The Greatest Movie Ever Sold: Movie Trailer

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. There are so many reasons why I love the look of this movie, not least:

• Super Size Me legend, Morgan Spurlock is fronting it. Guaranteed, good honest humour whilst proving a salient, sobering point along the way
• It is completely self-referential – a film proving its own point that we are over-advertised to through the medium of film and television, whilst acknowledging it wouldn’t exist without that very industry. I just love a good old paradox
• By the look of the movie posters, he actually manages to convince Californian-based pomegranate juice-makers POM Wonderful to take the $1m title sponsorship. I cannot wait to see that boardroom table discussion
• The issue of our contemporary over-dosing on product placement is placed front and centre (anyone who doubts the presence of brands in movies needs to check out Brand Channel‘s great database, Brand Cameo)
• Great title (though he will need to be forgiven for borrowing from Frank Rich’s book of the same name)

The premise is a simple one – can you make a movie using only budget acquired from sponsors and advertisers? If you’re wondering how Spurlock came up with the idea in the first place, his director’s statement in the movie’s press pack is worth a read.

(and no fewer than 12 pages of the 23-page press pack are dedicated to ‘A word from our sponsors’. So it’s a fair that bet he accomplished what he set out to…)

I think my favourite exchange in the trailer below, is from Spurlock’s conversation with politician Ralph Nader:

Spurlock: Where should I be able to go where I don’t see one bit of advertising?

[beat]

Nader: To sleep.

Not currently slated for a UK theatrical release this year, this might be one for festival screenings and a smaller-scale art-house release. But for the time being watch the trailer and enjoy:

 

Jack Willy, Jack Wills and what to do when passing off is all in the name of charity

It is no secret to this blog – and to pretty much anyone that knows me – that I am a long-time, ardent fan of Jack Wills.

So this evening, when I started to pick up tweets about Jack Willy for the first time – a brand new charity initiative in support of prostate cancer awareness – I initially thought, bravo JW for having enough gumption and banter around their own brand values to create a tongue-in-cheek charity campaign.

Or so I thought.

After a bit of digging on the site it became apparent that they are ‘BTW, NOT Jack Wills‘ and are instead playing on the renowned middle class clothing brand’s wide appeal. And, in for a penny, in for a pound, the site invokes JW’s look, feel, font, tag-line (‘outfitters for the general’ – rather than gentry), image/model look style and web design.

They’re hot on Twitter, they engage with their posse of fans on Facebook – they even run an ‘Ambassador‘ program whereby enthusiastic consumers of their clothing can earn themselves free stash by being photographed in the gear and posting their shots back to the brand. Any of this sounding familiar?

Now whether you’re a fan of the original brand or not, this led me to thinking: as a brand manager or owner, what would I do? I’m in charge of a hugely successful, internationally expanding, young, influential fashion label and a charity initiative sets up for a very worthy cause, riding on the coat tails of my brand’s image (and poking a little fun in its ribs at the same time). How do I feel about this? What are my options?

I figure they are, namely, these:

1) Do nothing

2) Do nothing – yet. Ride it out. It’s a start-up so wait and see what kind of following it gets (and what comments you get as a result) before making any move. (It’s got them this blog post for a start…)

3) Be reactively supportive. When fans, consumers or press ask the question, ‘So whad’ya make of all this Jack Willy stuff then?’, respond with a reasonably non-committal ‘We think their cause is an incredibly worthy one and we wish them all the best.’ Or even something a tad more engaged such as ‘and we’re honoured they saw the value in the Jack Wills brand to help promote awareness for their campaign’. But kept fairly at arm’s length and not promoting an association

4) Be proactively supportive. Seek out the organisers and reach out to them. Discover more about the set-up and explore the option of an official partnership. In an if-you-can’t-beat-em-join-em kinda way. Cross-promotion could work in your favour (though on first impression from the site, significantly TBC whether the Jack Willy gang would want an official JW stamp or seal of approval.)

5) Be privately opposed. The public voice decries any association with the charity – no negative comments per se, but making it clear there is no connection. Privately, approach with a view to enforcing a stronger message of complete independence from the JW brand in order to put an end to the passing off (which, frankly, it undeniably is as it took me at least 5 minutes to find the ‘NOT Jack Wills’ statement. Granted it was mobile web, but I’m not exactly web illiterate)

6) Be publicly opposed. Dangerous territory, but if a brand feels its values have been compromised, sometimes it should go all out to protect those. Harder if it’s a worthy cause, but if it were an organisation of deplorable or questionable (or competitive) intent, a brand wouldn’t hesitate. Just because it’s for ‘charidee’, should it act differently?

Of course, it might all be a double bluff, and maybe the Northern Irish founders really do have a link to JW. Maybe Pete Williams gave his blessing. But it doesn’t look that way to me. And whatever stance the brand takes, they should decide a position fast because the questions will come – if they haven’t already.

 

Jack WILLS Spring look (that's WILLS. With an S.)

 

So what would I do? I’d rule out #6 immediately – the cause is far too worthy and the objective well-meaning to bring in the heavies. For the time being, I’d also avoid #5, but consider a conversation in this territory later down the line if a supportive angle is decided against. Your brand equity is your livelihood – regardless of the well-meaning nature of potential impostors.

It’s probably too early days for #4 and you would need buy-in and weighty consideration from all stake-holders within the organisation before going down this route. But it’s not out of the question. So I think my take would be a combination of #2 and #3 – with a skew towards the latter. As a light-hearted, fun-loving brand, unofficially supporting these guys would be a strong way to demonstrate not taking yourselves too seriously.

Whatever happens, don’t do #1. Even if, at the very least, you prepare an internal reactive brand position to respond to queries in this area. Silence is damaging – especially for a brand whose lifeblood is its highly engaged dialogue with its avid fan base. They will ask, and a brand always needs a (consistent) answer.

And in the meantime, go buy yourself a Jack Willy hoodie. Go on. It’s for a good cause.

Innocent Knit Big this winter

In terms of brands, there are a few things for me that mark the onset of Christmas. Pret’s Christmas sandwiches, Starbucks’ red cups, and Hellman’s’ sing-along Christmas TV ad to name a few. But not forgetting Innocent smoothies’ adorable bobble hats.

I first saw these a couple of years ago and thought it was an inspired (if fairly expensive) piece of product marketing. Completely fitting with the brand personality and creating stand-out on the shelf.

This year those happy chaps at Innocent have taken it to a whole new level. Enter, The Big Knit.

Some pretty heavy advertising spend must have been placed behind this (thank you Coca-Cola) due to the double-page skyscraper ads in The Times earlier this week, but it made me take note. It seems that Innocent were made aware of how the public embraced the woolly hat novelty of years gone by and this year have created a whole campaign around it.

Together with Age UK (a charity ethos that tend to tug at the heartstrings at this time of year), Innocent asked the great British public to knit their very own Innocent bobble hats of their own design. Sadly, we’re now too late to offer knitting expertise to the smoothie bottles because, as the site helpfully told me today, all the hats have been dispatched to stores.

However, you can still contribute – by buying Innocent smoothies, natch. In Boots and Sainsbury’s up and down the cournty. 25p from every purchase goes straight to Age UK. And while I seem to remember this little woolly numbers from only a couple of years back, Innocent have been working with these guys for much longer than that:

“We first got our needles out back in 2003 when we knitted 20,000 hats to raise £10,000 money for Age Concern [now Age UK]. Since then The Big Knit has grown every single year – and 2010 will be the year we smash the £1 million mark of total money raised over the campaign’s history as we aim to put 800,000 hats on our bottles.”

Impressive.

So keep a look out for the bottles, and the hats on bikes coming to a town near you. Post a comedy be-hatted picture to the Facebook group, and if you’re quite the knitter, you can still learn how to make your very own Innocent hat with videos on the site. Or perhaps put your needles to better use and create something for your local Age UK outlet.

Happy Christmas Innocent.

(and just for the hell-mans of it, have a sing-along)

The Power of Branding

A little lesson in marketing for a Thursday afternoon.

I found this a while ago – I think on some eternal email forward – and I love it.

For anyone that doesn’t understand our crazy world, here’s a bit of a breakdown in terms everyone can understand:

1) You go to a party and you see an attractive girl across the room. You go up to her and say, “Hi, I’m great in bed, how about it?”

- That’s Direct Marketing.

2) You go to a party and you see an attractive girl across the room. You give your friend a fiver. She goes up and says “Hi, my friend over there is great in bed, how about it?”

- That’s Advertising.

3) You go to a party and see an attractive girl across the room. You somehow get her mobile number. You call and chat her up a while and then say “Hi, I am great in bed, how about it?”

- That’s Tele-Marketing.

4) You go to a party and see an attractive girl across the room. You recognize her. You walk up to her, refresh her memory and get her to laugh and giggle and then suggest, “Hi, I am great in bed, how about it?”

- That’s Customer Relationship Management.

5) You go to a party and you see an attractive girl across the room. You stand straight, you talk soft and smooth, you open the door for the ladies, you smile like a dream, you set an aura around you playing the Mr. Gentleman and then you move up to the girl and say, “Hi, I am great in bed, how about it?”

- That’s Hard Selling.

6) You go to a party, you see an attractive girl across the room. SHE COMES OVER and says, “Hi, I hear you’re great in bed, how about it?”

- Now THAT is the power of Branding.

All jokes aside, it does rather sum up the life blood of our industry: relationships.

What’s in a (brand) name?

Shakespeare had us right to question: What’s in a name? Would a rose, by any other name, really smell as sweet? What makes something inherently ‘rose’ other than the sum of all its parts (colour, fragrance, arrangement of petal cluster etc.)?

In a (sort of ) similar vein, I constantly find myself asking, what is in a brand? Today, this was triggered by the thought-provoking musings of marketer Alan Mitchell in this week’s Marketing magazine. Mitchell takes the case of Apple to pose interesting challenges to our concept of the power of the brand. At what stage do we make the error of seeing as powerful brand management, what is really just excellent product creation and good business sense?

I recently had to pull together my own thoughts on brands and branding into a two-minute video show-reel, and I began this by visually listing all the brands that I feel make me ‘me’. Or ‘brand Lucie’ if you will (ick).

But then Mitchell has gotten me thinking – for how many of the brands I listed did I really feel an attachment to the brand, either in name or identity? And what is the acid test to prove it?

As part of my recent Brand Management course at LCF, this question formed a whole unit of our learning, such are the complexities of possible responses. We had particularly vociferous debates over certain retail chains (e.g. Zara) regarding whether they have enough brand equity to call themselves anything other than a retail outlet. What does it mean to be inherently ‘Zara’?

A number of my friends shop regularly at Zara (perhaps unsurprising given the stores statistics on loyalty and repeat-visits: most high street chains in a similar price and style bracket show an average 3 repeat visits a year, Zara boasts 17). Yet when pressed on the Zara brand, all they could really offer in terms of brand equity (by definition, making it unique amongst its competitors) was that Zara was ‘Spanish’. And the reason for that is largely down to shopping trips on the Costa del Sol, 3 years before the chain hit the UK high street and at half the price. Not because Zara makes a concerted effort to instil its clothes with flamenco-inspired lines or to greet loyal customers with a free glass of Sangria.

So for proof of brand equity, we turned to the success of brand stretch and brand extension. If a company can successfully turn its hand to developing a wider range of its existing product type or – even more impressively – entering an industry completely alien to its starting point and take a loyal customer-base with it, then surely that is the ultimate sign of a brand that has made it.

One of my most admired brands in terms of development is O2: once a mere mobile network, now a global entertainment brand. Product alone cannot answer for this. Granted the purchase of the Millennium Dome gave them a huge asset with which to cultivate this new position in the entertainment industry, but it wasn’t excellent rates and service on my phone calls that has made me go to them first to get the news on the next Britney tour dates. O2 developed my brand loyalty as a phone customer, cultivated that, and took it with them when they entered a new arena (literally).

Jack Wills, as I have written about before, is doing much the same thing – taking their legion of JW followers into the realms of basement gigs for unsigned bands, and parties on the slopes of Val D’Isere. And flock they will in droves – not because they particularly love the bands playing, the very nature of unsigned means they cannot know half of them – but because they trust in Jack to show them a good time. Jack takes on a persona, a personality, and his friends gladly go along for the ride.

But to return to Mitchell’s example, I think he has a fair point. In my show-reel, I had included the ubiquitous Apple logo, but I now realise for the wrong reasons. Apple makes very cool products – phones, mp3 players, laptops and, now, portable reading tablets. But I take Mitchell’s point that it is the coolness of the product, not the coolness of the brand that makes me swoon walking around the Apple store, and actually contemplate spending $600 on a thin square screen that can’t offer me much more than my laptop, Blackberry and vast library of books don’t already.

I must end with his final point though, as it is a poignant business warning to all of us marketers out there, myself very much included. He uses the term ‘Brandiosity’ (one of those horribly contrived amalgam words, derived from Brand + grandiosity) to describe the inflated egos of brand people, whose warped cause and effect logic deems clever brand management to be the be-all and end-all of a product’s success. And, ultimately, sales.

I’ll admit it is all too tempting, after all those long blue-sky, sitting-on-a-pink-cube, creative brainstorming sessions, to greet inflated profits with glee, and wildly attribute the success stories solely to our own great work. But let us not forget that before every successful brand, must come an even more impressive product, and if creative branding oversight endangers the continued development of the latter, then Steve Jobs is out of a, well, job.

Barbie steps up to the (table) football pitch

I’ve written before on how enamoured I am with all things brand Barbie (she’s American, pink, girly and a fashionista – go figure), but I loved today’s little piece in Sport magazine about brand Barbie’s latest foray.

A Barbie football table no less. As our good friends at Sport observed: only available in pink. Natch.

What do y’all think?