Porsche committed to major long form content as it followed Michael Fassbender on the road to Le Mans.
Season one
Road to Le Mans started off over four years ago with six short form films, each no longer than 10 minutes in length. So far, pretty much what you would expect in a prestige luxury car brand film. I was reminded of BMW’s ‘The Hire’ film series over the years with Clive Owen as the driver.
Season two
Porsche must have had positive feedback to continue with a second series in a similar vein to series one of Road to Le Mans. But some of the episodes were double the length of series one and three more episodes in this series. Looking at the Porsche YouTube channel the two seasons were likely considered to be a complete arc. They build a playlist that holds only season one and season two.
The manage to switch around the voices in the narrative which I think adds more in season two and season three.
Season three
By season three, the series seems to have hit its stride. The episodes are as long as they need to be.
Season four
Season four seems to have more of Fassbender’s voice in it.
Feature film
The theme of resilience in the face of failure was an interesting, honest angle in the film. Road to Le Mans emphasises stoicism and resilience as much as it emphasises the performance of the car. The feature film is an edit together of season four.
Although it’s Fassbender’s journey and I respect what he’s done, it feels a bit self indulgent at times. I think that this is because the actor’s journey as a profession isn’t a team sport in the same way that most other roles are.
What Road to Le Man also brought through to me was the depth of achievement in Porsche’s 18 Le Mans overall victories. This film feels like a final chapter to this Road to Le Mans at least.
Porsche seem to have shouldered the cost of the film themselves, I was a bit surprised that the content wasn’t licensed to a streaming service like Netflix and then eventually put on YouTube. More related content here.
Old money style has been a pre-occupation behind the recent fascination with quiet luxury a la Zegna and Loro Piana.
Loro Piana advertising
The fascination with old money style isn’t new. Streetwear brands and hip-hop culture borrowed from preppy style over the years. Brands like Stüssy, A Bathing Ape, Phat Farm and Sean Jean had pieces that aped preppiness – a second old money style. Prior to Phat Farm, Ralph Lauren had trodden the same path and it inspired ‘Dad style’ in Japan.
Barbour jackets moved off the grouse moors and on to the backs of yuppies in the 1980s and 1990s UK – an urban preoccupation that is still maintained today.
Normcore is the practice of wearing great fashion basics that aren’t heavily branded. More related content can be found here and here.
Harry Farrell and Abraham Newman on the weaponisation of the global financial and trade system highlighted in their book Underground Empire. If I had one criticism it would be viewing this purely as an American trait. A classic example would be Chinese policies (cyber-sovereignty, shadow trade sanctions, coerced technology transfer), Russian food terrorism or EU sanctions on Russia.
Bill Gates feels Generative AI has plateaued, says GPT-5 will not be any better | Technology News – The Indian Express – Gates also predicted that in the next two to five years, the accuracy of AI software will witness a considerable increase along with a reduction in cost. This will lead to the creation of new and reliable applications. Interestingly, he also said that he anticipates a stagnation in development initially. The billionaire said that, with GPT-4, the company has reached a limit, and he does not feel that GPT-5 will be better than its predecessor.
The value of reputation is something that various disciplines especially the public relations industry discuss ad infinitum. IPSOS have put together some interesting research and thinking that helps to quantify and shape the value of reputation. Previous discussions on reputation value that I have seen, haven’t had the same rigour behind them. The presenter calls out the assertions of former Unilever Paul Pollman as misleading.
Unlocking the value of reputation key takeaways
Shareholder value and reputation don’t necessarily correlate contrary to the assertions of Unilever’s former CEO Paul Pollman.
A better reputation means that advertising becomes more effective: more believable and more memorable.
A better reputation means that consumers are more likely to pay a premium for a product (however this is relative within category).
The value of reputation varies by region. It’s stronger in Latin America than the UK, Europe or many Asian markets, but weaker in Africa and the Middle East.
The value of reputation parleys into brand trust and brand resilience. A personal example of this for me was the wayUK consumers were much more supportive of the BP than American consumers during the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Thanks to Stuart Bruce, I managed to get the full white paper that can be found here.
This is Financial Advice
This is Financial Advice is one of the best films that I have seen about the GameStop short squeeze.
Studio Ghibli music
While Japanese production company Studio Ghibli is recognised for its animation, the specially composed music is a key part of its ambience. It also happens to be great music for listening to while working. There’s a 120 hours of Ghibli related musical playlists here.
https://youtu.be/Cdp2qXHD96U?si=eaiL43V2J7K08Atv
Metal morphosis. Made Untamed
Toyota Australia were promoting the Toyota GR Corolla. This is the Corolla version of a GR Yaris. Same mechanicals, but five doors and a larger body shell. The Yaris was not made available in some markets such as the US and Australia, instead they got the larger car.
The creative is a mix of animation relying on precise high speed driving and a set course reminiscent of the late Ken Block’s Gymkhana series of films. The gymkhana series was in turn influenced by skate videos. Prior to being a rally driver, Block had co-founded Droors and DC Shoes prior to running his car culture brand Hoonigan and driving professionally.
Dimensions of luxury as a post came together thinking about fictional influence account Gstaad Guy, Horizon Catalyst’s New Codes of Luxury report and Sense Worldwide’s Future of Luxury report.
Dimensions of luxury breaks down into three areas which Catalyst calls:
Traditional luxury
Contemporary luxury
Personal luxury
Nowadays, most luxury brands won’t fit neatly into these classifications. For instance the Swiss watch brand Blancpain would be considered to be traditional luxury, but the Swatch x Blancpain collaboration which borrows the design language of the 50 Fathoms dive watch is very much contemporary luxury. Part of this has been driven by many brands being part of large combines:
LVMH – depending when you look at the stock price, Europe’s largest company by value run by Bernard Arnault. Related to L Catterton private equity fund which has been financed deals such as Birkenstocks.
Kering – LVMH’s rival best known for Gucci. It is currently run by François-Henri Pinault
Richemont – Swiss listed group focused more on jewellery and watches than rivals. It has a range of brands including Dunhill, Montblanc and Panerai.
Swatch Group – which owns most of Switzerland’s premier watch brands
Fosun – China-based multi-sector conglomerate which owns a hodge podge of western heritage and luxury brands including Ahava, Folli Follie, Lanvin, Sergio Rossi, Silver Cross prams and St John knitwear.
Notable independents include The Rolex Trust and Hermés.
Traditional luxury
Unsurprisingly this is the kind of luxury that most people would think of. Timeless style, heirloom designs and peerless quality are likely to be the kind of language that springs to mind. When the luxury industry talks about sustainability and the circular economy, the lives of these traditional luxury products come into focus, since they are often passed down. The influencer behind Gstaad Guy in an interview with the FT talks about his favourite item of clothing being a Loro Piana vest that was his Grandad’s.
What we think of as ‘traditional’ luxury brands came out of businesses with heritage that are known for their quality
Loro Piana and Zegna were both high end fabric manufacturers before becoming ‘luxury brands’
Rolex made high quality reliable tool watches, as did Omega and Panerai.
Louis Vuitton made high quality robust trunks for travellers.
Zero Halliburton and Rimowa made cases that were ideal for air travel and protecting sensitive instruments and camera equipment. The Halliburton in Zero Halliburton actually refers to Halliburton Company who are famous for providing oilfield services.
Contemporary luxury
Contemporary luxury is where the greatest controversies of luxury tend to lie. Horizon Catalyst tend to tie up premium brands like AirBnB and Apple together with the luxury sector. It includes values like innovation and sustainability. But it doesn’t discuss what Dana Thomas calls the massification of luxury, with traditional European brands being more often being ‘Made In China’. This has driven a drive for brands to try and ‘shortcut’ their way to success. Luxury brands have adopted the techniques of streetwear brands were scarcity and limited drops fuel the ‘hype’. What Sense Worldwide called ‘Supremification’. Chanel is opening special UHNWI only boutiques. And ‘Made In China’ allowed China to develop its own ateliers.
Personal luxury
Catalyst defines personal luxury as subjective in nature, individual to each person and having a deeper connection with personal values. It could be items that might be considered treats like having their groceries delivered. Their discussion of everyday luxury would be familiar to marketers in terms of the ‘Lipstick effect’ familiar from Juliet Schor’s work during recessions. But it’s interesting that luxury is being defined by consumers and followed by brands. The classic example of this would be brands from Nike to LVMH getting on board with NFTs, following consumers and creators.
Intuit Mailchimp are brave in terms of the the approach that they take to their marketing and Clustomers is a prime example of this.
Clustomers is a great campaign that builds on the frustrations that marketers face about segmentation and personalisation of communications. It is fantastically single-minded in its execution, which is what you want in an effective advert. I could have been seen how the rats nest of people could have come across as creepy rather than surreal and the art direction gets the tone right wonderfully.
But I think that the communications around clustomers to be more nuanced.
The Clustomers campaign
The Clustomers advert itself is the first point of evidence I would use is a brand building, distinctly non-personal campaign. The fact that I am writing about it, speaks a lot to its ‘talkability’. It has carved out its own small part of culture.
It looks to place MailChimp as the marketing technology vendor for start-ups and small to medium sized businesses. But like many political campaigns, it promises a simple solution to a challenge that might be more complex.
But this isn’t a campaign that will be only seen by the small business owner, or someone with a slide hustle. The message of personalisation might be received, without the nuanced understanding of marketing that MailChimp has demonstrated in the way that they’ve built the campaign. CFOs don’t have a sufficient understanding of marketing to understand this. For many of them it’s just a set of line items on the wrong side of a spreadsheet.
C-suite misconceptions
As I’ve said, I think that the message Clustomers gives is problematic in a wider context. A good deal of that problem is down to business founders and the C-suite having fundamental misconceptions on what marketing communications purpose is and how it does it.
Advertising isn’t fluffy or all about colouring in. It’s a legitimate and important tool for driving business success. The trouble is that CEOs, CFOs, founders and investors sometimes forget that fact. They’re sceptical about advertising at the best of times and often pull the plug when the economy feels wobbly.
Clustomers fuels a perception that personalisation is the key to marketing and by implication performance marketing is the only marketing required. The reality is more complex. The Ehrensberg Bass Institute’s Byron Sharp talks of ‘smart mass marketing’ and brand building as being the key for the majority of marketing activity in conjunction with personalised communication. The Institute of Practioners in Advertising has been doing sterling work trying to educate the C-suite, but technology specialists like Adobe, Google and Meta have been negating a lot of that good work done.
Portumna
Prior to COVID-19, back when I presented a lot more in public I used to present the following slide and when I talked to it I probably reflected some of what MailChimp customers would look for, and was behind Clustomers.
Portumna is the closest market town to where my family originated. My cousin still works part-time on the family farm. Portumna has been a commercial centre for centuries because of geography. It sits at a strategic crossing of the River Shannon. The Shannon divides the east of Ireland from the west of Ireland and has been a shipping way from centuries past to the present day.
A number of the shops including grocery stores, hardware and farm supplies, the sub-post office and the local pharmacy are family businesses. At least four generations of shopkeepers in the town knew my family and did business with them over the centuries.
There were life-long relationships formed. When I go home, I am loyal to the grocery store and pharmacy that my Uncle and grandparents used. The shopkeepers understood the needs of relatives who lived in the area and the kind of farm that they ran. The kind of online marketing that clustomers seeks to bring forward, is the kind of relationships that were in place in Portumna for centuries.
But those relationships were not just about personalised communications. There was a wider cultural context and even ‘brand’.
The fact that the family in question had built up trust in the community.
That they were known to be ‘respectable’.
That they had delivered for my family and people that they new in the past.
These brands were local oligarchs. They had one or two competitors at best.
So the customer mental models around farm supplies, the butcher or the grocer were very strong and constantly reinforced. And this is the kind of stuff that advertising as part of non-personal communications is best at doing.
