Sorrell predicts an LUV-shaped recession

Anything Sir Martin Sorrell says tends to make headlines. Today, Sorrell said that he thought the recession would take an “LUV” form. This was a phrase coined by Thomson Reuters correspondent Stella Dawson. But what does “LUV” mean?

Dawson suggested there would be an L-shaped recovery for some countries, a U-shaped for others and a few would achieve a V-shaped recovery. Sorrell added that he too thought Western Europe would have an L-shaped recovery; North America a U-shaped recovery; and a V-shaped one for the BRIC and Next 11 developing nations.

L-shaped means: after a long drop, there is a very slow, protracted recovery that takes a while to really take hold.

U-shaped means: a feeble recovery that takes longer than a V-shaped one, but rises quicker than a L-shaped one.

V-shaped means: a short recession with a quick rebound up again.

Want a nice pictorial version of this explanation? Visit here. In other news, Sorrell also said that those who have been commenting on the economy and being cheered by any less disasterous results have adopted a “flat is up” mentality.

“There are those who think that flat is the new up,” he said. “I don’t want to get into that mentality where you accept that declines in negatives is good. We don’t accept that. I’m surprised at people who see sequential declines in negatives [of revenue loss] and say the downturn is over.”

 

 

Kellogg’s and Calvin Harris

It’s great being a celebrity. Alright, you might have to fend off a few paparazzi and put up with regular tabloid kiss and tells but you also get treated like brand royalty.

Yesterday, musician and DJ Calvin Harris posted on his Twitter account about the lovely gift that he was just sent by Kellogg’s. After tweeting quite regularly about his breakfast preferences, the cornflake manufacturer sent him this box with some nice touches including the strapline ‘50% cornflakes, 50% branflakes – the perfect mix’. (Nice touch for a DJ.)

I am still waiting for Ruthflakes.

Media140 – has real-time social media got the X factor for brands?

Thank you to Media140 for having me to speak at their event on real-time social media today. It was a pretty daunting prospect to get up in front of a room full of social media experts, all of whom were sending their every thought on your words and ideas to a massive screen with a rolling Twitterfeed. (It felt a bit like being on The X Factor where everyone watching is Simon Cowell with access to a keyboard.)

Luckily, not too many people abused me. And I learnt some interesting stuff:

• ASOS’ number one referrer is Facebook. Its second-largest referrer is Twitter.

• The number of referrals at ASOS that convert into sales is twice as high from Facebook as it is from Twitter. Does this mean that Twitter isn’t a good sales tool and it’s better for customer service enquiries? Or does it simply mean that more people who will actually buy from ASOS use Facebook? Or people who use Facebook are more likely in general to buy stuff than those who use Twitter?

• When creating the Compare the Market meercat campaign, VCCP claim that the social media element was not the initial intention of the client. It was to be largely a TV-based campaign but VCCP felt that the character of the meercats lent themselves so well to social media that they took on that aspect anyway. A bit further down the line, this has paid off as this has been the element of the campaign that has really resonated with consumers.

• Innocent created a nice little customer-focused iniative by getting customers to send them amusing messages to go on the bottom of the brand’s bottles. The firm then picked eight messages, including “Help! I’m trapped in the Innocent factory!” And even funnier, the company actually had people calling them, saying “Er, I think you might have a problem at your plant….” after reading that one. A nice touch, consistent with the brand.

• Companies are really struggling with whether to have one sole corporate voice that acts as the official mouthpiece for the business on Twitter; or whether lots of disparate voices from various areas in the company “humanising” the firm through tweets is worthwhile.

Thank you to my fellow panellists:

Richard Baker, general manager for Virgin Trains

Will Mcinnes, managing director of NixonMcinnes

Candace Kuss, director of planning, Hill & Knowlton

Drew Benvie, managing director, 33 Digital

and our chair, Gordon MacMillan, who is social media and international editor at Haymarket.

Do Kingsmill Confessions make you want to tell tales?

There is an brilliant post on CrackUnit.com by Iain Tait about ads he doesn’t like (read it here). He picks up on the current Kingsmill bread campaign, which encourages people to make “confessions”.

As Tait points out: “I’m just bursting with a whole bunch of confessions about bread. What on earth are they expecting? If you’re dying to let your sandwich secrets out, head to kingsmillconfessions.com.”

He has a point. Personally, my favourite is someone who has “confessed” to Kingsmill on another site that their favourite bread is Hovis.

The confessions website is nicely designed but the comments don’t ring true. I’m not suggesting these comments are made up – as that would be dishonest – but they don’t have much confessing to them, more just good word-of-mouth about Kingsmill. Which, frankly, is a little dull. As ultimately, these are confessions about bread – how good can they be (see below)?

“My confession is that I never tried Kingsmill before, I wanted to see what I was missing out on so I tried some, now I only eat Kingsmill bread”

“I told my mum I was meeting up with my friends but then I went and bought Kingsmill and made a nice tuna/egg/cucumber sandwich HMMMMM saucy!”

“My nephew wanted to feed the ducks, so I told him they were all poorly. That way I could keep the Kingsmill all to myself ;n)”

Hmmm.

Halloween advertising on the move

Saw this nice little bus shelter advert today. It uses a comical toy skeleton in 3D trapped between the two panes of plastic. I noticed it not only because as I approached it in the dark morning, its lit-up green exterior really stood out but because it was literally surrounded by children. All staring and pointing and telling their mothers that they wanted a skeleton just like that one.

It was notable because the skeleton was the real emphasis of the ad, with the retailer’s name being far lower profile on another bit of the shelter. But people were actually seeking out the name and asking people sitting waiting for a bus to move in order to check where they should go to satisfy the pester power. Which retailer got all the kids frothing at the mouth like this? Matalan.

Good work!

Mattel’s homeless “American Girl” doll causes an outcry

The Mattel-owned American Girl brand has launched a new doll in its range, but unlike the bland blondes of the Barbies of yesteryear, this one has a twist: “Gwen” is “homeless”. (And she costs $95.) Needless to say, the blogosphere has gone crazy about it.

So just who is “Gwen”? Each doll in the American Girl range has its own character and back story; in Gwen’s case, she lives in a shelter with her family. She wears a simple cotton dress and has honey-coloured hair falling around her shoulders (see pic below). The book that comes with Gwen explains that her home fell under foreclosure, her dad abandoned her family and then she and her mother are forced to sleep in their car.

So is this an appalling, immoral idea?

First, think about this from Mattel’s point of view. The idea of a homeless doll is not that bad in itself. Consider this:

1. The idea of home foreclosure has now become more real for Americans than at any time during the previous 15 years. So this is a genuine socially important subject that real children may become acquainted with. Since the way children learn tends to be through play, it stands to reason that a doll will help bring these issues to interested kids.

2. The homeless are marginalised from society. The only way to stop people being marginalised is to raise their profile within mainstream society. By making middle-class kids aware of the issues of being homeless, Mattel is helping educate American society.

3. Gwen can be used as a “teaching tool” in schools and nurseries to introduce children en masse to the topic of homelessness in an accessible way, using something they understand (dolls). Otherwise it is pretty difficult for teachers to raise these issues in young classrooms. The issues of parental abandonment in Gwen’s story gives teachers a way in to difficult topics about modern families too.

4. It’s nothing new. Some commentators on stories about Gwen point out that they played back in the 1960s with a doll called Poor Pitiful Pearl (see comments at the end of the article). She came in rags, was “adopted” by the child and then brought back to full health and joy once placed with a family. For them, this is an old idea revisited.

So why is it causing such outcry?

1. The dolls don’t do anything above making Mattel money. While it might be teaching young kids that homelessness is a real issue in society, it doesn’t do anything to actively change that. No percentage of the product sales goes to homeless charities. The company simply stands to make profit from a homeless doll; it doesn’t stand to make a more important social improvement than that. You would expect that a brand introducing a character like Gwen would associate itself with a cause or charity to give her greater impact.

2.  The price tag ($95) is enormous and seems especially incongrous when selling a product with a story all about being so poor that the doll can’t even afford a roof over her head. It moves the business away from being seen as a valuable educator of children to making a large profit from a very sensitive and sad topic.

Time Magazine has also – in honour of Gwen – compiled a brilliant list of the ‘top 10 most dubious toys’. What’s your view? Horrendous initiative or thoughtful new product development?

Music and marketing; what’s going on?

In my role as an occasional blogger for the MIDEM music business festival, which I have taken part in for the last few years, I have blogged a few stories about the most interesting developments in marketing and music. You can check out my thoughts on how the band Tokio Hotel have gone virtual or whether Sky Songs will be successful by clicking here.

Charmin offers toilet attendants $10,000

This is a nice little campaign from toilet paper brand Charmin in the US. The Procter & Gamble owned product is launching a national job search to find five outgoing and enthusiastic people to work in New York City’s Times Square ‘Charmin Restrooms’ this holiday season for a salary of $10,000 each.

The five chosen “Charmin Ambassadors” will interact with hundreds of thousands of restroom guests between November 23 and December 31, while getting paid to revel in what P&G calls their “love of the loo.”

(Although I do find it worrying that P&G says: “This isn’t your ordinary 9 AM – 5 PM job, and Charmin only asks that candidates should enjoy going to the bathroom so much – whether it be to catch up on reading or just enjoy some “me time” – they never want to leave.”)

Unlike a normal toilet attendent, though, you will be earning your ten grand by producing behind-the-scenes news, updating your own blogs and content on Charmin-branded websites and popular social media sites; and capturing ‘family-friendly’ video footage in the space and surrounding areas.

If you want to audition, click here.

Sport and smoking?

An interesting coverwrap on Sport magazine today. It takes the form of the outside of a cigar and shows readers where to roll up the magazine to make it resemble a large cigar, with a “label” bearing the name of the sponsor, Intercasino.

Now, I’m not suggesting that Intercasino or Sport are trying to advertise tobacco (which is banned) but it seems like an odd choice to associate your brand with anything connected to smoking publicly. After all, sport and smoking – do they really go together?

Not sure that this really fits the type of intelligent, upscale male image that Sport tries to cultivate; this is a bit ‘old school gambling’ rather than forward thinking. The “roll up” technique suggested on the cover is a nice interactive touch for a coverwrap though…..shame about the subject matter.

It isn’t the first time that Intercasino has flirted with controversial advertising – its ads featuring a cigar-smoking dwarf were banned in 2008 by the Advertising Standards Authority.

Will this approach have the same effect? You can see a scan of the cover below or if you want a better look, check out the digital magazine version of Sport here.

Nespresso launches new ad campaign with George Clooney

George Clooney is going to appear in a new print campaign for coffee brand Nespresso. The marketing will feature images of Clooney alone in a dark suit and then with a Nespresso Grand Cru in his hand. The idea is that the ad of Clooney alone will read “Extraordinary Man”, while the one with the coffee too, will say “Make the ordinary extraordinary”.

There will also be an outdoor element to the campaign on the London Underground.

Nespresso is a fascinating brand. It is essentially a “masstige” idea; it’s upmarket but not gourmet. It can’t be seen as truly luxurious as it’s widely available and it’s machines are priced at a reasonable level. But at the same time, nor are its “coffee pods” used in the machines cheap and accessible to anyone with low incomes.

So why has Nespresso seen annual sales rise by more than 30% over each of the last eight years? First, smart pricing. You can buy a Nespresso machine in any department store. And for a coffee machine, it’s pretty good value, usually under £100, which is much cheaper than brands like Gaggia. The machines look very professional, but the price tag isn’t horrendous.

Second, you can only use the machines with special little coffee ‘pods’ ordered online and over the phone direct from the company. Which is pretty restrictive and guarantees the company a flow of income. People pay for a relatively inexpensive  coffee machine and once they own the equipment, they are tied into buying the pods (since the machines won’t work with anything else). And what’s more, Nespresso treats people as belonging to a club, so they actively like being restricted in where they can purchase the coffee.

Nestle was quick to spot that coffee drinkers are also coffee lovers. People cannot go without their caffeine hit and with a little encouragement, they’ll discuss their addiction and talk to other people with the same issues. While many people visit coffee shops, that is normally where the relationship between customer and company stops.

Nespresso, with its community The Nespresso Club, gives people access to tasting events and coffee-machine maintenance assistance among other benefits. It made something special out of an everyday experience. And it is reaping the financial rewards.

And it has George Clooney in its advertising. What’s wrong with that? (Nice pic of him in a previous ad below…)