livingbrands

FutureScoping 70

Just to let you know, the latest edition of my trends newsletter is now out: "emerging trends, new ideas and general thought stimulation"...or so it says on the cover.

Music like no other

OK, we know that I was in the minority of people left cold by drumming gorillas. And I also feel Bunnies is the least good of the Bravia ads so far.

But before anyone thinks I've got some kind of vendetta against Fallon, I must say that this I really do like.

128 musicians + one note each = the new Sony Walkman ad...

Lovely. And with the happening in real time, right now buzz I felt Bunnies was lacking.

But like em or not, you can't really complain about 3 really talk-about-able ads in quick succession.

Tell your story in another media

To promote Douglas Coupland's new novel, The Gum Thief, Random House Canada asked production company Crush to make 9 short films, each dramatising a facet of the book. And all narrated by the great man himself. You can see the 9 as one film on Youtube.

In the same way that TV shows are increasingly using the web to extend their story, this seems to be an interesting example of how you might do the same for books. Less the film of the book and more expressing the essence of the narrative in a different media.

(Thanks to Creative Review)

Is corporate consistency important?

We all understand the importance of brands being open, honest and consistent (or at least not contradictory). After all, it's so easy for people to find out the 'truth' nowadays, you don't want to be caught with your trousers down.

But what's easy for brands (in theory - obviously a lot haven't even got to this point yet, which is another story entirely), is not always quite so straightforward for the businesses that own them. Particularly if those businesses have a wide range of brands, in very different markets with very different audiences.

Case in point: Unilever. It has two brands that are often held up as perfect examples of great brand building, because they are very open, honest and consistent in what they say, and how they behave : Dove and Lynx/Axe.

The problem though, as Russell wrote about recently, is that whilst these two brand are brilliantly consistent, they are in danger of saying inconsistent things about Unilever. This is particularly true from the perspective of Dove, which has taken a stand against the very objectification of women that Lynx's seems to be embody.

Does this inconsistency matter? I don't know. I guess I have always felt a little uncomfortable about Lynx at a personal level (even whilst respecting the brand), so for me I would probably say yes...a bit. But I also recognise that a business like Unilever doesn't, and can't really operate with the corporate consistency of (say) an Innocent, where the company is the brand.

And you might even argue that Dove and Lynx should in fact be seen as separate 'businesses' that happen to be 'owned' by the same 'investor', and on that basis look at Unilever as one step removed. Plus, you obviously have to take the whole Lynx thing with a big pinch of ironic salt.

But when films like this start turning up (thanks to PSFK), you do have to wonder whether there might be problems ahead.

So back to the beginning: if you can find out everything about anything, what happens when enough people with a point of view start to join the dots between very different brands and the businesses that own them? How important is corporate consistency then?

10 things we didn't know before the 43rd week of 2007

1. An ai is a three-toed sloth from South America (and the word that clinched Paul Allan the title of national Scrabble champion).
2. Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa originally had eyebrows and eyelashes.
3. Dumbledore is gay.
4. A £500,000 note is not technically a counterfeit, because that word refers to legal tender - and the Bank of England has never issued £500,000 notes.
5. But £1,000 notes were in circulation until being withdrawn in 1943.
6. UN population projections go as far as 2300.
7. Forty percent of household packaging can’t be recycled.
8. Sheffield FC is the world’s oldest football club.
9. One percent of organic food on sale in the UK is air-freighted in from abroad.
10. Obesity rates in England were by 2005 the highest of the 15 member states who then formed the European Union.

(Source: BBC)

Torture by any other name

One of the major benefits of being both an agency and production company is that ideas and execution come together seamlessly. And sometimes very quickly. This anti-sex trafficking film, staring Emma Thompson as part of our involvement with The Journey, was written and shot for Body Shop in less than 10 hours (it was a very last minute brief!).

Sign the petition and send it on here.

Freaky brain test

Have a look at this.

If it's turning anti-clockwise you are more of a left brain person; if clockwise, more right orientated (apparently). And most people should fall into the former camp. Or so it says.

Though there are clearly differences between the two hemispheres of the brain, I have no idea if this works…or why. So I'd like to do a quick straw poll to check, as it's all clockwise as far as I'm concerned.

But even if hokum, it's quite fun trying to get the lady spinning the other way which, in good optical illusion fashion, is possible with some concentration.

(From: Zadland)

How to win a pencil

An interview with Dave Droga done to promote the 2008 D&AD awards...

10 things we didn't know before the 42nd week of 2007

1. The brain responds to facial expressions at a speed of less than 40 milliseconds.
2. Having sex daily can improve a man's sperm quality - increasing their partner's chance of getting pregnant.
3. CO2 emissions from shipping are twice the level of aviation.
4. George Clooney and Pierce Brosnan have had Bell's Palsy - a nerve condition that can result in paralysis on one side of the face.
5. Middlesbrough's first professional football club, established in the late Victorian era, was called Middlesbrough Ironopolis.
6. Only four people died in France in the Great Storm of 1987.
7. Migrants earned on average £424 per week last year, compared with £395 for UK-born workers.
8. Discrimination against atheists is allowed in employment in Texas, according to the state's constitution.
9. Leeches are used as treatment for cauliflower ears.
10. Asterix was so-called so he would appear at the start of an encyclopaedia of comics.

(Source: BBC)

Now with real meat chunks

It's probably worth pointing out, after all the social action stuff, that we still good old fashioned mainstream FMCG advertising.

This is our recent commercial for Butchers Superior, a new range of premium dog food from Butchers Petcare (a private company owned, rather strangely, by the Baker family)…

There's a higher res version here.