Ged Carroll

Category: branding | 品牌推廣 | 브랜드 마케팅 | ブランディング

The dictionary definition of branding is the promotion of a particular product or company by means of advertising and distinctive design.

I have covered many different things in branding including:

  • Genesis – the luxury Korean automotive brand
  • Life Bread – the iconic Hong Kong bread brand that would be equivalent of wonder loaf in the US
  • Virgil Abloh and the brand collaborations that he was involved in
  • Luxury streetwear brands
  • Burger King campaigns with Crispin Porter Bogusky
  • Dettol #washtocare and ‘back to work’ campaigns
  • Volkswagen ‘see the unseen’ campaign for its Taureg off road vehicle
  • SAS Airline – What is truly Scandinavian?
  • Brand advertising during Chinese New Year (across China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia)
  • Lovemarks as a perspective on branding
  • BMW NEXTGen event and Legend of Old McLanden campaign
  • Procter & Gamble’s Gillette toxic masculinity ads
  • Kraft Mother’s Day campaign
  • Kraft Heinz brand destruction
  • Porsche Design in the smartphone space
  • Ermenegildo Zegna
  • Nike’s work with Colin Kaepernick
  • Counterfeit brands on Instagram, Alibaba and Amazon
  • Gaytime Indonesian ice cream
  • Western Digital
  • Louis Vuitton collaboration with Supreme
  • Nokia
  • Nike Korea’s ‘Be Heard’ campaign
  • Mercedes SLS coupe campaign
  • Brand collaborations in Hong Kong
  • Beats headphones
  • Apple
  • Henrion Ludlow Schmidt’s considerations of branding
  • Cathay Pacific
  • Bosch
  • Mitt Romney’s failed presidential bid
  • Microsoft Surface launch
  • Oreo Korean campaign
  • Chain coffee shop brands and branding
  • Samsung’s corporate brand
  • North Face’s brand overeach in South Korea
  • Mr Pizza Korean pizza restaurant and delivery service brand
  • Amoy Hong Kong food brand
  • Chevrolet Corvette ‘roar’ campaign promoting a build your own car service

  • Mulan live action trailer & things that made the week

    Mulan live action film trailer

    Disney posted this beautiful trailer of the Mulan live action adaption this weekend. I presume it was to try and take the sting out of a black mermaid earlier this week on Chinese social media. The Mulan live action film will have to meet the exacting standards of fans who loved the animated version of Mulan and avoid communist party imbued fascism

    McDonalds bacon rolls

    Kudos to my former work neighbours at Leo Burnett London for this lovely bit of craft in a McDonald’s UK ad for bacon rolls

    40th anniversary of Sony Walkman

    Sony have been celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Walkman. There used to be a lovely museum of Sony gear through the ages that was not only great to behold; but an education in product design. Anyway check out this short Sony video of Walkmans

    Doxxed colonial policemen

    I’ve been following the ongoing events in Hong Kong with interest. It seems that the Labour Party proved to be more effective than the government in striking out for the Hong Kong people. Shadow minister Helen Goodman doxed one of three British expat senior policemen who were involved in the harshest Hong Kong police action to date on June 12. The Times newspaper published the names of the other two officers Rupert Dover and David Jordan. Their identity had appeared on Hong Kong protest banners after June 12 and were well known to the expat community.

    The June 12th tactics were more suitable for Northern Ireland during The Troubles than the kind of demos one would see in Hong Kong. Superintendent Julian Shave’s profile on LinkedIn (since removed) showed that considered himself an expert in counter-terrorism. There was nothing about his expertise in the use of tear gas against Hong Kongers.

    Given Goodman’s and the Labour Party’s stance about this, Messrs Dover, Jordan and Shave might think of looking for a job in Bahrain or China’s burgeoning private security sector, rather than risking a day in a UK court under a future Labour government…

    K-pop idol experience

    Hallyu or Korean popular culture has been on a sustained boom since the early noughties. A key part of this has been the way Korea seems to mass produce boy and girl bands in a much more consistently successful way than the likes of Japan. They even seem to do it even better than western producer dynasties like Simon Cowell, 19 Management or Stock, Aitken and Waterman. This documentary by Asian Boss is very insightful on the idol experience from an insider and how she’s pivoted into being a YouTuber

  • Chinas booming streetwear scene + more

    Inside Chinas booming streetwear scene – Inkstone – great video on Chinas booming streetwear scene that’s morphing into someithing very different

    Tesco Is Said to Work With Israel’s Trigo on Cashierless Stores – Bloomberg – if Chinese cashier less stores experience is anything to go by, this might not be a good idea

    ‘Adapt or die’ – Martin Sorrell’s message to ‘Pavlovian’ ad industry holding companies – Mumbrella Asia – S4 Capital’s low overheads and a cheaper wage bill due to the average employee age being 25 at Mightyhive – the programmatic firm – and 33 at MediaMonks, the production house, meant it could deliver greater bang for the buck than the networks – so its not a smart marketing play but a manpower cost play? We’re better run because we employ cheaper staff? Sorrell gets made to look like a chump in this article; I’d also suggest that he does his homework looking at effectiveness and creativity more closely

    Opinion | A Major Police Body Cam Company Just Banned Facial Recognition – The New York Times – interesting move by Axon. The US seems to be doing to facial recognition what the EU did to online data with GDPR

    FCB parts with Nivea amid rising tensions, including allegations of homophobic remark | AdAge – client reported said ‘we don’t do gay’ on agency call. That’s being leaked from FCB staff or freelancers

    Crazy/Genius: Are Influencers Frauds or the Future? – The Atlantic – the dystopian age of whuffie capitalism

    Nike Withdraws Products After Brand Partner Vexed China for Supporting HK | Jing Daily – Nike and the bullshit of brand purpose, especially when you contrast this to the Colin Kapernick campaign. When sales are lacklustre principles go to shit

    Huawei Personnel Worked With China Military on Research Projects – Bloomberg – looks like a mix of internal security work (analysing emotions in online video content, and external security on collecting and analysing satellite images and where 2.0 data. One also has to remember that Qualcomm has got a heavy national security background in the US. Given the current situation this news couldn’t have landed at a worse time for Huawei.

    Naomi Wu has an interesting discussion on professionalism versus engagement to maximise pay off on video. You need to have 2 million+ viewers to make the transition from 1080P to 4K worthwhile

    Carrefour sells 80% of China grocery business — Quartz – surprised they didn’t use China to jump start experience on e-commerce so they could take Amazon on in the home market. Talk about a missed opportunity

    China’s millennials are mourning the end of an era in online hook-up culture | Quartz – really interesting, given how early marketers like China Merchants Bank used drift bottle for its CSR programme. Its also unsurprising given China’s tightening grip on media distribution

  • BMW NEXTGen & things that made the week

    BMW NEXTGen event included a concept car the BMW Vision M Next. What I found most interesting about this is how BMW whilst looking forward with the i8 and the M Next; is still stuck with designs resembling the Giorgetto Giugiaro designed M1(E26) of the late 1970s. Don’t get me wrong, when I was a pre-teen my ideal car would have looked like the BASF sponsored M1 track car with the spiral paint work. It would have been nextgen for my pre-teen self, in the same way that the future also looked like a Star Trek communicator. Though our current smartphones would look nextgen to the original Star Trek set and prop designers.

    BMW M1 écurie BASF série PROCAR 1980

    Here’s what the M Next looks like (© Copyright BMW AG, München, Deutschland.)

    BMW M Next courtesy of BMW

    Which raise an interesting question. From a branding perspective does iconic legacy design make it harder to draw a line under one technology as you transition to another? We have various bias’ in our expectations, some of which BMW have tried to challenge with the sonic experience in their cars. I’d argue that they need to think about this outside the vehicles as well. From a safety perspective and because part of driving a BMW is being ‘seen’ to drive the marque.

    I think that there’s still work to be done by BMW and other manufacturers on getting their arms about the future of performance from a brand perspective, for a post-ICE (internal combustion engine) age.

    Abacus (a tech media publication from the South China Morning Post) has channeled the Pixel Boys to come up with a way of trying to make the Chinese tech sector make sense to foreigners. China Tech City | Abacus is well worth checking out.

    In an era when there is a chance that Jeremy Corbin could be a prime minster in waiting should a general election come along, And I speak with people who profess to be MacBook totting communists. I am surprised that Marxman haven’t seen a resurgence in popularity. I randomly came across this great interview of them by a French TV programme around about the time their first album broke.

    Hong Kong’s leaderless movement against the Chinese extradition law (or their CIA paymasters if you believe the Chinese government) have been doing some really nice creative to rally internal and international audiences to their cause. There were print ads that ran in the newspapers of many G20 countries and video content. Taking the politics to one side for a moment, just look at the craft in this video. At the time I have written this has been dubbed into:

    • Taiwanese variant of Chinese
    • Dutch
    • English
    • French
    • German
    • Bahasa Indonesia
    • Italian
    • Japanese
    • Nepali
    • Norwegian
    • Spanish
    • Swedish
    • Tagalog

    It makes Led By Donkeys look a poor effort in comparison.

    Bubble tea shops are opening around London outside of the usual China town locations. It’s success is in a sharp contrast to the likes of Jamies and Patisserie Valerie chains recent closures. Bubble tea actually came out of Taiwan in the late 1980s and London has been way behind in adopting the drink. Asian Boss tracked down the Taiwanese inventor of bubble tea Lin Hsiu Hui (of Chun Shui Tang) and the interview is great.

  • Flickr best social network experience + more

    Flickr best social network experience going / Boing Boing – I believe that flickr best social network experience at present, but I am not blind to the communities flaws

    An Oral History of Oakleys, the Most Badass Sunglasses of the 1990s | MEL Magazine – or how Luxottica made a great brand merely good. More related content here.

    The Ad Contrarian: The Stupidity Of Ignoring Older People | Ad Contrarian – interesting, it used to be that half the lifetime spend was done before the age of 35. Given that most marketing is short term programmes marketing to older people as well makes sense

    China Counterfeiters’ Hot Product in 2019? Peppa Pig Couture | Jing Daily – interesting China’s fake clothing people have been cranking out snide Peppa Pig wear; including dreaming up Burberry, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Off-White and Givenchy collaborations that haven’t happened! It’s wonderful and subversive at the same time

    They welcomed a robot into their family, now they’re mourning its death – The Verge – Williams understands that companies have bottom lines and that gadgets come and go, but Jibo was also designed to appeal to children, and those kids are now learning what it means to own a robot and have no control over its fate – pretty dark stuff. It sounds like the product succeeded with customers but was too pricey for what was required – A couple of things here; it wasn’t that long ago that we thought Japanese people were odd for having Shinto funeral ceremonies for their dead Aibos. Now we see similar behaviour playing out for Jibo. Secondly, unlike the first Aibo, Jibo is essentially a cloud personality, which begs the question when’s the move towards device based AI etc coming back as seeing your kids cry is too much?

    Dolce & Gabbana’s Expanded Sizing “Proves They’re Really about Selling Clothing,” Not Just Leveraging it — The Fashion Law – Dolce & Gabbana has announced that it will increase its sizing to include garments that will range up to size 54 in Italy, the approximate equivalent of a stateside size 18? You bet it is. The move by the Milan-based brand to extend its sizing – which went into force with its currently available pre-fall collection – “makes it one of the most inclusive designer brands for women,” according to The Independent’s Olivia Petter, a far cry from most high fashion brands, which Fashionista’s deputy editor Tyler McCall says “stop much closer to a size 10 [or] below that even.” – I think its a smart move given their problems in China

    The crisis in creative effectiveness | WARC – There has been a serious declining trend in the effectiveness of creatively awarded campaigns over the last ten years. The most recent IPA/WARC Rankings data, explored in the new Crisis of Creative Effectiveness report, confirms this continuing decline; creatively awarded campaigns are now less effective than they have ever been in the entire 24-year run of data and are now no more effective than non-awarded campaigns. We have arrived in an era where award-winning creativity typically brings little or no effectiveness advantage.

    Top 1000 Brands | Intelligence | Campaign Asia – for China

    Study Shows Big Rise in Teen Vaping This Year – The New York Times and Juul faces House investigation over teen e-cigarette use – this is going to get regulated sooner rather than later and the whole Philip Morris International ‘dialogue’ campaign is going to leave some creative agencies holding the reputation equivalent of a live hand grenade

  • Creativity in data

    I had the honour of being part of a panel for the PRCA on the creativity in data run in association with The Work Crowd.

    Creativity and data

    Here was the synopsis of the panel discussion that the PRCA put out.

    Communications is frequently seen as all about ‘big ideas’. But increasingly, it’s being recognised that to develop a big idea that’s really going to have an impact, it’s not just about creativity. Now, the winning formula is creativity + data.


    Of course, data has always played a role in the creative process, but historically through a more ‘rear view’ measurement of past behaviours. However, with technology advancing and predictive analytics utilising newly available data, the data we have access to is more forward-looking than ever.


    The ability to synthesise these insights is super-powering strategic planning for businesses, but it’s definitely not just the boardroom who should be interested in ‘running the numbers’. Maths and data may not be seen as natural bedfellows of storytelling and creation, but have we been underestimating the power of creativity in data? Ultimately, is data a friend or foe to the creative process?

    I kicked this around with Camilla and Richard. Here are my thoughts that came from this process in no particular order below:

    I wondered what the forefathers of the communications industry would have thought about the question? Leaving ethical considerations aside for a moment about the legitimacy of their techniques, what would they have thought?

    Edward Bernays was famous for using consumer insight, research and psychology in his work. It would likely have felt very alien to Bernays that we were even asking such a question. He would have felt that the answer is self-evident a 100 years later.

    Data isn’t a friend or foe to the creative process. It is part of the creative process. The sieving of data to get down to the grain of truth – the insight that you can hang your creative idea off.

    Thinking about the nature of data itself is muddled. Over the past couple of decades the communications industry has struggled with measurement. This then shaped its perception of data.

    • Data is quantitative
    • Data is tech dependent
    • Data is precise

    All of which is wrong:

    • Data can be quantitative, but qualitative data is also important, particularly to the creative process. Qualitative data is the stuff of stories and storytelling
    • A lot of data is technology dependent, but a lot of good stuff from a creative perspective isn’t. Marketing communications as an industry, has increased its use and importance of cultural insights in planning
    • Quantitative data isn’t always precise. Correlation and causality aren’t the same things. In addition, if online ad fraud has taught us anything, it is to be skeptical of data quality

    I am not saying that communications should move away from obtaining and using quantitive data. But this should be balanced by a focus on qualitative data as well.

    Data is seen paradoxically as ‘all around us, pervasive’ and expensive to obtain.

    So what data should the creative planners of the communications industry care about? Some of the sources listed below are free, some are books that are worthwhile investing in and others are expensive services that even the largest agencies struggle to afford in many markets.

    The data that the client has already

    Clients are already sitting on a wealth of information inside their organisation:

    • Past marketing campaigns. What has worked, what hasn’t.
    • Web analytics – what content is doing well. What do we know abut site visitors?
    • Key words that they use for SEO. What language should we be using for coming with messaging?
    • Sales data. Not just qualitative data, but what is coming out of sales calls and customer services enquiries? What concerns prospective and current customers? Why do they buy? Do they stay loyal? Do they have great stories? Who buys and who is likely to influence a buying decision?
    • Competitor research including brand tracking data if available
    • Planning work and creative briefs done by the clients other agencies. Chances are that a comms agency will have been brought in after other agencies. What channels are those agencies looking to leverage. Where can you complement their work? What is the human truth that they are hanging their creative from? Are there any design cues in their artwork?

    Work smarter, rather than harder. It is foolish to try and do the same information gathering twice. A client’s willingness to dig and get this for you gives you a rough read on how important your work is for the organisation.

    Best practice data on efficiency and effectiveness

    The marketing industry as a whole has put a lot of money into the Ehrensberg Bass Institute and they have compiled decades of marketing science research to some accessible books. How Brands Grow parts 1 and 2 are constant references for me.

    The IPA’s publication The Long and The Short of It by Les Binet and Peter Fields is another reference for me. Binet has updated this research to cover B2B recently.

    They help me answer questions such as:

    • Is PR the right tool to solve the client’s current problem?
    • Is our creative likely to be effective?
    • How much should be focusing on brand building versus activation?

    To make your life easier, here’s a slide where I distilled optimal channel choice versus marketing strategy.

    Zero-Based Budgeting

    Where you see ticks, that’s when the marketing tool (PR, advertising etc) will do the most good.

    The Holmes Report and WARC have collaborated so that if you have a WARC subscription you can access award winning case studies and learn from campaigns that have solved similar problems to the ones that you face. None of the industry organisations or communications have distilled this kind of data down into a comms agency equivalent and Binet and Fields.

    Desk research

    • Videos – its amazing the insights you can pick up from observing YouTube videos
    • White papers – I have become a pack rat for these, I download everything and keep them on my machine because you never know when you might need it
    • Your own data bank. I have over 40,000 site links to content that I’ve found of use in the past. It’s where I go to before DuckDuckGo since I already know its of a certain quality. I use a social bookmarking tool called Pinboard

    Academia

    Both Scopus and Google Scholar have got great resources on social science based research. In addition, Wolfram Alpha is a really good sources of validated data points. The British Library can also be a treasure trove of content.

    Articles

    • Blog posts (like this one)
    • Free and paid resources for example: Apollo Research, Business Insider Research / Contagious / Datamonitor / D&B Hoovers / Ebiquity / Emarketer / Economist / EIU / Financial Times / Forrester Research / Gartner L2 / Global Web Index / IPA databank / Kantar / Lexis Nexis / Little Black Book / Mintel / Nielsen / Pew Research / Statista / WARC / YouGov
    • Management consultancies in particular McKinsey do a wide variety of research
    • Other planners (for instance here’s an article that I wrote about trends in the beauty sector)
    • Trade bodies (particularly good examples are the GSMA Intelligence and CES)

    Government statistics bodies

    • CIA World Handbook
    • EuroStat
    • Government national statistics offices (Wikipedia has a great category page that points you to the right countries and regions for these sources)
    • IMF
    • UN Statistics Division
    • World Bank
    • World Economic Forum

    Social listening data

    Social listening data needs to be used with a certain amount of caution. It is a measure of the level of discussions around a given subject but not the sum of them. Some of them are likely to happening in real world settings, many in ‘dark social’ – social interactions that tools can’t see.

    As a rule of thumb in European countries there tends to be less B2B social discussions going on than the US. For consumer brands there has been some good work done to show how social media listening attributions (volume, share of voice, sentiment etc) can approximate to brand tracking.

    Primary research

    This could be everything from:

    • Quantitative focused research: running a quick and dirty survey on Survey Monkey, a reputable omnibus survey provider like Dalia Research, Kelton Global or YouGov through to commissioning a piece of bespoke research
    • Qualitative research: eye tracking, focus groups, interviews, neurological scans to analysis response to stimulation, observational research, video diaries
    • Field trip: go out with sales people, meet clients, walk around stores and notice what people do, strike up conversations in stores or trade shows. The art of the flâneur is made for the planner

    More information

    Academia

    British Library – getting a reader pass

    Google Scholar

    Scopus (paywall)

    Wolfram Alpha

    Best Practice

    How Brands Grow What Marketers Don’t Know by Byron Sharp

    How Brands Grow: Part 2: Emerging Markets, Services, Durables, New and Luxury Brands by Jenni Romaniuk and Byron Sharp

    The Long & The Short of It: Balancing Short Term and Long Term Marketing Strategies by Les Binet and Peter Fields

    Other

    FT Graphics

    World Economic Forum reports

    Governmental organisations data

    CIA World Factbook

    Eurostat

    IMF Data

    UN Statistics Division

    Wikipedia category page on national statistical services