's excellent production of Synge's Playboy of the Western World in Dublin's Liberty Hall. It seemed that the whole of Mayo was there and the first appearance of each actor on stage was greeted by a delighted murmur of recognition and, presumably when a more notorious local character arrived, by a smattering of applause.

Many years ago, I used to see similar connections maintained in Hong Kong at Chinese New Year when families returned to the Mainland to visit relatives in the home place or when they gathered for the sweeping of graves in April.

Some time later, I was able to make great inroads into the ad agency world in both New York and Chicago as I piggybacked on introductions from Irish-Americans and often found myself no more than two degrees separated from someone I wanted to meet (this was in the days before LinkedIn and the various social media sites).

David McWilliams has a point when he suggests that "the next chapter of the Irish story will involve harnessing Irishness and turning our worldwide family into the greatest commercial network the world has ever seen." Last month, with my colleagues at the Smile Conference, we launched a Facebook Failte campaign, to encourage Irish people all over the world to send a personal invitation to a friend or colleague to visit Ireland during 2009. The campaign has started slowly but is beginning to build momentum. (As we're on the subject, why not drop along and issue your own Cead Mile Failte?).

McWilliams is also right when he suggests that the Irish, like the Jews (and, in my experience too, the Chinese) enjoy a natural advantage in terms of the spread of our diasporas.

But wherever you're from, ask yourself what you can do to link in your brand to the tribe that connects you and millions of others to your homeplace.

Another Problem To Solve For Mr. Dyson

2009-04-03T17:04:00.006+01:00

We've just bought our first Dyson and it's a beauty. No doubt about it. Looks the business and runs like a dream.

Naturally, I was keen to see how Mr. Dyson talks the walk and his little booklet 'The Story of Dyson', which accompanied our new toy (sorry, serious cleaning machine), didn't disappoint.

I learned how the man who 'likes to make things better' started out designing a barrow, the Ballbarrow (which goes where "no wheelbarrow has ever gone before") before going on to design the world's first bagless vacuum cleaner. I also read in the section 'Another Problem To Solve' how it took three on-board computers, 50 sensory devices and 60,000 hours of research to create efficient, methodical robot cleaning. Another section told me that "the people at Dyson who design products are called 'engineers' (because) to Dyson, 'design' means how something works, not how it looks."

So far, so very impressive.

Then, following the instructions on the packaging, I went online to register my purchase.

Now, the people at Dyson who design the website can't be engineers because the site neither looks well nor works well. In fact, I'm not sure it works at all. I was taken brusquely through a sequence of web-pages (many of which were subtle variations on the last) before arriving at a page where I could enter my details. I filled out the form and pressed 'Submit' - and then nothing. No onscreen confirmation. No email thanking me for registering. Nothing.

Unsure whether I'd registered successfully or not, I called the local number instead and spoke with a very helpful woman who completed my registration and then advised me that my proof of purchase was all that was required to qualify me for service and certain parts under my warranty.

What a pity that Mr. Dyson's carefully designed brand experience didn't extend to my visit online. I don't expect his engineers to spend 60,000 hours (or even a fraction of that) crafting an online registration process but this simple exchange, made convoluted and frustrating, briefly soured my infatuation with our new beauty.

Over to you, Mr. Dyson.

You At The Back, Wipe That Smile Off Your Face

2009-03-26T08:54:00.009Z

A Garda source reportedly says: "This may have started as a prank, but it's now a national embarrassment. A full investigation is under way."

I agree wholeheartedly. The sooner we get to the bottom of the national scandals that are embarrassing us on the world stage, the better.

But I don't think it's the stunt that saw nude portraits of our leading politician briefly displayed in the National Gallery and the Royal Hibernian Academy that is turning Mr. Cowen's cheeks an unseemly shade of red. Surely it's the shenanigans in our banks that are the "last thing the country needs" (to misappropriate a remark made by a Cabinet Minister in response to the foolishness of naked emperors hanging in high places)?

Now don't get me wrong. I'm sure it's a source of considerable embarrassment to Mr. Cowen to see himself portrayed in this way, but don't school-teachers suffer the same ignominy at the hands of their students every day of the week (even if those wicked sketches don't usually find their way to the walls of the National Gallery)?

Stories of the Gardai raiding the offices of a radio station in order to finger the culprit smack of over-reaction. We're told that the hanging up of nude images could be deemed illegal under incitement to hatred, indecency and criminal damage legislation. I'm certain that humiliated teachers scramble to find grounds to bring the full force of the school system to bear on the infuriating pest in Class 1B who has a knack for cruel caricature but grasping at the straws of incitement to hatred, indecency and criminal damage in order to involve the Gardai is probably going a little too far.

How ironic that it's a school-teacher who's owned up to painting the pictures.

Ireland's international reputation would be better served by a mature response from Mr. Cowen's friends in high places, perhaps even the lofty dismissal of the pictures as a school-boyish prank beneath the notice of a serious politician intent on rooting out the rather more compromising wrong-doings of sticky-fingered leaders in our financial system.

Over to you: Do you think that rude pictures or unscrupulous bosses are the greater source of embarrassment for Brand Ireland?

Amateur Dramatics

2009-03-18T21:31:00.005Z

'Konica Milolta brings dramatic decline to advertising output...'

Spotted this truly awful advert in the underworld of Terminal 1 in London Heathrow. It features Ronaldinho, widely regarded for the sheer brilliance of his printing and photocopying.

You simply can't keep him out of the office.

Quite incredibly, the text reads:
'Ronaldinho brings dramatic improvement to football.
Konica Milota brings dramatic improvement to colour output'

Who on earth dreams up this stuff?

It's dramatic, but almost certainly not in the way that the writer had intended...

Boys And Girls, Do You Believe In Brands?

2009-03-10T05:57:00.009Z

"(Tinkerbell's) voice was so low that at first he could not make out what she said. Then he made it out. She was saying that she thought she could get well again if children believed in fairies.

Peter flung out his arms. There were no children there, and it was night time; but he addressed all who might be dreaming of the Neverland, and who were therefore nearer to him than you think: boys and girls in their nighties, and naked papooses in their baskets hung from trees.

"Do you believe?" he cried.

Tink sat up in bed almost briskly to listen to her fate.

She fancied she heard answers in the affirmative, and then again she wasn't sure.

"What do you think?" she asked Peter.

"If you believe," he shouted to them, "clap your hands; don't let Tink die."

Many clapped.

Some didn't.

A few beasts hissed.

The clapping stopped suddenly; as if countless mothers had rushed to their nurseries to see what on earth was happening; but already Tink was saved. First her voice grew strong, then she popped out of bed, then she was flashing through the room more merry and impudent than ever. She never thought of thanking those who believed, but she would have like to get at the ones who had hissed.

"And now to rescue Wendy!"

So boys and girls, do you believe in brands?

It's too easy to let the actions of a few Captain Hooks, and the hissing beasts who collaborated in their wrong-doing, poison our confidence in the good faith of brands in general.

Of course, we're outraged at the millions these crooks spent on the pretence of branding, purporting to act in the best interests of their customers whilst feathering their own nests at our expense.

But let's not allow the behaviour of a small number of celebrity brands damage the good name of those countless others who put us first, many of them small business owners passionately committed to doing their best day in and day out for us.

This is not Neverland, but we are well served by shop-keepers, tradesmen, artisans, white collar professionals and many other suppliers who will put the customer first, go the extra mile and watch our back.

Now is the time to rally round those brands that work sincerely to look after their customers.

If you believe, clap your hands (then reach into your pocket, pick up the phone or do whatever it is you must do to support them); whatever it takes, don't let your favourite brands die.

(You can also check out John Jansch's Make A Referral for a practical way to show your faith in your local market).

And now to rescue the economy!

Throwing Curved Balls

2009-03-08T07:54:00.007Z

Tomatoes in a fruit-salad?

Irish rugby legend Brian O'Driscoll had me a little worried following his startling line at a press-conference before last weekend's match against England. In replying to a question about Martin Johnson, O'Driscoll is reported to have said that, 'knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit whilst wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad'.

You wha'?

Brian, have you lost it completely?

But writing in the Sunday Times after the game, journalist Peter O'Reilly suggested that O'Driscoll's colourful remark was more likely a response to "the mind-numbing exercise where captains and coaches have only one concern - not providing their opponents with any motivational fuel". O'Reilly goes on to say that English soccer players responded to the boredom of post-match interviews in a similar way by trying to get as many song-titles as possible on record.

And I needn't have worried. O'Driscoll turned in one of his greatest performances in an Ireland jersey as he willed Ireland over the line against the English. And not a tomato in sight.

But O'Driscoll's response is quite telling.

I think customers often respond to the inane communications from brands in the same way. People pillory the earnest efforts of sales pitches. Commentary on the internet is full of spoofs on popular ads. And it's not only commercial brands that suffer from a little mickey-taking. Census-takers find an improbable number of people reporting 'Jedi Master' as their religion.

It's easy to dismiss these wisecracks as the work of dunces and smart alecks but there's no doubting the professionalism and serious intent of O'Driscoll once he crosses the white line onto the pitch. Nor his commitment to his team-mates on the training-ground.

But sometimes the only response to a charade is to play the fool. Too often, brand-owners ask customers what they think and scarcely wait for the reply. As often again, they script advertisements that beggar belief and treat the audience as boneheads.

How many times do we hear a shrewd enquiry in amongst the silly questions asked of a sportsman or a branded message that really gets us thinking?

Until we commit to a serious exchange with our customers, we shouldn't be surprised if a few choice tomatoes are aimed in our direction.

Wherefore Art Thou, Oh Apple?

2009-03-05T18:29:00.004Z

I'm tickled at the recent report that Bill Gates doesn't allow Apple products into his home.

According to Mrs. Gates, Bill suffers no rivals to Microsoft for his family's affections - although she did confess to a sneaking desire for the iPhone (or, as she might have said, that rather cute Capulet boy).

I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised; the great brands can bring out the wanton in all of us. And, of course, this wouldn't be the first instance of an apple proving too tempting for a woman to resist...

Desperate Housesellers (Series 2)

2009-02-20T05:50:00.003Z

Regular readers of Open-Heart Branding will recall my reaction in a previous post when these beauties dropped through my letterbox to lure me to the debauched surroundings of Bellingham in Co. Laois.

Well, clearly my blog isn't read by the desperate housesellers as another flier landed on the mat yesterday. Either that, or I'll need to find a less subtle way of discouraging junk mail.

Or maybe it is working and people are leaving the city in droves to sample the under-appreciated charms of that neck of the woods?

Somehow, I don't think so.

Scrap Of Sense

2009-02-07T12:21:00.004Z

Here's a great idea from Dublin design-agency Dara Creative: A Website Scrappage Deal.

At Islandbridge, we ask our clients to think in terms of 'what are you like?' in order to help them help their customers make sense of what they do.

Dara's use of metaphor in this case is both elegant and effective, particularly in a downturn when the idea of getting something in return for trading in a 'banger' of a website is very appealing.

Vroom, vroom, Dara; this has my engine purring.

Many Words For Play

2009-02-03T06:01:00.006Z

They say that children have as many words for play as we do for work.

Yesterday, I was delighted to see that even those children whose brains we suspected had grown addled through their addiction to virtual games had only one word for snow when they awoke to a whiter world: Play!

Mobile phones were (almost) forgotten by the moody teenagers who attend the school near our home as they got stuck into the age-old game of snowballing. Meanwhile, snowmen soon dotted the once-green areas, and some lone walkers found themselves under attack from a sudden flurry of white missiles.

Of course, the phones did come in handy when it came to recording the action or the works of art for posterity.

"Ah," said the old man with a smile, "the more things change, the more they stay the same."

A lesson there for brand-owners too, methinks.

Desperate Housesellers

2009-01-31T14:46:00.008Z

What are they like?

If ever we needed evidence of just how completely property developers have lost the plot, this recent flyer dropped through our letterbox provided it.

More Wisteria Lane than County Laois, these three simmering beauties peddle soft-focus seduction in sharp contrast to the demure housing estate homes that are actually on offer.

Do the sellers really believe that young couples, many of them with babies in tow, are going to fall for this 'sex outside the city' gambit?

It only confirms our impression of the last decade or so that builders simply threw up houses and apartment blocks with no understanding of the people who would eventually live in them.

Build it and they will come? Somehow, I don't think so.

Bloodless Coup

2009-01-24T09:03:00.007Z

I have a client, Marathon Sports Travel, who will take you 'to the heart of the action', whether that's at places such as Anfield and Murrayfield, or whichever foreign field plays host to the bloodied Lions of Great Britain & Ireland or to the red-shirted heroes of Munster or Manchester as they battle to be conquerors of Europe.

But I have a challenge for them. More than any of these places, I want to be taken to the heart of the action at the European Cup Final at the Olympic Stadium in Rome in May 1977, or to the FA Cup Final at Wembley in May 1986. In fact, I'd happily settle for any of the more run-of-the-mill matches that were played up and down England and across Europe by own red-shirted heroes anytime from the early '70s to the mid '80s.

You see, I'm a Liverpool fan, always have been, always will be. Que sera, sera and all of that.

But I realised something awful last weekend when the current Liverpool team stumbled yet again and allowed Man United to take charge of things at the top of the Premiership table: I don't care anymore.

Now this isn't a question of sour grapes or of being a fair-weather fan or anything. It's just that I don't recognise Liverpool anymore. They're no longer my team or our team, they're Benitez' team. They no longer show the spirit that marked out the great Liverpool teams (even those who finished second-best from time to time in England or Europe).

This is a team which gives the ball away without a thought or shuttles it fearfully from one player to another, back and forth, forward and back, because most are unwilling to take responsibility. When many of them get the ball, they don't seem to know what to do with it.

This is is a team of little intelligence. Sure, there's no shortage of endeavour or brute courage but this team is unrecognisable from the Liverpool teams of old, which played with confidence and style, and which had leaders in every position who were unafraid to seize the initiative and make something happen.

Today's team often bear a haunted look, as well they might, for the ghosts of old aren't even consigned to the record-books; many of them have turned pundit and dissect the performances of the current crop of players with the same calculation and edge with which they broke down opposing teams and turned defence to attack in an instant.

Rafael Benitez has carefully built a mediocre team in his own image and squeezed the life out of this great club as he's done so. Under his watchful eye, players who arrive filled with hope and brio wither away. Is there a single import who has improved during his time at Liverpool? Players shrink under his management and when they move on they often seem to find a new lease of life and to rediscover their old verve and intelligence.

I do not like what Mr. Benitez has done to 'my' Liverpool one bit (mind you, his predecessor was hardly any better). I remember being similarly offended by what some of the awful advertising of the late '90s did to 'my' Guinness.

So Marathon Sports Travel, please don't take me to see Benitez FC, masquerading in the colours of my team. Take me instead to the heart of the action at even the meanest fixture in a Liverpool campaign sometime in the late '70s or early '80s.

I don't even care if they win, though I'll be shouting myself hoarse until the very end. I just want to see Joey Jones or Ronnie Whelan or Kenny Dalglish play the game the way the Liverpool game is played. With confidence on the ball, with skill and with courage but, above all, with real footballing spirit.

Irishness For Sale

2009-01-14T12:19:00.007Z

WHEN WE think of Ireland Inc, there are a few key brands and personas that immediately come to mind. Baileys Irish Cream and Guinness, U2 and Colin Farrell, Temple Bar and Munster Rugby – all national phenomena with international appeal and recognition, writes Brian O'Connell in today's Irish Times.

The article includes my own take on what makes an Irish brand, as well as thoughts from Michael Cullen of Marketing Magazine. With Irishness and its value in the international marketplace under scrutiny following Waterford Crystal's shattering news, Read On for the full article.

How The Mighty Have Plummeted

2009-01-10T07:18:00.007Z

Following our Brandest Plans Client Workshop on Thursday, I found myself marvelling with a couple of clients at the news that the D4 group of hotels in Dublin's exclusive district is offering a number of rooms at €20 per night.

(Actually, €20.09 for those of us watching the cents - or seeking some rationale for the price point: 2009 as it's a special 'new year price offer').

Now for those of you unfamiliar with our city's exclusive district (don't be shy, I'm only an occasional blow-in myself), the D4 hotels include the former Berkeley Court and Jury's Hotels, two venues where well-heeled punters laid their equally well-groomed heads for hundreds of euros in those crazy, hazy Celtic Tiger days of yore. At least twenty four months or more ago, if my failing memory serves me well.

I'm not sure that I've witnessed such extraordinary devaluation of currency in my own lifetime. We hear dramatic tales from other (unstable) countries or eras where wheelbarrows piled high with big denomination notes (a million lira, anyone?) were abandoned by debtors outside the shops of those they owed money to when they realised that the wheelbarrow was likely to be worth more than the mountain of loot that sat perched on top.

An article in the following day's Irish Times talked of other major players who were leaping over the self-same cliff (the exclusive Ashford and Dromoland Castles dressing up €58.33 rooms as 'two nights bed and breakfast for €87.50 per person per night, with a third night thrown in for free'. Now that's creative accounting.

Whilst there's an argument for suggesting that these hotels are simply responding to market conditions, what does it say about the prices they were charging when we were falling over ourselves to spend our money? And about the real value of their brands?

Maybe it's a simple matter of life or death for the business in which case I'm not inclined to be too unsympathetic, but how are they ever going to recover their sense of value in the minds of their customers?

Experience from other times and places suggests that quality brands bravely hold their value even in difficult times. And emerge on the far side stronger than ever (if briefly a little lighter in the wallet).

But perhaps the real problem lies in the tendency of opportunists and number-crunchers who masquerade as hoteliers to think only in terms of heads on pillows and the currency of bed-nights?

Surely a hospitality brand is about much more than that?

All I Want...

2008-12-31T12:30:00.006Z

I don't know if you're like me but sometimes I struggle to ask for what I really want. Instead, I like to beat about the bush. Maybe it's an Irish thing?

While I really like the idea of Giftag, the recently-launched application that allows you to pull together a registry-style wish list of things you'd like from across the web, I find myself reluctant to add things to the list for fear I'd appear greedy or demanding.

Whatever about adding low-ticket items, I can't ever see myself putting something really expensive there: "He wants what? Where does he get off asking for something like that...Does he think we're made of money?"

Nor am I too sure how I'd casually let it drop to people that I've started a list (apart from mentioning it in a blog!): "My birthday's coming up. You might like to check out my Giftag list...". No, I just can't see it. It all seems very forward.

While I was catching up on podcasts over the holidays, I heard Gary Koelling of Giftag being interviewed by Albert Maruggi in the Santa Uses Giftag! episode of the Marketing Edge and was especially taken by the generous spirit in which Giftag has been developed.

Apparently, Gary works for the Best Buy chain of stores in the US and whilst it might have been tempting to develop Giftag to include only items available through Best Buy, they took the decision to make it a universal application because (and I'm loosely paraphrasing here) 'Best Buy is a social company...if we're making the promise that we're gonna make life better for you, what advantage is there in our making it so you can only use it for Best Buy? We know full well that we're not the only place our customers shop!'

I like that! That works for me...

...although maybe Gary and his colleagues will have to develop 'AhNoYouShouldn'tHave', an Irish version of the application that somehow allows me to ask for what I really want without appearing to do so.