16447: Only You Can Prevent Brand Safety…?

Digiday published a report on brand safety—which was illustrated with an image that appears to violate the brand trademarks of Smokey Bear. Brilliant.

15506: The Environmental Impact Of Branding.

 

Fundación Meri and Plastic Oceans in Chile teamed up to create this campaign that trashes popular American brands.

11303: Brand Disloyalty Towards Blacks.

Adweek reported on a study measuring the feelings that Black consumers have towards brands and marketing. Not sure about the value of these types of surveys. Has positive data ever resulted in increased spending to target Black consumers? To get the true story, simply follow the trail of crumbs. Perhaps the figures would change if Black consumers realized how even the brands they love undervalue them in regards to advertising—and discriminate against them via partnering with predominately White advertising agencies.

Adidas Makes Gains Among Black Consumers, L’Oréal Lags

Brand study reveals the demo’s feelings toward marketing

By Christopher Heine

Adidas, E*Trade, Geico and Land Rover are a few of the brands that have made the biggest gains in terms of positive awareness among black teenagers and adults during the last year, per NewMediaMetrics (NMM).

NMM, which surveyed 3,400 African Americans ages 13 to 64 about brand-related “emotional attachment,” found that Land Rover was the most popular brand across product categories while Lexus, Nike and Mercedes-Benz trailed closely behind as the luxury car niche showed well.

Honda and Toyota were the most popular economy car brands, while Hennessy (beer/alcohol), Walmart (retail), Starbucks (beverages), Clorox (households), Kelloggs (edible consumer-packaged goods), Aflac (insurance), Visa (credit cards), Charles Schwab (financial) and Joe’s Crab Shack (restaurants) led their respective categories.

Overall, 35 brands improved their demo-focused NMM index scores by 15 points or more compared to last year, said Gary Reisman, CEO of the New York-based marketing and research firm. He said Kohls, Verizon, Oscar Mayer Lunchables, Hotels.com and Expedia are other examples.

While nonanalysts might be surprised that Converse beats more prolific shoe sellers like Reebok and New Balance when it comes to favorable awareness with African Americans, Reisman said that result jibed with what he’s seen in the space. “Converse has done some fantastic product integrations and nontraditional marketing and advertising,” he explained.

Brands losing their emotional connection to black consumers during the last 12 months, per NMM, include L’Oréal, Prudential, Farmers, Travelers, Nationwide, Droid and Vonage.

6009: Major Withdrawals Of Loyalty.

Last week, the Associated Press presented a nice story on the Washington Mutual/JPMorgan Chase drama, examining the contradictions posed by connecting two very different personalities. As the piece pointed out, WaMu has built its image by dissing competitors like Chase. Now the upstart will be working for the stodgy, old White guys.

Meanwhile, Wachovia Bank stunned the advertising community—especially new AOR O&M—by revealing it was being bought by rival Citibank. The trade press and blogs obsessed over this tale too, mostly focusing on Ogilvy’s colossal misfortune.

Yet it doesn’t seem as if many have considered the deep, long-term damage these events inflict on our industry—damage that reaches far beyond the pains associated with lost profits.

The WaMu incident shows that branding is growing increasingly irrelevant. Categories like telecommunications have surely contributed to the degradation, as logos and taglines are regularly defaced, erased and replaced. How can agencies and clients hope to build customer relationships when brand characters undergo more radical transformations than Michael Jackson?

The O&M incident shows that adpeople are growing increasingly irrelevant. Constant encounters with nomadic CMOs and numbers-crunching holding companies leave few agency grunts feeling in control of their professional destinies. Why pledge allegiance to clients and BDAs when you’re viewed in terms of billable hours?

Loyalty—whether from the clients, the customers or the cubicles—is becoming extinct. And you can take that to the bank. Although there are no guarantees your bank will still be around when you get there.

Essay 4886

AdPulp’s Danny G remarked on Essay 4873, making observations worth discussing further.

G wrote: “Agencies who spout off about brands using the web to have an ersatz ‘two-way dialogue’ with consumers need to wake up and realize that yes, they are brands too, and the dialogue about the agency itself is fair game.”

For the most part, today’s advertising agencies are lousy brands.

Agencies are quick to convince (accent on con) clients that the standard marketing and advertising tactics are required for successful brands. Yet the typical agency seldom self-prescribes its own advice. The better shops take a “let-the-work-speak-for-itself” approach, essentially relying on word-of-mouth. Of course, no agency would ever suggest this course of action for clients. At least not without charging them for the plan.

On rare occasions, an agency will attempt to produce its own advertising and branding campaign. The efforts usually demonstrate that in addition to being lousy brands, agencies are lousy clients. Just ask any creative team that has ever been assigned to such a task. (Note to agencies: You don’t recommend that clients keep stuff in-house, so you shouldn’t either. Doctors won’t perform surgery on themselves, the lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client, etc. If you want a breakthrough campaign for your shop, hire Wieden + Kennedy or Goodby, Silverstein & Partners to execute it.)

Self-promotion aside, today’s advertising agencies are lousy brands for more reasons. Moronic management, mergers and buyouts are the major culprits, and they’re often intertwined. When viewed through a branding lens, it’s easy to understand the problems.

Having morons at the helm is the equivalent of having a shitty product or service. If your product or service is inherently shitty, then your brand will ultimately stink too. No rocket science there. It’s just the way things are. To compound issues, moronic management tends to be out of touch with the current marketplace. If a brand fails to evolve with society and becomes outdated and irrelevant, well, you get the picture.

Mergers and buyouts are killing advertising agency brands. The size of the holding company is directly proportionate to the awfulness of the merging murder. Back in the day, great advertising agencies had distinct personalities and images. You’d be hard-pressed to attach positive brand characteristics to IPG, WPP, Havas, Omnicom and Publicis—or any characteristics, for that matter.

Mergers and buyouts accelerate management shifts, as leaders jockey for power positions. The result is a rollercoaster ride of altering objectives and corporate vision revisions. The latest regime promises to invent “The Agency of the Future,” despite the fact that the architects are likely old school hacks incapable of coping in the present.

Plus, mergers and buyouts lead to constant name changes, exacerbating brand fuzziness. Imagine if McDonald’s or Coca-Cola altered their labels as frequently as agencies. The new monikers sound and look bad. The reprinting for business cards and letterheads can’t be cheap.

In BDAs (George Parker’s favorite abbreviation for Big Dumb Agencies), employees aren’t even clear on their employer’s official name. Need proof? If you’re a BDA drone, sign up for LinkedIn. Every week, you’ll receive a bunch of contacts that weren’t on your original connections list. Why? Because they identified your common agency by a different name than you did. Acme. Acme Worldwide. Acme Communications. The Acme Group. Acme RSCG. A.C.M.E. Publicis Acme. AcmeFCB. Whatever.

If agency folks don’t know their company’s brand, what must the clients be thinking?

If advertising agencies fuck up their own brands, why should they be entrusted with a client’s brand?