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AT&T and Apple: Co-op advertising done right

Like most of America, you're probably watching the all-out holiday advertising war between the two leading cell phone providers.

Frustrated, perhaps, with the staying power of those fun "there's an app for that" ads (Apple is known for finding a clever idea and sticking with it to the point of complete exhaustion. It seems Justin Long will be playing Mac, for example, until well into his own middle age), Verizon fought back with the most emasculating force in advertising: sarcasm.

Their "there's a map for that" campaign exploited an AT&T weakness and caused nothing short of a war to break out in the courts and in prime time. In fact, if anything will get us out of this recession, it may be the unprecedented level of media buying between these two giants.

But, for AT&T and Apple, it's more than a brute force. The two have teamed up to leverage unique aspects of each of their authentic brands to change the conversation. The advantage they're both talking about is: the ability to use voice and data together.

AT&T - the category leader and uber-practical and sophisticated brand - brought in Luke Wilson to add a human element to its essentially intellectual argument: doesn't it make sense that you would talk and type on one device? At the same time, no less.

But, be honest, you've probably never thought about typing and talking together. Or, at least, it's not a feature you're looking for. That's where Apple comes in. They are the standard in consumer expectation. They seem to know what we need before we ourselves are even able to put words to it. They can make talk and type not only cool, but really, really desirable.

Together, the campaigns appeal to our egos and our brains. We want to try it, to make it our own. Suddenly this little-known feature is a game changer. Apple's ads create demand and AT&T's fulfill it. Rarely are cooperative campaigns so complementary and powerful.

10 (other) compelling, authentic brands

My boss sometimes tells the story of Dr. Colley, a famous surgeon who author Jim Belasco followed on rounds. One day, en route to the operating room, Belasco saw the surgeon stop to talk to a man mopping the hallway. The surgeon and janitor conversed for nearly 10 minutes before Cooley dashed into the operating room. Curiosity raised, Belasco commented, "That was a long conversation." Then he asked, "What do you do in the hospital?"

The janitor replied, "We save lives."

THAT is a compelling brand.

One that is both embraced and breaks through. One that feels genuine from almost any voice.

You know these brands: Apple. Nordstrom. Zappos. Target. Ug. Hell, Uggs. Their brand stories have been told again and again until they've become both the unattainable pillars of legend and little more than background noise.

What does it take to deliver a brand that compelling?

It should be:

1. Meaningful. The simple, perfect words that hit you in the gut with connection and value.
2. Repeateable. In 2009, if people can't pass it on, it might as well not exist
3. Embraced. Thoughout all levels of the organization. And, within the core customer base.

What other brands are doing it just as well as those category leaders? Here are 10 more stories to tell:

1. United Way: Give. Advocate. Volunteer. Pillars that hold up as well in a board room as they do in a gay pride parade as they do in the aftermath of a disaster.
2. Ted: Ideas worth passing on. It's the heart of the brand and embodied in everything it touches.
3. MINI: In the tent, in the car, all for fun. That clan of effusive motorers finds joy in everything.
4. Anthropolgie: For every ecclectic who lives for the details and the romance of craft, we give you an inspiring place to shop. 
5. The Peninsula: Personal luxury. A new legend borne of the details.
6. Montreal: THE Creative City.
7. W&K: Where creative's create. A place that is all about the work. The wicked sweet work.
8. Progressive: A "we get you" brand that does the work for you. Grounded in a word all of America would connect with their name: compare
9. Tylenol: The old guard that has always made the right calls, reinvigorated by the Feel Better campaign and story
10. Pedigree. You know it. You've probably said it. We're for dogs.

Obsessed with Noah Brier's Brand Tags

Ok, so when Noah first launched his brand perception project a few weeks ago, I jumped on, tagged some brands, clicked around, wandered off elsewhere...

But now that he's logged over 600,000 tags, I'm obsessed with the browse.

If you're just checking out Brand Tags now, here's the back story:

When you hit the site, you see the name of a brand. All you have to do is type in the first word(s) that come to mind.

Here's Noah's thinking: If you ask a bunch of people what a brand is and make a tag cloud, you should have a pretty accurate look at what the brand represents.

The data is already HUGE. And, really addicting to check out. Especially the smaller print - catching what pesky outlying perceptions are detracting from your brand.

Participate
Browse the data

In other shiny new news. Google's collaboration tool is now live and (of course) free to all. Read about it on Faster Future or just go explore. If you work with a nonprofit or head up a community org, make sure to check it out. Great tools for sharing docs, ideas, pics and more among a dispersed group without a lot of setup / maintenance / management.

The Open Brand

With Adver-boyfriend off following his favorite NCAA team around the country this weekend, I had time to catch up on three industry books that have been tempting me from the bedside table. This week, I'll share perspectives on each of those, starting with:

By Kelly Mooney and Nita Rollins
Home agency: Resource Interactive

There are two schools of thought on the role of the 'expert' in consulting industries like ours: (1) it's our job to be the smartest guy in the room on our 'best at' subject or (2) it's our job to make our client feel like the smartest guy in the room.

Mooney/Rollins definitely fall in the latter. They've built a book that converges all the big ideas and groundswell of momentum around the social Web into a simple story on impact and action.

Kind of a Daring Book for Girls for CMOs

I say 'built a book' because it's the structure that agency wonks will be attracted to. A visual approach to the ideas and concepts we talk about every day (Come on, who among us hasn't taken a little real-work inspiration from one of Armano's quick sketches of clarity?), repeatable cases and solid frameworks.

For clients and newbies, it's all content.

A few of the ideas that got me scribbling notes in the margin:

After outlining the pitfalls of business-as-usual in a new medium, Mooney/Rollins lay out a New Relationship framework in simple Venn diagram fashion. The center is passion, overlapped on three sides by consumers, community and brand.

I love the idea that passion is the shared quality - the opportunity to build engagement (with people, with networks, with employees). At brunch this weekend, we were talking about the phenom coup Resource's PR team pulled off: Four paragraphs about The Open Brand in this month's cover story of Fast Company. When a friend - who, I should preface, knows everything about a million things I know nothing about - asked me what Fast Company is? And, to try to describe it now ... is, stalling. But, you probably remember when it launched, in the heydey of dot.com, when we were all rethinking work and what it means to find both delight and challenge in what we do every day, and essentially finding passion in work. I like to think that ethic has found its resurgence in the social Web.

The Open Brand also has a great information graphic on the motivations of iCitizenry, plotted on a continuum of everyday to elite:

• 74% are motivated by competence: "I can" (use Web tools for fun, learning and efficiency)
• 16% by collectivism: "I connect" (connect and share with people who have similar interests)
• 7% by culture change: "I am" (effect change that improves companies, products or the experience of others)
• 3% by celebrity: "I matter" (seek recognition or some degree of fame)

In a conversation (darn, I used THAT word) that has largely been shaped by the 1% Rule and other outcome-based frameworks, it's interesting to turn to the why instead of the what.

I digress. The framework is followed by a hall-of-fame of sorts of some of the loudest voices on the Web - from Kos to the diva of Amazon.com product reviews.

Someone I follow on Twitter - maybe Jaffe - asked (more eloquently than I am recreating here) is the Web creating more amateur professionals or is it simply giving us access to more true professionals. It's an interesting question for ad bloggers, but in the largest context of the social Web, it has another dimension: are there new 'careers,' new needs for voices and approaches (like the mega reviewers) that have essentially become the foundation of everything else?

That said, I think for most marketers, the challenge isn't in understanding the outlyers. They're relatively easy to learn about with various social aggregating tools and their own self promotion. Your agency can attack those (with some degree of grace or lumbering) the way they could any other opinion leader. The challenge is understanding the common person. What the key profiles of social behavior are and how those cross-index beyond age ... with a wider swath of loyalty and offline behavior.

I'm guessing the ethnographers at Resource save that level of detail for folks willing to spend a little more than $16.95...

AAA. Authentic storytelling makes a comeback.

Remember those long distance commercials from the 90s that left us with a lump in our throats?  The long-lost daughters calling home to dad. The couples reunited across seemingly uncrossable distances. The embarrassed TV watchers swiping tears from their cheeks?

Yeah, those ones.

What made them compelling was the story. The archetypes welling with happy emotion. The everyday hero stories that we all want to be a part of.

Jump ahead to 2008.

In an advertising environment of dropped calls, sweaty athletes and gloriously glossy hair follicles. AAA responds with their own everyday heroes; with compelling, authentic stories that we can all see ourselves in.

The campaign - from AAA Ohio and SBC Advertising - launched this month. It's told from the perspective of real tow truck drivers. But delivers something much larger: the story of their brand – literally, the true essence of service and membership – found in neighborhood driveways, in busy parking lots and in the cabs of tow trucks, with real people just talking about their jobs.

The result is great TV. Watch the spots here. But, don't blame me if you get a little teary on the Ant ones...

Why I love this approach:

AAA is up against two of the toughest challenges aging brands face: commoditization and sinking relevance.

People think: Oh, I already have this with my insurance or new car.

People think: My car won’t break down. I don’t need it.

Keeping ahead of the market, AAA aimed its operations and marketing strategies at refreshing the market perception of AAA.

Operations: Upgrade the ‘product’ we’re selling. People don’t have time to be towed. They want to be fixed and ‘stay on the go.’

Marketing: Anyone in any car can need AAA. The most common calls aren’t for breakdowns, they’re for keys locked in cars, dead batteries, flat tires, etc.

You can see the results in this campaign.

It shows that members are as likely to call for everyday goofs as real emergencies and demonstrates that most problems are fixed on the spot - no need to tow.

But, more than that, it brings to life a level of service and community that I hope will define the brand going forward.

Wendy's: the brand struggle

Griner may think the debate on Wendy's ended when he celebrated the demise of the Red Wig campaign, but, after having my post-writers-strike prime time interrupted by the Wendy's fish sandwich love fest these past few weeks, I've got to say: I miss Red Wig. At least I understood its role in the brand story.

Let me step back.

I'm not a food marketer, never hawked so much as a warm roll, but I've watched the industry on and off over the last few years and am close enough to other customer segmentation strategies to have developed a theory.

From the advertising and product mix out there, it strikes me that there are four main types of fast food customers:

• Families and Kids. Hungry people looking for a meal that's easy, affordable and in a place where ketchup smears and screaming babies are par for the course.


• Convenience Eaters. They're dashing from here to there and would probably like to eat something else, but when life has you on the go ... well, you hit the drive through lane.


• Calorie Nullifiers. Blue collar guys busting ass on the work site all day. Just getting to noon burns more calories than convenience eaters consume in a week. They need a big meal to keep them going.


• All-Day Eaters. Let's be honest, maybe they're a little drunk. Either way, they've got wacky schedules, demand ooey-gooey satisfaction and, frankly, probably have enviable metabolisms.

So, when Wendy's started up with Red Wig and introduced the Baconater, I started to get it. They were transforming from a family brand to something straddling the Calorie Nullifiers and the Any-Time Eaters. They were getting back to the Where's the Beef, taste matters heyday of  - screw the nutrition label, this stuff tastes great (for fast food).

Now enter the 'healthy' fish sandwich spot.

We're back to advertising core product. And, to convenience eaters, no less. Meanwhile, product development is adding jack cheese, jalepenos and bacon to any meat-bread combo they can dream up. And, the stores are still featuring cute little Wendy. Where are we red head?

The good news is, Wendy's has all the right tools. Bold product development and real estate teams. Solid footprint. And enough historical brand equity to ride out this blip, but, it's going to take a hard look at the core brand and the customer to get them back on track post-Dave Thomas.

Lipstick Jungle and Maybelline: When ad partnerships undermine editorial

This year’s choice for hot mid-season television formula is Sex in the City gets married and goes to the office. Combine several high-powered, hottie women execs with contentious, creative work environments and stressed out home lives and voila(!), advertisers line up like in the ultra-competitive days of the 1994 renaissance of sexy, smart doctor dramas. 

Tomorrow night will mark the third episode of one of the front runners of the mini powerful-woman genre: Lipstick Jungle.  And, at this point, I’m wondering if the ad partnership won’t be the downfall of the series.

I should preface with this: All television shows based on professions boldly simplify, cast unusually sexy characters (think of the “CSI”s with fully made up faces and low cut shirts scouring trash truck crime scenes or George Clooney still delightfully coiffed after a gory 48 shift) and are generally unrecognizable to people in the actual field.

BUT, still…

Lipstick Jungle’s marriage to Makeup Artist Chuck Hezekiah of Maybelline is a little reductive even for Prime Time. At each commercial break, he pops up with advice on how to get ‘the look’ of the exec featured in the last segment.

I’m not suggesting that the Ad Council should break in with a series on how to raise our young women, but,  when we take a relatively accepted convention (TV sexing up real-life humans) and make it driver of the story, well, it gets a little ugly. Afterall, they weren't exactly paying for ER with hair gel sponsors or CSI with tube top designers.

With such a prominent and potentially-controversial sponsorship, it will be interesting to see what part Maybelline plays in the success or failure of Lipstick Jungle.

Miller brand wins with 'second tier' media

After rejecting Miller Lite's Bud-mocking spots in 2005 over fear of offending the bigger beer sponsor, the Super Bowl ad sales division got smart and locked in exclusivity with the King. Now only Anheuser Busch can show its sweaty bottles during the game. But, that hasn't stopped Miller's pesky harassment of big brother's ponies and puppies on the big day.

This year, Miller showed its contrarian side - buying out all the non-Super Bowl inventory to catch viewers who might be channel surfing during cut #7659 to Payton Manning shaking his head at Eli. Then, layered it on the next day with full-page print ads in major newspapers offering to by Bud a beer for their Super Bowl commercial 'win' (a better beer that is) and with some great online snark, like this YouTube video featuring the Miller High LIfe delivery man commenting on the big game ads:

As Bud's product development, packaging design and advertising continue  up-market, appealing to a somewhat more discriminating drinker (uh, beer consumer), Miller Lite heads down-market toward the blue collar beer of choice. And, fiesty really fits for these second place suds. Up with the Miller.

Macy's Holiday TV

Can we maybe just admit a few things to each other here, dear reader? Like, maybe my RSS reader is painfully choked with (quickly staling) kernels of wisdom from bloggers the world-over ... and that by falling off the reading wagon for only a few days (maybe a week), they've run so amok that I will likely have to delete them all and just start over...

Happily, though, I have one less unmet obligation to feel guilty about - as Eric Kintz's recent article 'Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore' has brilliantly validated my eclectic posting and reading pace.

Which is all to say, if this is old news, I no longer have to apologize for the duplication -

The Macy's holiday TV campaign is absolutely infectious.

I admire:

• The single narrative that unites the celebrity appearances
• The choice to take the hard road and schedule multiple celebs on the same location, the same day
• The writing that leverages the public personas of the celebs to build their product brands
• The investment in a 60-second  brand experience
• The all-out fun of it
• The integration of brands that touch so many ages and lifestyles - creating the effect of something you know and something to discover

I love that a department store invested in it - a strong strategy to move from forgetable 'infrastructure' to flat-out memorable brand in the retail sprint to  the holiday.

Excellent Week for Men on the Web: Stella and Guinness launch

While I personally get what Agency Tart is saying about the new Guinness experience site, I've got to step back and think about the target ... which is decidedly not me.

It's a weird technology trick. Looks doable and cool. PLUS, there's a back story worthy of A&E and you can make your own movie without leaving your couch (or wherever you and your computer may be)

So, yeah, DIY showmanship - very manly beer drinking stuff.  And probably an ideal app for the audience.

Elsewhere on the Web, Stella continues to one up Guinness when it comes to relevant, long-lasting, experience marketing. Guinness hung a sign in every bar. Stella put a glass in every hand. Guinness created a cool microsite. Stella revamped their main site to be a sticky, fully engaging, multimedia video game of an experience. Oh, and they told their entire brand story in the context of some of the best gaming graphics on the Web.

So what if I don't get it...