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.

I am fascinated by the uproar about the transfer of the show Project Runway from the uber stylish Bravo to the more, um, subdued Lifetime (it premiered on the new channel last Thursday).  According to the blogs, viewers were sure that the show would not be nearly as good on Lifetime as it was on Bravo.  But while the channel has changed, the format, the hosts and the lingo will remain - so why was everyone so sure it would be bad?  Because the Bravo network has developed an incredible brand around “drama” TV that is so bad it’s great, for young-minded, style-oriented viewers – while Lifetime’s for…well, I don’t really know – women who stay home on Saturday nights?  (Even the name Lifetime sounds old!)  Fans trusted the show coming from Bravo as curator.  I’m inspired by Bravo’s ability to create this “in the know” persona for itself (even the logo suggests people are talking about it!). The most successful channels are brands – and while some are reaping the rewards of brilliantly managing this, those that don’t will be totally “out.”

This spot has been getting a lot of play on the advertising blogs lately. It’s an Australian beer ad for VB, which is immensely watchable, even for non-Australians. I’m not a VB drinker and nor will I go out of my way to find it, but the spot created a really positive impression of the brand for me…and really that’s what matters. VB is a massive mainstream beer…effectively the Bud of Australia, with huge appeal to a broad audience. I can imagine the planner sitting down to try to write the “target audience” section of his brief and struggling to find anything really insightful for his creative team. Then, maybe the lightbulb went off that the insight was not about a focused target audience, but more about the brand’s huge everyman appeal. The fact that VB is enjoyed by a huge array of Aussies means that it must have something special about it. The way the spot celebrates this appeal across a range of stereotypes is a great creative leap. It reminds me of the brilliant Bud radio spots years ago celebrating Real American Heroes (all 110 of them here) .

More importantly, it reminds me that while we often strive to focus down to a tight definition of our audience, maybe we should look much more broadly at a larger pool of users and concentrate more on what they need, rather than just who they are.

I’m currently on a research project set across three cities in India. Over dinner with my client Abhijit in Delhi, we got to talking about the interesting dynamics of cell phone adoption in this massive country. The biggest player here is Nokia, who just “got it right” according to Abhijit. I pushed for a reason why and he rattled off a number of smart moves… terrific advertising, a stellar product, and early entry into the market. But what caught my attention was an anecdotal story of how Nokia connected with the working class. Abhijit said a key move was when Nokia won the allegiance of truck drivers (who, believe me, are everywhere in this country!). As Nokia was looking for new and innovative ways to improve their hardware, they stumbled across a deceptively small insight: truck drivers get out of their trucks a dozen or more times in the course of a long night on the road… and it can be really, really dark (you know… that thing that happens when the sun goes down). The answer? Add a little flashlight to the phone. Bingo! Instead of looking for some earth-shaking, never-before-seen feature on the bleeding edge of technology, Nokia went old school and added a light bulb. And just yesterday on my flight from Delhi to Mumbai, the Economic Times of India published the results of its Brand Equity Most Trusted Brands survey. The top brand for 2009 and now two years running? The guys with the light bulbs sparking up — in more ways than one.

I am totally inspired by the groundbreaking force-to-be-reckoned-with of social media it what is proving to be pivotal in the historic events in Iran this week.

It has catapulted a technology that I was previously entirely cynical about into the realms of the truly revolutionary with average Iranian citizens able to get their personal experiences out to the world despite media blackouts and internet censorship with simple micro-blogging.

Hooray for a media coming of age and finding it’s worth. I am brimming with ideas to incorporate Twitter methodologies into our work!

As we talked about the other day with my United Airlines experience, brand consistency often comes down to an individual’s delivery. With all people-facing brands we are at the whim of the brand representative. Thinking about it from their point of view for a second, they have to be incentivized to deliver that brand experience consistently.  If we imagine the most successful service brands in the airline industry, Jet Blue and Southwest come to mind in the US and maybe Virgin and Singapore on an international scale.  What gives those people greater pride in delivering a unique and consistent experience that elevates their brands?

Ponder that for a while and then overlay yesterday’s news from London where British Airways announced they were asking their staff to work for free for a month to help get them out of the financial hole they’re in due to the economic crisis. In truth, their voluntary pay reduction would be amortized over a 6 month period, but which ever way you cut it, the airline is asking its staff to deliver the brand for a lower incentive.  The CEO, Willie Walsh, is clearly behind the initiative as he was first in line to volunteer to work for free for a month.  As he’s on £735K a year, critics say he can afford to lose £61K for a month.

In my mind, this could  galvanize a “circling of the wagons mentality” and a determination to survive, which could result in a push for even higher levels of customer service. This would happen if the staff felt an affinity for what BA stands for beyond just their pay packet. I’m not sure if this is true.

A more likely result is a disaffected and pissed off workforce who lack the incentive to deliver the BA brand consistently in the air. This has massive implications for the BA brand, which has been determined to differentiate based on a a “full service” promise vs. low cost, no frills competitors. What looks like a short term cost cutting policy could result in longer term detrimental damage to their brand.

What do you think? Would you be prepared to work for your company for less money to help it out of a financial hole?

Note to Egg Strategy employees reading this post - this is not a cheap attempt at testing the waters for a “BA style” wage cut. We just hired more people, remember!