It's been too long, hasn't it? Sorry. But here I am again, because I've just been reading this post on Brand New about Puccino's. Their copy-driven branding is all created by one man, designer and illustrator Jim Smith. Smith was taken on virtually out of college, and given a three-month contract that has now lasted ten years.
I've certainly noticed their stuff on various railways stations. The biscuit pack in the shot above made me laugh out loud, and I love their CLOSED sign, too:
The funny (and, for once, copy-free) idea above was apparently shelved after complaints. Shame. But how many clients would take the deep breath required to run the poster below?
Or this cup?
There are lots more examples in this Flickr set. All good and charming. Good on Puccino's for rejecting so few.
How to make your emails even colder and more impersonal!
I just received an email from the new CEO of Network Solutions, through whom I own a couple of URLs*. Look:
Do you know, I have a feeling I wasn't the only one to get this email. Of course, I'd know that anyway, whatever it said. But you'd think a large company, especially one that deals exclusively in online services, could at least address me personally. And it would help if the first sentence wasn't a paragraph long, and deathly.
That phrase, 'delighted to make your acquaintance'. It's almost the opposite of the impersonal salutation. This time, the language is absurdly over personal. He's not making my acquaintance. (He's proved that by addressing me as 'Network Solutions(R) Customers'.) And what an old-fashioned sort of a phrase. I'm often a sucker for the old fashioned, but it just sounds stiff and awkward here.
Then, 'the opportunity to serve your online business needs'. It's like a radio ad I heard recently for a local builder: 'for all your building needs'. It's so vague, so lazy, so impersonal.
I'm sure W. Roy Dunbar (for that is the gentleman's name, believe it or not) is a very nice chap, and more than capable of serving my online business needs, such as they are. But this email just makes him and his company sound flat, formal, out of touch and out of date. Which is not good.
* By the way, the URLs, should you wish to buy any of them, are chattamo.com, chattamix.com and hooplo.com. One day, one of them will make my fortune. Probably.
I know I keep going on and on and on about Orange, but it is the brand that consistently upsets me the most.
The tone of voice is consistent, I'll give it that. But it's so consistently unctuous and supercilious and syrupy that I just want to gag.
Coming home from a meeting last week, I spotted the latest sticky-sweet globule to have dripped from Orange's honeyed spoon. It was this:
It turns out to be part of the new Orange campaign from Fallon, based around this line of 'I am who I am because of everyone.' There is, God help us, a TV version:
Christ. For my money, these ads prove that the easiest thing to do with this sort of quasi-lyrical, oh-so-meaningful copy is to get it horribly wrong.
Thankfully, I am not alone. Campaign swiftly named the commercial Turkey of the Week, and the opinions they recorded from punters in the street were generally of the 'boring', 'confusing' variety. One of these reviewers gets straight to the point, saying she thought it was going to be an ad for teaching, or 'something with a bit more meaning, rather than just a mobile phone company.'
And that's it, isn't it? Orange appears to have had enough of being 'just a mobile phone company'. (All right, a broadband company too, but that doesn't seem to be working out too well either).
You feel that somebody somewhere has said to them, 'You're not about boring old phones any more. You're a brand. An iconic brand. You're a totem, a cultural touchpoint, a glowing connection between all the peoples of the world. You're a fireplace for us to gather around as the night settles coldly all about. You help release the dreams in us all, as a fine summer rain unleashes the delicate majesty of the rainbow.' Or something.
It's all very well to recognise the 'softer' elements of a brand, of course. If you allow people to communicate, you become a facilitator for all sorts of things in life. Lovely. But what if that becomes all you talk about?
Well for one thing, you run the risk of going generic, which I think these ads do. They just become about connections between people, and that's something any telecomms company can talk about.
But all this earnest, onanistic froth also seems hopelessly out of joint with the bloke who convinced me to sign an 18-month contract in order to get a free, early upgrade to a phone that's never worked properly since. And crap coverage.
Perhaps if customers came away from real-life encounters with Orange glowing with the sheer delight of it all, the brand would have more chance of getting away with such fluffy, pure 'brand' advertising. (It's impossible not to think of the iPod ads, which provide no more information than do the Orange ads, but succeed by reflecting the - authentic - joyous simplicity of the product.)
Sadly, though, I think the rot goes even deeper. It's in the tone of voice itself. Like the lady said, all this earnest, high-falutin' stuff about 'who I am' suggests something with 'more meaning', 'rather than just a mobile phone company'. Basically, they've got a bit above themselves. (Or more crudely, up themselves.)
The thing is, there's nothing wrong with being 'just a mobile phone company'. Provide a great service, communicate it with sense and charm, and you're onto a winner. We all love our mobiles (as long as they work). We couldn't be without them. They let us do all sorts of things.
So why is Orange so determined to pretend it's something else? I still wonder if they've got all sorts of new service offerings up their sleeve, and want to create a more abstract umbrella brand that can encompass whatever those are. Maybe. But if so, it ain't working.
I have a new client: Woo. (That's their name, not my rousing cry of new business excitement.) And I went to see them for the first time yesterday. Looking at the list of other companies in the Engine group, I found it a bit difficult to suppress a giggle. It's getting so difficult to find distinctive names these days, this is where we're now at. Still, they're doing very nicely out of it.
It's funny what you learn in this job. For example, I've been working with Mint, a design agency in Jordan, recently. Together, we named a new property development company in Dubai, which is creating some of the most exclusive and luxurious residences in the world. (And they really are: all hyperbole permitted on this one.)
With the name in place (it's still a secret), I started work on some marketing materials for the two islands they're developing. (See what I mean?)
I was describing a vision of what was to come, rather than an existing property, so I naturally slipped into the future tense: 'We will create the ultimate in luxury,' etc, etc.
This prompted a call from Tania at Mint, who explained that in her part of the world, if you say 'I will do something', everyone understands that to mean it'll never happen.
Of course, we have something like that over here - it's called builderspeak - but it seems to be the generally accepted meaning in the United Arab Emirates. Curious, eh?
What it meant was, I had to write about something in the future while avoiding the future tense. You try it sometime. It's not easy. (Thankfully, I seem to have pulled it off.)
I hate, hate, hate the FCUK brand. Really hate it. Horrible, oikish bull-headed non-idea that it is. But for heaven's sake, if you're going to do it, do it with some wit. I've just seen FCUK socks in a shop. Naturally I didn't buy them - I'll never buy French Connection again, even though I quite like some of their stuff (the stuff that doesn't shout profanities at me). But look:
Nobody thought this schould be called SCOK? Come on. It would have been a little ray of charm in this otherwise bleak and cynical excuse for a brand.
Hate's a bit strong, really. But 'This Water' doesn't seem to me to have any of the charm, personality or, well, innocence of Innocent, its parent brand. ('Juicy Water' was much nicer, I thought.)
It probably hasn't, but it feels like this name has been through the branding mill, briefed out to earnest consultants with complex theories about the democratisation of information in a Web 2.0 multiverse.
It feels achingly 'now': at once informal and apparently friendly, while also being oblique and modish enough to make one feel one isn't quite in on the joke. It feels, to me, like a brand consultant's brand, not a consumer's brand.
It's a bit unfair to compare it with Innocent, of course. (Especially as I complain about everybody comparing everything to Innocent.) The whole point of the name change is to distinguish it from its illustrious parent. It needs to have its own voice.
But the Innocent name has succeeded, I think, because it links to the product in a direct, almost functional way, as well as being charming, human and original. By comparison, 'This Water' seems rather vague, and perhaps just an excuse to do labels that say things like 'There are 88 cranberries in THIS WATER...', etc.
Having tasted it, I can report that the water itself is delicious. I'll buy it for that reason. (And because they also contribute to Water Aid.) But for me, there won't be that added enjoyment of the brand and its language that you get with an Innocent smoothie.
