Profiles in Client Courage: Dos Equis

Haru Sasaki, who read our post about Tony Sinclair, alerted us to a fictional spokesperson who absolutely rocks. That would be The Most Interesting Man in the World, spokesperson for that very fine Mexican beer, Dos Equis. His signature line?

“I don’t always drink beer. But when I do, I prefer Dos Equis.”

That’s a line that makes me want to kiss the client. Because it absolutely connects with how a lot of people drink beer today without trying to pretend otherwise. Beer is becoming just part of the mix for a lot of people, along with liquor and wine. It’s an incredibly honest line, a believable line, and more of an invitation than a sales pitch. I could completely imagine the MIM (as Dos Equis communications refer to him) does, in fact, prefer Dos Equis.

And I, of course, want to BE The Most Interesting Man in the World. What guy doesn’t?

He’s a beautiful invention. He lives up to the line from the first Austin Powers movie, “Woman want him, men want to be him.” The spots have the kind of humor and fun that Tony Sinclair (Tanqueray) should have had. And this is a campaign with long and strong legs. (Dos Equis already is taking applications for the Most Interesting Man in the World’s assistant – to replace the previous assistant, Steve, who was killed in the line of duty.) Yet it’s far more than a campaign – it’s an embodiment of an ethos and worldview that a lot of people are going to connect with. And that’s the basis for a brand culture.

Beautiful.

Stay thirsty, indeed.

So why do I want to kiss the client, and not the creatives and the rest of the team at EURO RSCG? Because the agency did what I expect them to do – they were brilliant. But a client who has the courage to run with this invention? That is a rare creature, indeed. And I know that he, she, or they will be rewarded, one way or another, for their courage. Most likely with the awakening of a strong brand and a growing embrace of Dos Equis in the US.

So, thank you, Dos Equis client, whoever you are, for doing the right thing and keeping hope alive in the hearts of branding agencies around the world, that someday, they too will find a client with your courage.

– Doug

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Let’s Hear From the Clients Out There

Hey, there, Clients.

Are you thrilled with your current agency or agencies? Or do you have the sense that something’s missing? What are you looking for that you’re NOT getting right now?

The marketing world is in rampant change. Are agencies out leading the way or lagging far behind?

Go ahead and let ‘er rip – you can do it anonymously. Here’s your chance to tell us if we’re making you proud or making you cringe. Be brutal.

– Doug

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Shallow End, Deep End

Are you shallow?

Didn’t think so. So how come so many brands are content to be shallow?

For instance, Tanqueray’s current fictional spokesperson, Tony Sinclair.

At first glance you think he’s a smart embodiment of the cocktail culture that reveres a good gin. Uh, nope. Watch his commercials, go to “his” web site, and you’ll soon figure out he’s nothing but thin veneer and a sales pitch.

Too bad. Tanqueray once had the ultimate fictional spokesperson for cocktail culture: Mr. Jenkins. Invented by Dallas Itzen and Patrick O’Neil at Deutsch, he was a suave, mysterious, grey-haired, tuxedo-clad martini man who hung with the young and hip. He showed up at gallery openings, swanky penthouse parties, and late-night soirées. He was witty, but not just witty. As the print campaign unfolded between 1994 and 1999, Mr. Jenkins attracted a cult following. He was the kind of guy people wanted to know more about. He definitely had all kinds of cool, else why would the young hipsters tolerate him – let alone worship him?

But, alas, Tanqueray changed their label to read “London Dry Gin” and decided they needed to tell the London story in their advertising – despite the fact that Tanqueray sales were rising while overall gin sales were declining. They believed it was time to be “authentic.” So they retired Mr. Jenkins to an island. Little did they know that cocktail culture was about to explode, and that they had an authentic embodiment of cocktail culture right in their hands.

Explode it did. And then came Austin Powers. And so, eventually, Tanqueray and Grey Advertising concocted this British-accented young partying “man of mystery” who would supposedly capitalize on the Austin Powers craze, youth culture, and the rise of the martini. Oh, and best of all, they gave him a slogan, with the implicit hope that it just might magically morph into popular culture. The line is: “Ready to Tanqueray?”

Oh, yeah! I mean, don’t all your friends, at the beginning of a Friday night, turn to each other and say, “Ready to Tanqueray?”

Because it is, in fact, a fine gin, Tanqueray still sells well despite this hodge-podge mess. Wikipedia calls Tony Sinclair a “mad-cap socialite.” Personally, I think he’s more like Jar-Jar Binks with a tie.

There is absolutely no mystery to Tony Sinclair, unlike the enigmatic and stylish Mr. Jenkins. And this is too bad, since the actor (comedian Rodney Mason) is obviously talented. He just has no real character to work with. Also, Mr. Jenkins had more self-respect – and respect for his audience – than to pimp the brand with a ridiculous line like “Ready to Tanqueray?” The truth is, gin sales are on the rise and Tanqueray will do just fine despite this shallow pitchman.

On the other hand, let us mourn the lost opportunity. Mr. Jenkins stood for an entire philosophy of life–the kind of philosophy that’s at the heart of today’s cocktail culture. Namely, that life can be celebrated with style and sophistication, and that great pleasure can be had from indulging in the finer things, like a gin (i.e. true) martini.

A buddy of mine in college had a personal philosophy he called “gracious living.” It was all about living life well and enjoying high culture, even as poor college students. And that, to me, is what both cocktail culture and Mr. Jenkins are all about. Art, fashion, style, conversation, martinis. Had he survived, Mr. Jenkins by now would no doubt have a highly-successful blog and probably several published books guiding people to enjoying the finer points of cocktail culture.

Mr. Jenkins, in other words, was a fiction that could have been deeply realized, and therefore deeply meaningful to Tanqueray’s audience. And make no mistake about it, a fiction can be a true embodiment of a brand’s values and its worldview, and a powerful catalyst in growing a brand culture.

Could the Tony Sinclair character have achieved the same depth that Mr. Jenkins promised? Possibly, if he had been given a compelling and mysterious character at birth, rather than entering the world as a disingenuous cardboard cut-out that offered nothing new but instead faintly echoed current trends in popular culture. For awhile there, Mr. Jenkins was popular culture. There’s a big difference.

– Doug

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Our Friends at TriMet Win an Award

We salute TriMet for their recent ADWheel Award 1st place for the WES collateral piece we created together. The ADWheel Awards are given by the American Public Transportation Association, and the award show will be held in San Diego this year.

We love it when our clients win an award within their industry, because it means we’re starting to succeed in our quest to make our clients famous in their industry. Famous for marketing leadership and bold efforts that make stuff happen.

My thanks to Pam, Drew, Carolyn and Debbie for their guidance and partnership.

– Doug

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Mr. Kawasaki’s Cool Idea

Under the category of constant inspiration I have filed the name Guy Kawasaki. His most recent brilliant idea is Alltop, a site that aggregates other sites and blogs and sorts them by topic and then gives you the most recent entries for those sites.

Here’s how Alltop explains it in their FAQ:

We import the stories of the top news websites and blogs for any given topic and display the headlines of the five most recent stories (except Moms.alltop which has fewer headlines because there are so many feeds). When you place the cursor over a headline, we display part of the story so that you can decide if you’d like to read it. To read the story, click on its title. To go to the home page of the site, click on its domain name.

Just so happens he has a category for branding, and id-ology is now one of the blogs and sites listed there.

Our thanks to Mr. Kawasaki for listing us. And for his continuous cool thinking.

– Doug

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Oh, Man, Not Another Fable

Yeah, looks like.

Once upon a time there was a smart young prince named Palm and he invented the most wonderful magical devices, things that no mortal had ever seen before. He even invented Treo, essentially the first smart phone, which all his subjects loved. But a wicked witch cast a spell on him and caused him to go to sleep for years and years, and when he woke up he had only 16% market share – of the market he had invented, no less. The prince was very sad. And so were all the elves on Wall Street, who had reduced the prince’s stock value by 90% from it’s 2000 high.

Moral: Every brand is vulnerable to a severe and brutal beating at any time, no matter how dominant it might be.

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You Gotta Serve

Chrysler won’t have a fuel-efficient car till 2010. Unless maybe they have Nissan build one for them.

GM is scrambling to shake off its truck addiction. So is Ford. The big three are desperately scrambling to be relevant – and, quite possibly, to survive.

Scrambling to do what Toyota and Honda have been doing for years, which is to offer hybrids and innovative fuel-efficient alternatives.

How could this be? How could these successful corporations so badly predict what their customers cared about?

Could it be because they’re about selling, not serving? Could it be they figured that, as long as people keep buying what they’re selling (which is big trucks and SUVs), there’s no need to change?

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m Detroit’s biggest fan. My favorite car of the last three years was my 1996 Lincoln Town Car, Cartier Edition. That ride ruled. It was destroyed six months ago while parked in front of my house by a drunk driver, which caused real tears to flow. But what did I replace it with? An ’08 Scion XB. Because I had to come to terms with the global warming issue. And the big three couldn’t win my heart or my head. (Note: gas prices hadn’t even gone through the roof yet.)

Serving means looking around and saying, We’re in the car business. And cars cause greenhouse gases. And, despite what our current commander in chief thinks, and despite what we’d like to believe, it’s pretty darn clear that greenhouse gases are causing global warming. And that’s bad for everyone.

Serving means putting yourself in your customer’s skin and trying to figure out what that customer really wants from you. Serving is looking at the big ethical picture and saying, if what we do is bad, then it’s time to do things differently. Serving is opting to do the right thing before the marketplace smacks you up side the head with a spiked baseball bat.

A brand culture serves, it doesn’t sell. Because it realizes that no one likes to be “sold.”

A brand culture is sustainable. Selling until people stop buying is hardly sustainable.

A brand culture shares the values and worldview of the people who belong to it, and knows what those people care about, and knows how to serve their values.

A brand culture anticipates needs based on those values.

It’s a sad comment when the Japanese car companies are more in tune with the values of the American public than GM, Ford, and Chrysler. How did the Japanese know that Americans will not persist in destroying the environment once they truly understand the problem? And weren’t they fortunate that, because of this, they were sitting pretty with hybrid models when oil prices skyrocketed?

It’s not too late for the big three to create brand cultures that serve their customers’ values. It is just as conceivable as building an all-electric car, which we know is happening at GM. Like many others, I’m ready to believe, I’m ready to join. It comes down to leadership making the choice.

Meantime, there’s a lot we can all learn from their predicament, and from their previous choices.

– Doug

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Building a Brand vs. Wearing a Mask?

While watching the Beijing Olympics this weekend I saw one of the newest adverts from United Airlines, “Two Worlds,” which lives within the family of TV spots they’ve been making for the past 2-3 years now. Perhaps you have seen it; the visual style is certainly memorable.

This whole series United has been running does two things very well: it leaves a strong visual imprint, and it tells a full, endearing story that engages the viewer for the duration of the 60 second spot which leaves them satisfied at the end. This particular iteration of United’s campaign is meant to illustrate the drastically different experience a traveler might have on the new international business class line. While it doesn’t resonate with the same emotional connection as some previous outings (such as the dragon and the rose), it certainly creates the impression of a unique brand with priorities different from those of the competition.

Of course, what those priorities might be are left entirely up to speculation. Perhaps this other new spot, “Heart,” from the same lineup serves to better answer that question:

Now we’re making some headway. Clearly, United is trying to position themselves as a companion to your lifestyle, one that can help you get to what matters most. But is this actually building a brand culture, or is it just creating an external image? There’s no question that these adverts are visually stunning, and they certainly do a fair job of storytelling, but whether they truly express the values and personality of the United Airlines brand is another question altogether.

Not having flown United any time in the past five years, I can’t personally answer this question, but if my experience with just about any other airline out there is any indication, these ads aren’t really telling you a story about who United is so much as trying to forge an association between the brand and your personal priorities. In what sense they are “forging” said association is something I will leave for you to decide.

This seems a prime example of a company taking the first steps toward creating brand culture, but lacking the initiative to follow through with the promise they’ve laid out. It’s a classic case of theory versus practice. In a perfect world, we could see something like this on TV and know that we have just been clued in to the kind of experience we can expect from Brand X, but as jaded victims of marketing archetypes, we are more likely to be suspicious of an attempt to play our emotions against us in the interest of pushing a product. It is my hope that this is not the case, but until I get the chance to fly United, or until I hear from somebody who has recently, I can’t know for sure.

The moral is simple; if you make a promise, follow through with it. Let’s hope that United is doing exactly that.

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The Cowardly Lions

Interesting.

The latest issue of Creativity magazine, published by Advertising Age, is their annual awards show issue. It’s a summary of the major award shows, who won which, and then a tally of awards by agency and creative director.

Kind of silly, frankly. Not that I’m against awards–I love it when we win them. I just don’t think they warrant a whole magazine issue.

What’s interesting though is the number of articles written by judges and other advertising luminaries complaining about sham award show entries. Sometimes these are pieces entered into award shows that had no real client (as in, the agency did the work, went to the business, showed them the work, and got them to agree to let the agency run it untouched). Sometimes these ads actually had a real client but the ad only ran once.

Now, why would a client only run an ad once? Well, apparently clients are doing this in order to enter multiple ads in the shows, and then the ones which actually win get to run for real with a big media budget behind them.

Two shams. Disturbing? Yes. Common? Apparently. Although I’d never heard of the whole idea of client-sanctioned ad testing via the award shows before. The previous sham I know about. I’ve run a client-less ad in my day. (Actually, a poster series. It didn’t win an award.)

My question is, how on earth could the authors of these complaint-filled articles be surprised? After all, it’s the industry itself which breeds this whole mess.

In the first case, the client-less ads, sorry, but this is what you get when you hire, promote, and set salaries based on the number of awards a creative has won. These people are not stupid. If their career depends upon winning awards, they’re going to find a way to collect the metal. Yet these creatives are demonstrating they don’t have the courage to build the relationship with the best clients in the world in order to do the best work in the world. And that’s fairly cowardly.

In the second case, the one where the client is an accomplice in running the ad and then using the award shows as a focus group, well, what self-respecting agency would allow such humiliation? I’d personally rather resign the business than let some frightened bunny rabbit coax me into letting the other creative directors of the world determine what’s good work for my client’s brand. Once again, cowardly.

And, finally, why would the industry complain when its own skewed values and overemphasis on awards have turned into a dark, medieval catacomb of conspiracy, deceit and decay?

I’ve always been proud of the awards my teams have won, but I have never been fooled about the true value of the shiny heads and pencils. It’s useful in this business to recognize accomplishments, but foolish to put too much value in other people’s opinions. And its downright despicable to mistake awards for the real purpose of our business, which is to enrich people’s lives with brands that mean something. And to grow our clients’ businesses.

It’s time to articulate, as an industry, just what awards should mean and what role they should play. But the problem is really the fault of the industry, not the cowards who are gaming it.

– Doug

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What’s the difference between invention and a lie?

Spirit Mountain Casino’s Buck and Simon

Here’s a perfect example of the old approach to branding – the failed, broken model we’re all trying to avoid. It’s the fabrication of a “brand image” designed to attract customers, much the way bait attracts coyotes into a trap. And it has nothing to do with the truth of the real, hidden and sadly therefore unrealized brand of Spirit Mountain Casino.

Buck and Simon are, if you didn’t know it, two cartoon coyotes. It seems they’re wacky and fun–although not really. They show up in animated tv spots and on billboards, bus sides, and other places. It’s the latest ad campaign for Spirit Mountain Casino, which once had a stellar brand representation in the marketplace. Apparently Spirit Mountain is continuing to search for a campaign – and a brand – their customers will embrace.

And it’s exactly the kind of thing real humans (as opposed to demographics) are likely to see not so much an endearing fiction but as a manipulation with the sole purpose of getting a certain set of demographics into the casino.

Today, real humans are using the internet and other tools to circumvent brand images and to go straight into the truth of what a brand really stands for. They’re looking at a brand’s policies, actions, secret memos, history, leadership, vision, communications, blunders, and true moments of glory as evidence of what the brand means. As real humans, they are looking (aren’t we all?) for honesty, and they’re not terribly excited about being manipulated.

So, along comes Buck and Simon who are neither funny, like South Park or Sponge Bob, nor entertaining and meaningful, like the trickster coyote figure from The Grande Ronde tribe’s traditional lore. Buck and Simon come across not as some sincere representation of the core values and true nature of the Spirit Mountain Casino brand, but simply as an advertising ploy–and not a very artful one at that.

How big is the missed opportunity? Massive. Spirit Mountain Casino, when it launched, had a gorgeous brand presence, created by Sandstrom & Partners, that felt real and sincere. The Grande Ronde tribe has a deep pool of historic and contemporary meaning which could inform the brand, and a rich value system, which we hope is driving this brand. Most of all, there’s a way for the casino to both cater to the gaming audience, give them a great experience, and, at the same time, represent something truthful and meaningful at the heart of the Spirit Mountain brand–something which doesn’t feel like just another ad campaign tossed at the wall to see if it sticks.

And why does this matter? Because people are looking for meaning from brands. That’s one of the core principles of our whole Brand Culture theory. They’re shopping for value systems that align with their own values, and for brands which they can use in creating their mosaic of the self. Surprise, surprise–they’re not interested in bait that leads them into just another trap

– Doug

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