JKR

POPSOP’s overview of brand initiatives offers a good thermometer to take the temperature of what’s hot and not in brand trends and their PR initiatives. There has been a real influx in the last couple of days (from health to exercise to homelessness and helping the oil spill in the Gulf) .

The Schweppes Schwim free campaign facilitates the training of 120 new swimming teachers and coaches as part of its commitment to get people active on the road to 2012.

Quaker USA healthier lifestyles announces a new direction focusing on products and programs to help people lead healthier lifestyles.

Coca-Cola Behind the Lens Youth Filmmaking is a national online competition empowering 13-19 year-old amateur filmmakers to demonstrate their creativity.

Coors Light – giving back to the Gulf – Their “Pass the Pint” initiative is one of two programs Coors Light is currently involved with since the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill.

Kraft Food – Huddle to fight hunger is Krafts largest branded initiative ever to fight hunger in America.

etc.etc.

Companies are wanting to be seen proactively supporting and developing new initiatives that will chime with consumers who either live in the areas from which they operate or from which they buy their goods and services. From a design perspective, it is curious how few of these initiatives feel ownably branded. All smashing ideas, but with the brand and its values typically “stickered on”. Coke, unsuprisingly, shows how it should be done.

I am sure there is a Sunday sermon concerning the virtues of a humble low-key approach to proclaiming one’s charitable deeds, but this activity is commercially driven. The CSR department, probably ignored for decades, are suddenly ruling the roost as part of the 360 mix. As such, perhaps it’s time that the ideas (all great and “brand-fit” compliant in their own right) should be expressed in ways which make the brand look less arbitary in their visual presence. Because, humility aside, doing this makes the charitable gestures appear closer to the parent brand’s hearts. Having said which, top marks for this Schwepps copyline…

Pavé is an “ultra-lux” liqueur of the type you will have seen before, typically being brandished by music stars in photos from glamorous sponsored parties (but less typically spotted down your local). It’s “distilled through high quality diamonds” for purity. Ho hum. Pavé belongs to a particular category of premium products that unabashedly focus on a slightly vulgar “designer” modernity, inset Swarovski Crystals and all. As Russia and China continue to preoccupy marketers thoughts, we regularly receive briefs suggesting we “bling things up a little” and Pavé’s publicity photos suggest they might have a certain type of wannabe oligarch in their sights.

But it’s possible we are viewing the luxury market in these territories in a rather one dimensional manner. A report, “Deeper Luxury” by the WWF on the seemingly unrelated worlds of luxury brands and sustainability, made this observation: “In China, the concept of luxury relates to the Confucian concept of “face”, or personal reputation. There are two aspects to face: mien-tzu and lien. The former usually refers to material prestige and displays of wealth, while the latter refers to moral standing, the loss of which makes it hard to function in Chinese society. The Mandarin term for luxury may be translated as “show-off goods”, indicating that luxury consumption is currently driven by mien-tzu. In future, it may be driven to a greater extent by lien.”

Perhaps, as the WWF suggest, we are missing an appetite for premium brands with depth? The report also notes that in such territories, where the contrast between haves and have nots can be extreme, governmental intervention will also frown on too much inspirational marketing: “the mayor of Beijing has said that advertisements for luxury products “are not conducive to harmony”. The local market regulator added that “there is a problem with certain advertising not conforming to the demands of a socialist spiritual civilisation”. Consequently, the mayor of Beijing ordered all luxury billboards to be removed.

Maybe, for those of us designing remotely for such markets, we might want to dig a little deeper than the surface assumptions?

“Do we really have to put the pack-shot on the end-frame?” bleated the head of planning at the ad agency, wrinkling her nose.

The inference being that the (yet to be created) ad would lose all its grooviness should they include something as old fashioned and drearily commercial as an image of the product the ad was selling.

There are indeed lots (and lots) of really uninspiring and dreary pack-shots in ads. Blame the art directors. The two examples above, however, were pulled pretty much at random from this week’s Grazia, and demonstrate a creative interpretation of the brand’s spirit via loud and proud use of the packs. They may not win D&AD’s, but one certainly knows what they are selling.

The packaging jar produce has, at times, been blessed with fantastic interpretation in advertising. In the early nineties BBH brilliantly adopted the iconography we designed for the Boddington’s draught can  to create a seamless union of pack, brand, and concept. It did win D&AD’s, as memory serves. There have been plenty more happy examples over the years (and as many more where the pack was deemed an irrelevance).

Of course, there are degrees – Cadbury’s Gorilla would have been made plonky with a bolted on pack shot – the randomness of the ad was part of its appeal. But Gorilla still made use of the packaging’s signature purple to deliver a strongly branded ad.

I think the onus is on advertising creatives to work out how to use the packs creatively. And it’s the responsibility of the packaging designers to deliver work which has strong enough equities to inspire the ad guys.

Zynga is a company which makes “social gaming” brands (Farmville, Mafia Wars etc). People with too much time play them on Facebook and the like. This sounds very niche to an over forty- something like me. And we have all read about branding in second life. But here the flow of traffic is reversed  – Zynga brands are selling product through partnership with 7000 7-Eleven’s.

But this isn’t the only way Zynga are blurring the line between the virtual and the real. They are running a promotion where consumers can redeem virtual items within the games off the real-world purchases. This drives traffic to the games, where Zynga will also charge real money for additional virtual purchases. I assume this is all clear to the under ‘40s?

So what? Well, firstly it’s interesting to see the online world step into the real one, rather than vice versa. The breadth of competing brands has just expanded to potentially include lots of new players from another dimension. And in design terms these new players come with a visual language all of their own – will subsequent promotions blend the language of packaging and the language of gaming to create a whole new category?

I recently read a great definition of the difference between the post-war make do and mend generation and ours: they spent time to save money, we spend money to save time. This occurred to me when looking at these bags produced by workers’ collective Mend. They look cool and are a responsible choice. Each label carries the name of the woman who actually made it – people for whom working for Mend is a great second chance.

All great, but also, for me, evidence that the “no-logo” generation of consumers is just as badge conscious as their mainstream counterparts. It’s just that the badges being flashed are more alternative – arguably a subtle form of one-upmanship and display of piety.

Such consumers’ ‘70s equivalents were genuinely no-logo: itchy home knitted jumpers and wonky self-thrown crockery. The Good Life was not a designer choice.

Today, no-logo really means right-logo. Nothing wrong with that – it means our jumpers aren’t scratchy, our crockery looks attractive, and we have the choice to pay decent people a decent wage.