iPhone language

I've just been enjoying Johnson Banks' latest Thought for the Week: Me and my iPhone speak a different language.

Apart from sub-editing quibbles with the title (it really ought to be My iPhone and I speak different languages, of course), I found myself nodding along with Michael's whinge about the iPhone's predictive text.

It's the apostrophe predictions that really annoy me. Every time I have to write what the hell (and I do more often than you'd think), I end up with what the he'll. The iPhone also insists on turning my possessive itses into it'ses. And so it goes on.

As a fanatical Twitterer, this is a significant pain in the backside. I tweet a great deal from my iPhone - as my wife will be only too glad to tell you, along with gnashing teeth and rolling eyes. Then there's all the usual emails and texts one ends up sending on the move these days.

As a writer, I'm naturally keen that everything I send out into the world is correct (or at least is the way I want it to be). And as a professional writer, all these things - emails, texts, tweets, blog posts - are little calling cards for me. So it's infuriating when technology insists on ducking them up (as the iPhone would have me write it).

But as I smiled along to Michael's rant, I remembered the most important thing I've learnt about Apple technology, which is that it's almost always better and simpler than you think it is. (Especially if you have any experience of PCs, which inculcate one with the sense that computers have to be incredibly complicated to use, as well as unreliable.)

Based on that oft-learnt lesson, I quickly checked the Settings menu on my iPhone. And there, under 'Keyboard', was the little toggle switch I needed: Auto-correction on/off. Bingo.

I still think they could fine-tune the predictive text - why the hell am I more likely to be saying he'll every time? But once again, I've been reminded that with Apple, the answer is usually a (very intuitive) click or two away. And I've fallen a little more in love with my iPhone.

Obamawaggoning

This week's election in the US was thrilling. We've seen a lot of very unpleasant history being made in recent years, so it was thrilling to see the explosion of optimism that blasted across the world from Washington on Tuesday.

So it's rather depressing and wearying to see that not even this historic moment is beyond the grasp of those looking for any handy bandwagon to hitch their brand to. Since the election I've had two emails from organisations hoping to piggyback on Obama's success.

The first came from Network Solutions:



The next, from Mad.co.uk:


No links, because they don't deserve them. Does this sort of thing convince anyone?

It's not 'laying people off', it's 'synergy-related headcount restructuring'

Thanks to my friends at 26, I've been alerted to this quite extraordinary bit of corporate language-mangling by Nokia Siemens Networks.



And that's just the first paragraph.

I'm not sure what people feel is gained by this sort of language. We all know what they mean, so why not be straight about it? They've merged, and that means they don't need so many people. It's an unpleasant fact of corporate life, but it is a fact and we all know it.

Jargon like this makes the brand look silly - surely they don't think anyone is fooled by it? It also makes them look a bit shifty and deceptive, unprepared simply to stand by its actions.

Listen to this: "At the completion of the planned synergy-related headcount restructuring activities, Nokia Siemens Networks expects to have in the range of 7,000 employees in Finland, from an initial base of approximately 9,200."

Seven stodgy paragraphs in and they're not letting go of that enormous phrase, "synergy-related headcount restructuring activities". And they've tied themselves in linguistic knots trying not to say, "We're cutting 2,200 jobs." Of course, we can all do the maths and we can all see through the smoke. So why bother?

All this reminds me of a recent News Quiz on Radio 4, in which Jeremy Hardy ruminated that new jobs are always "created", but cut jobs are simply "lost", as if the organisations were not involved. "Oh, sorry, Bob, your job's lost. We don't know where it's gone. It never turned up. Better not come in. Ever again."

You're not going out wardrobed like that.

The Oxford University Press US blog has announced that 'Hypermiling' is their new Word of the Year. Apparently, it means making your car achieve the maximum possible miles on a tank. Is that really the best of the year? I can't believe it.

Much more troubling is the news, in the same article, that 'wardrobe' is now a verb, as in 'Eva Mendes is wardrobed by Calvin Klein.' Yuck.

Also, I see Meh has made it into the Collins Dictionary. But am I bothered?

Brilliant new film for Barnardo's

This chilling, smack-in-the-face film for Barnardo's is superb. It literally made my hair stand on end. I saw it on Scamp's site - he's the copywriter at BBH who worked on it. He did A Good Job (as did all concerned).

Puccino's

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.

Comedy imitates life (or at least branding)

I thought this was funny: Creative Review's spoof new identity, with an accompanying text using ludicrous jargon, apparently culled from real brand consultants. ("Our unique 3D marque - which we have christened the MaRble® - employs premium cues including the addition of vitreous accents denoting excellence and quality..." and so on.)

But it was made particularly piquant by the fact that just the day before, I'd seen this on Brand New:



The accompanying jargon is less outre, but runs along the lines of, "We needed to create a modern and distinctive look which signals where we are going as opposed to where we have been."

Hmmm: an abstracted globe... the word "distinctive"... I smell a paradox.

Today's Rant: The gorilla is a turkey

I must admit to a surge of schadenfreude as I read on Scamp's ad blog about the apparent failure of that drumming gorilla to sell Dairy Milk.

The original article is on Brand Republic, and reveals that while the percussive primate may have been a favourite among bloggers, Dairy Milk's market share has actually dropped. (While its arch-rival Galaxy has gained ground.)



I have to say, I never understood the fuss about Gorilla. I found the ad slow, the gorilla unconvincing and the whole thing bewilderingly unfunny. (Even bizarrely earnest.) So naturally I'm delighted, in a mean, selfish sort of way, that he's a flop.

Gorilla, like its successor, Trucks, is based on this 'brand idea' of 'Joy'. And it seems to me to demonstrate one of the pitfalls of modern-day branding. Having distilled the 'essence' of Dairy Milk down to that one idea, Joy, Cadbury's seems to have lost sight of what it's actually about, which is chocolate.

The idea that chocolate brings joy is hard to argue with (although hardly ownable by one brand). But joy, in and of itself, has no particular connection to Dairy Milk. The 'glass and a half' bit is still there, but feels rather lost, like a remnant of the past they felt beholden to include. (Pure joy or Brimming with joy or any similar line would have worked just as well.)

What you're left with is an ad which does kind of say 'Joy', and which apparently makes lots of people laugh, but which doesn't seem to have communicated very much about Dairy Milk.*

Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I still think you need to tie whatever Big Brand Idea you're toting back to your product or service - not just in advertising but in any communication. We need to come away connecting the Big Brand Idea to what you're actually selling. Because it's not an ad for joy, it's an ad for chocolate.

For example, I'm one of the few people whose teeth grind every time someone says how wonderful the Guinness Surfer ad was - what a pompous, overblown lot of old cack, I mutter to myself - but at least the Big Idea still connects to Guinness: it's worth waiting for. It's particular to Guinness, rather than a generic emotion like Joy, which could just as well be the Big Idea for the iPod, or McCain Oven Chips - or even Guinness, which has certainly brought me joy for many years.

Those great campaigns of yesteryear, like For Mash Get Smash, understood this too. The Big Idea - Space Age Food - is nailed firmly to the product. It doesn't hurt that the ads are so completely charming, universally funny and entirely original.



There's a First Choice ad that's been running for a while. You've seen it: hundreds of children appear over the dunes of a beautiful beach, and scream down to the sea to the William Tell Overture. We learn that First Choice teach thousands of kids to swim every year. 'That's why we're First Choice.'

It's not a great ad. It's not going to win any pencils. It's not as 'creative' as a drumming gorilla (although let's face it, animals doing human stuff is a pretty well-trodden trope). It doesn't make arch, ironic use of crap music. And it's never going to be a successful viral.

But for me it wins over Gorilla, because it tells me something, in a way I find it difficult not to smile at - all those kids rushing for the sea, now there's joy. I bet it sells more holidays than Gorilla sells chocolate.

_______________________
* All this reminds me of that experiment, I think by the Guardian, in which they created a brand called, I seem to remember, 'Joy'. (I can't find any reference online, unfortuately - anyone know where it's hiding?) They created a campaign about it, even though it was nothing but a name. The ads looked fresh and appealing, and people quite liked them. They even said they'd be interested in buying Joy. But Joy didn't exist. It was just a brand idea without a reality. Superficially successful, but with no substance.

If lawyers can single-space, so can everyone else

David has alerted me to this splendid site, Typography for Lawyers. Often, one feels that legal documents must have some sort of immunity from decent typography, but clearly they don't. When I got to the page about double-spaces between sentences, I started cheering:



God, this drives me nuts. So many client documents come with these yawning gaps between the sentences, as if someone's hung the paper up in a firing range. If I'm editing some client copy, half the time my first job is a Search & Replace, substituting single spaces for doubles.

I just can't believe people don't look at what they've written and go, 'Urgh.'