Free some underwear from those irksome dangling tags to get a pretty good product: Hanes Tagless Underwear. Then come up with some well-conceived copy to sell it: Because the world gives you enough tags. Add a tri-series of neat artwork. So far, so good, right? Now, add a dash of sensationalism, let a mindless handful of viewers get a peek, and there it suddenly is: the perfect recipe for a disaster. McCann India is the ad agency in question and their campaign - now withdrawn - had 3 print ads. The first showed a man bearing the burden of a vivid bunch of “gay” things, the second had a guy pulling at a similar collage of stereotypically “black” things, and the third depicted an assortment of “Pakistani” stuff - each with the same words at the bottom. Hanes Tagless Underwear. Because the world gives you enough tags.
People have been calling the campaign “anti-gay” and “racist”. How is it either of those things? The fact that it was seen as biased is odd; it’s anything but! (The only thing that does bother me about the campaign is that people who aren’t really aware of the stereotypes in question will indeed become so after seeing it.) Yes, the executions are hard-hitting for the times, but I also think that the basic brand idea borders on brilliant! And that is what McCann’s defense should have been - instead of the spineless apology they actually mustered up.
Much of course has been said on the topic of logos, but here are my two cents, nay phils.
There’s a logo for a ‘horseracing city’ in Dubai called Meydan. The logo is simple. It’s a sort of variegated blue background. On it, in a white and very legible font is: Meydan. A thoroughbred destination. That’s the English version. I saw a similar looking logo in Arabic the other day and knew instantaneously what it was for - even though I am thoroughly uninitiated when it comes to reading the script.
Compare this to tonnes of other logos around that try and do too much - fancy color schemes, an effort to communicate not just the company but it’s holding company as well, fonts that overwhelm, and taglines so verbose or rehashed that they repel. It’s often pretty unnecessary, largely ineffective and highly forgettable stuff…
So ditch the clutter and think Nike, Fedex, and Apple instead! I believe the message is simple.
The QE2 is retiring in Dubai. Come 2008 and it will be the property of Dubai World, a real estate development arm of the Government of Dubai. Cunard has sold her and the ship will soon become a luxury floating hotel, fully equipped with boutiques, bars, and a museum. It will be anchored to The Palm Jumeirah, an artificial island so big, it is apparently visible easily from outer space.
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From a financial perspective, I hear raising a hotel of the QE2’s specs would likely take 4 years and cost 4 times the $100 million it was acquired for. But more than that, the United Arab Emirates is a maritime nation - I think this will do wonders for the Dubai brand and significantly enhance tourism appeal. To think that the QE2 project is just one of the city’s many such avant-garde ventures off-late…
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I have to say I am impressed by the premium the government (yes, the government!) puts on original thought around here.
Millward Brown recently did a worldwide study to measure brand loyalty. One of the questions they asked was: would you be ready to permanently tattoo a brand logo on to your arm?
Almost 20% said they would be willing. Of them, the most popular response was Harley Davidson. If you are thinking that’s because of Harley’s rough-n-toughness, then consider the brand that came in a close second: Disney. So, obviously, it’s less about brand-consonance with the concept of tattoos, and more about the brand itself. Not surprising then that Cocoa Cola came in third?
Now guess which brand was fourth…
It wasn’t Apple, no. Go here for the answer, but think about it for a moment first - just for the fun of it!
Kudos to Airtel and the chaps at Rediffusion DY&R in India for the new direction in which they have taken the campaign.
It’s almost predictable, which is precisely why it is close to genius. Much like the Corona campaign: on-the-tip-of-your-tongue intuitive. The trick often lies in hitting on a concept so seamless that everyone - from consumer to creative to CEO - takes a look and wonders why they didn’t think of it first. Nice!
Airtel’s reliability index better be pretty good though, or users might have to take the brand with a pinch of salt! Good for beer, not so much for a mobile network - no matter how noble its advertising.
Condoleeza Rice at a press conference on Friday: “The United States doesn’t have permanent enemies; we’re too great a country for that.”
No-permanent-enemies is obviously semantic strategy to clarify that North Korea and Iran are indeed enemies until they comply with nuclear demands. It makes little diplomatic sense to refer to enemies - however temporary - as enemies out loud. Okay, so it’s a clumsily put statement, but at least it is honest.
Now the too-great-a-country bit. It brings to mind instantaneously the fact that truly great countries - if there are indeed such things - should have no enemies! Particularly in the unctuous way the US currently does. What were her speechwriters thinking when they churned that out?
It’s neat how certain internet gimmicks have been wildly successful in transcending language barriers and publicising brands across the globe. Not always elegant perhaps but often powerful! You’ll see what I mean, if you enter your first and last name in the two boxes on top, and then hit the ‘visualiser’ bar on this link.
I once had conflicted feelings about Starbucks, but am now an unabashed fan of the brand. See a few years ago, I tried hard to avoid Starbucks, and patronized several local coffee shops in Austin instead. I purposefully focused on the boring luxury of each Starbucks store and the small component of free trade coffee they sell. I was appropriately peeved when they bought out Peet’s, and yes, rolled my eyes regularly when the person ahead of me got a grande-non-fat-three-pump-vanilla-soy-latte-extra-hot-no-whip.
Then I moved to LA where there weren’t as many local-coffee-places-with-parking in my neighborhood. And so I became thoroughly happy with my 2-percent-grande-iced-latte-for-4-big-bucks again. Then Highland Perk opened up in Eaglerock. Yay, I could now act-local-think-global again!
That’s till I stumbled in on a groggy Sunday morning and absent-mindedly asked for a “grande percent latte” out of habit. The much-tattooed many-pierced coffeemaker replied, “Don’t know what grande is, nor what percent means. The latte I understand.” So I laughed a bit and he mumbled: “I don’t respond to Starbucks-speak.” Why is that, I asked. And he said, “Because they don’t really care about coffee, and if you go there, then neither do you.” I was annoyed because, as you know, the decapitalist (if you will) in me had been awaiting this bickering barista’s inclusion in my daily routine for a while…
Even so, I went on to amicably say I’m from Austin and how I miss its strong local coffee shop culture - sort of indicating that it’s not out of choice that I go to Starbucks. Bu he didn’t thaw a bit, no. So I left and took my dog to the park and sipped his latte. And it was good, but no better or cheaper than Starbucks - which is where I stopped off on the way back for a refill. I could say I did that only to avoid dealing with His Highandmightyness again, but really, it was then that I gave up hating on the Starbucks I love. Call me what you will. =)
Now I’m back in India where, despite the profusion of international brands that have hit, Starbucks has not yet arrived. But I’m currently visiting Dubai and it’s been around here for a while. As you can imagine, I’m one foot out of the door and in my sneakers so I can run.
PS: Starbucks also makes an effort to spark social change and I find that commendable. Whether or not the at-times-controversial effort is made solely in the interest of increasing their ’star’ and - consequently - ‘bucks’ factor is anyone’s guess. At least they make it.
There’s a fat blanket of smog hanging over rapidly industrializing India, absorbing sunlight that would otherwise filter on to the subcontinent. This is according to a study recently published in the New Scientist and it’s not surprising.
“It turns out that smog produced by US and Europe until about 1980 had resulted in similar dimming across the world. But when the West cleaned up its act in the 1980s and 1990s - just as India and China were starting to spew - clearer skies returned across much of the world.“
Clearly, it’s important for India to learn from the cycles that more developed parts of the world have gone through already.
But think of the blind acceptance of Western consumerism that we are seeing in India today. An ad for Zeiss opticals - now available in India - shows a girl in an office expressing condescension towards a coworker for wearing glasses with no brand name. The tagline is “Brand nahi to style/naam nahi” or something like it. Basically, it signals that without brands to show off with, a person can make no impact. How tasteless and how untrue!
India, beware. The unthinking brand of capitalism the West embraces just isn’t cutting it anymore and the sociopolitical state of America is good evidence. We don’t have to go stir crazy on brands in India to realize that rampant consumerism - just like the grey smog that now envelops us - is damaging. Indians need to be wary of the retail therapy trap.
(Of course brands - and the businesses they represent - need to start being more responsible with their messaging too but that’s a story from another day.)
A recent article by Francois Gautier captures well some of my sentiment. I’m not sure that spirituality is the answer to India’s problems. But sitting up and taking a look at the West more objectively is certainly in order.
“Today, there is a sense of deep satisfaction, of gloating even, in India. The economy is booming, there are more and more cars on the roads, shares are soaring, a plane is taking off every six seconds, hotels are full, shops do roaring business… But if one looks closer at what is happening here… India is veering blindly, without restraint, towards total globalisation and Westernisation… Yes, there are great values in the Western world: Freedom, democracy, equality (not always though), respect for the environment, less corruption. And India must, and has already borrowed from these qualities. But… it seems the Indian political and intellectual mind is pushing these qualities to an illogical extreme, as if it wants to prove to the West that ‘we are as democratic, as liberal, as free as you are’… India must achieve its liberalisation and industrialisation, by taking the best of the West, but preserving what is good, pure, wise in her own culture.”
Axe is marketed as Lynx in Europe, so did Unilever rename Axe as Zatak in India? Apparently not. Turns out Zatak ads are simply “inspired” by the Axe creative. I’ve always found the Axe idea vaguely off-putting and imagine anyone who “buys” the spoofy campaign to to reek slightly of desperation if not BO. Even so, I’m not surprised that it won several awards for its creative and planners. I mean the concept is occassionally funny albeit in a boy’s club kinda way, and the Clicker idea was actually pretty catchy. But back to Zatak. I’ve got to say it stinks, if from nothing else, then from its utter lack of originality.
