It’s not new, but over the last few months the concept of augmented reality (a type of virtual reality that presents the world’s environment merged with, or augmented by, computer-generated imagery) has really exploded. Despite the apparent obstacles - need for a webcam and willing consumers who have the time to understand the concept - more and more brands are using AR to engage with their audience.

Is this just another gimmick or is the technology just being used in a gimmicky way? As with Apps, doing it is pointless unless there is a compelling idea or functional benefit attached. As the medium takes off, surely we’ll see it used to dramatise brand truths, run competitions, provide instructions, hints and tips, richer nutritional info, links to relevant sites etc etc. We are at the tip of the iceberg, but at a macro level, along with animated Apps and moving ads on the tube, basic brand communication is becoming more and more about movement.

And even at the basic promotional level there are some pretty engaging examples of creative augmented reality strategies. “Doritos’ Lovers”, launched in Brazil, is a great example as it allows consumers to create their very own Doritos 3D Lover Monster which can then be uploaded onto the owner’s social network profile, and unleashed to interact with other Lover Monsters (watch below). It’s not about the crisps, but instead being part of the brand, so it cleverly extends further than simple product promotion.

Also available to watch here

Levi’s is adding this label to their jeans stateside, recommending sustainable washing behaviour and encouraging passing the jeans onto others more needy when you are done with them. On one hand it is very scrooge like to be cynical of any CSR initiative. On the other…well, all the communication here puts the responsibility on the consumer, who might feel a bit nagged and wonder if the company itself practises what it preaches. It’s kind of like reading in your hotel room that the management want you to re-use your towel, not to save them a job, heavens no, but to save the planet.

Encouraging good behaviour is fine, but it risks looking like token CSR messaging if the brand isn’t overtly leading the way somehow. Secondly, I thought the whole point of Levi’s was to wear them till they fell apart – that they got better as they got older, and giving them up was only possible when they were truly past physical redemption. But perhaps as a brand introducing new lines regularly, the shelf life on a pair is now only as long as a passing fashion for a particular cut? My point being not that do-gooding is wrong, but that the most powerful and inspirational way to motivate consumers needs to feel like it comes from a brand’s heart, rather than appearing tacked on (even if the basic motivation is pure and well-intentioned). Levi’s are also doing work with “obey” designer Shepard Fairey in the US - perhaps they should get André the giant to lay down the law on how we should behave?

Douwe Egberts concept, BeMoved vending machine, turns buying a drink into a physical game for the young at heart, allows on-screen click and drag coffee customisation, gives you real-time news and weather and lets you log your personal preferences. All very Minority Report. And all indicative of the way technology is broadening our choices (I was told by someone in the know recently that our relationship with comparison sites is about to invert – rather than us choosing from what’s available, we will soon be putting our needs out to tender, for competitors to bid on).

But this general movement towards more and more choice and noise must surely also be creating a space where simplicity can have a certain cachet. Brands offering over-information and over-engineered complexity feel like they are locked in an arms race, all those whistles and bells signifying little that will build lasting brand value, and what consumers want (beyond a little novelty) is not always at the heart of the thinking. But perhaps these are just the views of a Luddite who is out of step with the amount of time and attention folk want to give to buying a vended beverage?

The above image and headline came from satirical news site “The Onion”. It’s nice to know that it isn’t only the UK where politicians feel we need to be nannied into healthier choices. The current TV and bus-side communication, around the hidden dangers of salt, strikes me as slightly political – is the FSA justifying its existence with this campaign in light of Tory scepticism? Perhaps, but as we have observed before, the FSA’s campaigns can actually benefit smart brands who honestly engage with them. And as a design agency they are our safety net – when journalists naively ask “what tricks do you play to get around legislation and hide the real nature of a product’s nutritional facts?”, they suppose we are skillful dissemblers playing a game of duplicity – actually, as any fule kno, that’s a highway to brand disaster, and truth well told is by far the smarter option.

But funnily enough, designers are not trained nutritionists – we assume that the facts given to us to communicate are essentially true, and thanks to the FSA, we can point to a body whose existence allows us to presume this to be the case.

What makes a brand cool? The movie adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are came out in the States on Friday and the buzz suggests it is the very definition of cool. Meanwhile, the Coolbrands 09/10 supplement in yesterday’s Observer newspaper was peppered with expert opinion and theory on why some brands are cooler – plenty about first mover advantage and the like, little about the basic (self evident?) contribution of bold design and clients. However, Mark Blenkinsop of agency Exposure made some points which I thought were enlightening. He talked about the notion of “distribution as communication” - where the brand is sold, how, who to, and how the competition on adjacent shelves can all combine to give a brand the right image for cool consumers.

I thought of this when looking at the promotional tie-ins for the Wild Things film. Cool book, cool director (Spike Jonze), cool soundtrack and uber-cool merchandising and marketing. The following images were posted on (of course) coolhunting. It’s all so “now” it could almost be a parody of overblown marketing trends, from “pop up stores” to high fashion tie ins, via designer sneakers and jewellery:

The pop up store in LA:

The exclusive on-set photography prints at Urban outfitters:

The jewellery collection & furnishings:

The fashion collections:

The collectable kubricks:

The inevitable sneaker editions:

Looking at all this it occurs that while being a cool brand is desirable and lucrative, it is an approach which intentionally limits the brand appeal to the “right” people rather than the masses. Limited editions, limited availability, limited time only - even the plastic figurines are collectible “Kubricks” rather than something which comes with a happy meal burger. I’m not sure how many adult sized wolf outfits they will sell, and I doubt that this is the point. This is not to knock all the wonderful creative work which seems like a smart way to promote the film to the kind of hipsters and kidults who are presumably the target audience. But the obvious conclusion I came to is that while being cool is some kind of marketing holy grail, the cache one creates in such a distribution strategy by default restricts the brands’ potential to reach everyone. Which presumably suits the hipsters very well.

Back around January there was much speculation that consumers would dump brands in favour of own label. While the truth of this seems to swing with every new report, it’s clear that the rival supermarkets had a golden opportunity to define their own personalities while encouraging shoppers to switch and save. Instead, each day sees a tsunami of competing generic price messaging which leaves consumers, I would hazard, no wiser about who is genuinely offering the best value - all those big numbers become interchangeable wallpaper after a while.

Tesco used to have brilliant copy (above) which offered value with quality (even if using green did play a little to their rivals’ identities). Now these nuances have been abandoned for price comparison (with rivals often confusing shoppers with various counter claims within the same ad break…).

Waitrose have been famously successful with their essentials range (and to declare an interest, we were involved in helping develop the strategy on ‘essential Waitrose’) - so Sainsbury’s have produced a copycat campaign (presumably a “spoiler”). However, unlike Waitrose, I’m not sure that Sainsbury’s telling us they offer a basics range is offering particularly new news.

The net effect is lots of visual noise and little clear communication. And while some supermarkets abandon a sense of brand values in pursuit of becoming interchangeable commodities, which are supposedly only chosen on price, they are failing to give consumers the reason they need to trade out of branded goods. Even on a functional price flash level, brands such as BA and Orange show that it is possible to offer value information without losing brand values or visual distinctiveness.

In his presentation at TEDtalks a while ago, Seth Godin (author of the world’s most popular marketing blog), made a case for the selling power of being remarkable. By this he meant, broadly, being “game changing” and arrestingly different. His analogy was that if one drove past a bunch of cows it would be without comment, but if you went past a purple cow you would, literally, remark upon it. The point was that remarkable things catch the attention of the more switched on in society, they talk about it and so create a more mass appeal.*

I don’t know if I’m switched on, but I am remarking on this new Japanese beer - Okhotsk Blue. It’s “made using water melted from icebergs that float each year onto Hokkaido beaches from the chilly Sea of Okhotsk”. For me it poses the question of how does one define the boundary between remarkable and a gimmick? Context seems to be everything – we Europeans revere natural brewing and heritage in our beers (Guinness might be black, but that’s no issue because this is simply a result of the barley being roasted in the brewing process), whereas I assume the Japanese culture is more open to a blue drink as it places a premium on bold innovation generally. And younger European drinkers are also becoming less in thrall to “authenticity” (as WKD and the rise of Sailor Jerry with his rather imaginative provenance attest to). In other words, one culture’s gimmick is another’s cool new brand.

But I would suggest that the most convincingly “remarkable” innovations have more than novelty appeal – they tend to be built on solid conventional foundations – for example it is the elegant and authentic looking superior bottle which supports the eccentricity of Bacardi’s bat device, or Burberry’s heritage which makes their decision to put the brand’s lining on the garments’ outside remarkable not weird. Meanwhile, to return to Godin’s analogy, a purple cow never did Milka any harm!

*For the full and probably more lucid version, it’s talk 261, free on the TEDtalks podcast

One could argue that the Vogue brand is built on expert opinion and excellent art direction. Polyvore, on the other hand, is a user generated online fashion “magazine” full of user generated ads. Essentially, fashion fans click and drag images they like from other sites to create collages (or “sets”). Readers then click on the items shown and are taken to the websites that sell them. But the New York Times reports that expert-free Polyvore got almost 25% more unique visitors than Vogue’s style.com in June, and its audience has tripled in a year. Revenue comes from commission on sales and, increasingly, tie-ins with brands, but its appeal comes from facilitating browsing rather than buying.

So what’s significant? Polyvore is indicative of a whole host of big trends: consumers favouring peer opinion over the expert equivalent, and consumers’ jumping at the chance to be creative. It’s also evolving the way ecommerce works, and bringing into question assumptions about content ownership on-line (there are remarkably few complaints from the contents original owners).

But I wonder if the site is also a harbinger for how marketing conducts research? Here we have a live trend indicator. We all know that what’s on the catwalk this season will filter down to the high street in short order. But Polyvore is a barometer of what’s really clicking with consumers. Research is generally expensive, actively sourced and managed by experts. Could crowd sourcing content on sites such as Polyvore challenge this model? For example, the sites data can tell brands what’s hot in what region, informing their distribution strategy.

Perhaps it’s no longer a matter of guiding the public’s tastes (like Vogue) but rather of listening (for free) to what they are asking for?

Putting brands on Facebook might sound like a lame idea, but Coke, who have the most popular brand page, can claim over three and a half million “friends”. Not only that, but they didn’t have to lift a finger, as the page was originally the result of a couple of Coke enthusiasts.

David Taylor’s “brandgymblog” has a great round up of the brands who are socially networking successfully: http://wheresthesausage.typepad.com. His blog is generally well worth a visit – we regularly cross paths with David on projects and the speaking circuit and his analysis of what’s going on “out there” is always of interest.

Back to the topic of user generated content, Sharpie (the American pen brand) are using their online presence to showcase lots of consumer creativity using their products. It’s a really neat idea, as it exploits connections to other sites, puts the consumer at the centre of the story, takes minimal effort, creates buzz, inspires different product usage and best of all, positions the brand as selling creativity rather than pens. Here is what the site looks like…

And here are a couple of things that have been “Sharpied”…

We have been a bit snooty about “crowd sourcing” in the past but Sharpie show that handing control over to “amateurs” can be a really powerful way to build brand equity with little effort.

‘Besides, nothin in the world’s more expensive than free’ (The Reverend in The Wire).

The latest “Big Idea” book to catch hype is Wired editor Chris Anderson’s “Free: the future of a radical price”. Like most folk with a ready opinion on the topic I haven’t actually read it yet, but the synopsis is interesting: Anderson’s observation is that “information products” (e.g. most stuff available online from music to news) are increasingly driving a trend for goods being given away (or stolen) and this in turn is creating a new paradigm for economics.

Of course little in life is truly free. Indeed Anderson’s book, somewhat in the face of his theory, is analogue information retailing at £9.49 on Amazon. Nevertheless in the non virtual world of FMCG constant discounting of household brands is creating an equal sense of how we perceive products. It’s always harder to value something that is given away (the image above is of discarded free newspapers in Paris).

One observation I would make is that we have worked on several “premium” brands that were in reality permanently sold on deal. Their image held strong while extra effort was invested in their image (smarter physicals etc) but when this investment ended their stock quickly fell. If a brand is essentially an idea attached to a product, the idea needs to be cherished and constantly polished to ensure that the intellectual property continues to be valued. Failing to do this drives products into being commodities, and commodities are sold on price not prestige. To this point both Harrods and Harvey Nichols are both very clever at making a sale look like a prestigious event (see below) rather than a bargain bazaar.

Meanwhile Anderson’s book has been criticised for some factual errors resulting from research in the less trustworthy waters of free information online. Which speaks volumes.