livingbrands

Waitrose can't cook

Apologies for the quality of the photo, but there was a sea of commuters breaking around me. But I see this everyday on my way home, and it has started to annoy me.

The objective of this new Waitrose campaign is clearly to promote their new, good value Essentials range, without undermining the brands foodie credentials. Fair enough.

But you don't need to be a Masterchef contestant to realise there's a flaw...

If you can't make it out thru the blur, that's the essential ingredients for a chilli con carne - mince, tomatoes, chilli beans and rice.

Now I know that (strickly speaking) onions and (duh) chillis/chilli powder may not be in the Essentials range, but come on guys!

Pepsi to cease advertising

This made me laugh. And also reflect on some of the points made, and wonder whether there was a better world out there if we just looked at things differently. All that was required for complete verisimilitude (word of the day!) was some comment about social media being the future ;o)

PepsiCo sent shockwaves through the carbonated beverage industry Monday when the multibillion dollar corporation announced that it would cease all advertising of its popular soda product, effective immediately.

"We know it's good, and everyone's pretty happy with the overall taste, so why spend all our time worrying about what other people think?" PepsiCo CEO Indra K. Nooyi told reporters during a press conference at the company's corporate headquarters. "Frankly, it just feels sort of weird and desperate to put all this energy into telling people what to drink. If they don't like it, then they don't like it."

Added Nooyi, "That's not really any of our business anyway." According to Nooyi, top PepsiCo brass held a series of meetings over the past several months before unanimously agreeing Monday that they all enjoyed Pepsi, and that the company's century-old history of massive, high-budget ad campaigns, cross-promotional tie-ins, merchandising, and Super Bowl halftime extravaganzas had been "a big mistake."

Executives then released a statement to shareholders declaring that PepsiCo is now "what it should have been all along: a company that just makes soda, and doesn't get caught up in trying to make everyone like it."

In response to a question about whether the elimination of Pepsi's marketing and advertising divisions would hurt the company's ability to compete with rival soda manufacturer Coca-Cola, Nooyi expressed no concern.

"Vying for the greatest market share shouldn't be a soft drink company's be-all and end-all," said Nooyi, who added that if she's happy at the end of the day, that's what really matters. "After all, it's not like this is some kind of Cola War or anything."

"Look, Coca-Cola is a terrific product," Nooyi continued. "Millions of people choose it over Pepsi every day. Are those people wrong? Of course not. Concepts like 'right' and 'wrong' shouldn't even apply. It's a soft drink."

Nooyi told reporters the company's $1.3 billion annual advertising budget would be put into Pepsi's savings account, spread among various charitable organizations, and divvied up into generous bonuses for the company's minimum-wage factory employees.

Claiming that "taste is subjective," Nooyi further stated that those who hadn't already heard of Pepsi were unlikely to begin drinking it now, and that the company was perfectly content to rely on word of mouth to sell its product.

"You can't taste an ad, anyway," Nooyi said. "People are going to make up their own minds regardless of whether we spend millions trying to inform them that Taylor Swift drinks Pepsi. I mean, seriously, does it really matter if Taylor Swift drinks Pepsi? She's just a human being like everybody else."

Concluding the press conference, Nooyi stated that she wasn't even sure why she was talking about any of this in the first place, asked the assembled reporters whether they didn't have better uses for their time, and suggested that everybody just go home, hug their loving spouses, and play—really, truly play—with their children before life passes them by.

"Hey, there's a slogan for you," Nooyi said. "Spend more time with your families."

From the Onion, obviously.

10 things we didn't know before the 38th week of 2009

1. Banana skins can take two years to biodegrade.
2. The longest speech at the United Nations lasted almost eight hours.
3. Brazil always speaks first at the UN General Assembly, according to long-standing protocol, and is followed by the host country.
4. Jay-Z has Barack Obama's mobile phone number.
5. Swine flu gel can get you drunk.
6. British heroin comes from Hampshire.
7. Gambon, star of the Harry Potter films, has never read any of the books.
8. The only woman ever in the French Foreign Legion is British.
9. Ceefax was created by accident.
10. Fifteen of IKEA'S Billy bookcases are made every minute.

 (Borrowed from the BBC)

Some Campaign fame for my outsourcing post

I added my POV to the Peperami outsourcing debate recently, and it's been picked up by Campaign this week. Which is nice.

10 things we didn't know before the 37th week of 2009

1. The Da Vinci Code and Dan Brown's three previous books are the UK's top four bestselling adult paperback novels of all time.
2. If you buy an item worth more than £100 with a credit card and it breaks because of a fault, the credit card provider is liable.
3. In Freemasonry, there is a death ritual in which a mock murder is performed.
4. A typical human has enough body fat to sustain about 40 marathons.
5. Tyrannosaurus Rex developed from a near-identical but much smaller predecessor.
6. Sportswear firms Adidas and Puma have had a 60-year feud.
7. Monkeys suffer colour blindness.
8. Pregnancy may help athletes to be more flexible.
9. All British industrial action ballots must be by post, except for workers at sea.
10. Vera Lynn had three songs in the first ever Top 12 in 1952, when Britain first introduced official sales charts.

 (Borrowed from the BBC)

Peperami, outsourcing and IP

(Fontplaydotcom)

Just come across some interesting comments from Simon Law on the implications of Unilever outsourcing creative development of new Peperami advertising...

"This is one of those 'interesting' concept ideas, right up to the point where it becomes the home for the latest Peperami brief and The Guardian writes an article about how Unilever are ditching their ad agency to see what comes out of crowdsourcing creative ideas. At which point, it becomes a very real alternative to having an ad agency… well, depending on the outcome. And it will be fascinating to see what comes out of it.

At the same time, it’s sad – because Still Price Lintas (that merged into Lowe) was the agency that invented the Peperami character and now any creative can write a story around it. Without them getting a penny. And, the reality is, the difficult bit was inventing it in the first place. So, is it OK that we still don’t own any future revenue streams off the ideas we generate? A problem that has been around a long time with little resolution. But, as we enter a world where content and characters are the value, could agencies be giving too much away for little reward?"

The debate about outsourcing is well catered for on both sides. But I thought Simon's second point touched on a possibly more interesting question: the old chestnut of IP.

There has always been a slight disgruntlement in agencies over givingn ideas away for free, in perpetuity. But this was always a case of swings and roundabouts on the income front, when we were the only game in town - you lost your idea, but gained someone else's in return.

But if outsourcing becomes established that model falls apart.

Which looks bleak if you're an agency...unless we look at this as an opportunity to renegotiate things in our favour.

In the past, there was always mutual agreement between client and agency to not get to bogged down in IP, because of the 'swings and roundabouts' argument.

But like vandals down the park, Unilever's Peperami decision has broken the roundabout and pulled down the swings. And maybe (naively) one of the results of this will be that agencies find it easier to argue for some kind of IP related payment for initial idea generation in future: an on-going royalty payment or hefty buy out perhaps.

After all, a boy in his bedroom in Boise Idaho may be able to write a passable (and obviously cheap) script to an existing campaign idea, but most clients will still need to work with a proper agency to develop and nurture that idea in the first place.

Because it is only an on-going relationship which provides an agency with the requisite market, brand and consumer understanding to develop an idea that actually delivers. And from the other side of the fence, it's that same relationship that allows a client to access the holistic skills and knowledge agencies can provide...and which some 'bloke on the internet' (tm) lacks.

So if outsourcing becomes established as a cost effective way to work with a well established campaign idea (and I can see the advantages...and it's a game we can still play), maybe now is the time for agencies to start revisiting remuneration of the initial idea development that makes this outsourcing possible.

Or to put it another way: no more giving stuff away for free.

Post of the month (vote Jon!)

I have the honour of again being nominated in Neil Perkin's Post of the Month, with a little 'dark night of the soul' piece I wrote on the nature of the work we do (which seems to have stirred up some interesting debate).

I'm in very good company, so read them all.

But vote me, obviously…because you know it makes sense.

Music piracy, the old fashioned way

From back in the day: the Dead Kennedys show the new kids how to stick it to the man...

(Thanks to Rock Sellout)

10 things we didn't know before the 36th week of 2009

1. Married couples used to always sleep apart.
2. Criminal trials in Japan have a 99% conviction rate.
3. The world's oldest circle of church bells is in Ipswich.
4. Both parties file for divorce in only one in 300 cases, on average.
5. Peter Andre's surname is actually Andrea.
6. The subject with the most GCSE passes this year was chemistry.
7. Everyone once used the left-hand side of the road.
8. There are so few redheads in Mexico that they often greet each other in the street.
9. Silvio Berlusconi is the same height as Nicolas Sarkozy.
10. "Posh" tea company Twinings is owned by Associated British Foods, which also own budget clothes chain Primark.

 (Borrowed from the BBC)

Give people what they want to feel

Some views on creative development from Pixar's Andrew Stanton, director of Finding Nemo and Wall.E…

"I am a firm believer that you can't take it literally when audiences tell you what they want. Our job as storytellers is to know what the audience wants before they do. So an audience member will typically tell you 'well what I want is…' and they are just going to use examples of what they've seen before. You can't take that at face value. What they are really saying is 'I want to feel as great as I did the last time I had a good time at a film, but in a new way. But I don't know what that new way is, so I'm just going to give examples of old ways'"

So it's not about giving people what they have seen before, and so can easily articulate…even if they did really like it. It's about letting them feel the way they have felt before (when it was good)…which could actually look very different in execution…and probably should, as novelty adds and sameness detracts from a positive 'feel'.

Which has particular implications for 'research', I guess, as this 'feel' only really happens in the execution and in real life context.