In honor of one of the simplest, yet best innovations of all time, let’s celebrate July 7th as “Sliced Bread Day”.  82 years ago today, Otto Rohwedder sold the first loaf of pre-sliced bread made by his innovative new machine.  Rohwedder had been working on the machine for 16 years, and it was a secondary problem that he needed to solve before it became a success. Slicing the bread was not the issue, but keeping the bread fresh was the more important factor.  He was only successful once he developed a part of the machine that wrapped the sliced bread in wax paper immediately, thereby packaging it fresh for sale.  Two years later, Wonder Bread commercialized the idea and the rest is history.  Good innovations don’t become great until all the angles are covered. Rohwedder stuck at it for 16 years.  Perseverance pays.

I’m a big fan of Dave Trott’s blog. I see his posts as life lessons through the lens of advertising. A couple of days ago in a post on logic, he quoted Akio Morita, the founder of Sony:

“The greatest assistance I had in building my company was the total failure of nerve on the part of Western businessmen to move without research.”

And also Steve Jobs:

“It’s not the public’s job to know what they’re going to want. It’s my job to know what they’re going to want.”

We do a lot of research, but I can’t help sympathizing with both thoughts above. That doesn’t mean I disagree with research (which would be pretty silly for me), but I’ve seen my fair share of the wrong kind of research. In previous jobs, I’ve seen research used to dumb down breakthrough ideas and make them more mainstream. I’ve seen research be used to justify a client firing an agency; I’ve seen researchers saying that they were able to measure the effectiveness of an ad by having a few people look at a storyboard.

However, I’ve also seen research provide insights to doctors to improve the way they work with cancer patients. I’ve seen people crying in research as they discuss the difficulties of raising “problem kids”. I’ve seen lightning bolt insights about brands that come from observing people in bars or on cruise ships (yeah, those are the best projects).

What I’m saying in a round about way is that research gets a bad rap as the enemy of creative purity…as if asking people to share an opinion sullies the integrity of an idea. That’s BS.

To research or not isn’t the question. There’s always a  time, a place and a way to make research great - the good researchers know that and the best clients too.

Isn’t it nice when you see an ad that has a lovely idea, well executed.
This is one of those occasions. I think Tropicana in Canada tagline “Brighter Mornings For Brighter Days” is a lovely thought.

We have a lot of runners at Egg. A couple of us have experimented with the “freerunning” movement. In short, minimalist footwear to produce close-to-natural footstrike. While still within the minority, this freerunning movement is gaining traction (sorry, had to do it) and is proving to be a cost-of-entry innovation for most mainstream footwear companies. New Balance, Adidas and Nike have joined the race (there we go again).

These races against similar products inevitably produce a battle of differentiation (messaging, colorways, sponsors). Ultimately, the winner will harness an element of distinction its competition can’t match. I’ll propose Nike’s getting there with the below video. Always attentive to its ownership of the convergence between athletics and pop culture, Nike produced a video with the help of a couple Japanese DJ’s (not going to pretend I have the street cred to elaborate) that while absurd, highlighted the core attribute of its Nike Free shoe (next-to-natural flexibility) in a way that resonates with runners and peaks the interest of those profitable fashion-forward sneakerfreaks.

This is a challenge to rethink the way we communicate our most important attributes. Re-imagine how our targets experience the benefits we shout from the rooftops. Turn a simple function into art and in one down-beat, beat down the competition.

For many of the world’s men, the airtight equation for camaraderie consists of one or both of these addends: beer and sport. The summation quite often includes both in the case of a big game. THE big game. Such as the UEFA Champions League game between AC Milan and Real Madrid football teams.

In a brilliant activation strategy,  Heineken Italy proposes that the “most sacred time men have left” is at risk, then devised a stunt to call out the increasing influence external factors have in pulling a fan away from his set (and his buddies, and, well, a profitable beer occasion). More narration will only act as a spoiler, so spend a few minutes with this excellent case study to see how, ultimately, Heineken went viral, celebrated the sanctity of male bonding and created authentic engagement with its brand.
Cheers to the weekend.

I’m not a fan of Axe products, but I am a fan of their ballsy (pun intended) campaigns that appeal shamelessly to men’s more base instincts. There’s been much written about Unilever’s alleged hypocrisy of promoting such a powerfully positive female brand (Dove) here and here and at the same time running campaigns like this and this for Axe.

Personally, I think the best brands know who they’re talking to and who they are not talking to, recognizing that getting the message really right for their true audience might mean offending the others….and boy, does this new campaign do both.

When I think Puma, I think fashion, not authentic sports and in a quick word association around the office I hear “hipster, Brooklyn, single speed bikes and Wilco”. I think the move into more fashionable shoes and apparel has overshadowed Puma’s position as a footwear supplier and sponsor of athletes in both footballs (if you know what I mean). Back in the day Puma sponsored Joe Namath and Pele.

This recent viral piece, which is doing the rounds online is a lovely attempt to remind us who follow football (with a round ball) that Puma has as much love for game as it does for the catwalk. And I think it does it rather well.

At the start of my career in the early 90s, I interned at a new agency in London called Mustoe Merriman Herring and Levy. I was a wannabe junior planner, so when I met with the planning director, I was determined to learn as much as I could from him.  He passed on this pearl of wisdom about planning that I still remember today. He told me a story about commuting on the train during the winter. It was a dark evening and as his train slowed down to a station, he looked out the window and was able to see into the kitchen of a house near the train tracks.  In the kitchen, a woman stood at the sink doing dishes. The train stopped and he was able to watch her for a moment, and she was singing (maybe to a song on the radio, maybe not). The house was close enough to the train that he was able to see the brand name of the dish detergent she was using.  He ended his story by saying…”that’s planning”.

I thought of that the other day when I came across this wonderful series of short films about the lives of New Yorkers run in the NYT back in the summer of 2009. It showed me that even though we are often looking for big insights or truths that resonate with huge numbers of people, it’s the individual stories within that reveal the gold. The piece is called 1 in 8 million.  A belated Happy New Year from Egg - 2010 has started like 2009 finished, hence the rather late first post of the year!

On a plane home the other day I saw the documentary “It Might Get Loud” - a film featuring three guitar playing legends - Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White. The film shows how each of them were inspired and how their careers unfolded. One story in the movie touched a nerve for me. Jimmy Page was talking about recording the track When The Levee Breaks in an old manor house in the English countryside. They set up the drum kit in the front hall, above which was a vaulted high ceiling. Instead of moving the drums into the main room where the rest of the equipment was, John Bonham started playing out in the hall, quickly realizing that the uniquely high ceiling added a massive amount of “height” to his sound. This created the now legendary drumming sound on that track. Other bands tried to recreate it by recording in elevator shafts.

Loved this for a the marriage between serendipity and a great creative leap. It made me ask- what brands have recently “heightened” their sound in a unique way…and then one for you: what have you done lately to “heighten” what you do?

This post was originally going to be about Tiger Woods and Gillette, following on from the Thierry Henry post earlier in the month, but there’s so much stuff being written about him now, that I find the whole thing depressing.  Far better to be inspired by something that adds height, rather than focus on a guy keeping his head down for the foreseeable future.

Those of you who follow football will be aware of France’s qualification to the 2010 World Cup at the expense of Ireland with a controversial winning goal. The goal came after French star Thierry Henry controlled the ball twice with his hand before crossing to his team-mate William Gallas to tuck it into the net. The London tabloids (bless them) called it the “Hand of Frog.”

Thierry Henry is one of 3 men (Tiger Woods and Roger Federer being the others) who are part of a Gillette global branding campaign. A recent image on the Gillette website in France featured the 3 stars holding the tools of their respective trades. Rather than showing Thierry Henry with a ball at his feet, the picture shows him holding the ball with his “hand of frog”.  As my colleague Ted commented: who should get a raise this year?

1) The creative director or pompous photographer who thought shooting this image with the ball in Henry’s hand was a better idea than placing it his feet.

2) The brand manager who called the agency first thing Monday morning to tell them to fix the site.

3) The producer and post house (web designer…?) that made it look effortless.

Personally, I still think it looks like someone’s chopped his hand off, but that might just be me

A few weeks ago the CEO of VW North America, Stefan Jacoby, attracted a lot of press for his comments made in an interview in the Washington Post. Herr Jacoby explained that his key goal for the brand was to create more mainstream “North America friendly” fleet of cars that honored the different driving experience we have here (vs. Europe). He got a lot of stick after the interview for comments about better cup holders and entertainment systems. Basically VW brand fans were afraid that this vision would lead to a dilution of what they love about VW - i.e. that the brand would become more blah, less unique and less “imported”. I’m one of those people. I only have to look at Saab to see a European brand that’s been denigrated with a more North American approach to design and manufacturing.

Further enhancing my brand snobbery, I came across this set of viral films created by DDB Stockholm, sponsored and supported by VW. No doubt about it, this is the spirit of VW that I like and which draws me to their brand. Lovely idea, well executed, nice message and one which seems in keeping with what I associate with VW (good design ideas for the people). Piano Stairs is my favorite:

While I’m at it, this is my favorite  VW spot from their UK agency DDB London. It’s a couple of years old, but I could watch it over and over. Another perfect example of their brand voice. I’m hoping that with the change in corporate direction and the upcoming change in agency partner, that this voice is never lost.

I love the Evian couture bottle program. With the proliferation of bottled water brands that span the market from packaged tap water to luxury designer water, there is a natural comparison between bottled water and fashion.

Fashion sells textiles at extreme markup through design. Doesn’t Voss, Bling2O, Antipodes and other ‘Fine Waters’ do the same thing? Evian is clearly keeping a foot in this trend.

Here are some of the Evian designs so far. The latest one by Paul Smith is definitely my favorite.