Brand: Heinz Ketchup
Execution: Consumer Generated Advertising Contest
Target: Burger Eaters
Rating: ****
Reviewer: David Vinjamuri

Description:
Heinz launched a promotional blitz in December of 2007 for a consumer-generated advertising contest called “Top This.” The challenge was to create a new television spot for Heinz. The winner would get $57,000 (the number taken from the ‘Heinz 57′ days) and would be aired on television. Runner ups would receive $5,700. Heinz promoted the contest on-pack with mentions on 57 million customized bottles and 200 million tailored packets with catchy taglines such as “Hungry for Fame?” and “Starving for the Spotlight?” Heinz also ran full-page ads in the New York Times and USA Today to promote the contest.

The winning ad was created by Chicagoland resident Matt Cozza, a Northwestern graduate, freelance cameraman and award-winning documentary filmmaker. The ad takes off from a personal experience of Cozza’s, where he sat down at a restaurant and found that Heinz ketchup was missing from his table, proceeded to swipe a bottle from another table and set off a chain reaction.  The ad will air on the Food Network.

What Works:
A win-win campaign for both Heinz and its consumers.  The 130-year-old brand pours some vitality into its creative efforts from outside the walls of agency-of-record Cramer-Krasselt.  Heinz consumers get to dream about creating a spot to air on national television and of winning a substantial prize.  Heinz builds momentum for the contest by picking the finalist videos from the thousands of entries itself, but allowing consumers to choose the winner.

This is all, of course, textbook script for a consumer-generated marketing campaign, but Heinz has been exceptionally savvy in the way it has managed the process.  The promotional efforts sound impressive and reach a huge number of consumers, but they’re also exceptionally thrifty.  On-pack advertising has virtually no incremental cost for Heinz and one-time insertions in two newspapers are small cost items done more for publicity than actual consumer awareness.  Heinz also creates a customized, low-cost forum to air these spots before a friendly audience (on the Food Network) and consider them for further exposure.

The announcement of the winner creates a big PR opportunity for Heinz and results in some national news media coverage including a Fox Business News segment.

The final benefit may be as important as the rest.  Without abandoning its agency of record, Heinz essentially gets thousands of fully produced concept ads for free.   And many of these are not handicam efforts.  The myth behind consumer-generated marketing  campaigns is that every Dick and Jane can win.  The reality is somewhat different.  These campaigns have become a resume-builder for talented film school grads and independent producers.  Just the sort of folks that brands have difficulty accessing directly.

What Doesn’t:
Brands rarely consider that a consumer-generated advertising contest will wind up putting a new tagline - and possibly a new brand positioning - on air nationally.  While it seems inevitable that consumers play an increasingly large role in positioning and marketing brands, this is something different.  The contest format is artificial and can result in a tug on the brand in a particular direction that is larger and less gradual than consumer co-creation would normally produce.

While the campaign winner was a very solid ad, it does not break new ground for Heinz, which as not yet found as compelling a positioning as it achieved with the iconic spot “Anticipation” of the late 70’s - fueled by the Carly Simon hit of the same name. “Now We Can Eat,” positions Heinz as “what goes with food” but the product-as-hero format features the bottle more than the Ketchup.  Heinz already owns the category - it needs to create more hungry people to expand the category.

Branding Bottom Line:
A better spot than 80% of what’s on television.  For $57,000.  Top that.

Brand: Brooklyn Museum
Execution: Online Viral
Target: New York Museum Goers
Rating: *****
Reviewer: David Vinjamuri

Description:
The newest in a series of intriguing online marketing initiatives for the Brooklyn Museum, Click! is an exhibition taking place from June 27 - August 10, 2008 which will be crowd-curated until May 23rd, 2008. A full description from the Brooklyn Museum Website:

Click! is a photography exhibition that invites Brooklyn Museum’s visitors, the online community, and the general public to participate in the exhibition process. Taking its inspiration from the critically acclaimed book The Wisdom of Crowds, in which New Yorker business and financial columnist James Surowiecki asserts that a diverse crowd is often wiser at making decisions than expert individuals, Click!  explores whether Surowiecki’s premise can be applied to the visual arts—is a diverse crowd just as “wise” at evaluating art as the trained experts? Click! is an exhibition in three consecutive parts. It begins with an open call—artists are asked to electronically submit a work of photography that responds to the exhibition’s theme, “Changing Faces of Brooklyn,” along with an artist statement.

After the conclusion of the open call, an online forum opens for audience evaluation of all submissions; as in other juried exhibitions, all works will be anonymous. As part of the evaluation, each visitor answers a series of questions about his/her knowledge of art and perceived expertise.

Click! culminates in an exhibition at the Museum, where the artworks are installed according to their relative ranking from the juried process. Visitors will also be able to see how different groups within the crowd evaluated the same works of art. The results will be analyzed and discussed by experts in the fields of art, online communities, and crowd theory.

Click! follows a series of other new media initiatives at the Brooklyn Museum, including the online exhibit Hiroshige’s One Hundred Views of Edo and the Graffiti Exhibit from 2006.

What Works:
Necessity begets creativity and so it is perhaps not surprising that one of the most creative series of new media marketing initiatives in recent memory comes from a budgetary-constrained arts institution, the venerable Brooklyn Museum. The Click! exhibit shows that meaningful online interactivity can be as simple as asking the public to choose the works for an upcoming exhibit, thus giving them a stake in the outcome and a good reason to visit.

This advertising blog does not give many five-star ratings, and this one is earned not just for the clever use of the online medium, timely jump onto a popular bandwagon (crowdsourcing) and strategic pandering to a popular author (James Surowiecki) but for the continuation of a two year series of clever, low-budget new media initiatives which have effectively served to position the Brooklyn Museum as a daring innovator among its peers.

Even better for students of new media, the museum has documented the journey along with its results in an excellent white paper. This type of sharing is rare in the private sector and much needed in an industry where most of the big advertisers are struggling to understand the online medium.

The best parts of the Brooklyn Museum’s approach to using new and emerging media is its focus on simplicity - from the cellphone tour to the crowd-curated exhibit. It is a refreshing change from some of the lavish but unnecessary innovations foisted on us by the Fortune 100.

What Doesn’t:
Although straightforward, the website for the Brooklyn Museum is not nearly as innovative and user friendly as the online exhibits.

Branding Bottom Line:
The Brooklyn Museum makes us wonder what we got for the last million we spent with our online agency.

Issue: A small supplier decision comes back to bite Wal-Mart
Commentary by: David Vinjamuri

[Image from NALIP.org]

In Accidental Branding, I write “Do Sweat the Details”. By this I mean that very small actions that do not at first seem to be related to our brands often have very big consequences for the brand. What I meant when I wrote this is that consumers often cue off of small details that are of no interest to brand marketers, like how the package opens, how customer service handles complaints or how business partners speak about our business.

This week, Wal-Mart has provided an excellent example of how decisions seemingly unrelated to marketing can affect our brands. It’s a big enough deal that I would call this Wal-Mart crisis a textbook example of “Brand Karma” - meaning that what you put out into the world eventually comes back to you. Wal-Mart has never had a great reputation among its suppliers. For years it has been accused of sourcing goods locally in new markets only as a competitive tactic to drive out other retail customers and then ending the relationship in order to bankrupt the local supplier.

This general attitude towards suppliers bit back recently as The Wall Street Journal reports. The company which Wal-Mart used to capture video of sales conferences and other internal meetings for thirty years, Flagler Productions Inc. was dismissed two years ago. It does not take much reading between the lines to suspect that this termination of a longtime relationship was not handled well. INstead of maintaining a fondness for Wal-Mart and seeking to regain the Wal-Mart business, Flagler has gone into the business of selling these candid and embarrassing videos of Wal-Mart events to the general public. It appears that in spite of Wal-Marts general legal rectitude, they never secured exclusive rights to this video.

It’s a brand disaster. The videos, as Gary McWilliams reports, contain:

A former executive vice president and board member challenges store managers in 2004 to continue his work opposing unionization. Male managers in drag lead thousands of co-workers in the company’s corporate cheer. In another meeting, managers mock foolish or dangerous use of a product sold in its stores.

I have written a lot about Wal-Mart in the past several years, and I don’t think it’s an evil company. Their basic goal of trying to reduce prices for average working families is a good one. They have made some good steps forward (along with Target) on trying to bring prescription drug prices down. They’ve also tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to bring down the horrible, predatory purveyors of pay-day loans with fair competition.

Where Wal-Mart seems to falter is that they have no corporate instinct for the integrity of their brand. A corporate obsessed with costs is bound to bruise a lot of “little guys” in the process. (See Wendy Bounds nice blog post for more on this.) And not shockingly, one with the ability to really hurt Wal-Mart has finally bitten back.

The lesson? Everything affects your brand. If the way you treat your employees, suppliers or customers is not consistent with your brand, they will become a cancer in your system. Brands may not practice Buddhism, but they should believe in Karma. It all does eventually catch up with you.

If anyone has links to the Wal-Mart videos, please feel free to post them in comments.

What follows is an excerpt from Chapter 3 of Accidental Branding: How Ordinary People Build Extraordinary Brands. The book evolved from a class in Positioning and Brand Development at NYU where I asked my students to write case studies of brands that had been founded by entrepreneurs without an MBA or any formal marketing background. I was surprised at the strength of these brands and some of the stories behind them. Two of the cases from the class became subjects for the book: Roxanne Quimby (founder of Burt’s Bees) and John Peterman (founder of J. Peterman). Peterman was actually the first of these entrepreneurs that I met - he agreed to talk to me even before I had a contract to publish Accidental Branding.

Accidental Branding has just been released in the U.S. and is available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders and Books-a-Million. If you have a group of 30 or more entrepreneurs or marketers and are willing to buy and read the book, I’ll be happy to speak to your group on the phone or in person for free during the months of May or June this year.

EXCERPT FROM ACCIDENTAL BRANDING: HOW ORDINARY PEOPLE BUILD EXTRAORDINARY BRANDS

CHAPTER 3 – THE STORYTELLER JOHN PETERMAN (J. PETERMAN)

“This is a single-action Colt 45 Peacemaker, the gun that tamed the West,” Peterman says, as he slides the long revolver out of his custom-made shoulder holster, flicks opens the cylinder, and loads .45 caliber bullets one by one. Then he hands me the gun. The sun hangs low in the Kentucky sky, pouring red light over Peterman’s ranch on this midsummer’s evening and making me squint as I inspect the Colt. It is a craftsman’s piece that looks like it has been hammered out of a single hunk of iron. The handle is inlaid with smooth Bakelite, which is cool in my hand. It is heavy, much more so than it looks, and as I extend my arms to aim it I feel gravity pulling it groundward. I hold the gun carefully with two hands and sight down the barrel. Then, releasing my breath, I gently squeeze the trigger. Nothing happens.

“Just ease back the hammer when you’re ready to fire,” Peterman says calmly, as if he has not even noticed my failed attempt. I nod and slowly thumb the hammer toward me until it clicks into place. Then I line the shot up and pull the trigger again. This time the Colt jumps in my hand. It is loud, much louder than gunshots in the movies. Peterman looks through binoculars at the can I’m aiming for, which is 40 feet away. “You’re down and to the left. Don’t flinch when you fire.” I hadn’t realized I’d flinched, but I notice it the next time, and the next. I continue firing through two reloads, shooting 18 rounds in total. My flinch gradually lessens, but although a stout poplar tree showers chips every time I fire, the can sitting in front of it does not seem to budge. Peterman is gracious with the limited supply of bullets. He gives himself a mere six shots. When we retrieve the coffee can, there are five holes in it. Peterman says, “Looks like you hit it a few times.” He is being polite. I am pretty sure I’ve missed the can altogether and he’s hit five of six.

The Peterman in question, the one I’ve come to central Kentucky to visit, is none other than that Peterman: John Peterman, the founder of the J. Peterman Company. He is the man who built his mail-order business to $70 million dollars in sales and reinvented the catalog as we know it. His name is familiar to over 40 million Americans. In 1991, Holly Brubach in the Sunday New York Times called Peterman a “merchant poet.” He is also famous because of the buffoonish caricature of him played by John O’Hurley on Seinfeld starting in 1995. Four years later, Peterman went spectacularly bankrupt at the height of his fame. And now he’s back, quietly rebuilding the empire he lost.

Peterman has invited me to spend two days with him in Lexington, where I will interview employees at the J. Peterman Company (including his wife, Audrey), sit in on merchandising meetings, and see how the business runs. I am not sure he realizes that my central goal for engineering the entire trip is to visit the ranch I’m now standing on. After spending four hours interviewing Peterman in New York City a few weeks earlier, I’ve become convinced that the ranch will explain some of the mysteries of the myth he so successfully created. Even before Seinfeld, people were telling stories about J. Peterman. He was the world traveler who had fought in three wars, who hobnobbed with sheiks and maharajas, who looked equally comfortable at a state reception or tending a farm in Provence. Peterman’s little Owner’s Manual was a secret handshake for a certain set of people.

Along the way, the J. Peterman Company attracted some incredibly loyal customers, loyal enough to see their beloved business go bankrupt and still return as consumers two years later when Peterman revived it. In Lexington, I hope to answer a simple but elusive question—how did Peterman build this myth that motivated so many fanatic customers? And I have become convinced that the answer lies hidden at the Peterman ranch.

Excerpted with permission of the publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. from Accidental Branding. Copyright (c) 2008 by David Vinjamuri. This book is available at all bookstores, online booksellers and from the Wiley web site at www.wiley.com, or call 1-800-225-5945

Issue: Why bad packaging hurts your brand
Commentary by: David Vinjamuri

Today I suffered what might almost qualify as a repetitive-motion injury: I cut myself while trying to liberate a consumer product from its packaging. The offender is often the clamshell style of package.

This package can only be opened with sturdy scissors or - if you’re reckless - a knife

The offender today was actually a Zyliss Ice Cream Scoop which had a plastic band wound so tightly around the slender part of its handle that I briefly considered removing it with a soldering iron (which would have been safer). Instead, I used a pair of scissors which rebounded to nick my finger.

Other examples of this type of consumer-unfriendly packaging abound from CD and DVD jewel cases covered with that same clam-shell and clad in hard-to-tear plastic and sticky, sticky tape to pill bottles with shrink-wrapped plastic neck covers that defy tearing.

All of this is actually expense management at the cost of the brand. The problem is that the wrong people are in charge of elements that really affect the brand - either finance managers worried that packaging which is easy to open will invite pilferage or salespeople responding to pressure from retailers to make packaging which will be difficult to open and hard to shoplift.

But it’s a brand disaster. Why would any consumer product knowingly cause someone to bleed? It is unimaginable.

If you’re a brand manager, it is time to start examining your packaging closely. It might just be undercutting your brand message.

Issue: Online Communities and Brands - Our New Hometowns
Commentary by: David Vinjamuri

[Image from Church of the Customer]

Douglas Atkin, author of The Culting of Brands has a theory about people in the 21st century. We’ve mostly been torn from our hometowns. We don’t live with our grandparents or parents and may not even know our neighbors. We may share an income level with them but we might not share other core values or beliefs. Increasingly, we use brands as a short-hand to communicate our values to our neighbors and those we encounter socially. Driving a Volvo? I know you’re affluent, have kids and probably send them to private school. A Prius? We obviously are both Dems who share a passion for the environment. Wearing Ralph Lauren? You have money, like to make a nice impression but think fashion with a big “F” is vulgar.

The question brand marketers who see this are asking is: how will this translate to the online space? So we are all watching online communities very closely. With a few key exceptions, many online communities started by marketers are clunky, unusable affairs. We brand people are far too nervous about control to nurture communities well. Some good lessons come from urban planners. They have learned that tightly controlled or barren spaces actually attract ‘undesirables’ (drug addicts, homeless, vagrants, skateboarders) because they cannot be customized by the community. Thus, when Bryant Park was designed, over 1000 lightweight chairs were included, which were intended to be moved by park visitors. The park continues to be a safe and vibrant space.

There aren’t any definitive answers for brands with online communities, as the models are fast evolving. Sites like craigslist.org, FlyerTalk and TivoCommunity have created strong communities of interest, but they are not fully evolved social networks. Many social networks, like Facebook and MySpace are less efficient as brand havens (with the notable exception of the success of independent music on MySpace). Private label sites like NING allow brand marketers to create gated or single-interest communities, but are still in early stages of development.

The Church of the Consumer described an interesting framework (crediting Ray Bard for the visual reproduced above) for thinking about different types of online communities, or different stages in the development of an online community. Cliques are small, exclusive and anti-establishment. Networks are large and intended to facilitate introductions or the spread of information. Cults have rituals, belief systems and charismatic leaders. Finally, Nations are egalitarian, sovereign and committed to an all-consuming cause.

This leaves open the question of how a brand can create an online community. For this, I was happy to get a sneak peak at Forrester’s new report on Online Community Best Practices (thanks to Jeremiah Owyang and Tracy Sullivan). Forrester is careful to differentiate the different reasons that brands form online communities into Listening (an online standing focus group), Talking (get across a brand message), Energizing (nurturing brand enthusiasts), Support (allow brand users to support each other) and Embracing (involve brand faithful in developing the brand). The report goes on to describe some of the steps in creating an online community and - importantly - how to deal with different types of online troublemakers. At seventeen pages, it is still a brief summary, but very useful for those considering a plunge into the water.

Issue: Why are retailers suing their customers?
Commentary by: David Vinjamuri

We have been ranting for some time about companies that pursue business strategies that harm the brand. A Wall Street Journal front-page article yesterday highlights another such practice. Companies including The Home Depot, Wal-Mart and Lord & Taylor are hiring law firms to threaten or pursue civil litigation against suspected shoplifters to recover damages. They do this in addition to criminal proceedings.

If handled appropriately, this might not be a foolish practice for the brand. Recovering damages from those who have committed criminal acts against the brand lowers the cost for law-abiding consumers. Unfortunately, like many other practices administered by corporate financial people without any brand oversite, this one casts too wide a net with disastrous results.

In one case cited by the Wall Street Journal, a handyman in Miami named Glenn Rudge was detained at Home Depot after he checked out because a clerk observed a set of $8 drill bits poking from his shirt pocket. He was handcuffed in the store by a guard and the store refused to let him call home and ask his wife to bring the receipt for the drill bits in to the store. He was charged by prosecutors who then dropped the charges when he produced the receipt.

To add insult to injury, a month after the charges had been dropped, Rudge received a letter from the Palmer Reifler law firm demanding $3,000. That sum increased by another $3,000 when he ignored the letter. Mr. Rudge was threatened with a visit from the Sheriff’s office in the second letter. Fortunately, Mr. Rudge was doing handyman work for an attorney who filed suit for him and recovered undisclosed damages from Home Depot.

This example is one of many detailed by The Wall Street Journal and experienced by innocent consumers around the country. Retailers are combating a real problem - the estimated $40 billion annual cost of shrinkage (losses to theft, shoplifting and other consumer fraud) - but doing so in a manner that harms their brands and causes unmeasurable damage to their revenue.

This all stems from a very anti-brand attitude which assumes that consumers are all guilty until proven innocent. The price for this belief is huge reputation damage in word of mouth and negative publicity.

Retailers would be wise to adopt a more customer-friendly attitude towards potential theft. A few thoughts:

1. Approach customers politely - some of them will be innocent.
2. Do not forcibly detain customers - unless unambiguous evidence of a crime exists.
3. Allow customers to explain - accept reasonable explanations even if some may be false
4. Do not sue customers - who have been judged innocent in criminal court.
5. Add common sense to your shrinkage policy - why are customers purchasing hundreds of dollars being detained for $8 items?

It seems unlikely retailers will heed these warnings. In spite of repeated negative publicity, they continue to learn lessons from the music industry - suing their own customers until they have no business left.

Issue: As the Writers Strike End, Network Executives Contemplate Alternatives to Pilot Season
Commentary by: David Vinjamuri

The strike may be over, but the longterm effects of the Writer’s Strike are only just beginning. Chief among them is the question of how to develop new shows for network television. The old model - a pilot season where money is lavished on producing many shows which never see the light of day - is expensive and inefficient.

The answer to this question already exists though - and it’s in a place few are looking for examples these days - major league baseball. The major leagues understand that very few high school or college baseball players are ready to hit 100mph fastballs on day one. Instead of setting these guys up for failure, they send them to compete in leagues designed to develop their skills. Those who flourish get a chance to join the big show - the major leagues.

Network executives have already accidentally done this by promoting series like Showtime’s Dexter and USA Network’s Monk to prime time slots during the strike. Now they should consider a more serious and nuanced development plan.

Internet channels are crying out for content, for one thing. A series could be tested on iTunes, Joost, YouTube or a myriad of other places online. Three or four pilot episodes might be enough to pull together enough of an audience to justify a season-long run on a basic cable station. Then if the audience grows (in size and in passion) the series could make the jump to a broadcast network. This would also give each series a backstory - something for new fans to explore.

The writers’ strike has given television networks an unprecedented opportunity to change their business model. It would be a shame to waste it.

Issue: A surprising choice in the Democratic primaries
Commentary by: David Vinjamuri

Political campaigns are usually the stuff of brand managers’ nightmares. The advertising is coarse, unsubtle and unconvincing. It argues with consumers. The media plans are absurd, bombarding consumers with spots so many times that they are as likely to revolt as be convinced.

In this year’s Democratic primary, however, a strange thing is happening: the candidates have constructed two very clear brand paradigms.

While the window dressing of the campaigns may have you believe that the campaign is about experience vs. youth (for Clinton) or change versus the status quo (for Obama), decoding the brand paradigms suggest that the real struggle is even older and more familiar for brand strategists.

It turns out that this primary is really about management versus leadership.

Why do we say this? Decoding the language Sen. Clinton uses to speak about her candidacy and the language of her advertising yields a classic trove of pro-management imagery. Clinton values experience, understands the mechanisms of power, knows the people who actually get things done. She promises to be ‘hands on,’ surrounds herself with party elders and speaks of herself as the safe choice. She unfailingly uses the first person “I” when speaking about her campaign - indicating she will take personal responsibility for the results and values accountability highly.

Sen. Obama speaks of the urgent need for political transformation and uses the language of movements rather than management. He suggests that creating a post-partisan administration and transcending “blue versus red state” mentalities is more important even than specific policy objectives. In spite of repeated attacks from his opposition, he continues to speak more about opportunity and to use his media to motivate rather than to specify. Sen. Obama rarely uses “I” and almost always uses the second person “we” to speak of his campaign as a movement.

This makes for a surprisingly substantive choice for voters. It’s not just flash and posturing - the two candidates are presenting two real alternatives to the question of how executive power is wielded. And they are using classic brand paradigms to do it.

Senator Clinton presents a rational argument for competent management being the most important quality for the next leader. She points to this as the greatest weakness in the current administration (failure to plan for the occupation of Iraq, poor follow-through in Afghanistan, mismanagement of disaster relief after Katrina, etc.). She suggests that only a great manager will be able to deal with the war on terrorism and work health care reform through Congress.

Senator Obama tells us that leadership rather than management will be necessary characteristic of the next President. While bad management may have gotten us mired in Iraq, only leadership will extract us. Rather than a President who can move the levers of power he suggests that we need a President who can inspire others to make fundamental changes.

These competing brand paradigms give us a stark, pragmatic choice. In Senator Clinton’s vision, the best way to avoid a terrorist plot being hatched in Munich, but bound for the United States is to have a President who can get the FBI and CIA to share intelligence, work smoothly with the German government and one who has put the right capabilities into place to stop the plot once uncovered.

Senator Obama suggests that changing the underlying mistrust of the United States in the eyes of foreign nationals (through visionary leadership) would more effectively foil the same plot by making the German Police more likely to trust their U.S. counterparts and share intelligence and also make ordinary citizens of both countries less fearful to cooperate if they were themselves Muslim.

These are two valid arguments and both need to be considered. And - although politics is not the usual place to find it - a good example of successful brand positioning.

Brand: Coca-Cola (The Coca-Cola Company)
Execution: TV (1 and 2)
Target: Soft Drinkers
Rating: *****
Reviewer: David Vinjamuri

Description:
Two Super Bowl spots for Coca-Cola, both of which broke for Super Bowl XLII. The first spot features Democrat Jim Carville and former Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist arguing on a talk show. They say the word “wrong” at the same time and Frist says, “jinx - buy me a Coke!” “Right now?” Carville asks and Frist says, “No talkin’ - jinx rules!” The two leave the show and walk outside to a hot dog cart where Carville buys Cokes. Frist sees a tour bus and says, “How ’bout it?” “Why not,” Carville shrugs and the two take a tour of Washington, D.C. where they rediscover their love of America (even riding on Segway scooters at one point). The spot ends with them having another Coke while sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, looking at the sun setting over the reflecting pool and Washington Monument.

The second spot starts with a tranquil aerial view of Central Park in New York City. Three floats for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Stewie (from The Family Guy), Underdog and a Coca-Cola Bottle (which we don’t recall seeing in the most recent parade) are being handled by their teams. Then a gust of wind takes the Coca-Cola bottle aloft and Stewie and Underdog immediately begin to fight for it. The battle continues over the streets and sidewalks of Manhattan until, unexpectedly, Charlie Brown catches the bottle over Central Park.

What Works:
The New York Giants may be going home with the rings, but from the brand manager’s perspective it looks like Coca-Cola won the Super Bowl. Although perennial favorite Budweiser won fan polls in such forums as Adbowl, Coca-Cola scored more points from a brand equity standpoint by surprising viewers with two strong messages about the brand - each of which place the brand itself (and not secondary brand equity props like the Budweiser Clydsdales) as the hero of the spot. In fact, the spots mark a remarkable turnaround year for Coca-Cola which has taken itself from the depths of advertising irrelevance (perhaps epitomized by the failed remake of the iconic 70’s spot “Hilltop” called “Chilltop” as an introduction for Coke Zero - an effort so profoundly bad that an online version cannot be found) to a fresh rediscovery of the brand in the hands of Wieden & Kennedy.

Coca-Cola as a brand is most successful when it used as a social catalyst - the profoundly unique element that brings people together. Even though Stewie and Underdog are fighting for a single bottle in the “It’s Mine” spot, the real story is all of the New Yorkers watching the proceedings in wonder, remembering their first trip to the Thanksgiving Day parade. On a small island, events can unite people quickly. Such is the message of this Coke spot. The Frist/Carville spot is expertly timed - coming as it does just a few days before the socalled “Typhoon Tuesday” when nearly one-half of the U.S. electorate goes to vote in primary elections. Speaking as it does of transcendent values that overwhelm partisan issues, it aligns Coke with an important cultural moment.

Taken together, these spots remind us of the profound impact of an iconic brand, one that has been easy to forget for more than a decade.

What Doesn’t:
The Atlanta beverage giant’s future fortunes may hinge more on water and non-carbonated drinks (as evidenced by the recent acquisition of the Vitamin Water brand) but Coca-Cola needs to remember that the equity of all of its brands is enhance by the goodwill that the Coca-Cola name generates. Other than a few noble efforts by Wieden & Kennedy (and Psyop who collaborated on the magical “Happiness Factory” campaign” ), Coca-Cola has significantly under-invested in a brand that drives much of its brand equity as well as employee and distributor morale.

Branding Bottom Line:
Squint and you’d think Coke just aired an Obama commercial and an outtake from Cloverfield. But it’s still a home run.