Hilary at Daily came across a great little operation recently, Sweat Equity Enterprises (www.sweatequityenterprises.org), which embodies a spirit of positivism that, thankfully, is increasingly prevalent in marketing organizations balancing profit and purpose (socially and/or environmentally conscious business leadership).

Sweat Equity “designs groundbreaking collaborations between youth and industry” an innovation lab for companies, and an unbelievable learning opportunity for teens.” According to the organization, participating youth are educated and encouraged to demystify those media and products that so strongly influence them, then set to generate their own ideas and develop their own products, effectively taking back control of the marketing. Nice to see that more kids today are marketing savvy in a positive way.

Posted by: Colin Mangham

I had a good experience recently with positive word-of-mouth and lodging. A colleague in Hong Kong recommended the LKF Hotel, for reasons that it was centrally located, with great amenities, and at a good price. All of those points put it squarely in my latitude of acceptance. I then looked it up online, where I found consumer reviews on TripAdvisor.com. Most of the reviews were positive, and several mentioned that it was a particularly good hotel for English-speaking travelers, partly because it was located in Lan Kwai Fong, a nightlife area popular with ex-patriots. I was sold, enjoyed my stay, and would stay there again.

LKF Hotel Website>
TripAdvisor.com>

Posted by: Colin Mangham

A colleague recently reported having changed a Howard Johnson hotel reservation to another, albeit lesser-known, hotel, completely as a result of reading some negative reviews of the HoJo property online. I found a particular interest in his in-going latitude of acceptance with Howard Johnson, as well as the negative word-of-mouth that shook him off of the hotel after he’d already made the effort of seeking it out and making a reservation.

I was a Senior Copywriter on the Howard Johnson account at Christy MacDougall Mitchell in 1996 when we re-branded Howard Johnson, and co-authored the tagline, “Howard Johnson Makes You Feel at Home.” This positioning was largely a result of key insights into consumer values, assumptions, beliefs and expectations (VABEs) that resonated across all of our pre-strategy consumer research. Many Americans associated Howard Johnson (also, “HoJo”) with a bit of ‘Americana’ heritage, and held beliefs that this is a familiar and lasting brand name that calls to mind a more relaxed time in our national history – an era that, in retrospect, was arguably more values-oriented with respects to ethics, morals and the importance of the quote-unquote nuclear family.

We saw this as a great opportunity to leverage that ‘warm’ feeling, especially in the national TV campaign copy I wrote, which included, “You know when you’re traveling, you look for things you know … things that are familiar, that make you feel comfortable … that’s why it’s always so good to see the Howard Johnson sign.” The idea was that many Howard Johnson ‘road warrior’ customers, particularly 10 years ago pre-Expedia, did not make reservations in advance, but would see the sign while driving (mostly at night) and pull over. We wanted the campaign to help make the Howard Johnson sign the one they felt good about among unfamiliar options.

In reality, we found that they also held assumptions that these Americana relics were aging, poorly kept hotels. Unfortunately this was derivative of their expectations not being met on recent visits to Howard Johnson. This was the key challenge of the holistic marketing effort … if the properties weren’t sufficiently upgraded so that the consumer experience matched their in-going expectations, they likely would not come back again. I think this remains a challenge with the chain, as evidenced by the poor WOM my colleague found regarding the Howard Johnson location in his online search. Alas, we did what we could….

Posted by: Colin Mangham

Today, with a concomitant decrease in consumer trust of marketing messages and an increase in social networking due to technologies including the Internet and mobile phones, word-of-mouth (WOM) communication has become a highly valuable conduit for influencing consumer behavior. If we pause to think about the topics of our day-to-day conversations, most of us quickly recognize that many are product-related, even if not brand specific. Examples include references to how good (or bad) we look in certain clothes, where we recommend as a great place to eat, or why we had a bad experience in the teller line at the bank, etc.

Fact is, for better or worse (depending on your level of love or disdain for marketing), WOM communications are, in many cases, the results of branding and marketing efforts to seed those dialogs. Marketers today are embracing more holistic strategies, utilizing WOM and other tactics as economical and, in many cases, more effective approaches than conventional tactics (e.g., advertising) for engaging consumers.

These communications are often lifestyle-oriented, including tie-ins to trends in social responsibility, as is evident with the many green/eco-friendly campaigns (and viral emails) of late from not just companies but also non-profits including charities and social/environmental activists. This is a reminder that marketing is not just a tool for profit, but for communicating needs, attributes and benefits in any exchange of value.

Posted by: Colin Mangham

Back to the Jeep on the side of the cliff, semiotic focal points include representation, connotation and ideological interpretation…

Representation: No doubt, stimuli that fall into unpredictable patterns often capture our attention. Interestingly, the only representation of the “product” in this ad is the Jeep logo in the corner, and representative of the entire company make, not specific to one model (e.g., Grand Cherokee, Wrangler, Liberty, etc.). So this is a top line brand communication. There’s also a tagline/slogan, “The One and Only,” which is a positioning line that quite directly suggests this manufacturer is peerless. Other than that, there is some additional representation in that it’s a gas pump, which is associated primarily with the operation of automobiles.

Connotation: What it connotes here is that your Jeep can achieve the near impossible, can go where other mere mortal cars would not even dream, because it is a true, rugged, outdoor vehicle, that loves to climb. Though most everyone knows it can’t really climb such a steep rock face, the hyperbole here makes the viewer stop and, Jeep hopes, smile at the thought of it. Also, that it’s a gas pump, a symbol of a routine task in the operation of a vehicle, connotes that this is just another day on the road for a Jeep.

Ideological Interpretation: The choice of a beautiful scene, appearing to be hundreds of miles from civilization communicates an ideological affinity – an appreciation for not only nature, but also the ability (time, money, or both) and desire to venture far outside the city in search of adventure. This is, in that respect, a very American ad, though I should note that it was created by BBDO Canada, so maybe I should say “North” American ad. Also, note that the gas pump is vintage, perhaps 1970’s era, not modern and new, as well as in red, white and blue. That’s wholly intentional on the part of the advertiser, and I interpret this to communicate that this American icon has been making this journey for several decades, thus underscoring its history of adventure.

With all the clutter of messages in every form of media, it’s increasingly important to have a firm functional understanding of at least the general constructs of the field of semiotics, as is demonstrated by Jeep’s clutter-cutting image of a gas pump on the side of a mountain, presumably on a quote-unquote road that Jeeps travel frequently (nudge-nudge, wink-wink, yeah right).

Posted by: Colin Mangham

Earlier this week I mentioned semiotics (also referred to as “literary criticism”) for interpreting the symbolism in a Coke ad. Semiotics can be defined as a product’s role in the verbal and visual communication of meaning; ways in which underlying messages can be communicated and interpreted. What follows is an example of an advertisement (actually two in a series) that demonstrates an interpretation of signs and symbols, ranging from their basic representation of a product, to what these signs connote and ultimately what they represent in an ideological context.

One of my favorite sayings in the branding and advertising business is that, at least in America, and especially in Los Angeles, “you don’t drive a car … you wear it.” So I looked for automotive ads that demonstrate semiotics. What I chose was a Jeep ad with a gas pump jutting out from a steep rock face high above a verdant valley. First, let’s consider that “Jeep was originally an army vehicle, so Jeep’s ruggedness has been known of since its inception. Jeep sees this durability as their niche and that is their marketing focus, through the use of several different techniques” (Associated Content website).

Cultural Note: “The American experience with Jeeps is very different from the French and German experience because our cultures evolved differently (we have strong cultural memories of the open frontier; the French and Germans have strong cultural memories of occupation and war). Therefore, the Codes — the meaning we give to the Jeep at an unconscious level — are different as well.” (The Culture Code 2006: 3)

In my view, only since the real arrival of the Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) in the market about a decade ago has “rugged utility” taken to the city streets. Still, even though the wheels of most SUV’s today will never touch actual dirt, many people who drive them have an affinity for marketing messages that place their vehicle in the Great Outdoors. I know this partly as my own private focus group … I’ve owned a Jeep Grand Cherokee, a Land Rover Discovery and a BMW X3.

Now, nature as a rhetorical tool is of course not a new idea in advertising, and Jeep’s advertising aim here, and across many of its campaigns through the years, is to suggest you can do anything you want in a Jeep, including going to the beach, having a picnic, or, well, driving up a mountain, as the “Gas Pump” ad suggests, with tongue firmly in cheek. Next, a closer look at the key points of semiotics in this ad.

Posted by: Colin Mangham

Following up on yesterday’s post regarding Gestalt theory in advertising design and layout, the attached photo image is from www.gregslater.com, the photographer’s website where it presently resides. I chose this one as I had seen it recently on the back cover of a Taschen advertising collection, but also because it is for a truly global brand – one of the biggest, most pervasive, did ya know? – and with virtually no ad copy it communicates its message well.

Deconstructing it a bit … closure is perhaps the most obvious of gestalt psychology examples here. In popular culture today we’re familiar with, for example, photographs that are cropped so that, say, the entire person or subject is not within the frame, but yet our eyes seem to see it all. This has also been used in outdoor billboard situations you’ve seen where “Coca-Cola” in its trademarked script is so large that the billboard only holds part of it, but in your mind’s eye you know very well it says “Coca-Cola,” yet it’s not been reduced to a smaller size (less impactful) to fit on the billboard. Your mind does the rest.

So in this ad, you see the snowflake, even though it’s not a snowflake, of course, but an arrangement of bottles. It also helps that you see other duplications of this pattern on the page in varying sizes, some even blurred in the background, which further brings to mind a view of snowflakes falling. Further, this ad’s use of a figure-ground, guiding the eye immediately to the snowflake large in the center, while allowing the peripheral information of the other snowflakes and against the white background complete the thought visually.

What are also noteworthy here are the patterns of similarity, in that all of the bottles are precisely the same image, but represented in different sizes, angles and patterns (snowflakes) to communicate the message. This is of particular importance for a couple of reasons. First, the Coca-Cola bottle image used here is the iconic glass bottle shape that represents classic Coca-Cola heritage, and for many audiences this will call to mind, for example, the beverage from their childhood, particularly in context of the snowflakes and the date “12.25” which makes it a Christmas holiday greeting. Secondly, it serves to remind us of just how distinctive this bottle shape/form is – it’s almost instantly recognizable as Coca-Cola. And that use of similarity in packaging wherever Coke is sold around the world has been a major contributor to the massive strength of its brand recognition. “The Coca-Cola brand image is instantly recognizable, the local specificity is also immediately clear … No wonder that the journal Business Week has identified Coca-Cola as the world’s number one brand” (Strategic Direction Journal 2006: 27-29).

What’s it all mean? All wrapped up into a one-page advert, this one “says” little more than the product name and a date. What it communicates, however, via Gestalt psychology and expert attention to principles of closure, similarity and figure-ground, is holiday cheer and good wishes. With respect to semiotics, I believe a large appeal of all this is its classic, almost 1950’s feeling, harkening back to a simpler, more peaceful time in American history – a time when kids might hopscotch down to the corner drugstore for a refreshing bottle of Coke, and maybe catch some snowflakes on their tongues along the way.

Posted by: Colin Mangham

There’s a common phrase in America, and I assume in other Western cultures, particularly those that are well accustomed to advertising: “perception is reality.” It serves to underscore the importance we often place on perception as a function of consumer behavior in brand building. Now, there is another familiar phrase that is meant to be its polar opposite – the oxymoronic “Truth in Advertising” which, in many circles, is a joke framed around an unattainable Utopia. But I believe there is at least some truth in most consumer perceptions of branding and marketing communications, ranging from advertisements to product packaging to other visual and audible stimuli, including sight, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures.

In the psychology of branding, we also consider “perceptual selectivity,” with the notion that people attend to only a small portion of the stimuli to which they are exposed, in large part due to what is commonly referred to as advertising clutter. Thousands of messages vie for our attention and engagement every day, and this potential for information overload has increased exponentially since the advent of the Internet, and even more so now that high-speed/broadband has made the likes of YouTube and full motion sight and sound available to distract us, for better or worse, with the click of a mouse.

Enter Gestalt psychology theory, and visual tools and methods by which marketers endeavor to present a minimal amount of information to represent, in the mind’s eye of the consumer, a bigger picture message. For my next entry, I’ll hunt down an ad image that demonstrates elements of this theory.

Posted by: Colin Mangham