Russell Davies

nothing changes

It was one of the Queen's 80th birthday's last week so The Times did a reproduction of the paper from the day she was born. Not much has changed. Political coverage is largely identical to today and so are the ads. Or at least the strategies. I thought this was interesting. We puff on about innovative strategic hoo-hah but most of what we do is identical to strategies in use 80 years ago, or probably since the dawn of time/commerce.

Very little's changed here. You see ads like this all the time.

I like the fact that one of the reasons cited for buying a British car is that they're uniquely suited to British driving conditions. (Steering wheel placement is important for a start.)

You probably couldn't get away with saying 'medium-powered car' these days. You'd have to say something like venti-powered. Or high power to weight ratio. Or GTI.

Proper snob appeal. But for salt?

One thing I love is the modesty and reasonableness of the claims. 'Fashionable hats at moderate prices'. Who wouldn't want that. None of the modern hype that enables Chrylser to say something like it's not just a car, it's a Chrysler. (Or something, I saw a poster, I don't really remember it.)

naval repositioning

Just reading this splendid tome and found two good entries for Richard's legendary repositionings competition.

1. Admiral Sir Edward Vernon - from rum as cause of drunkenness to rum as a cause of half-soberness

1700s. Vernon was responsible for some naval operations in 'the Americas'. The navy had always had problems with discipline there due to much shore-leave and easy availablity of rum. He decided that rather than trying to forbid his men rum he would instead give them free grog (half rum, half water). This meant that they would only be half-drunk. Which was better than completely drunk. Strategic genius.

2. William Pitt - the oceans don't divide up the British Empire, they unite it

Again 1700s. The way the British Empire was scattered all over the globe had always been seen as a problem by politicians and strategists. The Empire was connected by thin, fragile supply lines that had to be continually protected by the Navy - as opposed to the more compact Empires of some of our rivals. Pitt simply reimagined the oceans as oppotunities not problems (he should have been an account guy). He made the Empire's spread-outness an advantage - it meant we had bases all over the world from which to operate and the connectedness of the oceans gave the Navy vast playing fields on which to wage war and support British interests.

a message to all my readers

get ready for Chinese design

This splendid little Buddah Machine arrived yesterday. It's like a transistor radio permanently tuned into the same few ambient tracks. More info here, here and here. It's very pleasing.

But the packaging was interesting too. It made me realise that we're about to start receiving contemporary Chinese design and hybrids of Chinese/Western design in the same way that Japanese design suddenly became prominent here through video games and consumer electronics.

It's going to be interesting times.

when you're five...

There's nothing better than standing on posts.

Except maybe hide and seek.

library time

I always thought the Account Planning School of the Web library was a good idea but we've let it drift into sadness recently. So I'm going to try and give it another bit of a kick start.

I've built a Squidoo lens that lists all the available books. Or you can see them at this flickr group.

The flickr group is annotated so you can see the location of each book. Hopefully. If we keep it up to date. I'm happy to pay postage to you, but you have to pay for it to come back, or, ideally, on to the next person. And you have to send a decent (at least 500 word) review that we can post with the book.

Iain Tate has also contributed some of his books to the pile, I hope he's still up for this. (But Iain, let me know if you're not). If you want to contribute some of your own just add them to the flickr group and we can spread love and co-operation throughout the planning community. Then we can move on to world peace.

And can everybody who's already got a book email me and let me know, or leave a comment here, because i've slightly lost track.

Also, if you want to see all the APSotW posts on one long page you can just go to schooloftheweb.net.

Trevor Horn is God

If, like me, you were 16 in 1982 you will worship this man, Trevor Horn, as a God. And there was a suitably God-like documentary about him on Radio 2 this week. You can still listen to it here (scroll down a bit) but I don't get the impression it'll be there for long. (I have an MP3 if you want to email me.)

it reminds you that he changed the face of music multiple times by being funny, imaginative and deeply perfectionist about the tiny details. It's all in here: Malcolm McClaren, the World's Famous Supreme Team, Dollar, Buggles, Fairlights, Go-Go, ABC, The Frankies, The Blockheads, that orchestral stab, whizz-bangs, 808s, Yes (Jon Anderson's bizarre speaking voice being a particular highlight) and then it goes slightly flat with Seal. But you've got to listen.

the 'driving along a road' experience

There's a genius post at Re-Imagineering about the multiple perils of sponsorship, branded content and all that guff.

They talk about the earlier days at Disney, when guest satisfaction was priority number one and, though they accepted sponsorship, they didn't let the sponsor's message get in the way of the experience/story. A balance a lot of channels are trying to strike these days (including me).

But then they talk about the dark days when they lost site of that priority and built Test Track at Epcott for GM - a kind of World Of General Motors.

I think I've been to this, and the description rings a bell - an unconvincing, headache inducing reconstruction of a testing facility followed by an uncanny simulcrum of the experience of 'driving along a road'.

This is the perfect archtype of so many branded experiences. They succeed in accurately re-creating the genuine brand experience and in doing so reveal that the brand is deeply tedious and un-inspiring.  This is one of the great advantage of television advertising, it can make your brand seem more interesting than it is. It's much harder to do this, convincingly, with something as extended as a ride. Or a website. The growth in this kind of marketing will accelerate the thinning of the brand herd, removing the unremarkable ones and revealing horrible lose-lose-lose situations like this, where Disney get a dull ride, GM remind everyone they've got nothing to say and actual people waste time queuing for something rubbish.

Actually, maybe that's another good way of determining the inherent interestingness of your brand. If it was a ride at Disney - would anyone go? And if you want to get more refined, which Mr Men would go with you?

Mr Brand (and, if you want to be patronising, Little Miss Brand)

Popped into The Animation Art Gallery today, they have a Mr Men exhibition going on. Brilliant.

A board in the exhibition said someone had come in and bought three Mr Men prints for a friend - the three that summed up their character. Made me think that's exactly the kind of thing a brand consultant would make you do, but then I thought, actually that might not be such bad discipline, because the Mr Men at least include negative characteristics, as well as positive ones. It might force you to be honest, and get you away from the usual bland six adjectives.

I can think of many brands that should acknowledge they've got a bit of Little Miss Bossy in them.

differentiating wifi

I'm at Heathrow, Terminal One, sitting in the giraffe cafe, logging on to wifi. I was offered tmobile and BT Openzone and selected tmobile without even thinking about it. Even though I really don't like the tmobile brand. It's just that signing up for a limited pass with Openzone is so bloody laborious. It's not like tmobile is easy or fun, it's just that BT is rubbish.

Who'd have thought you could screw up a commodity thing like that? Turns out you can.