Is Brad Pitt a fish finger?

Is Brad Pitt a fishfinger ?

And fifty-two other thoughts on brand design

by Silas Amos from the jkr Design Gazette 2009

Is Brad Pitt a fishfinger?

Specialist packaging design agency jones knowles ritchie was established in 1990 and is one of the biggest such companies in the UK. Clients include Unilever, Mars, Diageo, Molton Brown and many others, with projects both global and local in scope. We believe in harnessing the essential power of individual brands’ equities to transcend the commodity trap.

Silas Amos is a jkr lifer, having joined the agency at its birth (and not too long after his own). His role as a designer progressively evolved into a more strategic one, and he is now involved in planning the creative content and application of projects. That means more talking and listening with less drawing, but he still thinks in fundamentally visual terms.

Is Brad Pitt a fishfinger ?

And fifty-two other observations from the jkr Design Gazette 2009

Words and design by Silas Amos

Preface In the digital age, information has a slightly shorter shelf life than fresh fish. Analysis, however, can enjoy a longer lifespan. To get this book ready for the end of the year, I’m finalising the contents in early November. That means some of the inspirations for these pages already have the air of history. And many of them are based on ephemera: impressions sparked from the web, from the papers, and from conversations. I’ve also made the conscious decision not to dwell on our own work in this book, so that it’s as broad and impartial as possible.

My views are those of a designer and creative director, not a marketer.

I get excited by what works, and what doesn’t, and I’m interested in trends that come from evidence rather than theories. Given the huge amount of change going on around us, I hope the pragmatic designer’s eye offers a useful – and different – perspective.

I have corralled my musings into five broad areas: the downturn, sustainability, brand identity and behaviour, technology, and “odds and ends”. In truth, lashing 52 weeks of observation into a cohesive “story” wouldn’t reflect the scattergun nature of events. But beneath the passing trends one can observe some enduring principles of sound design and communication operating. This book aims to expose and consider these principles, as much as reporting some of what happened on the surface.

Have a happy and prosperous 2010.

Silas Amos

Introduction

We live in unpredictable times. Can design offer a means to interpret the confusion?

Earlier this year, the discounters were sweeping all before them with the traditional grocers written off in the pages of the national press.

Nine months later, Morrison’s and Waitrose top the retail growth league.

At a time when many major banks are effectively bust, others report eye-popping profits. And when pub-going is in serious decline, cinema-going is on the up. What do these and other such contradictory signs mean for our businesses?

So we asked, if planning for the future is even more of a challenge than usual, can our Design Gazette help? Historically, design has been a bell-weather for business confidence, one of the first service sectors to retrench going into a downturn, and one of the first to recover coming out. But design is also a reflection of underlying consumer sentiment, if you read the signs.

One thing that’s clear from 2009, the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth, is that the market is sorting the winners from the losers in Darwinian fashion, so we’ll use the end of the year to reflect and recalibrate our thinking before pushing ahead.

While the individual observations about commercial design seemed random when written, with the benefit of hindsight, we can perhaps now see bigger patterns, in which each blog was but a pixel. We hope they will entertain you and help you forecast with greater confidence.

The future is already here, if only we make time to look!

Andy Knowles

52

observations from 2009

Design in the downturn: the rise of the third little pig brands

After a long period when the mainstream was seen as a little dull compared to the groovy boutique brands, and new pretenders were eyed with envy, it must have felt like a fairy tale for stalwart brands: With the winds of recession howling, brands that had frolicked all summer long building their equities on the shaky foundations of lifestyle trends looked a little exposed. These were times for more substantial architecture. The brands that had stolidly ignored the fads and fashions, but focussed on the genuine needs of their customers, suddenly looked like the smart little pig.

Heinz, Johnson’s, Persil, Hovis, Sainsbury’s, M&S, Citroën, Kellogg’s and others played the nostalgia card with varying degrees of retro and progressive design. The underlying message was that these brands had been around in tough times as well as good. In the troubled economic climate, they were the kind of brands consumers ran to for emotional shelter.

“Unspoilt by progress” was the implication, with no brand’s centenary passing uncelebrated. Old advertising was recycled into montages, and vintage designs came back from the archive as brands insinuated that they had always been part of the family. But looking backwards and forwards at once isn’t easy. Was this the year the industry buried its head in the sand and failed to make the most of recession’s unique opportunities?

Post war or post the latest banking meltdown, frivolous design has great appeal in serious times.

1

Frivolous branding

Upbeat design for the downturn As the song has it: “Forget your troubles/Come on get happy”.

Every now and then you see a design and think “in twenty years’ time, that will be used to sum up our era”. Marc Jacobs’ joyous bottle for his scent Lola exemplifies design’s response to the downturn.

As an approach, it’s nothing new: one response to the scarcities and gloom of wartime Britain was the popularity of dramatic pillar box red lipstick. And as soon as fabric was again available after the war, designers swapped utility minimalism for the exuberant and extravagant fashions epitomised by Dior’s New Look. The design for Lola is the spiritual granddaughter of those trends.

Lola wasn’t alone: Swatch, for example, saw profits leap 17%.

Swatch was arguably better placed than more high-end lines to exploit less affluent times, but the cheerful aesthetic of the brand brought flair and colour to a grey and dour climate. Similarly homewares designer Cath Kidston saw profits increase dramatically against a downward trend in the category. The brand’s success was attributed to consumers’ nostalgic yearning for home and hearth in the recession, but the cheerful aesthetic of her designs certainly played a part.

Exaggeration, confidence and a joyful use of colour might all add up to whistling in the dark, but this approach gave consumers bored with the doom and gloom an appreciated tonic in 2009.

Flickr.com by Mr. History

2

Infantile and conservative branding

“We want our mummies” Whistler’s painting of his mother (1871) might easily have faded into obscurity on the wall of a Paris museum, had the old lady not been shipped to America on a twelve city tour as part of an effort to lift the national spirit during the great depression. Coming to be seen as the embodiment of the stoic, universal mother, she attracted thousands of visitors, particularly boy scouts.

A similar yearning for home and hearth – and their symbols – infused 2009. Rights owner Chorion, the home of such children’s favourites as Noddy, Olivia and the Mr Men, saw annual sales lift by more than a third to £53.7 million. According to Chorion’s chairman, “When things get tougher, people veer towards the things they know and love. It’s a lot like comfort eating”. Many top brands re-ran old advertising evoking nostalgia, and reminding us that they have always been there for us through thick and thin. The opportunity to face hard times with brave and inspiring design was arguably lost in this avalanche of mawkish recycling.

Business Week noted that a quarter of the post-1945 ads in Advertising Age’s “top 100 ad campaigns of the 20th century” were launched in a recession. But not, it seems, this recession. Do we want to be remembered as the generation of brand communicators who were given great opportunities both economic and technological, but who could only look longingly to a vanished past? And could playing safe ultimately prove to be the riskiest long term design strategy of all?

3

Communicating value

Do cheap brands require designs of visually brutal economy?

Most supermarkets revamped their value ranges along visually interchangeable lines, with white backgrounds becoming the standard code for “basic”. When launching a line of hundreds of products to be dotted about a giant supermarket it clearly makes sense to go for a simple and impactful design system. Using your brand colours makes equal sense. And if you’re selling a “no frills” line then the easiest way to communicate the proposition is to get rid of the visual frills. But can such an approach, taken to extremes, look so basic that it devalues both the products and the store?

Doesn’t everyone, no matter what they are spending, deserve to have nice looking packs? Making the basics range look more attractive might conflict with a “good, better, best” strategy, but there are degrees of design refinement that can be applied. At the other extreme of the product spectrum Chanel No. 5’s box proves simple and basic can also be beautiful.

In the nineteenth century John Ruskin was famous for his thinking on the nature and worth of art and aesthetics. He championed the importance of making art and beauty accessible for the “common man”.

But he also coined these words of wisdom which suggest things will not change any time soon: “There is hardly anything in the world that someone cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper.

The people, who consider price alone, are this man’s lawful prey.”

$ # !"

& & %

Which of these pieces of copy is more memorable and brand building?

Step into middle England’s best loved department store, stroll through haberdashery to the audio visual department where an awfully well brought up young man will bend over backwards to find the right TV for you then go to dixons.co.uk and buy it.

Dixons.co.uk

The last place you want to go

4

The price war fought to a draw

Good value vs brand values The downturn gave supermarkets a golden opportunity to define their own distinctive personalities while encouraging shoppers to switch and save. Supermarket own-label products would be the new brands we were told. But because supermarkets decided instead to focus on a price war amongst themselves, that’s not quite how it played out.

Each week brought a tsunami of competing but visually interchangeable price messaging, loaded with claims and counterclaims that left consumers none the wiser about who genuinely offered the best value.

Supermarkets abandoned the sense of brand values in pursuit of becoming interchangeable commodities, failing to give consumers any reason to trade out of branded goods beyond price.

But a campaign for Dixons showed it is possible to turn rival brands’ visual equities against them, and to talk about brand values without big price messaging. The copy, signed off with “Dixons – the last place you want to go”, was hailed as evidence of “the new honesty”, even though the promise that Dixons is the cheapest might be more perception than unassailable reality.

“Live long and prosper�: a perfect example of progressive retro.

5

Progressive retro

Looking backwards, moving forwards Not all brands spent 2009 wallowing in comfy nostalgia. Many chose instead to trade on classic roots, but make them appealing to modern sensibilities. Coke’s aluminium bottle combining modern materials with vintage graphics was a good example, as was the rebranding of the original Star Trek series for a new audience – the kitsch old Starfleet badge was reapplied with the confidence of the Nike tick in the poster campaign.

In a year when many brands celebrated their anniversaries through rose-tinted glasses, Guinness 250th had an eye on the brand’s future rather than its glorious past. As well as throwing a global party with lots of famous bands (rather than fiddle playing), Guinness launched a charitable fund of £5 million to help people enrich their communities.

The identity for the event itself was contemporary and minimal rather than stuck in the brand’s visual heritage.

All of these brands reworked their “retro” equities to make them appeal to contemporary tastes rather than simply harking back to the past, allowing them to have the best of both worlds.

Go humans go

In the UK Quaker Oats played the authentic, unspoilt-by-progress approach on its packaging. In the States the brand took an optimistic and future-facing route in its advertising (inspired by the humanist philosophy of the Quaker faith?) Which do you think was the smarter response to the downturn?

New and shiny

A little tarnished?

6

Re-badging

“A tramp feels indecently exposed with his cap off” The quote comes from Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell’s account of his experiences as a gentleman of the road.

The book makes clear how clothes do indeed make the man, with the importance of making oneself presentable when in straitened circumstances a matter of basic survival.

The automotive industry is a prime example of the once prosperous now fallen on hard times. Many manufacturers’ marques are being refreshed – Citroën in recent months, and Vauxhall, Opel, Fiat, Lancia, Volvo, Chrysler, Mercedes and a few others over the past year and a half – some more successfully than others. It would be naïve to think redesign alone will reverse economic fortunes, but in the midst of such a severe crisis of confidence rebranding at least offers a positive face to a tough market. And compared to the money required to develop new cars, a little brand tweaking and tucking is actually not such a ridiculous investment. When all you have are the clothes you stand up in, looking the part is more than a cosmetic exercise.

On the other hand (and one with a cap in it), GM got a new nickname: “Government Motors”. Unhelpful when one is trying to evoke a sense of a new beginning. GM wisely dropped its “mark of excellence” from its new cars. This also had the added benefit of helping make the various brands within the portfolio a little less homogeneous – a real problem when cost-saving, harmonised platform car production had led to individual brands looking and feeling more than a little samey.

Jolt’s bankruptcy might force it to exit stage left.

But was having an interesting structure to blame?

7

Capex

Custom packaging - a price we should afford?

Jolt Cola’s petition for bankruptcy protection, citing the principal cause as the threefold price it pays for resealable cans over the standard ones used by its more famous rivals, raises the question of whether bespoke structural packaging should be in the dock too.

With the twisted glass bottle a relatively minor format in the UK nowadays, it seems that even when your name is Coca-Cola, the dis-economy of scale associated with customised packaging just isn’t sustainable in today’s competitive environment. Others have learned this lesson the hard way. Even when the consumer gained superior convenience, as in the case of Nescafé’s hot can, Stella’s take-home mini-kegs, or Quaker’s short-lived resealable cartons, the sales of the new packages were niche compared with core formats.

Yet brands shouldn’t give up the pursuit of enhanced tactile or functional packaging. When we worked on the embossed Stella Artois can back in the 1990s, it provided positive confirmation of Stella’s premium status and helped the brand accelerate away from the pack.

This was one of a number of co-ordinated initiatives that ultimately made Stella the biggest alcoholic drink by value in the UK. As Stella invests its packaging pounds in new initiatives like the chalice glass, it has retired the embossed can. But investment in a coordinated design programme has helped bolster a premium positioning.

So, although high-cost custom packaging may ultimately become a luxury you can’t afford, its value in catalysing brand renovation might arguably be priceless, as long as you’re prepared not to succeed every time.

THE “J-LO” 2000-2007:

Luxury goods as daily treats

MASS PREMIUMISATION Basic Commodities trade up and go fancy

THE “DITA” 2008-2009:

SuperLuxury continues to thrive

Basic and everyday brands gain momentum

8

The polarization of mass and premium

What shape are we in?

Until the recession kicked in, we were seeing basic commodities becoming posher and fashion brands launching ever more affordable lines. This double whammy created a huge mass premium category. Fancy smoothies replaced plain old juice in our fridge, along with organic yoghurts and puddings sold in ceramic ramekins. Meanwhile, “designer” accessories were as likely to be real as knock-off. The downturn appeared to tighten the belt on this swollen middle, creating an hourglass silhouette that could give Dita Von Teese’s corset a run for its money. A polarization away from the centre could be perceived in the success of value lines such as essential Waitrose at one end, and the burgeoning “super luxury” brands – 8% growth last year according to Wealth Bulletin – at the other. In the middle meanwhile, as belts tightened, sales of takeaway lattes and Innocent Drinks (surely the brand most synonymous with the mass premium trend) dropped.

So what’s next? With various green shoots sighted in company stats, opinion polls and media commentary, perhaps the hourglass figure is daring to breathe out again. In design terms, I’m not sure the declining fortunes of the mass premium category have resulted in generally cheaper looking design; we have become used to getting a more finessed and sophisticated level of branding whatever the price point. Perhaps as the mass premium category returns, the visual distinctions between “good, better and best” categories will remain permanently blurred. Or perhaps the middle ground will get a distinctive visual lexicon all of its own, the better to mark its position in the pecking order, and role in our lives?

Sustainability: is it possible to be responsible and sexy?

Greenwash is so 2008. By 2009, genuine sustainability innovations that were in the planning stage when the topic was white hot began to see the light of day. So it’s been an interesting year to consider if responsibility alone is enough. On the one hand the best solutions tended to stick to the elementary three R’s (reduce, reuse, recycle), but they often lacked lustre. Conversely the more glamorous initiatives sometimes seemed to be a triumph of style over substance – and too clever for their own good.

Nevertheless, in a welter of green initiatives, it was the brands that refracted their sustainability thinking through their unique brand equities which achieved memorable results. And such sexy behaviour only works once a substantial amount of the “dull stuff ” has been done to create a solid foundation.

The truth, as we explained to one client with their heart in the right place, is that to be really green, you’d have to stop making products.

Everything else is damage limitation. However, the smartest solutions managed to save money and grow affinity while also preserving the planet. Moral obligations aside, at its best sustainability offered a great vehicle for brand innovation.

Do we really need any more stuff?

9

Creating engagement

Style or substance? Both please This Anna Sui bag, sold in Target, was upcycled out of material originally used as posters which highlighted Target’s commitment to “style, value and recycling”. Somewhat less glamorously, Kenco launched a call for Britain to “go on a packaging diet” to coincide with the roll-out of its new Kenco Eco Refill resealable packs, an alternative to glass jars. These use 81% less energy in their manufacture than equivalent glass jars. The design itself was not going to trouble any beauty contests, but which of these initiatives do you admire more?

Kenco offers a genuine solution but could have had a little more va va voom. If consumers are to be encouraged to reuse a jar forever, perhaps the jar itself could inspire such behaviour by being a little more desirable – a bit more “designer”, if that’s not a dirty word?

Yet the Target campaign actually makes more stuff we probably don’t need, and was criticised for using a PVC substrate that’s far from green for the posters.

Few brands pull off sustainability and style in equal measure.

(Method cleaning products and Aveda are notable exceptions.)

It’s a tough challenge, and it’s easy to snipe from the sidelines, but consumers are clear: they don’t want to compromise style when getting something greener, but are quick to criticise if the solution is not properly responsible.

10

Lean not mean

What can you afford to lose?

The space created in cereal boxes as product settles in transit is known as ullage. Kellogg’s trial for a new cereal box used 8% less packaging material than a traditional pack. By reducing the amount of ullage, packs can be made smaller, saving on packaging without any loss to the consumer in terms of product. Retailers are able to use the space saved to stock more products and the box takes up less cupboard space in our homes. This looks like the perfect solution all round. But what’s the catch? Does less space on pack mean less room to get your brand message across? Surely this just presents a new opportunity for brands to focus their message, working harder to utilise the space available to them, and reducing all the unnecessary clutter which is part and parcel of much FMCG packaging.

The question for any brand is “where’s your ullage?” For example Nokia gave consumers the option to buy a new phone without (yet another) recharger. Choosing this option reduced packaging, product and shipping footprints. What can you afford to lose?

Ooh la la. 2009 saw sustainability initiatives becoming more playful and less worthy.

11

Spirited responsibility

A lighter green Amid all the greenwash, many a worthy and responsible green initiative was lost in the noise. A responsible approach is not enough to generate real engagement: it’s vital to inject personality and soul into any new brand extension that exploits the possibilities of sustainability.

Being green doesn’t have to mean being worthy and dull, and as sustainability becomes a mainstream idea, its expression is becoming more playful and spirited. Stella Artois made much of its recycled/ recyclable credentials and its “hedge fund” but framed these points in a groovy francophile fashion.

Sainsbury’s rebranded the unloved but sustainable pollack as “Colin” (French for cooked pollack), and got Wayne Hemingway to design a Jackson Pollock inspired pack. The free publicity Sainsbury’s earned with such an idiosyncratic approach was probably far greater than conventionally attractive packaging or serious accreditation would have yielded, important because if an initiative such as this is to work, it’s got to grab our attention.

Getting back to nature is coming back into fashion.

12

“Real” food

Homespun charm meets designer lifestyle At the Hameau de la Reine, tucked away within the gardens of Versailles, Marie Antoinette played shepherdess, milking beautifully clean hand-picked cows with royal porcelain milk churns. She was partly inspired by Rousseau’s fashionable “cult of nature”. Now it’s a jump from Rousseau to UK environment minister Hilary Benn and the style sections of the Sunday papers, but bear with me.

Benn suggested that supermarkets’ standardised approach to fresh fruit and veg, where anomalies in shape and colour are rejected, Stepford-wives style, is both ethically unsound and also misses the opportunity to celebrate variety.

Benn is on-trend: the middle classes are embracing a designer make-do-and-mend ethic, from Cath Kidston how-to manuals to Observer blogs on allotments. Michelle Obama’s White House kitchen garden initiative showed that muddy boots could be quite chic.

Variety and homespun charm are celebrated in fancy cupcake shops and via the successful prints of the Keep Calm Galleries – it’s Blitz spirit lite.

Mainstream brands are also evoking their earthy and real qualities: Budweiser’s “born on“ labelling has been around a while and Campbell’s have enjoyed huge publicity with their “grow your own tomatoes” initiative, which looks fantastic and makes the brand feel cool again. Meanwhile, I wonder how many supermarkets are brainstorming the “farmers’ market opportunity” whilst simultaneously rejecting spuds that don’t fit their template?

13

Transparency

When they take away your physical, what do you have left?

It’s safe to assume governments, always keen to be seen to act on matters of high public awareness, will in time require more standardised physical packaging. An early sign can be seen in Germany, where beer brands are required to share common bottles so as to aid reusability. Great for the planet, but challenging for a brand aiming to look distinctive. As packs become less physically distinctive and more graphically cluttered, it might be prudent to invest more energy in a brand’s graphic equities now to help preserve more powerful branding later. One day your logo (or other key visual assets) might be all you have left!

Yet pack fronts are burying their branding under a mass of other information. A plethora of (eminently worthy) messages that proclaim green credentials are now joining all the nutritional information that was added just a couple of years ago. In addition to the GDAs, brands are carrying information on the source of their paper and so on. While well intentioned (or cynically applied), such a blizzard of flashes will wash over the consumer while choking the branding like bindweed.

A smarter solution is suggested by the 100% biodegradable packs opposite, which make a virtue out of a “less is more” nakedness that’s both bold and funny.

14

Partnerships

Doing good and feeding the brand Save Your Logo’s idea was brilliantly simple: get brands with logos featuring flora and fauna to protect their adopted species (see www.saveyourlogo.org).

From a branding perspective it’s obvious that brand-centric corporate social responsibility is going to pay back better than random altruism.

It’s fitting that Lacoste, as the first sportswear brand to put their logo on the garment’s outside, is also the initiative’s first international partner.

With so many arbitrary accreditations cropping up in communications, brands must define their own positions, work out how these impact the complex area of sustainability, and then decide who to partner with.

This approach might sound obvious, but many of the current partnerships between brands and good-works organisations look like hastily arranged marriages, rather than meetings of committed partners.

Do we want brands to encourage good behaviour or would we prefer them to just take care of all that for us?

15

Calls to action

Practise, don’t preach Levi’s added this label to their jeans stateside, recommending sustainable washing behaviour and encouraging passing the jeans on to others more needy when you are done with them. The suggestions are sensible and consider the whole lifecycle of the product. On one hand it is very Scrooge-like to be cynical of any CSR initiative.

On the other… well, all the communication here puts the responsibility on to the consumer – might they feel a bit nagged and wonder if the company itself practises what it preaches?

Encouraging good behaviour is fine, but it risks looking like token CSR messaging if the brand isn’t overtly leading the way somehow.

Secondly, wasn’t the whole point of Levi’s to wear them till they fell apart? The communication used to be that they got better as they got older, and giving them up was only possible when they were truly past physical redemption. But perhaps as a brand introducing new lines regularly, the shelf life of a pair is now only as long as a passing fashion for a particular cut? The point isn’t that do-gooding is wrong, but that the most powerful and inspirational way to motivate consumers comes from a brand’s heart and deeds, rather than something which appears tacked on, even if the basic motivation is pure and well-intentioned. A principle is only a principle, as they say, when it costs you something.

Those ‘please re-use your towel’ messages one finds in hotels are an interesting place to see how to make such encouragement compelling: statistics show that if the message in the bathroom notes that other guests follow the suggestion, the suggestion is more effective. And if the message says that others who have occupied this particular room followed the suggestion it’s even more likely to convince the guest to hang up their towel. In other words, the best way to encourage others to adopt behaviour is to appeal to a herd mentality.

the usual

unusual

16

Tactical responsibility

Placing the message centre stage Arla backed the Earth Hour campaign, which asked people to turn off their lights on the 28th March between 8.30pm and 9.30pm, with two million special “lights out” packs (bottom right). Rather than running a flash that might have made Arla look tokenistic or opportunistic, they turned the whole pack over to the campaign.

This example demonstrates that a brand can retain its equities, create buzz and even disrupt the category by the simple measure of being less protective of its everyday look and feel. While the promotion has little to do with Arla’s core values, by boldly playing with the brand’s (still recognizable) visual equities, it feels like a full blooded commitment rather than bandwagon jumping.

Image from treehugger.com

17

Tailor-made opportunities

Think global – act local Launched in 2008, but much admired and awarded in 2009, The Deptford Project Café – a converted train decked out in groovy graphics – is the first step in a plan to completely regenerate the area around Deptford Train Station. Helping towards the regeneration of an unused space, adding designer flair to a grassroots project and taking the idea of reuse and recycle to another level, there is much to admire here. Are we often guilty, when planning CSR initiatives, of thinking somewhat grandly, rather than looking out of the window at opportunities that immediately present themselves?

So many brainstorms aim to imbue brands with “soul” and a sense of “grass roots authenticity” via their off-pack activity. Great ideas are often generated but go nowhere because, in the cold light of day, implementing them from scratch looks far too high-maintenance.

Yet all around us small projects like this are sprouting up, many of which could probably benefit from an injection of cash. Are such initiatives in the public sector an untapped well for doing some genuine good with genuinely idiosyncratic projects? Or would “corporate-ising” such work rob it of its soul? Perhaps it is a case of learning to think and act small rather than worrying that adding a brand logo = dull or bad. And if we act genuine, funnily enough, we will become genuine.

Waste not want not: Putting things in the bin is no longer an unequivocally good deed.

18

Downsizing

Is your product rubbish?

In a bid to reduce the enormous amount of edible food we send to landfill, the UK government suggested that consumers’ common sense could replace the “Best Before” date on packaging, with packs carrying only the more necessary “use by” information. Chucking stuff away is a bad habit in which the UK leads much of Europe.

One obvious solution is to sell smaller packs, especially for shortlife groceries. Several brands are now producing smaller loaves for smaller households which hopefully get eaten before we start to feel that man cannot live by bread alone.

Various reports also point to a growing urban population globally, all living in smaller and smaller spaces. Compact packaging and products are consequently going to form part of your portfolio – what can you downsize?

19

Reduce and reuse

Rethinking the paradigms Sustainability initiatives offer fantastic opportunities for innovation.

After all, sustainability is about rethinking traditional norms to cut the crap – or at least reduce it a little.

Method’s packaging is famously green and cool enough to be displayed rather than hidden under the sink. Their refill, with its neat water droplet image, is stylish and acknowledges that the core design is too nice to throw away. Pot Noodle, realising the product is generally used next to the mug-rack, decided they didn’t need a pot at all.

And the packaging for detergent Wonder Tablitz came with two extra refill tablets, eliminating needless creation of two more trigger packs.

All of these are examples of brands doing away with as much packaging as they can. But how come it sometimes seems so hard to emulate their lead?

“Why don’t we naïvely suggest little things to the technical folks, who can tell us why they’re impossible?” – this is, from experience, a common but ultimately doomed approach to sustainability workshops.

Everyone gets frustrated, and little gets accomplished. There are two better and contrasting places to start a sustainability brainstorm.

The first is around “what can we already do, and how can we communicate it more distinctively and engagingly?”

The other option is in genuine blue sky thinking: “what if our capacity to produce new packaging was taken away?” Imagine a world in which packaging itself is banned: fresh vistas suddenly open up for brand behaviour that isn’t limited by more conventional (though vital) light-weighting initiatives and the like. It’s then possible, having opened one’s mind, to work back to some practical initiatives.

The examples opposite broadly stem from such an open approach.

Identity and behaviour: information overload

Media fragmentation, brand proliferation, that flipping Tim Berners-Lee: as consumers we are approaching information overload, and it’s only going to get worse. Against this background, and with advertising budgets tightened, many brands turned to their packs, seeing them as communication vehicles, and wanting them to work harder.

Editions were everywhere, and promotional packs were often very imaginative. Back of pack continued to come out of the shadows as a canvas long overlooked in its potential to dramatise “the reason to believe”. Some brands de-branded, and others questioned what a brand actually is – all very postmodern. But in the white noise of all this activity, it seemed that bold changes often left consumers behind.

Less, as the adage goes, was often more...

Hunter plus Jimmy Choo and Mac plus Hello Kitty.

Which one feels greater than the sum of its parts?

20

Co-branding

“I’m with sexy...”

It was a year of co-branding – some frivolous, some fantastic.

For example, noted British boot brand Hunter and fashionista fave Jimmy Choo collaborated to create a luxurious pair of mock croc, leopard print lined wellington boots. They must have looked great caked in mud at Glastonbury. But who did whom the favour?

Presumably Hunter believe such tie-ins keep them relevant to the all-important style leaders, and Jimmy Choo gained a bit of traditional establishment kudos from the co-branding. But such “fashion meets tradition” collaborations have started to feel more formulaic than witty. The practice is more about generating PR than sales, but PR’s oxygen is originality. And borrowing someone else’s cool comes at a cost: done too often, it can dilute brand equities in both directions.

On the other hand, it’s possible for co-branding to do everyone a good turn. Hello Kitty is one of those odd brands which appeals equally to two year old girls and grown women who enjoy a little ironic kitsch. But as the brand becomes more ubiquitous it might be losing some cachet for the more mature fans. A tie-up with MAC cosmetics was a smart move. It fits MAC’s spirit of “playing with makeup” and the styling of the collaboration gave a darker and more knowing edge to the Hello Kitty look and feel. Perhaps one reason for this being such a good fit is that while in many licensing partnerships the licensor shops his or her property around, MAC went after Sanrio, Hello Kitty’s owner, to do the deal. Targeted thinking around the brand fit translated into an execution that really conveys the notion of the two worlds colliding. One plus one can equal three.

The real deal? Not quite the full drum kit for those wishing to play Ringo, but the success of The Beatles: Rock Band proves consumers will permit certain brands plenty of creative latitude.

21

Trust and love

Why can some brands get away with murder?

The more you respect a brand the more you ask of it. When you feel a trusted brand isn’t being true to its principles, you can get a bit emotional.

With this in mind, it’s true that some music fans have been exasperated by The Beatles: Rock Band game – the sound of barrels being scraped and all that. But in the near billion dollar industry of music gaming, what The Beatles: Rock Band gets is the appeal of the group’s almost mythical journey from The Cavern to the roof of the Apple offices – and the huge bank of visual iconography they generated along the way. It’s this storehouse of memories and associations which forms the narrative of the game and creates its world.

The Rock Band team even bothered to visit Abbey Road studios to film the carpet the moptops used to stand on, showing a fanatical eye for detail even the most obsessive fan will appreciate. In other words, the licensing deal is fuelled as much by love as opportunism.

The lessons marketers could draw from studying The Beatles’ branding could fill a small book. Beyond their superior product, a visionary marketer in Brian Epstein and a level of success that now carries the impression they defined a whole era, one factor stands out: for at least the first two thirds of their career The Beatles looked like they enjoyed doing it, and innovation was their lifeblood, not a necessity.

They evolved so fast and so far because they were unafraid to play with their winning formula. Maybe that’s why they are still loved, and why The Beatles: Rock Band does not feel like a weird evolution for the brand or the band.

1

2

3

22

Naming

Jeeves: butler or banker?

In the year that Norwich Union spent millions distancing itself from its roots and renaming as Aviva, and a meerkat kept popping up to successfully help us remember a rather forgettably named comparison site, it was clear that having the right name is a valuable asset.

P. G. Wodehouse’s character Jeeves has long been a byword for the ultimate right-hand man, especially in the British psyche. If you have a Jeeves, then you have it all.

The search engine Ask Jeeves capitalised on this widely held understanding from its launch in 1996, until a company buyout in 2005 resulted in the character being axed. Four years later and the affable servant has made his return after market research determined that in the UK “Ask Jeeves” still has a brand awareness of 83%, compared to Ask.com’s 72%. This just goes to show that if you can open the right drawers in the minds of consumers, you can create a brand that runs far deeper than an attractive yet baseless word mark.

Perhaps it plays to those of us who are useless with names but remember faces better.

However, even when armed with this new insight, the visual retooling of the character fails to capture the spirit of the idea in the same way as his predecessor. With his new grey suit and 3D rendering, Jeeves now appears far more like a banker than a butler.

So has the mascot has been brought back, but with his character being lost? And might Ask might have had a bit more respect for the original’s equities given their recall findings?

23

Staff uniforms

The clothes maketh the brand Uniforms were an unlikely hot topic in 2009, triggered by the much-discussed Virgin Airways ad. When Virgin stewardesses first took to the air I was at an art college where most of the girls wore determinedly shapeless jumpers, Hollyoaks was a distant dream, and the “Still red hot at 25” ad for Virgin Airways would have been lambasted as the worst kind of chauvinist piggery. In 2009’s bleak midwinter, it felt like a tonic for the troops. Sidestepping its implications for the cause of women’s lib, the ad is one of the more powerful pieces of visual branding seen in a while. From the dramatic flashes of red (echoed in the set dressing of less evergreen Our Price and Wimpy logos), to the climactic end-frame of the “Vargas girl” inspired nose-art logo, the brand burnt itself powerfully into the mind.

But an arguably smarter approach (one that helps change perceptions of the brand rather than just creating impact) was being modelled elsewhere. Dressing its newest team members in burgundy t-shirts with the message “TRAINEE BARISTA”, Caffè Nero branded them – in a good way. So straightforwardly honest is the message that a longer wait in the queue or a drop in quality of coffee feels, to the consumer, forgivable. It acknowledges the brand isn’t delivering 100% perfection, but also reminds us that making a good Nero coffee takes skills which are not easy to acquire. Not bad for a t-shirt. It’s a good example of corporate culture being communicated directly to the customer, rather than being hotly debated on mission statements which rarely seem to reach and change perceptions in the real world. And it demonstrates that you don’t have to employ a lineup of glamourpusses to make a point through your uniform.

24

Product placement

Sponsorship that adds value Product placement went through the mirror for the promotion of HBO’s vampire drama True Blood. Rather than the usual dreary on-screen product placements, the relationship was inverted, with HBO using “brand partners” out there in the real world supposedly advertising for their vampire segment of the market. Brave of the brands to play along, and a great example of turning conventions on their head. Also refreshing was the acknowledgement that promotions and advertorials should entertain and enrich culture, rather than just leeching off it.

Pringles’ unofficial Wimbledon packs were too good an idea to miss. But it’s risky to turn core packaging into an ad.

25

The blurring of comms channels

Isn’t everything an ad?

As credit crunched and advertising budgets were slashed, packaging briefs were often hijacked as alternative advertising vehicles.

Thinking that the two media are interchangeable is folly. The best brand packaging is never as literal in its messaging as an advertising campaign, and works best when acting as a symbol of rather than explanation for the brand’s attributes and values. Nevertheless, tactical promotions could be worked to huge effect. For example, Pringles’ “tennis ball tube” packs, given away at Wimbledon without official sanction, made the multi-million pound Evian sponsorship seem comparatively dull through a witty exploitation not just of the event but also the brand. If you can make people smile then they will probably forgive such brazen arm-chancing.

But such smart ideas tend to be one-offs. Turning packs into permanent billboards risks devaluing the brand’s authority over time.

The brand in the hand should “be” rather than sell. Otherwise it can seem as if at the point of consumption the brand is still tugging on our sleeve about something, and that can feel a little desperate.

26

Designer and artist editions

“Who’s this one for?”

Special editions should feel, well, special. Saucy photography legend Ellen Von Unwerth for Coca-Cola, Gaultier for Evian, Blahnik for Coca-Cola, Paul Smith for Evian... This year saw an avalanche of designer-endorsed limited editions, not to mention those done by celebrities and pop stars. It began to feel a little by-the-numbers, rather than inherently exciting. Beyond brands getting some cool points by association, few of the results seem to be genuine marriages of brand livery and guest star’s signature style, with most brands happy to lie back and act as a passive canvas for the artist to decorate.

As with all art patronage, some commissions are smarter than others.

The cleverest brands ensure their visual equities are adopted and adapted by the artist. A good example of an artist “doing” a brand is the work of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami for Louis Vuitton.

While the designs are simply a pattern of the LV logo, they are also distinctly “Murakami” in their colourful bubblegum palate. I guess this collaboration really worked because Murakami is an artist who clearly loves and wants to play with brand devices, and because his style was judiciously selected by Louis Vuitton for its ability to mesh with the brand. The results look neither bussed in nor phoned in, and Murakami’s work created a whole sub-genre of collectibles for the brand.

The distinctive Murakami design for Louis Vuitton and just some of the many designer editions of Diet Coke. But are such special editions no longer feeling so special?

The limited edition on the left designed by Paul Smith makes playful reference to his trademark coloured stripes, applied in a light “Evian” spirit. The limited editions for Perrier use the idea of speech “bubbles” (obviously very relevant to the product) filled with random French expressions.

Lovely designs both, but which do you think pays back better to the brand?

before...

after...

before...

27

Evolution or revolution?

One thing at a time: Understanding your equities The conventional way to herald a “new improved” product is to tie in some advertising and a new pack. “Cross-platform”, “more bangs for our buck”, all that good stuff. But for Blackthorn cider, this approach backfired. A new, mellower taste profile was presumably intended to widen the drink’s appeal beyond the brand’s devoted followers, but the refreshed packaging compounded devotees’ impression that the brand was swapping substance for style.

Up in arms, they graffitied the poster’s copyline from “black is back” to “black is crap” and launched a strident Facebook campaign.

Strong initial sales figures suggest Blackthorn should convert many to the new recipe, but the risk is that those who might have dug the new styling could be persuaded by the protests that Blackthorn is somehow inauthentic, and thus give it a miss. Brands with loyal followings need to be handled like gelignite, and it might have been prudent to de-couple a new recipe from a new brand design.

Tropicana might not stir such passionate consumer reaction, but a redesign gave them an estimated 5% drop in sales, costing tens of millions in lost revenue despite a $35 million ad campaign.

Pundits were quick to point out that too many design elements were changed at once, and the “orange with a straw” equity was dumped, making consumers question if it was the same product.

The redesign also reduced shoppers’ ability to navigate the range.

“We underestimated the deep emotional bond that our most loyal customers had with the original packaging,” said Neil Campbell, Tropicana’s North American President.

Brands tend to steer clear of images like this.

And are they missing a trick?

28

Brands with political views

Adopting an editorial perspective During September, Ben & Jerry’s “Chubby Hubby” was renamed “Hubby Hubby” and two grooms were added to the design to celebrate gay marriage in the brand’s home state of Vermont.

It was nice to see a mainstream Unilever brand risk a few sales by embracing such topics. When Unilever was rumoured to be about to purchase Gü, some people carped that it was too dull and stodgy to run with the smaller brand. Yet with “Hubby Hubby” Unilever showed boldness in taking what was essentially an editorial decision, and one that not everyone would agree on. Absolut’s limited edition branding-free “No Label” bottle also promoted a theme of tolerance – albeit with an online tag cloud which was a veritable lexicon of sexual stereotypes, somewhat confounding its proclaimed belief that we should live beyond labels.

FMCG brands are generally blandly apolitical. The Sun and Fox News show that having a particular point of view might not be to everyone’s taste, but can nevertheless create hugely successful brands, so it feels like an obvious card to play beyond the media category.

Ben & Jerry’s initiative feels like the first time a big brand has given a corporate social responsibility message real edge. As a mainstream supermarket promotion it arguably contributes more to normalising the issue than too-cool-for-school luxury brand limited editions such as Absolut’s.

29

Mascots

She comes from a good background The Cadbury’s Caramel bunny girl came back in time for Easter.

Cheestrings and Coco Pops both had new advertising and packaging which shared prominent use of mascots placed in front of simple flat treatments of the key brand colour. It might not be the most cleverclever brand communication you will ever see, but the simplicity of the approach was visually powerful amid the clutter of the ads’ environments. And the approach could stretch – by autumn the Caramel bunny was lounging across a spread in Grazia kitted out in a Giles Deacon dress “inspired by” Caramel Buttons.

The use of the colour was the key. It’s interesting how much more “iconic” the mascot becomes when it appears in front of the brand colour: like Fido Dido on a green can, or the McVitie’s Penguin on a pillar box red pack, the mascot and brand become synonymous in the mind’s eye.

While “mascot + brand colour = strong branding” is an obvious equation, it works best when the mascot is in a locked relationship with the other design elements. For example, did the Fairy baby lose his status the day he stepped out of his green frame?

Was it the bunny or the purple backdrop which made the Cadbury’s Caramel ads pop? She was in step with a trend for a simpler and bolder framing of brand mascots.

!"#$%&'()$*&+,$%-"(%. /(0(#$1%(23

30

Branding in the margins

Back of pack: the final frontier Opposite is Ernest Hemingway’s response to a bet that he could not write a complete story in six words. He considered it one of the best things he ever produced.

Would Hemingway applaud “For best before: see base of jar”?

Back of pack writing has moved on from briefs requesting a copycat of Innocent Drinks’ style, and every syllable can be made to count.

Many brands have already had great redesigns and don’t need further significant changes. But new sustainability initiatives and such like still need to be communicated. For many products, the back of pack offers a great opportunity to imbue the brand with extra soul. As an agency we had as much fun and success bringing the nutritional information to life on the back of Hovis as we did redesigning the brand architecture. It’s a good time to start sweating the small stuff.

Little things can add up to a lot.

inspiration

promotion

Let the rumpus begin! The fashion designs above were part of an integrated campaign to market Where The Wild Things Are. They are, technically, “cool�.

31

Distribution

Is being cool self-limiting?

What makes a brand cool? In the PR launch for this year’s CoolBrands, Mark Blenkinsop of agency Exposure talked about the notion of “distribution as communication”: where a brand is sold, how, who to, and the competition on adjacent shelves can all combine to give a brand the right image for cool consumers. This idea chimes with the promotional tie-ins for the film Where the Wild Things Are, which could act as a textbook snapshot of a certain kind of “now” marketing: cool soundtrack, cool pop-up store, limited edition jewellery, clothing, sneakers and photographic prints. Limited editions, limited availability, limited time only – even the plastic figurines are collectible “Kubricks” rather than something you’d find in a Happy Meal box. Even adult-sized wolf outfits. All quite sophisticated for a film ostensibly aimed at kids (or kidults).

I’m not sure how many adult-sized wolf outfits will be bought, and I doubt this is the point. Perhaps this approach follows the rule of supply and demand, limiting availability to heighten value?

“Doing an iPhone” is the holy grail for most brands. If the product is great and likely to stick around, then making it only selectively available to build the buzz can help the launch. But this tactic also risks creating a ghetto, putting a ceiling on the brand’s potential reach.

And if you remove the ceiling so that the masses can access the brand at a certain point, does that leave it no longer cool and therefore without such perceived value? It’s a Catch-22 that won’t go away any time soon.

Being big and looking indie: Is de-branding a smart way to cater for the “no-logo� generation?

32

De-branding

Big struggles to look small Starbucks’ move to de-brand outlets in hometown Seattle into no-logo “indie” looking cafés will bring a wry smile to the average G8 protester’s face. The decline in Starbucks’ sales is blamed on the ubiquitous and bland corporate feel of the brand: it’s become a victim of its own success. But pretending to be what one isn’t must surely be the strategic equivalent of deciding to go back into the closet.

Would it not be better to offer a prouder but less bland evocation of the branding – one that has charm and a built-in capacity for local flexibility, rather than sweeping the logo under the carpet?

This “we’re small, honest” approach is reflected by many mainstream brands whose liveries are being de-digitised and infused with homespun hand-drawn charm. Product innovations also took this route: Walkers launched adult crisp range Red Sky as an unendorsed, stand-alone brand. It makes sense, both in creating space from Sensations, and also considering that brand’s 0.4% sales growth against Kettle’s 24.9% increase last year. The packaging and name suggest Red Sky wanted to appear to be a “little guy”, which would of course be scuppered by a Walkers logo. But do you remember asking mum or dad to drop you off round the corner from the party to avoid your mates checking out the parents? Just as pretending the folks didn’t exist proved to be an unsustainable strategy for our teenage selves, might Red Sky risk being busted for their true origins?

Or does this unrealistically suppose that the public gives much of a damn? Either way the hand-whittled “indie” look is becoming so ubiquitous that it ironically no longer looks that independent of mind or spirit.

Technology : Some great ideas amongst the tinsel

It’s been a strange year – while so many brands have played the retro card, technology continues to change the medium of communication at a rapid rate. A YouTube movie full of statistics about the growing influence of social networking suggested that brands’ control over their own image was eroding: 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations, only 14% trust ads. 25% of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are links to user generated content.

34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands.

And of course, ’09 was the year everyone had an opinion on Twitter.

The way this new phenomenon affects marketing can be seen in Hollywood: until very recently producers and the film industry were fixated on the big opening weekend – land one and you were made, “fail to open” and the publicity budget for roll-out evaporated.

Now the indicator for hit or miss is 11.00pm Friday night, because that’s when the first night audiences emerge to tweet their opinions.

Millions of dollars of investment are at the mercy of a semi-literate 140 character review. And of course wittily acid reviews get much more traction than something along the lines of “quite good in parts” – just ask Dorothy Parker. I guess one might say “how bracing, perhaps the general standards will improve?”

But beyond pesky consumers, the risk is that the medium is driving the message: a movement towards more and more choice, noise and information must surely also be creating a space where simplicity can have a certain cachet. Brands offering information-heavy and over-engineered complexity feel like they are locked in an arms race, all those whistles and bells signifying little that will build lasting brand value: some branded apps suggest that cool new techniques are being applied in an incoherent and incontinent manner. But as this section’s L’Oréal example demonstrates, the smart approach might be to goal hang and exploit technology by fitting it to what a brand already does rather than get too carried away.

smart TomTom app logo

silly

stupid?

33

Apps

Need some glamour for your brand?

“We’ve got an app for that.”

It’s been interesting to see the use of the word “app” entering marketing lingo, often simply used to signify “good”. For example, “this project needs a killer app” can be translated as “I’d like a good idea at the heart of the creative work”. Whole conferences are being set up to teach us how to harness the power of the app, but is there more than hype at work here?

From a creative standpoint, the design potential and language of apps is quite inspiring. If advertising is a story, and packaging is a haiku, then app icons are a single exclamation mark. They work best when they are shorthand versions of the parent logos – they’re currently the ultimate distillation of branded expression. TomTom is a shining example of the app, looking great as a symbol, but opening up to functionality that no longer needs actual TomTom hardware.

But daft ideas seem to be just as popular. Zippo’s “virtual lighter” is one of the most popular apps ever, with over five million downloads – but it’s a bit pointless isn’t it? Starbucks’ two apps help you find the nearest store, “build” your own coffee, and make your loyalty card digital. All very logical, but isn’t this over-engineering the simple act of buying a coffee? Miller Lite’s app flashes how many beers you want so you can wave it at a busy bartender. O brave new world – I’d be serving the guy who brandished this last.

Before commissioning an app, it might make sense to have a bona fide idea. In this case, the medium is not the message. In the rush of brands to this new medium, most are lost in the general noise and, as in all other marketing endeavours, it takes something really special to stand out. Given the iPhone’s still relatively small reach, perhaps a brand manager’s $250,000 might be more judiciously spent elsewhere?

Search all the parks in all your cities.

You’ll find no statues of committees.

David Ogilvy

34

Crowdsourcing

Are a million heads better than one?

Empowered by the internet, the phenomenon of crowdsourcing (that’s getting someone else to do all the heavy lifting) has been building for a while now. It often takes the form of a design competition and many in the design community argue such contests devalue the role of design, and encourage us to settle for work of a lower than professional standard. Maybe, but that’s not very punk or creative in spirit.

The Moving Brands agency, who took part in the free pitch to create a new identity for London, made crowdsourcing work for it with gusto.

They opened up their pitch online, encouraging the public to get involved and post their own ideas. A canny and engaging approach: canny because it builds consensus rather than acting as a remote designer bastion of “proper” design, and engaging because it feels so full-blooded and energetic. It got the agency global coverage and 40,000 extra hits. Sadly this crowdsourcing within a crowdsourcing (for what else is free pitching?) failed to get them shortlisted.

Another example from this year was Australian super brand Vegemite.

For the first time since its birth 85 years ago, the brand looked to create a product variant to meet the conclusion of 300,000 antipodeans that they need a more spreadable version which doesn’t require butter. Vegemite went back to its roots: in 1923, a national naming competition was held in Australia to put a name to the yeast extract spread. The winner was Vegemite, though initial poor sales led to the company renaming it “Pharwill” for just one year in 1928!

The winner in 2009’s contest? Vegemite iSnack2.0. I kid you not.

While the winning name speaks volumes for the Aussie sense of humour, those precious designers moaning about standards might have a point. Still, it sold over three million jars in its first three months.

35

Technology with soul

Why do so many cool gadgets look ten-a-penny?

The design and presentation of electronic products is commonly so visually “now” and slick that it’s interchangeable. It wasn’t always this way…

Designed by Ettore Sotsass in the sixties, the tomato red Valentine was the iMac of its day, bringing design flair to a product conventionally functional and grey. The advertising posters are classics of their kind, still cropping up regularly in design museums, art galleries and best-of lists. Such a beautiful product could afford to use a soft sell, but the posters evoked a wonderfully eccentric nature in keeping with a thought leader brand.

It’s hard to think of any premium-tech communication around today that has such distinctive spirit. We’ve become a bit worthy and joyless in the way we market premium products. In these austere times, perhaps the onus is on branding to cheer us all up a bit more, rather than defaulting to interchangeable soulless “designer” visual clichés such as elegantly photographed products on gloss mirrored surfaces. The opportunity is ripe for a more idiosyncratic approach that breaks the mould.

So this year’s limited edition Vivienne Tam HP laptop (left) is inspiring.

While “designer decorated” editions are becoming commonplace, this one has a nice twist – it’s being marketed as the first digital clutch.

What a neat idea. And what a memorable one.

36

The inevitable tweet

140 characters on Twitter What can I say about Twitter in 140 characters? Not much.

Twitter grew and captivated the media and energised the web, but is yet to make mo

Twitter enabled brands to strike up new conversations and forge closer links with customers. Scott Monty brings a personal voice to Ford, reminding customers of the company’s credentials and making it real at a time of unprecedented pressure. Meanwhile Innocent Drinks transition their communications effortlessly from the label to social media.

37

Peer recommendation

Are amateurs more influential than experts?

The Vogue brand is built on expert opinion and excellent art direction.

Polyvore (www.polyvore.com), on the other hand, is a user generated online fashion magazine full of user generated content.

Essentially, fashion fans click and drag images they like from other sites to create collages or “sets”. Readers then click on the items shown and are taken to the websites that sell them. But the New York Times reports that expert-free Polyvore got almost 25% more unique visitors than Vogue’s style.com in June, and its audience has tripled in a year. Revenue comes from commission on sales and, increasingly, tie-ins with brands, but the site’s appeal comes from facilitating browsing rather than buying.

Polyvore is indicative of a host of significant trends, including consumers favouring peer opinion over the expert equivalent and jumping at the chance to be creative. But more importantly, here we have a live trend indicator. We all know what’s on the catwalk this season will filter down to the high street in short order. But Polyvore is a barometer of what’s really clicking with consumers. Research is generally expensive, actively sourced and managed by experts.

Could crowdsourcing content on sites such as Polyvore challenge this model? For example, live data can tell brands what’s hot in which region, informing their distribution strategy.

Fashion online is no longer just a matter of guiding the public’s tastes but also of tracking their desires.

Two great examples of how Sharpie is getting consumers to celebrate their creativity (and provide content for the brand).

38

Advocacy

Turning consumers into advocates Putting brands on Facebook might sound like a lame idea, but Coke, who have the most popular brand page, can claim over three and a half million “friends”. Not only that, but they didn’t have to lift a finger, as the page was originally created by a couple of Coke enthusiasts.

Meanwhile Sharpie, the American pen brand, took things to a whole new cross-platform level by using their online presence to showcase lots of consumer creativity using their products. This is a really neat idea, as it exploits connections to other sites, puts the consumer at the centre of the story, takes minimal effort, creates buzz, inspires different product usage and best of all, positions the brand as selling creativity rather than pens.

Opposite are two examples from their “uncapped gallery” of things that have been given a good Sharpie.

It’s also interesting to see how the site uses social media brands like YouTube and Flickr and builds its own brand site out of them.

This is the way online is going, with the most connected pages being the ones that effectively channel-surf across all the other cool stuff available. What such an approach sacrifices in terms of control it more than makes up for in engagement with the online community.

THE HARVEY NICHOLS

SALE

S TA R T S 2 7 D E C E M B E R

39

Everything for nothing

Is the future free?

One “Big Idea” book to catch hype in 2009 was Wired editor Chris Anderson’s Free: the future of a radical price. Anderson’s observation is that “information products” (most stuff available online from music to news) are increasingly driving a trend for goods being given away (or stolen) and this in turn is creating a new paradigm for economics. A glance at the state of the newspaper industry would bear this out.

It’s always harder to value something that is given away: look at all those free papers littering the London Underground. And it’s not just in the virtual world that we are expecting more for less: constant discounting of household brands is levelling brand perceptions.

Many “premium” brands are in reality permanently sold on deal.

Their image held strong while extra effort was invested in smarter physicals and so on, but when the investment ended their stock quickly fell. If a brand is essentially an idea attached to a product, the idea needs to be cherished and constantly polished to ensure the intellectual property continues to be valued. Failing to do this drives products into being commodities, and commodities are sold on price not prestige. To this point both Harrods and Harvey Nichols are very clever at making a sale look like a prestigious event rather than a bargain bazaar.

Little in life is truly free. Anderson’s book, somewhat in the face of his theory, is analogue information retailing at £9.49 on Amazon.

Its also taken flak for some factual errors sourced in the less trustworthy waters of free information online. Which speaks volumes.

The move from vinyl covers to CD jewel case formats led to the death of the glory days of music branding and the dumbing down of the designs – there was no longer a reason or platform for sumptuous covers. Electronic books take this to another level.

First Kindle, then the Sony Reader, and then the Nook, Barnes & Noble’s response to Amazon: just one example of how technology is changing the game, but not necessarily to design’s advantage.

Such electronic books lack the canvas and ability for design nuance that the old analogue versions offered. As the media become more synthetic will the need for design that works simply and small (yet does so with soul) become both more urgent and challenging?

40

Coding

Barcodes with personality This year marked the thirty-fifth anniversary of the first commercial appearance of a barcode (at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio).

With the data matrix “square” generation of barcodes soon to supplant the original, and other pretenders waiting in the wings (see opposite), it might not be long before those ubiquitous stripes disappear.

A moment then to reflect on the notion that even a pack’s most functional elements can offer creative opportunities. For example, Esquire magazine has been quietly playing with its barcode for a while, tailoring it to each month’s big feature. Having a little fun is a great way to imbue a brand with soul, and all the better for being left for the reader to discover rather than being telegraphed.

Meanwhile, at £3 a pop, Bokodes are not the future just yet. But a version that doesn’t require a powered LED is in development and is expected to cost just five cents. For this investment you get a tiny dot which can be read obliquely from up to twenty metres by mobile phones. The Bokode can send out complex information, find a particular product on a crowded shelf, and even transmit little films.

So far, so Minority Report. But as developer Dr Mohan puts it, “[the box] could say hey look at me, I’m a dollar cheaper”. Given the creative potential of the new wonder-code, I hope brands take the opportunity to convey more poetic or engaging sentiments.

Otherwise consumers will be left with the high-tech equivalent of a shelf wobbler.

41

Silent movies

The moving brand As a good example of how the web is changing the way brands and categories behave, the fashion industry appears to be shifting its focus to events and moving images. Gareth Pugh, Yves Saint Laurent’s Stefano Pilate and Viktor & Rolf have all experimented with video virtual shows over the last few seasons. Live feeds from catwalks have become events in themselves. Still photographs capture time and place, paying back to the brand over decades and can be considered art. Filmed catwalk shows have yet to reach this level, but productions are growing in presentational and narrative sophistication, and this trend will accelerate as they become the dominant communication medium.

From moving posters on the underground to animated home pages and apps showing brands in motion, technology favours brands that can express themselves in animated rather than static contexts.

It’s not hard to imagine that in the near future new packaging design will need to prove itself not just on shelf, but in how the branding can be successfully used in a moving off-pack context. These are chicken and egg times for designers.

From top: Moët bottles encrusted with personalised messages in Swarovski crystals by the “Moët atelier”, the new Douglas Coupland novel whose cover can be redesigned online before purchase and Nespresso’s huge range of coffee blends which makes an online order essentially a customised experience.

42

Customisation

Can FMCG offer personalised branding?

Personalised editions were a big trend for premium brands in 2009: With Brabantia’s Colour Your Bin programme offering a choice of 200 colours to match your kitchen and Havaianas offering their flip flops in 200 colours with accessorisation in Selfridges. We’ve come a long way from Henry Ford’s “any colour as long as it’s black.”

A “limited edition of just one, just for you” approach is engaging and relevant for thought leader brands that can command a robust price, but is it an avenue open to less high-end FMCG brands with tiny margins?

With digital printing it’s feasible to custom-print certain FMCG packaging in-store but this seems a bit OTT: would you bother queuing for a personalised chocolate bar? However, the possibilities open up online. M&M’s let you choose bespoke sweet colours and add personalised messages, showing that even the humblest of products can access the trend. MyMuesli.com allows you (should you be really rock’n’roll) to custom mix your own blend of muesli to order.

Freed from the need to function within the practical requirements of a shop shelf (standout, navigation, appetite appeal and so on) brands bought online can be liberated to become truly visually iconic.

I want my Corn Flakes to feature just the rooster, with my choice of journalist writing on the back of pack.

If packs are tailored to the person ordering them, there’s no more direct form of marketing. 10,000 days ago few had home computers, “videogames” were exclusively for boys and Starbucks sounded exotic.

In the next 10,000 days is it too fantastical to imagine everyday packaging that’s especially designed for us as individuals?

43

Reinvention

New media, new messages Does the lady opposite look good to you? She should, she’s the face of Estée Lauder Profile Picture Makeovers for your social network page. Here’s a fantastic analogue solution for the digital age: Estée Lauder are offering free in-store makeovers and a photograph of the results so you can upgrade your Facebook profile picture.

What’s so clever? Selling the same old basic promotional activity but exploiting the huge new need for decent pictures. So, what do you already do that can be recycled into smart online applications – and lots of free PR?

Odds and Ends: some notes from the margins

I was going to call this section “In the News”, but that seemed rather grand for the kind of stories that had mostly graced the marketing press and the blogosphere, but touched few real people’s lives.

Nevertheless, some of this wool-gathering was quite interesting – the Pringles court case in particular offered a rather philosophical approach to the question of whether a brand is more than the sum of its ingredients.

Intellectual noodling was much in evidence in 2009, from the widely decried strategic setup for the evolution of the Pepsi logo to debate over the merits of Nestlé’s adoption of oriental philosophy Kansei to inform its innovation process. Perhaps all this post hoc rationalising and philosophising was indicative of a general paranoia that the work can’t speak for itself. Does adding a TM to a process make it more valuable? Or is this trend for dressing up clear thinking with fancy process beginning to wear thin?

Vs

44

Defining the essence of a brand

Pringle or potato?

We all intuitively get what brands are, and for me the more academic explanations overlook the fact that branding is a feeling as much as a formula. Despite spending years talking and reading about what brands are, it’s actually quite nice working day in and day out on something that remains rather hard to sum up. “A brand is an idea attached to a product” is the most succinct and useful definition of branding I know, but I don’t think it would have helped Pringles’ lawyers...

P&G lost a UK court case wherein it aimed to avoid Pringles being defined as a potato product (preferring to proclaim that the snack was 33% fat and flour!) in an attempt to avoid spud-related taxation.

The judge noted the elusiveness of product definition: did Pringles have the “essence of potato?” Yes, he decided, they do. Defining the essence of things goes to the heart of what branding does.

Court cases aside, P&G’s managers can console themselves that Pringles defines itself in a league of one. The combination of product, branding and pack format ensure that for most consumers it is, at essence, a Pringle, not a crisp. That’s equity beyond value – value which will outlast the lawyers’ demeaning deconstruction of the product.

45

Proving a design’s worth

Is your research too efficient?

The Citroën DS (pronounced déesse, French for “goddess”) was relaunched in 2009 – a predictable move following the success of the new VW Beetle, BMW Mini and Fiat 500. A thought occurs: all the originals of these cars have beautiful, charming lines which presumably pre-date designs that were informed by product testing in wind tunnels.

The wind tunnel effectively shaved all the interesting bits off car designs in the name of greater efficiency. We gained better cars, but duller, more conventional brands.

Is FMCG research a little like a wind tunnel? Research is meant to ensure that designs perform efficiently for as many consumers as possible. In the process, the kind of quirks that provoke criticism from Joe Average get shaved away, even though these features often appeal to the opinion-forming, design-savvy consumers who will become early adopters. Highly researched designs may offend nobody, but they can also generate products that nobody can really love either.

With the rule of thumb that nine out of ten innovation projects fail, a design which provokes no particular emotion is probably doomed.

Obviously the topic of design research is a complex one, but taking a step back, perhaps it should not be used to value good numbers over a good feeling? And less fluffily, it’s important to remember that the jury’s not the judge – that’s the brand manager’s job.

Opposite: so nice we’ve shown her twice

!

(After Mark Wallinger’s 2009 self-portrait.)

46

Self-promotion

“Brand Me” is nothing new Anyone who has “self-branded” via LinkedIn, Facebook or, heaven forbid, a blog, might want to pause for a moment before congratulating themselves for being so progressive, and consider a couple of earlier experts in the art of self promotion. Before writing about the fastidious James Bond, Fleming first lived the part: like Bond’s, his cigarettes were specially made for him at Moorlands of Grosvenor Street. And when Fleming was promoted to commander in naval intelligence he upgraded his cigarettes’ branding from one to three gold bands, in line with his new rank. Another expert in the art of self-promotion was founding father of modern advertising David Ogilvy, who affected a dramatic cape with scarlet lining to add a certain creative flair to his image.

However, coming up to date, Peter York wrote on the phenomenon of ‘brand me’ for Intelligent Life, noting that all the help available to individuals seeking to polish their “personal brand” is creating a workforce of airbrushed clones, and soon it will be one’s idiosyncrasies that command a premium in the job market.

Ogilvy and Fleming hailed from an era when personal style was just that, showing us that self-branding is nothing new, and that it’s possible to make memorable gestures far from the rather generic world of digital “social networking”. Will anyone still be talking about your LinkedIn profile in fifty years’ time?

en l Ow

hae Mic

d ran

-B

thy

eal

&H

s

es

u Val

l sfu ng

Glo

Ent

tic ias

d cte spe

lish

Sty

hus

Asp

t lien

i Res

ol Co

en Ow ael l ich rcia - M me eal com app uge ited ers h atic e lim off hav and rism a ple ies Ch ted peo tegor ula c i orts ca for.

Art l sp e of ays al sh nic ona ng pl e h r ssi e ra r he Tec &F rofe wid eve an tive g n st p in a ho i Cle inc Mo res to w ook nst L I al sco nefits od ion Go irat be bal Fit

las tC Firs

s cce Su

47

Celebrity endorsement

Why people are not brands Brands, it is often said, are like people. Considering the hype over the potential “rebrand” of Andy Murray by celebrity minders 19 Management, one questions the truth of this analogy. Firstly, people are not as malleable as products: no amount of polishing and rebooting will give Murray the looks or charm of David Beckham.

In advertising he appears a little stiff, and on court he often looks mardy. A new logo on his shorts is not going to change this inherent grumpiness. Whereas branding that’s spiky is effective, since it’s better to provoke strong reactions in consumers than be so bland as to be overlooked, we’re less forgiving of people’s foibles.

Hence the carping about this “I’d support anyone against the English in soccer” Scot selling the quintessentially English Fred Perry emblem.

What makes Murray an interesting person makes him a challenging brand to sell.

Meanwhile, Michael Owen’s management took the whole “person as brand” to its logical conclusion. Setting out his stall for potential brand fits in a dreary, corporate manner, one can’t help thinking it all looked a lot more fun in Jerry Maguire. But while people are not brands, they can stand as emblems for the zeitgeist. In many pundits’ roundups of the significant icons of the noughties, Victoria Beckham was named as the individual who best visually shorthanded the celebrity-obsessed big glasses and bag culture of our times. Not bad for someone who as a girl stated her ambition as being “to be as famous as Persil Automatic”.

A sample of the strategy which surrounded Pepsi’s re-branding.

48

Overthinking

Have we all lost our nerve?

The “leaked PDF” of an agency presentation for the new Pepsi logo promoted the new design as the culmination of the entire history of western art, and “scientifically” mapped the logo’s gravitational pull.

It was so beyond the pale that it was denounced as an elaborate hoax satirising the worst kind of design self-aggrandisement. (It was also suspected of being a brilliant viral ad.)

In truth, most agencies place their work in a larger cultural context, and reference the design theory they are applying. And with such a costly project as the Pepsi brand-mark coming down, in real terms, to debating the merits of a tweaked coloured circle, you can see why the results required a little substantiation. But any design presentation buried in such volumes of “visual planning” justification should raise client suspicions, because it betrays a lack of confidence in the actual design. After all the waffle, design, in the real world, simply “is”.

Meanwhile Nestlé announced their adoption of a new design methodology, based on the Japanese philosophy of Kansei.

This approach uses consumers’ feelings about a product early in the design process to inform the solution. Take away the fancy name and oriental philosophy and are we not left with the less original thought of using research to inform the brief? The annexation of Kansei also exposes marketers’ lack of faith in designers’ ability to just “get it” – or, perhaps more tellingly, in marketers’ own abilities to judge the merits of good work. An expensive mini-industry has been founded on devising new methods (scientific and otherwise) of trying to quantify, structure and rationalise the design process. But these processes risk smothering the elusive sparks of inspiration really great design throws up from time to time. Real leaps forward require a bit of space. A (likely apocryphal) story has the exasperated Laurence Olivier suggesting to Dustin Hoffman, as the latter agonised over his craft, “try acting, dear boy”.

Annie Hall

1977

Interiors Stardust Memories A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy Zelig Broadway Danny Rose The Purple Rose of Cairo Hannah and Her Sisters Radio Days September Crimes and Misdemeanors Shadows and Fog Husbands and Wives Manhattan Murder Mystery Bullets Over Broadway Mighty Aphrodite Everyone Says I Love You Deconstructing Harry Celebrity Sweet and Lowdown Small Time Crooks The Curse of the Jade Scorpion Cassandra’s Dream

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

2009

49

Doing nothing

Woody Allen: the world’s smartest client When the titles for a Woody Allen film come up, chances are, from the early seventies to this year’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, they are white out of black and set in the font Windsor. Personable but also smart looking, for the fans these titles signal they are on familiar ground.

The continuity over decades of work has created a true sense of brand. But Allen’s alleged logic for choosing consistency over fashion is both brilliant and practical: why invest $200,000 of his budget in re-inventing something new every time, when what he’s got already works?

It may sound like an odd view for a design company to applaud, but before changing any design, it pays to ask what’s wrong with it.

That said, the exception (and one of Allen’s greatest opening sequences) comes from Manhattan, where the title is actually a real sign on the side of a building. It’s a break with Windsor – but hey, he only had to point his camera at the right word. So not only is Allen canny, he’s also open to a great new solution when it presents itself. Top marks for proving there are savvy ways to make the most of budgets without sacrificing quality when belts are tight.

approved

original (see the boobs?)

true original

50

Reviewing work

Taking liberties Marianne, personification of liberty and the French republic since the eighteenth century, has been adopted by French Tourism in a “re-branding of France” (with a Matisse-style star thrown in for good measure). What’s revealing – in more ways than one – is the original version of the logo rejected the previous summer.

Putting yourself in the client’s position, which version would you back? The original works far better graphically, is less bland and more memorable. It is also more on-brief – the aim was to create a logo which evoked “liberty, authenticity and sensuality”.

And, after all, bared breasts were not too outré for the famous Delacroix painting of Liberty in 1830.

However, the more demure approved version avoids provoking thoughts of “ooh la-la” clichés that the original might have triggered.

I’m not sure if the client’s decision was cowardly or prudent.

But a decent rule of thumb for such choices is, if you don’t have the conviction to back what makes the creative execution interesting, tinkering with it risks robbing it of any meaning. Sometimes it’s better to challenge the designers to take a fresh approach rather than to water down a good design to an average one.

51

Style du jour

Faux folk – the style of ’09 The lifestyle and homeware brands which dictate/reflect our tastes have a big influence on design in general, including branding.

So the opening of US homewares store Anthropologie in London is not insignificant. Everything in the store has a one-off artistic quality, but it’s a chain store with chain store prices. As you can see from the examples opposite, it fits the “pinny porn” fanciful make-do-andmend pigeonhole – indeed, the winsome rolling pin would be my nomination for the design artefact which sums up 2009.

Anthropologie’s stock conjures up in my mind a car boot sale entirely of Sir Peter Blake’s cast-offs, and I mean this as a compliment to both the artist and the store. But it’s also indicative of the way the de-mac, hand-whittled trend is moving, from a resurgence in the use of drawing, to a kind of faux folk decorative feel. In addition to consumers seeking comfort from famous homely brands in the downturn, there is much evidence that at a boutique level things are becoming more decorative, offering a warmer alternative to designer minimalism. The evidence that much the same is happening in food packaging can be seen from a cursory scroll through packaging blogs, and it won’t be long before this style infuses more mainstream FMCG packaging. If one were looking for a hot design recruit right now, perhaps Ukrainian grandmothers would be a good place to start.

52

Distinctivity

Is Brad Pitt a fishfinger?

We often use the example of fishfinger packaging to illustrate the point that certain elements of a design are generic rather than ownable.

If you over-rely on a lovely shot of a fishfinger, you are likely to look generic, and vulnerable to the competition taking a nicer photo.

Film posters for different genres have their own category conventions, and there’s doubtless proof that by following these rules they appeal to more of their particular target market. In the case of, say, rom coms, where there’s a new one out every Friday, it makes sense not to buck the trend. Rom coms are weekly staples from the “basics” range, and they say as much in their standardised packaging: man, woman, white background, sans serif font, red and black type.

Garnish with Jennifer Aniston or Sandra Bullock.

On the other hand, some films supposedly have more brand equity.

Tarantino movies are hotly anticipated by his fan base, and in the past his posters have had a distinctive quality that marks them out as maverick and independent of spirit. The Reservoir Dogs image became almost as imitated as the one for Trainspotting, while Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill put versions of Uma Thurman on a million students’ walls. But 2009’s Inglourious Basterds looks like a carbon copy of Valkyrie, itself a pale imitation of the Reservoir Dogs look.

Fishfinger Pitt replaces fishfinger Cruise and the Tarantino brand slips into the background. The original posters for the film have the nasty but arresting qualities of a Sven Hassel paperback cover, and fit the film’s content well. They were probably dropped because they would be seen as inciting inner city youth to acts of mayhem.

Quite right too.

Following well understood graphic codes is going to help people choose you. But adopting clichés will fail to get people to remember you.

On the evidence of these posters, with an over-reliance on the fishfinger in the design, brand Tarantino’s position is slipping from speciality to commodity.

10

predictions 2010

2008

2009

2010

2011

Trends don’t keep themselves to neat calendar years: they tend to be more like waves, picking up momentum in one year, changing shape over another, and crashing on to the shore in the next, to be followed by the another one. So, for example, sustainability filled the marketing press two years ago, but with precious few tangible examples of activity, and many corporate promises. This past year has seen the actual work appearing, and next year will see more sophisticated and nuanced solutions, before collective attention turns to some other hot topic.

Rather than just picking some trends out of the hat, for the first five predictions in this section I am recycling the predictions we made at the beginning of 2009 as a starting point, recapping what actually happened, and projecting them into 2010. The remaining five are new thoughts that will be proved true or false by the twelve months ahead...

Still in recovery

Survival of the fittest We predicted 2009 as the year supermarkets imbued their own offerings with more distinctive brand values, thereby replacing “proper” brands in consumers’ hearts and minds. But we also noted that the brands best placed to weather the storm would be those which have a point of distinction beyond their price: “Design which evokes a brand’s soul, and focuses on what makes it different from the herd can transcend rational price comparisons.”

Looking at all those ads from brands evoking their idiosyncratic pasts, our prediction that brands’ souls would be valuable assets proved spot-on. But we were wrong about supermarkets: they instead entered whatever the value-for-money comms equivalent of an arms race is. By year’s end only Waitrose might be said to have made a big shift in consumer perceptions with its massively successful essentials range.

Next year expect more of the same – unless no.2 and no.3 brands can differentiate and stand for something, private label alternatives will step into their place to make it a straight shoot-out between the no.1 brand and the supermarket own brand. Soul, the dramatisation of brand truth, and behaviour (be it sponsorship, CSR policy or innovation) is going to become more and more important for brands selling both their personality and their product. Ben & Jerry’s limited edition celebrating gay marriage is perhaps an early indicator of FMCG brands taking a less mainstream but more engaging approach.

Brand me

Self-promotion comes of age We noted that online networking is moving out of its infancy both in terms of design sophistication and as a credible means of self-promotion. As competition for jobs increases, “self-branding” is becoming a more creative art and science. How long, we wondered, until an individual produces self-promotion so good that it is a worthwhile destination as an end in itself? And how long before this DIY medium establishes conventions which directly influence and inspire the mainstream?

The growth of t’interweb’s influence continues, though that’s hardly a prediction, just a fact: LinkedIn has more than 50 million users worldwide, of whom approximately half are in the United States.

And this years D&AD did feature a fantastic piece of self-promotion where a guy turned himself into his own brand, with identity guidelines to match (opposite).

But we failed to predict the real evolution this year – not individuals creatively acting like brands, but brands creatively acting like people.

We have talked quite a bit about this in the technology section, but social media is going to become a key pillar of any creative initiative.

We are taking packaging briefs which have to factor in how the on-pack design and behaviour can act as a springboard to online activity.

It’s just another way in which brands are going to have to operate at an eye-to-eye personal level, rather than talking down to consumers from a remote pedestal.

In a world of bland ‘brand me’ this chap took things to their logical and absurd conclusion with his personal set of guidelines.

hey Jude don’t

make it bad

take a sad song and make it better

be afraid

you were made to go out and get her

let me down

you have found her, now go and get her

let her into your heart

remember to let her under your skin

then you

can start to make it better

begin

better better better better better waaaaa

na This diagram (designed by Danny Garcia) is just one of many displaying the playful adoption of information graphics conventions.

It’s an under-exploited approach ripe for more imaginative adoption in FMCG back of pack.

Number crunching

A new lexicon of information graphics We predicted that in a world of 24 hour news analysis of the downturn, there would only be so many times we could see red arrows pointing down and graph-lines descending before we glazed over. Jaded readers and designers would look for fresh ways of presenting the same (repetitive) figures. We hoped that a need to repackage the same information in new ways would lead to a golden age of information graphics.

We were partially right – papers such as The Guardian have had a purple patch where comparative information set out colourfully and graphically became a key part of their identity. And diagrams such as “what does a trillion dollars actually look like?” began life on the internet and started popping up everywhere in the mainstream press – mind-bogglingly big numbers required big ideas to explain them.

Tag clouds were everywhere this summer. But there was much more than this.

2009 also saw a popular renaissance in the use of diagrams (one opposite) to subvert the dry nature of information graphics and make playful, engaging points. In a world of over-information from insurance to nutrition, it’s fair to say this is an often overlooked branding tool that can be more proactively used to breathe life into dreary back of pack claims ladders. We predict 2010 will see a resurgence of brands utilising the cut-through power of information graphics.

Life’s little pleasures

Poverty or luxury?

We foresaw a reaction to value range austerity and the basic nature of much sustainable packaging with a countertrend celebrating the premium and the frivolous. As in the economic doldrums of the eighties, when conspicuous consumption was a buzzword and “reassuringly expensive” lager and the like offered a brief and affordable antidote to the overall grey austerity of the era, pleasure would become a valued commodity in ’09. As the first post of this book makes clear, this came to pass for brands such as Marc Jacobs, Swatch and Cath Kidston.

We foresaw a knottier problem facing the luxury brands: how to offer budget ranges that preserve market share while avoiding tarnishing their glittering images in the longer term? As it turned out, “mass premium” brands fell between two stools, but some luxury brands did all right: LVMH are always a good yardstick when it comes to luxury goods and their performance proves this is the case.

According to The Economist, two divisions – wine and spirits, watches and jewellery – were the worst affected as their revenues each fell by 17% and their profits by 41% and 73% respectively. It seems when times are hard people can do without three-figure bottles of whisky and put off the purchase of four-figure watches. What they can’t live without, it would seem, is their Louis Vuitton bag. In fact Vuitton always gains market share in crises as people opt for a few classic items over many items from lesser designers. The continued existence of luxury customers could be seen in the inclusion in this year’s Neiman Marcus Christmas catalogue of a personal play plane (for the man who has everything but a carbon footprint conscience).

Prediction for 2010: the polarization will continue. But that’s not to suggest we’re a society of haves and have-nots; it’s more that consumers will be happier to buy well presented basics ranges, but unwilling to live without some outer trappings of luxury which many of us have come to expect as our right.

Obama’s first initiatives looked like they would create an impressive design legacy. But all good things inspire inferior imitations...

Civil leadership

Any Obama effect?

With his “Change” and “Hope” posters now safely enshrined as one of the decade’s most famous and successful pieces of branding, like many we were excited to see the changes a charismatic new president would bring to our own particular sphere. Referencing the FDR New Deal era, which was rich in brilliantly branded civil programmes, and the excellent branding that had helped get him elected, we hoped for great things. Like many, we were somewhat over-optimistic. There was some evidence of nice identities for new initiatives (opposite), but not much. It was encouraging to see the top guy present design work, but one feels he’s had a bigger job worrying about conveying an image of substance to want too much distracting stylistic veneer getting in the way.

As for the UK, with an election in the wings we can expect to see the parties dusting off their logos, and probably endeavouring to learn lessons from the Obama campaign’s contemporary approach.

This year’s “straight-talking-kinda” logo for “Cameron Direct” – it’d make a nice new livery for an upstart estate agent – suggests the attempts might be a little cringeworthy.

From catwalk to checkout, this year was mostly wearing white.

Colour and aesthetics

Bright and cheerful Last January, quoting Pantone’s colour predictions for spring "09 we foresaw a bright year ahead: “fashion designers encourage hopeful attitudes with lively colours, while sophisticated, grounded hues address the need for stability in times of economic uncertainty”.

But we both failed to guess just how important white would be in ’09, from economy food packaging to a spring collection by Lagerfeld for Chanel that heralded “the new austerity.” And have you noticed how many white Fiat 500’s there suddenly seem to be on the road?

Nevertheless there was much evidence of cheerful and brightly coloured design this past year – severe minimalism seemed less appealing in such a tough year. Looking to 2010, we predict that this cheerfulness will continue to imbue brand design, with the slightly muted hand-drawn feel (that’s been the default style of ‘indie branding’) giving way to more exuberant folk-inspired patterns and stylings whose full-blooded colours and decoration breathe authenticity and humanity into designs with vigour and charm.

Pokerfaced “designer” seriousness is a bit out.

Storytelling

Spinning yarns The traditional approach: spend many an hour searching for brand truths, consumer insights and anything remotely interesting or quirky about the brand and its history. Great hooks deliver great branding – the founders of Innocent realised this and blew the P&J Smoothie brand out of the water. But there’s a new way of coming at things: who exactly is this bloke Sailor Jerry? He’s the guy young ’uns are asking for at the bar in preference to premium lager (with its established dates, brewery crest and other trappings of a “real” brand), that’s who.

He conjures up cool associations and the coming generation seem less fixated on facts which proclaim “authenticity” than they are on a good tale. In short, they are happier to get the story than the facts, and this opens up great creative potential for brand building.

The extent to which such self-mythologising is being taken is quite something – consider The Kraken Black Spiced Rum. Even before you get to the contents the packaging is sublime. It has a Kraken silver plastic seal with a black ribbon surrounding a beautifully designed cardboard box with images of the Kraken and other mysterious creatures of the sea. Inside the box you find a book, a limited edition poster, a Kraken tooth in a corked glass vial, custom-printed wrapping paper, a black feather and a pot of Kraken ink. The rum itself feels almost unnecessary! And, neatly for this observation, online the brand presents itself as a storybook.

Truth well told will be an enduringly strong approach, but imaginative content creation is opening up new vistas of design possibilities.

Flickr.com by Buero Wagenhaeuser.

Head over heart

Aldi bags in the Audi boot While one trend takes brand content down a path of imaginative storytelling whimsy, other consumers are taking a path as straight and rational as an autobahn. Aldi have been an unstoppable force in Germany for many years. Whether you have a Daewoo or an Audi sat on your driveway, Aldi is the place to go for your commodities.

It’s not about being cheap, it’s about being a “smart shopper”.

Why pay more for something like toilet roll when the cheaper Aldi alternative is just as good? It also allows people to spend their saved money on the brands they really care about.

Here in the UK such bargain supermarkets have not seen the same success across all consumer groups. “The consumer is not rational” is a mantra many subscribe to. However, with the credit crunch tightening our purse-strings we are arguably learning that savvy shopping is also smart shopping. Could it be that the U.K’s more affluent consumers’ buying behaviour is about to more closely match that of the rational Germans? It has happened in the clothing category already, where high style at bargain prices is worn as a badge of canniness to be admired by one’s peers. If so, brands are going to have to work harder than ever before at promoting their rational reasons to believe as well as championing the emotional attributes that transcend logical comparison.

We can expect point of sale to make creative and technological leaps in 2010. It’s time as a poor relation to above the line is coming to a close.

Point of sale

In-store: the new frontline With big media budgets slashed, 2010 may well be the year of in-store marketing as an increasing number of FMCG manufacturers wake up to its creative potential. The moment of truth at point of sale is hardly one overlooked by marketers, but along with packaging it is getting more and more scrutiny and strategic attention.

The age of the wobbler is being consigned to history and the fruits of many a brief laid down in 2009 are likely to see the light of day.

It’s probable that for advertising agencies in-store becomes the core of ambient campaigns. The example opposite suggests that our shopping experience might be about to become more entertaining (and even more visually cluttered...)

Opinionated consumers

The binary culture I thought I’d end this book of opinion with an observation on opinions.

“It rocks”/ “it sucks”. Everyone, as they say, is a critic. But the era of blogging and tweeting has made the criticism we consume brutally black and white. Everything from celebrities’ dress sense to a can of beer is reviewed, and the two default settings are “awful” and “awesome.”

The difference between being a zero and a hero can feel like it’s at the mercy of a Caesar’s thumb of public opinion. It’s irrelevant that most of the opinion shared is drivel – what matters is that it’s influential drivel. The facts suggesting that peer recommendation outweighs paid advertising are stacking up, and of course a well aimed put-down is far more memorable than any balanced review.

In his presentation a couple of years ago for TEDTalks, Seth Godin talked about how brands need to be “remarkable” to make an impression. By this he meant they need to do something unconventional in order to be, literally, remarked upon. And increasingly, in the brutal crucible of online consumer forums, nuance counts for little. Because the reviews are essentially snap judgments, any branding being premiered will need to go for the jugular with a bit of engaging razzle dazzle; remarkability will become a key weapon to ensure brands fall the right side of the binary divide. This will get a more positive immediate response than any amount of strategically smart but unarresting behaviour, most of which operates under the radar of the casual blogger. So do the right thing for the brand, but give it a sparkly sugar coating for the influential armchair critics.

One might read these words and glean a sense that branding, in common with much in culture, will be dumbing down. But to be more glass-half-full, an imperative for remarkable gestures will hopefully result in plenty of remarkable work. That points to a bright (and shiny) future...

Thank you for reading.

Please feel free to recycle the thinking, or even better, pass this book on...

M

RECY

C

A

P

D

•

•

100%

LED

NAP

The paper in this book is accredited:

PROVE

Acknowledgements My thanks to Paul May for his enthusiastic editing and advice upon these pages. Thanks also to Sarah Lloyd for many smart suggestions, not all of which I was smart enough to take.

David Mann, Andrew David, Reena Pindoria and Lisa Stillman all deserve credit for the contributions they have made respectively to the design, artwork, re-touching and production of the book.

And thanks to Kate Askey for year "round copy checking.

My especial gratitude goes to Amy Maw, for her tireless and good natured toil. Without her the Design Gazette would not make it to the internet each day, nor would this book have reached your hands.

Onwards !

The jkr Design Gazette will continue to offer thoughts on topics that catch our eye most working days in 2010. Please join us at: www.jkr.co.uk/design-gazette/

If you have any feedback, questions or notions inspired by these pages, please contact silasamos@jkr.co.uk or andrewknowles@jkr.co.uk.

A “lecture” version of this book is available should you wish us to present to your team. Allow an hour.

All text in this book is the copyright of jones knowles ritchie.

Copyright for all images and trademarks remain with the legal owner.

©

2009

Is Brad Pitt a fishfinger ?

What does Whistler’s mother have to do with branding for the downturn? Just because something is cheap does it have to look basic? Is it possible to be stylishly sustainable? Are a million heads better than one? What can Hemingway’s six best words teach us?

Why can some brands get away with murder? How can you avoid your product becoming rubbish? Has product placement gone through the looking glass? Is indie branding a busted flush? Can co-branding be greater than the sum of its parts? Is the future free? Are amateurs more influential than experts? Is your research too efficient?

Part snapshot review of 2009, part trend analysis for the year ahead, this anthology from the jkr Design Gazette offers design literate observations and opinions on effective branding.