A refreshing move from Pepsi for the start of the new decade: asking people in the US what they’d like Pepsi to spend its philanthropy budget on, rather than the Pepsi corporate responsibility department allocating it as they see fit. This approach is being labelled ‘crowdsourcing CSR’ or ‘crowdsourcing philanthrophy’. Fast Company has referenced it in a piece called ‘Is Philanthropy the New Marketing?‘.

Pepsi says it wants this to be a participatory exercise (getting people to participate with the Pepsi brand more), and it seems like a great idea to achieve this. At the same time, it will increase awareness that Pepsi does contribute to society and so prime Pepsi’s civil branding status.

The campaign to promote the initiative will probably meet the 3Is Civil Branding criteria: Important – yes community projects are important; Inclusive – yes community projects bring people together; Influential – yes Pepsi is an influential brand. Read more on engaging people with issues they find important and the significance of this in social media campaigns in an earlier post The secret ingredient for successful social media campaigns.

The feedback that Pepsi gets from people about where they think money should be spent will be a useful indicator of what people in the US think are the most important issues in civil society, as well as telling Pepsi how they should spend their money of course.

Great start to the new decade, thank you Pepsi!

Have a delightful holiday. We’re back in the studio on 4th of January.

When Wittgenstein proposed that ‘the message is the receiver’, he meant that no matter what the speaker says, the meaning can only ever be interpreted and understood in the listener.This idea implies that:

[a] The listener comes complete with their own context and preconceived notions and

[b] these preconceived notions work to create interference for the speaker’s message and result in a different message being understood if the speaker and listener’s contexts vary. Quite often, we need to rally a message back and forth in order to have the speaker’s meaning really understood. This is never more true when two different people or groups with different backgrounds, goals and experiences are trying to communicate.

We’re all familiar with the shift from broadcast to dialogue but what does it mean in action? Let’s take an example.

We need to pick on somebody, so while Procter and Gamble has done some interesting and positive civil branding actions with the Tampax (see previous post), let’s use their latest drama regarding airbrushing model Twiggy for their Olay brand so we can work with a practical example.

The Guardian reported:

P&G said that there would “always be differences between uncomplimentary paparazzi shots and professional beauty photographs”. The company argued that an article in a national newspaper, which featured Twiggy “off-duty” in the Olay ad, may have prompted the complaints.

P&G added that it was “routine practice to use post-production techniques to correct for lighting and other minor photographic deficiencies before publishing the final shots as part of an advertising campaign”.

The company said that there had been some “minor retouching” around Twiggy’s eyes, which was inconsistent with its own policies; this had already prompted it to withdraw the original ad and replace with one in which there was no post-production work around the eyes.

There are certainly two different conversations going on between the speaker (P&G) and the listener (media, normal people). Groups are upset that Twiggy is being made to appear younger than she is when endorsing a product. In their statements, P&G explains their ideas on policy, their view of the situation and technical details of a shoot.

The listener wanted P&G to discuss the concern of making older women appear younger than they are in order to sell product. In not responding to directly to their concern, the listener feels ignored and will try to reengage P&G in other ways, likely expressing frustration.

It’s just like an argument with a friend where you are trying to get your story across but the other party is not up for listening.

This situation is a lost opportunity for P&G to talk about the companies views on authenticity, airbrushing and ageism. These views are important to many of P&G’s customers as Unilever has proved with Dove.

Here are five rules that we’ve developed over the years to help when responding to this kind of situation:

1. Focus on the response. Listen to the responder and take the conversation to their topic. Don’t try to change the topic or shut the conversation down prematurely.
2. Use their topic as a platform to speak about your ideas on their concerns. P&G could have used this situation to discuss their ideas on celebrity image in a modern society, how it is changing, issues of ageism or any other important topic to P&G.
3. Take the conversation to its conclusion. Each participant will want to direct the conversation down their own path. Make room for each other’s ideas and you will have more air time to talk about your own thoughts on the subject and have your ideas understood.
4. Be open and be true. You need to be open in order to keep the conversation going, but you also need to be true to your own ideas and values. If opinions really differ, then you need to agree to disagree, but in our experience, this is very rarely the case.
5. Take action. These kinds of conversations often raise new opportunities. Be quick to capitalise on them to secure your position and reinforce your words with deeds.

Of course, Olay/P&G is not alone. Marketers are trained in strategy that does not include two-way participation, so learning the ropes is difficult. When handling these situations, marketers often take on a defensive or debate-like position. While it takes effort and bravery, entering into the listener’s conversation opens up entirely new areas of opportunity for a brand and can turn out to be moments of real innovation.

Further reading:
Lib Dems call to ban airbrushing
Could Tampax be another Dove?

There’s a new report out called A Bit Rich? and written by Eilis Lawlor, Helen Kersley and Susan Steed at the New Economic Foundation (NEF). It might help to nudge us towards a more socially and economically progressive new decade: the caring twenty-tens.

This report has got a lot of media attention, and understandably so with quotes like:

• For every £1 in value created, £7 worth of value is destroyed by a highly paid City banker.
• For every £1 of value created by an advertising executive, £11.50 is destroyed.
• For every £1 paid to a childcare worker generates £7 worth of benefits for society.

A Bit Rich? explodes some of the myths about the value to society and the economy of certain jobs over others. For example, it tackles the idea that we need the City and the mega-earners because of the value they generate. It uses a methodology called Social Return on Investment (SRoI) to quantify the value of certain jobs.

Understandably, we homed in on the negative contribution advertising executives make to society that, according to the report, encourages over-consumption and status anxiety. President of the IPA and celebrated ad man Rory Sutherland refutes the claim, which is somewhat more plausible than Lloyd Blankfein’s defence that Goldman Sachs does ‘God’s work’.

It is important to recognise a lot more honesty and social consideration needs to go into the way we all promote brands. Many ads contribute a lot of enjoyment and stimulate thinking around important issues, but they are by far and away outnumbered by other less virtuous communications.

The report parodies the difference between professions by creating fictional job postings:

The last part “suspend his or her social and environmental conscience” reminded me of what a friend said when I told him about our Civil Branding movement: “oh, so it’s branding with a conscience then”. Thanks Dickie, spot on.

There is a way for brands and advertising executives to redress the negative effect they may have on society: building in socially-progressive messaging to brand communications. A recent post of ours talks about the contribution Orange RockCorps is making to society. We look forward to improved figures for advertising executives’ effect on society in the next decade.

Demos’s new report Service Nation is about the democratic notion of serving the community, and how young people can get more involved to start good habits for the future.

The Government’s idea of a National Civic Service was mooted amongst 54 young people at a Demos convention in September. Only 8% liked the name, and the words duty, civic and service were not very popular. The idea of gaining a sense of personal achievement and fulfilment was important.

We couldn’t help thinking about the psychological value exchange between brands and people, and the success of branded community initiatives like Orange RockCorps, with their strapline: Give, Get Given.

Brands are great influencers and motivators of human behaviour, and they can also be great levellers. As such they can be ideal agents of democracy.

We are big fans of what Orange is doing with Orange RockCorps, and the way they are doing it by merging the CSR and marketing agendas, talking about civil initiatives through brand communications. Other brands are making valuable contributions to society through CSR-led initiatives such as the Vodafone Foundation’s ‘World of Difference’. We rarely see these efforts expressed in primary brand communications, which is a shame because this limits the reach of these good civic initiatives.

Do let us know about communications that promote civic initiatives that you have seen by other brands like Orange RockCorps. In the meantime, we’ll start thinking about measuring the overall contribution to civic service that brands are making.

Well, Christmas season is upon us and that means warm, heartfelt wishes all around. This spot from Wal-Mart caught our eye as a message of gratitude to the soldiers serving in the Middle East. I’m sure there will be more to come before the magic day.

In promoting World AIDS Day, we have collected a few of the iconic ads that we have seen over the years that are provocative, funny and scary – sometimes all at the same time. Here are some websites where we and all our clients can get more involved:

(RED)
World AIDS Day official site
UNAIDS: United Nations effort
ONE: International advocacy group
Global AIDS Alliance

Quebec Coalition Against AIDS

Michael Stich Stiftung AIDS awareness

MTV World AIDS day ads

French AIDES Awareness Council

Malaysian AIDS Foundation: Hope

Aldo fights youth AIDS

Benetton

We have recently conducted a very unscientific survey of banking brand slogans compiled by The Financial Brand in order to see roughly what proportion of bank slogans focus on a civil message for society.

Now, the survey has all sorts of bias, (slogans do not a brand make, country bias, historical bias, our bias, etc.)  but it provides an interesting benchmark for where banking brands position themselves and how many take a stance that addresses society’s needs.

We simply filtered the slogans through our consulting team, asking them to agree on some broad categories. Here they are with some definitions:

• Aspirational (34%): Promise of a better future for you or belonging to an exclusive club e.g. Making More Possible (ABN AMRO). Where Membership Matters (Bridgewater)
• Customer Centric (24%): Putting the customer first e.g. We’re all About You (Mazuma). You and Us (UBS).
• Boast (18%): Statement about how good the bank is e.g. Fluent in Finance (Barclays). Altogether Better (First Choice)
• Functional (8%): Statement about value or function e.g. More Broker for your Money (Scottrade). Let us quote you happy (Norwish Union)
• Civil (5%): Focus on wider society and improvement – not about the individual e.g. Capital Ideas. Human Values (New Alliance). Live Richly (Citibank). Let’s Change the World (Shorebank).
• Simple (3%): Focusing on ease of use e.g. Simpler. Better. Faster (Standard Bank). It’s That Simple (Vantus Bank).
• Local (3%) Promoting the e.g. Hometown Banking. Real Value (Numerica). We’re From Here (Frost Bank).
• Security (3%): Encompassing protection of investments and protection of the family unit e.g. Because Change Happenz (Zurich). Ready for Tomorrow? (Norwich Union).
• Pun (2%): Being cutsy with the name e.g. Investments with Abbey Endings (Abbey National).

It’s no surprise that the most common kind of slogan promotes aspirational themes and ideas. Aspirational narratives are the legacy territory of banks and many are reluctant to move away from this safe harbour. Over time, these messages have evolved from ‘exclusivity’ narratives surrounded by membership (think Diner’s Club) to celebrating the human spirit best typified by American Express and the ‘Long Live Dreams’ campaign. We expect these aspirational messages to decrease in number as a category and increase in social meaning (i.e. less individualistic) in the future.

It’s also quite sensible to see that customer-centric slogans are the second most used kind of slogan. Banks everywhere are moving from operations-focused to customer-facing companies. Most large retail banks have made the transition we expect this proportion to increase over time. Of course, if this many banks are talking about putting the customer first, how differentiated can this category be in the future?

It was a real surprise to see just how many banks boasted about their own prowess in their slogans. While banks are not known for being the picture of modesty, it’s hard to imagine why such a large portion of them continue to talk about themselves in these society-focused era. We can only guess that this group will diminish quickly as banks go through their natural cycle of repositioning.

Happily, civil-positioned slogans do not appear at the bottom of our list and are well represented by some of the world’s most successful banks. Even banks that do not indicate a civil notion in their slogan e.g. HSBC’s ‘The World’s Local Bank’ promote overtly civil messages in their communications.

This simple survey demonstrates the opportunity for banks to increase the meaning in their brands and become more differentiated. Many have slogans that are purely functional or belong to a previous age, where speaking about ones’ self was considered expected behaviour.

There is plenty more to say on the topic. The next post on this might examine top 20 global bank narratives and see what portion of them focus on civil messages.

This recent spot is another example of how banks are looking to re-frame their narrative post crisis (see previous post on re-framing banks). Ally is GMAC’s new internet bank offer in America. These cute spots work to establish ‘truth’ as a central tenant of their brand.

Truth is an often attempted, seldom achieved story for brands to tell. Those that tell the story in an authentic manner have usually had truth as a guiding value in the culture since the beginning. As anyone can appreciate, truth is not an ancillary concept that can be stapled onto a brand easily. Truth in action is a foundational value that affects the behaviour of the company in profound ways.

It’s a very desirable state of being for customers who want an honest company to trade with and who want to have a ‘pure’ brand image reflected in their decision to purchase. See previous post on ‘The truth will set you free‘. Brands like IKEA and Innocent lead the pack – although in very different ways.

This allure to the notion of truth is why so many brands now embrace openness, simplicity and straightforward values in their brand statements. So much so, that as an agency, we often recommend that these values are generic to the category and should not be included in the brand platform as a source of differentiation.

The Great Recession has presented an opportunity for challenger brands like Ally, Virgin, building societies, Islamic banks and co-ops to redefine what banks can mean for customers in ethical and social spheres.

Advertising agency Isobel, in association with YouGov,  has shared the results of its ‘Family Brands 2009‘ survey. This is a survey of 1,500 people’s views on how socially-responsible, caring and good at listening 100 selected brands are.

The attributes of socially-responsible and caring are included in our own Civil Branding surveys, amongst many other attributes, which is why we picked up on this survey. Being good at listening is something all brands should strive for these days.

We were interested at the ‘family’ take on these attributes in the Isobel survey. Our research indicates that it is younger adults who are more interested in the socially-responsible and caring attributes of brands than the typically older parent group. Why does socially-responsible and caring, and being good at listening for that matter, equal family?

There is something going here though. The brands that scored top in the survey also score well in our Civil Branding surveys (eg M&S, The Co-operative,  Boots). We believe that people like it when brands help us to think about today’s social challenges, and maybe give us a nudge in the right direction. OK, this equates to parental behaviour. We are in the ‘caring noughties’ after all, so the ‘family’ construct is probably quite useful.

As a taster of our Civil Branding surveys, here’s one on Cadbury.