Brand: Gatorade Rain
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here (Reviewed Spot is Titled ‘Rain’)
Target: Boys and Men
Rating: ****
Reviewer: David

Description:
A basketball sits abandoned on an empty outdoor asphalt court surrounded by a high chain-link fence in a gritty urban landscape. We see the day pass as clouds move overhead and hear a clap of thunder as it starts to rain. The raindrops fall on the ball, but they are red, not the color of water. Almost immediately, the ball grows roots which snake into the asphalt and begins to expand like a prize pumpkin. Finally, the pod-basketball opens (in a scene reminiscent of Aliens) and a chiseled Kevin Garnett emerges. The voiceover says, “Introducing the rebirth of cool – Gatorade Rain. Start crisp, finish clean, stay cool in the heat. Gatorade Rain.” The spot ends with a product shot and a fade in and out of the Gatorade lightning bolt.

What Works:
This spot does a great job of reinforcing the core Gatorade brand attributes endurance and performance. The metaphor is simple – Rain is cooling and nourishing to the Earth as Gatorade Rain is to the body.

What is particularly appealing about this spot is that it carries forward visual imagery of Gatorade that has been very effective in the past while keeping it fresh. The Gatorade rain is close enough to the Gatorade sweat (or tears) in earlier spots that it is instantly recognizable and it makes this spot unique and ownable for Gatorade. Using rain as the metaphor here is also helpful because it reinforces Gatorade’s brand positioning as essential nourishment for the exercising body. It is a much better use of Garnett than in the Adidas campaign where he is made into a b-movie star.
This spot is also gorgeous visually and the pod-birth of the athlete is even startling enough to catch the attention of a fast-forwarding TiVo owner.

What Doesn’t:
While it was easy to link this spot to Gatorade and although we believe that it does a good job of reinforcing core Gatorade attributes, it was not as effective at introducing the new product. The pitch for Gatorade Rain almost gets lost in the storm – so to speak – which is both noisy and visually dominating. It also is not entirely clear to this Advertising Blog whether ‘Starts Crisp. Finishes Clean.’ will be meaningful code to teenage boys who are the core audience for these drinks. That sounds more like beer drinker code to us, but perhaps that is the point.

Darren Rovell, the top Gatorade expert and blogger points us to his blog where a number of Gatorade enthusiasts talk about their horror at seeing the Alien-like effects and distaste at the red rain. This is not our reaction but is well worth considering.

Branding Bottom Line:
Gatorade makes us sweat. Again.

Brand: American Express
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here
Target: Patient Card-Seekers
Rating: **
Reviewer: David

Description:
Film director Wes Anderson of Rushmore, The Life Aquatic and The Royal Tenenbaums fame stars in his own long-format American Express ad. The two-minute spot starts with a conversation between a Sikh and an a man dressed in white and features a mansion, a blinking ballpoint pen and an exploding car. This is quickly revealed to be the set of a movie with Wes Anderson directing. The camera follows him as he goes from diversion to diversion, reminding himself “American Express commercial” in the middle. After numerous interruptions and one use of his Amex card for $15,000 he concludes with “My life is about telling stories. My card is American Express.”

What Works:
This spot begs to be described as ‘madcap’ or ‘zany’ and does mirror the pacing and seeming randomness of some of Mr. Anderson’s film work, which might endear it to fans. Amex gets good branding here because of Mr. Anderson’s announcement early on and his use of his black Amex card in the middle of the spot. The two-minute format is distinctive. Even if this long-format advertising is not entirely owned by American Express, Amex is quickly becoming synonymous with this tactic. The core brand attribute of individualism as expressed in the “My Life. My Card.” tagline is strongly reinforced by the unique nature of this spot.

What Doesn’t:
We chose this spot to comment on primarily because it gives us some insight into the problem of consumer-controlled media. The bigger example recently occured with the Chevy Tahoe incident (story at Adjab) where General Motors allowed consumers to create their own commercial and the results were so awful that they made NightLine. That was an obvious risk of uncontrolled user-generated advertising. But we think that this American Express spot points to a less obvious risk. If you hire someone artistic and famous to create a commercial for you, give them complete creative control and the result is – well, bizarre – what do you do?

If the filmmaker is well-known and you really have given over creative control, the honorable course is to run the spot. American Express has taken the honorable course. But what about the advertising?

The best spot in this series may be the M. Night Shayamalan spot (see our review here). This, too is an odd creature, but it intrigues and enchants and in the end fulfills the brand promise and strengthens the campaign. Wes Anderson’s take on the genre is a conscious self-parody which falls flat under the weight of pretense and ego. Instead of seeing how absurd the whole Hollywood game is and lampooning the egomaniacal directors, the only believable point of focus in this crazy jumble is the egocentric director Wes Anderson who is entirely believable as the focal point in the eye of the tornado. His glib “right – American Express commercial” feels like a putdown on American Express.

This is a difficult spot to review because it is tricky to judge what the reaction of the prospective Amex cardholder will be to this spot. The branding is good and it certainly is “My Life. My Card.” But this advertising blog feels that the execution in this case hurts the strategy. We know that American Express enables card members to do a lot of things – some good and some bad. We’d rather see the good.

Branding Bottom Line:
More Rushmore and less Life Aquatic would have made for a better Amex spot. Two thumbs down.

Brand: Coke Classic (The Coca-Cola Company)
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here (Link is to Best Ads on TV.com)
Target: Coke drinkers
Rating: *****
Reviewer: David

Description:
A young boy sits on his bicycle at a deserted city street corner and opens a bottle of Coke. As he drinks it he looks into the distance and his eyes widen. He begins to pedal through the empty streets. Then he is suddenly riding through the middle of a parade. The landscape changes and he is in the middle of a flat rural landscape, still passing between marching bands as he crosses over a river on an antique metal bridge. Then he rides into a small town and passes the WWII veterans marching beside their vintage jeeps in uniform. We see a long shot of the main street of a small town. We see Mexican mariachis playing, beauty pagent contestants on a float and then Scottish bagpipes in Manhattan as the boy continues his trip. The pulsing, voiceless music intensifies as a Chinese dragon and Uncle Sam on stilts kick out. The boy tilts his head up, taking a long swig of Coke and finishing the bottle as he rides. Suddenly he is back by his urban corner store. He looks down at his empty bottle and back at the empty cityscape. The spot cuts to a white screen as a spinning red coke bottle icon appears with the new tagline, “The Coke Side of Life.”

What Works:
At long last we find a Coca-Cola commercial that we can support and – no surprise – this one is a product of the relatively new relationship with Wieden + Kennedy (Portland). For those who do not know, this is the agency behind Nike’s iconic spots.

Coca-Cola is an even bigger challenge than Nike was for Wieden for three reasons:

1. Mature Category – Carbonated soft drinks have been declining in volume in the U.S. for some time as consumer preferences change.
2. Product Comparisons Difficult – Since there is little functional comparison possible for colas, reasons to choose each Cola are more purely related to branding, lifestyle and taste.
3. Unclear Brand Positioning – Coke has a confusing history over the past decade of random and sometimes conflicting brand positioning from nostalgia (hilltop + chilltop) to holiday warmth (polar bears) to ubiquity (Always Coca-Cola) to urban lifestyle (many of the spots in between). The accumulated wear on the brand has reinforce the Coke name, but drained it of any specific expertise.

This Wieden spot does an excellent job of pushing Coke into a more narrowly defined, ownable brand positioning. The positioning? American universality. (We’ll stay off of the political implications of this one.) Coke is one of a very small number of cultural icons that links Americans from the heartland to the big cities. At its core, the concept of sharing a celebration is the purest essence of the original Coke brand positioning (‘The Pause that Refreshes’). By linking these celebrations throughout America together on a seamless main street that reaches across the entire nation and using a young boy to experience them together, Coke does a great job of finding that universality that it had lost through years of increasingly segmented micro-marketing. This spot is the product of an excellent insight into the brand: it has the ability to unify and is strongest when it does just that.

As one would expect of a Wieden ad (if not necessarily from Coke spots over the past several years), the production values and pacing are excellent. The branding is also great for three reasons. First, the distinctive Coke bottle and Coca-Cola logo are visible throughout the spot. Secondly, Coke is literally the hero of this spot as it enable the journey that the young boy takes. This ties Coke to the unique selling proposition – only Coke brings Americans from all walks of life together to celebrate. Finally, this execution is so distinctively tailored to Coca-Cola’s brand character that it would be impossible to attribute to Pepsi even if the branding were not seen. In addition, the music and cinematography are top-notch.

What Doesn’t:
Our only quarrel with this brilliantly executed spot is with the tagline, which does not have the stickiness of ‘Always Coca-Cola.’ The Coke side of life is not memorable or even meaningful and the tagline is distracting and confusing. Fortunately the spot works without it.

Branding Bottom Line:
After a long dry spell Coke hits a home run.

Brand: Dyson
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here (new campaign
spots are ‘Reversal of Fortune’
and ‘Full Circle’)
Target: Homeowning Men
Rating: ***
Reviewer: David

Description:
Two new spots in what we would consider a new campaign for the U.K. Vacuum cleaner manufacturer. In ‘Reversal of Fortune’ the spot opens on an elegant living room with wall-to-wall carpet. The camera quickly zooms from the human view into a microscopic view of the carpe. As we observe dust mites walking through the wool fibers, we hear a vacuum cleaner and the mites are sucked up into the cleaner, arriving at the filter. The voiceover says, “vacuum manufactures want you to believe that dust stops here, at the filter – and it does, until the filter gets clogged,” here we see the dust mites and other debris clogging the grimy-looking filter. Then a dramatic zoomout follows the dust mite back through the cleaner into the carpet as the voiceover says, “Then there’s less suction to pick up dust so it stays where you don’t want it – in your house.” The spot cuts to a silent black screen and the line “Fact: Vacuums Don’t Always Work Effectively” Underneath this, “Dyson Does” appears. The final screen has the logo, a product shot and “Get the Facts at Dyson.com”

‘Full Circle’ features nearly identical shots with a different voiceover, except that this time the anti-hero is a mold spore instead of a dust mite. The voiceover says “Vacuum manufactures want you to believe that dust – and the mold spores it contains – stops here, at the filter. But in attempting to improve suction, some vacuums use filters with bigger holes. So dust ends up back where you don’t want it – in your house.” Also new in this spot is a virtual visualization of the bigger holes in some vacuum filters that allows our renegade mold spore to escape back into the carpet.
What Works:
Dyson continues its scientific pitch to men by creating creepy and compelling visuals to accompany the cold hard facts about filter vacuum cleaners. What we like about this ad by the numbers:

1. Brand Positioning: Dyson’s real inspiration was not the filter-less vacuum – it was to market the vacuum to men instead of women. Thus the product is defined less by the context (how the vacuum is used) or the product (the unique product benefit) and more by the user: the left-brained man. This requires a change of archetype in thinking about the vacuum cleaner. Instead of being a home cleaning accessory like a sponge or a mop, Dyson reimagined the lowly vacuum cleaner as a big power tool. The design of the Dyson plays perfectly into this image – it looks more Makita than Mr. Clean.
2. Visual Impact: Dyson’s original spots were a little geeky and unpolished. These new spots are as slick as an episode of CSI (and apparently using the same visual effects coordinator). The zoom shot from the livingroom to the microscopic view of the carpet is engaging and keeps you watching the rest of the spot.
3. Clever Claims: Dyson has done a good job of massaging the claims that these two spots make. They don’t exactly say that the Dyson vacuum is superior to other vacuums. They merely say that there are some problems that some filter vacuums can have and that Dyson does not have these problems. This is a good way of finessing the legal issue of not being able to substantiate a superiority claim but still making a strong consumer claim.

What Doesn’t:
In spite of the slickness of the execution here, we think Dyson has made a strategic error in conceptualizing this spot. It goes back to the archetype Dyson has created of the vacuum cleaner as power tool rather than home cleaner. The key to making that archetype real in the minds of consumers was making the Dyson vacuum cleaner the hero of the earlier spots. We particularly liked two executions run previously to the current campaign which explained the benefit of the Dyson ball suspension. (View them here) These spots make the Dyson look like a big, fun power tool. Seth Godin has pointed out that one of the cleverest design features of the Dyson was the visible suction tunnel – the vacuum cleaner begs for the proud male owners to pull it out and show their friends how cool it looks when it is sucking dirt (while their wives or girlfriends stare in horror as the neighbors see dirt coming out of the carpet they are standing on). By backing away from the ‘product-as-hero’ execution, the Dyson gets much less air time in these spots. This advertising blog calls it a mistake.

We also think the substitution of Mr. Dyson for a female voiceover is a bad call. There is undoubtedly some research suggesting that the female voice is more soothing and convincing, or perhaps it expands the brand’s appeal to women. If the former case we doubt the research – in the latter case we suggest that narrowing rather than expanding the brand’s appeal will be better for longterm sales. Consumer seek expertise and Dyson is the expert at knowing what men want in a power-tool vacuum cleaner.

Branding Bottom Line:
Dyson shows us the evil in our carpets, but we’d rather see their cool vacuum cleaner swirling dirt.

Issue: Philips Files for a patent on a device to prevent ad-skipping
Commentary by: David

If you are reading this advertising blog, the chances are that you have already read all about the controversy surrounding Philips application for a patent on a television that would make it impossible to fast-forward or channel surf during ads, even with a digital video recorder. [You can find the facts here.] For the record we agree with the opinion of Steve Hall at Adrants, Catharine Taylor at AdFreak and Chris Thilk at Adjab – it is a bad idea. The horse has left the barn when it comes to controlling consumer behavior and coercive devices will never be accepted into the market.

More surprising than the story itself is the source. Not a press release, not leaked information from a company insider about near-term marketing plans, not even a careless comment by a senior executive at an industry dinner (remember the stir caused when Carnival Cruise CEO Robert Dickinson calling the murder of a George Smith aboard a Royal Caribbean ship ‘entertainment’ and a ‘non-event’ at a Miami conference).

All Philips did was to file for a patent. Now they have most of the blogging world in a lather. And unfortunately for Philips, this has led to a swarm of mainstream media reports and a consumer reaction against Philips.

All of this over a patent filing.

Did the Philips CMO approve the patent filing? Not likely. Did the U.S. PR agency for Philips advise on whether such a filing was wise? We doubt it. More than likely, there was a single marketing person – perhaps a product director for new products working with a team of European scientists who thought it would be wise to seek patent protection for this technology even though commercialization plans had not yet been developed or debated.

The actions of these few people, relatively obscure and insignificant from the viewpoint of the Philips shareholders could possibly have a material effect on the stock price if this story hits the mainstream media.

The real question here is – what does that mean for your company?

Our suggestion is to treat everything that leaves your office as a part of the brand – and realize that it may ultimately reflect on the brand. An angry letter to a supplier, the denial of a consumer claim, filings in a lawsuit, musings of the CEO – these things all reflect on your brand.

There will be mistakes. If your company has more people than you can know personally, there is bound to be miscommunication and different interpretations of brand strategy. When you make a mistake, however, make sure you know how to spot it and how to correct it. A couple of questions to ask yourself:

1. Do You Know When Someone is Blogging Your Company? Does your company have someone responsible for tagging Technorati, Bloglines, Google Blog search and watching key blogs for mentions of your company?
2. Can You Respond Quickly? A quick, professional response that is not defensive and understands the viewpoint of the consumer is the key to managing a blogsphere crisis.
3. Do You Have Good Advisors? Do you work with a PR or Crisis Management Agency that understands the online world and how best to react to a quickly escalating problem?
4. How Do You Prevent Mistakes? Do you have a committee that includes senior managers, brand experts, PR people, regulatory, legal and scientific advisors who screen anything that can potentially reach the consumer?

Just a few thoughts as you watch this Philips story unfold.

UPDATE: Here is the statement Philips released as pressure on this story mounted.  Our take is that it will not defuse the story:

We developed a system where the viewer can choose, at the beginning of a movie, to either watch the movie without ads, or watch the movie with ads. It is up to the viewer to take this decision, and up to the broadcaster to offer the various services.

Brand: Volkswagen  Jetta
Execution: TV
Link: Click Here  (You Tube)
Target: Post-collegiate Drivers
Rating: ***
Reviewer: David

Description:
Twentysomethings talk about ordinary subjects while driving in a Jetta in these spots. In one, two guys discuss whether a girl is turned off by the word ‘like’ and in another, two couples discussed who cried in a movie they’ve all seen. The driver in each of these spots is attentive, with both hands on the wheel. In the middle of the conversation, as we are observing the driver, we see a sudden threat. In one case it is a car running a red light, in another it’s a car pulling out unexpectedly from a side road. Then there is a sudden accident. In one spot we see the airbags inflate. The spots cut to black and then to the driver and passengers standing outside the damaged Volkswagen Jetta. They are clearly unharmed. Then the spot cuts to a shot of the damaged car rotating on a white pedestal with the tagline “Safe Happens” superimposed above. Then we see the five star government side impact crash test rating.

What Works:
This is a visually engaging spot – so much so that it may bring attention back to the television during the commercial break. The situation is very plausible and feels utterly real. This spot does an excellent job of viscerally engaging the viewer. The branding in this campaign is also very good. This is a product-as-hero execution and the Jetta is in virtually every frame. The VW logo is also visible on the steering wheel of the car early on.

There is some controversy with this spot, of course. The question is whether the crash scene is too dramatic and might create an aversion effect. Our take is that this spot will offend or traumatize some viewers, but overall it will engage more than it repels. Those who do remember it will associate it with Volkswagen.

The permission to believe in the selling proposition of this spot is the five star government crash test rating which is persuasive.

What Doesn’t:
In spite of our very positive feelings on the dramatic execution of this spot, we believe that it is a strategic mistake for Volkswagen. The issue is not whether the spot is credible or believeable or persuasive – the question is whether it is ownable. We would argue that Volvo still commands the strongest consumer affiliation with safety, and that VW’s attempts to sell safety in the Jetta will not ultimately cause consumers to tie ‘safety’ to either ‘Jetta’ or ‘Volkswagen’.

Support for this position comes from an unlikely quarter. Several years ago, Whirlpool realized that between Consumer Reports data and its own internal testing, it was producing the most durable, dependable washers and dryers on the market. Their attempts to capitalize on this in advertising were universally rejected in consumer testing, however, because consumers had spent a generation watching Maytag ads featuring the lonely repairman. Even though the Maytag product was no longer as dependable as Whirlpool, the Maytag brand continued to ‘own’ reliability. Whirlpool’s solution was to buy Maytag.

Thus, in spite of this Advertising Blog’s fondness for this efficient, dramatically-executed spot, we cannot give it better than a middle rating because we believe it is off-strategy for the brand. Jetta has been a difficult brand to market because as a car it has many virtues. Choosing among them to position the car effectively has not been Volkswagen’s strong suit.

Branding Bottom Line:
That scary Jetta crash ad has us seriously considering buying a Volvo.

Brand: Yellow Book (Yellow Book USA)
Execution: TV
Link: Not Available Online (website here)
Target: Small Business Owners
Rating: ****
Reviewer: David

Description:
Yellow Book discusses the possibility of extending the brand now that they are so successful. They show us a host of different possibilities from Yellow Book cereal to Yellow Book Sneakers and Yellow Book gas. Finally, they point out that since they are the best at what they do, they should focus on what they are good at.

What Works:
This clever spot is perfectly pitched at small business owners but resonates for a wider audience. Yellow Book manages to neatly spoof the trend of absurd line extensions while at the same time reinforcing their brand. The spoof is accomplished by fully realizing the crazy Yellow Book line extensions in vivid yellow. The brand reinforcement is all of that yellow along with the Yellow Book name in virtually every frame. It is more effective than a standard product shot, because each dubious new line extension focuses our attention right back on the Yellow Book brand name. This is one of the most effective executions of product-as-hero (or in this case, anti-hero) that we have seen.

This spot would not work if the execution were not dramatic and crisp. Each line extension is brought to life and vividly rendered with bold cinematography. The pacing of the spot is excellent. There is enough content to get target audience viewers to watch carefully the second and third time they see the spot.

What Doesn’t:
This spot does not position Yellow Book with a unique, ownable benefit over its competition. This ultimately makes it category advertising – which we believe should be acceptable for Yellow Book. As the branding is so strong, it may have the effect of narrowing brand recall for the competitor.

It should also be mentioned that Yellow Book does not have PR acumen on par with the execution of this spot. When asked for an MPEG copy of this spot to stream online, they responded as follows:

Since our Yellow Book “Cola” TV spot began airing across the country, we have received an encouraging amount of positive feedback, and have also rec’d a couple of requests similar to yours. As in the past, we continue to maintain a policy of not releasing the spot electronically for use on any Internet outlets. Our Agency also advises that there would be incremental Talent payments that would be incurred for Internet Use (as required by SAG/AFTRA).

This is remarkable considering that Yellow Book made a significant investment to produce and air the spot and considering that advertisers are among those who read this advertising blog as well as excellent industry blogs including Adrants, Beyond Madison Avenue, Jaffe Juice, Adverblog, Adjab, Adfreak and Adland which might also have covered this campaign. This is a good modern example of ‘penny-wise and pound-foolish.’

Branding Bottom Line:
Yellow Book punches holes in our marketing playbook.

Commentary by: David
Issue: The Burger King to star in Halo-type video Games

Advertising Age reports today that in addition to stalking BK consumers, winning log-rolling championships and romancing Brooke Burke, the Burger King (as incarnated by Crispin Porter) will soon be starring in a video game. This story was broken by Kotaku.com and confirmed by AdAge.

Our quick take? Great idea, terrible brand. While we sympathize with the desire to create more engagement around the brand, we believe that engagement is not useful unless it builds the brand equity. What builds brand equity? Talking about some crazy stunts that the brand mascot has pulled? Possibly – but only if those stunts link to something unique, ownable and relevant about the brand. We do not see how getting shot up – or shooting people up will build the Burger King brand.

Why is Burger King doing this? They have mistaken effect for cause. The big consumers at fast food restaurants are young single adult males. They are hugely profitable for these restaurants. There is no argument here. But this is an EFFECT, not a CAUSE. These men are loyal to these restaurants because they built their loyalty as children. The loyalty was created by a family experience. In revisiting these restaurants and overconsuming they seek to recapture the sense of belonging that they lose once they are pushed out of the familial nest and before they build their own family.

Trying to win over these consumers as adults is foolish and may be largely futile. At best, fast-food chains risk turning them into value consumers, loyal to whichever chain offers the best discounts. At worst they will alienate the families that provide their future heavy consumers.

We applaud the marriage of video games and brands. Video games have been unjustly neglected by a marketing community which does not understand them or the gamer. But this is a bad move for Burger King. Parents will not appreciate seeing the Burger King in yet another very adult role – one even worse than the role of Stalker he has been playing on TV for the past year. And they may turn away from Burger King as a result.

Brand: The Notorious Betty Page (Picturehouse – A Time Warner Company)

Description:
This online campaign for a film hitting theaters today (April 14, 2005). This features online flash advertising in various units as well as an interactive website featuring trailers, e-greeting cards and cast bios and a MySpace page. The ad units feature a pinup-style picture of Gretchen Mol as Betty Page which expands from a standard block to fill the right column of the page. The background is yellow and features the release date and cities (the picture is in limited release in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles) as well as a link to the website.

What Works:
This is a good example of a well-executed online campaign which is both attention-grabbing and targeted. It shows how a brand which needs to exploit a niche audience (presumably tracking the resurgent success of throwback burlesque shows among feminists and the ultra-hip in coastal cities) early in order to build momentum for a national launch can do this effectively online.

Here are a few things we like about this campaign by the numbers:

1. Strong Visual Impact – Yellow was a good choice for the background of these spots as it is attention-grabbing without ruining the page look of the websites we observed the campaign running on, like the NY Times. The visual images used for this campaign are simple and clear, which is critical (and so often ignored online).
2. Balanced Appeal – The trick of a campaign for a movie like this (an arthouse film trying to strike a balance between naughty, nostalgia and – well, art) is that it needs to show a clear visual image that captures all of those features. The pictures of Gretchen Mol in this campaign do a very good job of this. They are playful and retro without being revealing or crossing the line in a PG-13 onine world. (The film is rated ‘R’ but the advertising venues are more mainstream). This delivers some of the brand benefits (cool enough for hipsters, retro enough for downtown-ers, naughty enough for guys) succinctly and in a manner that does not condescend.
3. Good Use of Online Toolbox - While it is not innovative, this campaign does a good execution on MySpace, (the social networking site that nobody over 22 seems to understand) as well as a simple and efficient website.

What Doesn’t:
The danger with this campaign is that different people will come to it with different expectations, and some may be disappointed. Is it a tragedy – a tail of exploitation? Is it a post-feminist empowerment story? We’re not sure. The danger of soft appeal to several different audiences lies in the ability to meet expectations. This film will not be successful unless the word of mouth delivered by early audiences is strong. A critical part of building brand fanatics is to make sure that you carefully manage their expectations. Then it is possible to exceed expectations and gain endorsement from these early enthusiasts. This advertising blog may have missed the point, but we found the brand positioning slightly difficult to tease out of the campaign.

Branding Bottom Line:
This campaign teases more than it pleases but shows what can be done online.

Brand: IBM
Execution: TV, Print, Interactive
Link: Click Here – Click links on ‘innovation’ tab to see print or interactive campaigns. [Warning: The Adobe file on the Print tab will attempt to display a .pdf of the 16-page Wall Street Journal advertising supplement - and may paralyze your computer in the process]
Target: Corporate leaders, business process managers and IT Managers
Rating: * (TV)/ ? (Print)/*** (Interactive)
Reviewer: David

Description:
This IBM campaign deviates from the ‘Help Desk’ Model to talk about deeper needs and deeper solutions. The campaign includes a tv spot, a print campaign which began with a 16-page Wall Street Journal supplement and has an online component including an interactive website.
The television spot is a radical departure for IBM – and vaguely similar to the new spot from Microsoft. It opens with a view of a factor that looks like an oil refinery, highlighted against a deep blue sky. As the camera closes in on the factory, we see blue flowers streaming from the smokestack, falling into the foreground. “I’m Not Like Everybody Else,” from the Kinks plays in the background. Then the flowers start falling on Manhattan, into the individual streets and past skyscrapers. They blow across a river into an office where people are working in cubicles. An elevator door opens and the people inside are lipsynching the lyrics from the Kinks. Then we see various other workers in other settings also lipsyching the song, including commuters at a train station, a doctor doing rounds and Japanese businessmen at dinner. As the pace of the song increases and the scenes from different cities move with increasing rapidity we see the words “What Makes You Different?” superimposed on the scene. Then, “What Makes You Unique?” Over a view of the Chrysler building we see “What Makes You Special?” Finally, against a long shot of Manhattan and the Empire State building we see the IBM logo.

IBM explains the rationale behind the campaign (courtesy, IBM):

As a study unveiled earlier this month by IBM Business Consulting
Services indicates, 65% of the world’s top corporate CEOs declared that
due to pressures from competitive and market forces, they plan to
radically change their companies in the next two years.As they contemplate this radical change, only 20% of CEOs recognize that
they have been highly successful in such endeavors in the past. In
driving this change, the study found that CEOs are looking beyond growth
through new products and services. They are increasingly focused on
innovation in their business models and operations as key mechanisms for
driving change.

CEOs stated that approximately two-thirds of their efforts are now
targeted at business model and operational innovation. Furthermore,
fully 61% of CEOs who have a primary focus on business model innovation
fear that changes in the business model of a competitor could likely
result in a radical change to the entire landscape of their industry.

Finally, a word from IBM on the new spot that highlights this campaign (also courtesy, IBM):

IBM’s new integrated marketing campaign illustrates how innovation that
matters is the key to getting and staying special and why IBM is the
company most capable of helping clients create value and competitive
advantage through innovation.

The advertising campaign provides an opportunity to tell the entire IBM
story. It is not only IBM’s technology leadership but its business
leadership, and the ability to integrate both of those to provide real
value to clients.

One goal of the campaign is to cut through the clutter of innovation
messages from other companies because IBM’s view is, in fact, quite
different. Innovation is very different from product invention. The
iPod is cool, but no one goes to Apple to help their company become more
innovative. Another goal is to create differentiation for IBM and make
it harder for competitors to respond to the capabilities that we have.
Now that everyone is talking about On Demand, it’s time for IBM to set
itself apart again.

It is important to understand that the campaign is NOT seeking position
IBM as “the most innovative company.” The entirety of the advertising
is about the end result for the customer, and the campaign will feature
IBM clients prominently. The advertising stresses that while every
company does things differently, there is one thing that can make any
company special. It is the one thing that IBM understands better than
any other company in the world: Innovation is the key to getting and
staying special.

We could not review the print portion of this campaign as IBM’s Adobe application froze two of our computers and we were too fearful to attempt it with a third.

What Works:
The interactive work for this campaign is compelling. The website integrates the thematic elements from the television spot (blue flowers, color scheme) and provides solid case studies as well as podcasts and reports for the CEO or business leader looking to spark innovation in her company. This site solidly conveys some of the brand benefits of working with IBM and makes the value proposition clear.

The television spot itself is another example of very, very beautiful advertising. The cinematography is exquisite, the Kinks song is electric and the effect of the lipsynching working masses is chilling. As entertainment, this spot grabs our attention and doesn’t let go. We particularly like the puzzling and mesmerizing effect of the floating blue flowers.

What Doesn’t:
It is a strange week indeed when both IBM and Microsoft take a sudden turn into the Twilight Zone from an advertising strategy perspective. While the interactive portion of this campaign looks well-thought and sensible, the television spot completely boggles us.

This advertising blog searched in vain for a selling proposition, or even brand positioning in this spot. We asked ourselves the question – will this spot build new client relations for IBM? And the question – will this spot build the IBM brand? Unfortunately, we had to conclude that the answer to both questions was ‘NO’.

Here is our thinking on this spot by the numbers:

1. Unclear Brand Message: Watch this spot carefully about 11 times and you will see that it is a comment on conformity. It attempts to show people who want to be unique but are not. Or perhaps they are, but only on the inside. What is the brand message here? It is clear that IBM wants people to think of themselves as special, but IBM does not show us an escape path here. The brand has not empowered people in this spot to change or transformed them in any way. Just as with the Microsoft spot, this spot seems to show us what already exists (albeit in an interesting, eye-grabbing way).
2. Weak Branding: The lack of a clear value proposition for IBM leads us to suspect that this is really image advertising in disguise. That what IBM is really trying to do here is associate themselves with these hip, beautiful, cool images. Unfortunately, the IBM branding here is almost invisible. In fact, the only connection to IBM in this entire spot comes during the last few seconds as the IBM logo flashes up. That is even less than we saw in the Microsoft spot.
3. Generic Category Benefit: While Microsoft pegs the most important factor in the success of a business as ‘People’, IBM believes it is ‘innovation.’ Frankly, we do not really understand this from the television spot. Even if we assume that the print work we have not seen effectively makes this connection, we are left with a generic category benefit for any business-process consulting or IT consulting company. Even the IBM press release (above) states that the campaign is not positioning IBM as ‘The Most Innovative Business’. So IBM is essentially telling us that innovation is a good thing and they do a good job of helping companies build innovation – even though they make no claim to being the most innovative consultants. This is an incredibly weak brand positioning.
4. Questionable Media Selection: As with Microsoft, we have to question the wisdom of trying to reach a relatively small and very elite group of corporate decisionmakers (many of whom do not even watch television) through expensive prime-time television advertising. Undoubtedly, IBM has been convinced that nothing can make the splash of network television ads and they were looking for press coverage in addition to the direct effect of the media. But there are so many better ways to reach this target that we must question the use of the tens of millions of dollars to shoot and air this gorgeous but pointless commercial.

Branding Bottom Line:
IBM takes a dive into the deep blue and forgets to come up for air.