4 Fuks Saké

Cheers Fred

In this post-Brexit era, one thing you’ll never take away from Brits is our ability to take the piss. Absolutely world class leadership right there with #WalkersWave.

Obviously you’ve seen it. The automated, boy-ish enthusiasm of Lineker (here in the Peter Beardsley, No 10 role) sets you up with cheer, positivity and warmth. He puts it on a plate – and bang – there’s the punchline. A smorgasboard of the world’s most depraved criminals – Fritzl, West, Britain’s most prolific sex offender Savile™, asking us to buy crisps.

As a self-appointed ‘industry leader’ – part two of this article should be 100 words about ‘lessons being learned,’ and “obviously our thoughts go out to the families involved.”

The real reason for the absolute glee of this isn’t the pain of the Walkers and client and agency team. God bless them, they’ve suffered enough.

The joy is in puncturing the pomposity, horrendous phrase ‘thought leadership,’ the pointless conferences, the every-Thursday-night award ceremonies, and second screen, hot-air bullshit that exists in creative marketing.

Inviting people to go to a football match in order to sell crisps ISN’T important. It isn't a real job. I should know I’ve been doing it for twenty years.

The brief. The strategy. The best practice workshop. The creative presentation. The amends. The PO. The build. The “we’re at crunch time,” panic. The sign-off and the eventual release. My “washup” would say that #WalkersWave is three, four, five months of tunnelled, bunker thinking – ignorant of a world beyond meetings rooms, and a Metro/iPhone on the tube.

We are privileged.

We are well paid.

Our jobs are fun.

We steal the tickets at festivals and Cup Finals.

We don’t save lives.

We don’t put our bodies on the line.

We think we know it all.

Fred West waving for Walkers is a gleeful wedgie to anyone that represents corporate brands/general Soho bell-endry; and a reminder to recognise to place our work in the real world.

Cheers Fred.

Women’s Sport Will Thrive – But Only If We Recognise The Universal Trait Of Male Stupidity

A winter weekend in February and for the armchair viewer it was very much one of two halves. (Lack of) ethnic diversity and LGBT representation was top of the agenda at the Oscars. For the sports fan, our viewer switched between the human M&S Blue Harbour catalogue of Six Nations punditry; and River Island’s Jamie & Jamie in Sky Sports HD. White middle class men were very much to the fore in daylight hours.

Yet, women’s sport – participation, exposure and financial health – is on the charge. Broadcasters are covering more live events. Editors are devoting more space and airtime to report stories. The major sports brands are featuring more and more female athletes in their Gotham City billboards. This weekend’s Rugby Special covered the women’s Six Nations before the men’s action in Rome and Cardiff. I’d wager that more sports fans would pick out Charlotte Edwards over Gary Ballance in an identity parade. The rise will continue. Sponsors, on the other hand, are lagging behind.

This isn’t a polemic around discrimination, fairness or misogyny – it’s not difficult to find those arguments. However, I would like to examine one of the institutionalised factors of the sports industry that women may never overcome: the stupidity of men.

A fool and his money are easily parted – and I’m perfectly happy to include myself in that. The blind loyalty and devotion of men to other men kicking or throwing balls is at the root of an industry that has mastered the act of designing, presenting and selling sport back to men at a vast expense.

As men, we have an insatiable need for belonging; to support a club, to get Spurs badges tattooed on our forearms, to wear our colours on foreign soil, to be respected. That seemingly exceptionally basic male need is so easily exploited – who wouldn’t want to turn that to financial gain?

Retailers today routinely talk of shoppers (predominantly female-skewed) being “savvy.’ £7,000 on a debenture to reserve the right to buy an international rugby ticket? Savvy? Turning up at Sunderland for a 12.45 kick off because the company you already pay £100 a month to says you should. Is that savvy? An unquestioning £7 a pint, or a £20 steak sandwich on top of a £100 match ticket at Lord’s? “Well that’s just how it is right?” I mumble to myself every June at the Nursery End.

Sport creates a state in which men hand over their money in awe to an institution at its turnstile. Still, an undercurrent of awe lies at the heart of many of the requests for sponsorship cheques. By its very definition, the antiquated term and device the sponsorship ‘right’ implies subservience to the heroic sporting body, resplendent in its blazer.

Progressive brands are trying to build narratives that show their commitment to their customers or a wider audience. They know that talking ‘at’ people – especially the savvy shopper – cuts no ice. The arrogant brand built on pomposity and prestige is un-liked. Brands that make peoples lives better or more meaningful are the brands that win.

Women’s sport provides a wonderful platform for brands wishing to follow that meaningful path. Women’s sport needs financial investment. It needs people and brands willing to invest time and offer practical support. It requires the ongoing support of established sports brands to promote the parity and - deliberate use of quotation marks here – “normalisation” of women’s sport.

So yes – you - SSE and the FA and your women’s football partnership. “We’re entering this partnership with one simple ambition – to make a difference to the future of women’s football and sport,” they clearly stated at launch. Their money and downright graft will create more access points for girls and women to enjoy the game across all levels and abilities. Who can argue with that?

Kia’s financial and practical investment is changing the lives and livelihoods of the England women’s cricket team. The team collectively drives 300,000 miles a year. Kia gave each squad member a car. The aforementioned Charlotte Edwards quit her job to become a full-time cricketer, earning a £40,000 a year salary off the back of the deal. “I had to pull my car over into a lay-by, and I just sat there, stunned. I never thought I’d see it in my time.” That’s Charlotte Edwards MBE speaking about the deal just two years ago. The cricket community will never forget.

There is a simple logic. Bold, brave brands that invest in women’s sport will improve the product. The better the on-field product, the bigger the audience. The bigger the audience, the greater propensity to grow participation. The bigger the participation levels, the better the product – and so it continues.

Above all, the greater the game grows, the more lives are changed through sport. Respect, love and warmth goes to the brand that helps change those lives in the first place.

Bravery ought to conquer stupidity. But as we’re used to being told by the expert analysis, sport is played on paper.

Televised Football But Not As We Know It

“Interesting. Very interesting!” screamed Barry Davies on Match of the Day back in the day. Who would have thought the same could apply to Adam Lallana running round in circles, or Martin Skrtel clearing his nasal passages?

On Wednesday evening Liverpool play Sevilla in the Europa League Final, Europe’s also-ran club tournament – and a chunk of UK football fans will be watching the game live on YouTube.

The match itself is unlikely to be memorable (although it’ll be enough for me to forgo watching the wash-up of Peggy Mitchell’s death). BT’s decision to make the game available as part of its “wider digital strategy”, throws up all manner of interesting thoughts and discussions about where sport, TV, digital platforms, broadband providers and hardware manufacturers are heading (other than the UEFA hospitality boxes in Basel).

There’s the digital platforms themselves. YouTube aren’t messing about, and their intentions are clear. CEO Susan Wojcicki got straight to the point with North American advertisers a fortnight ago, stating YouTube reaches “more 18-49 year olds during primetime than the top 10 TV shows combined.” Its claim for the mass audience – real people you meet in the pub, street or in the office – starts clouding things for the men running sports banking enormous cheques from TV companies.

Take the English Cricket Board for example. It picked up a BAFTA for its coverage of England’s last Ashes win, yet as Sean Ingle pointed out in The Guardian, more people watched a 1974 episode of Colombo on ITV3. In December, Joe Root failed to make the short list for BBC Sports Personality of the Year, and team sponsor Waitrose called it a day.

If YouTube is ‘normal TV’, where does that leave the likes of the TV companies currently staying in the game by borrowing money from the City?

It’s here we can poke around the “wider digital strategy” hinted at by BT. Whatever channel or platform the sport is on – it’s got to get into our home or onto our tablet somehow – and that requires a network. The greater the demand for content via a network, the stronger and more reliable that network needs to be.

So if you’re a telcomms company with a best-in-market broadband and mobile network, pumping stuff into peoples’ homes whatever its source; that’s not a bad place to be.

It also puts you in a more robust position. What happens if Tim Cook wakes up tomorrow and says, ‘right, next, let’s do Apple Sport?’ Or Google’s Eric Schmidt says to YouTube’s Wojcicki, “would you like me to call Richard Scudamore?”

On the one hand, they don’t need to. They may wish to wait and allow the sports bodies to continue to approach them. US sports continue to make overtures with the NBA big advocates of YouTube, and the NFL agreeing a deal to screen games exclusively on Twitter. Sport isn’t rational though – and it has a habit of making men do stupid things with their money, through the blind love of it all. Why else would we get up at 4am to go to Sunderland?

People in grey-glassed offices will start to shift uncomfortably – but for fans, that’s a day to be welcomed. More eyes on more sports at more accessible prices and on more accessible platforms? What’s not to love about that?

THE HEART OF ENGLISH FOOTBALL

What is it with logos and rebrands? They cause such unnecessary stress. Some poor, pleasant bloke with a beard and a massive pair of headphones quietly arranges a few artwork files, adds some copy and reveals it to the world – it triggers the default seven day hysteria zone of anger, debate and piss-taking in social media.

At first glance it appeared that the English Defence League had re-branded under the leadership of Michael Dawson and Stephen Warnock, but having put that to bed, there is a lot to be intrigued by the move. Now that the hysteria window has closed, I think it’s time to give the lads at Futurebrand a break.

The English domestic game is in rude financial health, and the EFL should take great pride in developing a league with the fourth largest attendance in the world. There is talk in the press release about global identity, stakeholders, focus groups, having meetings with Johnstone’s Paints about it – but the heart of it is the opening quote.

"The new EFL name rightly emphasises the central role our clubs play at the heart of English professional football,” says Shaun Harvey. Quite right too.

We like leaving our houses and watching football in the fresh air with our own eyes. Can we do it at Rochdale on a Tuesday night? Unequivocally yes. Football clubs are at the heart of local communities, supported by local people. There is pride, a shared identity, a warmth from simply being together in the English Football League that is to be cherished. The heart of English professional football is a lovely, and accurate turn of phrase.

Of course though, it’s hard not to discuss the English Football League without bringing the Barclays Premier League into the fold. As a Queens Park Rangers fan, I feel highly qualified to comment on the club’s relationship with both.

Here we have a club with a fanbase essentially stretching in a thin strip from Ladbroke Grove to Heathrow, and a crowd of 18,000. Fans of the club are at their happiest when the team is passing the ball, playing attacking attractive football, the players are smiling and the shirt has a clear, broad blue hoop. That is it. With that approach they won the Championship in 2011, and that strip of West London smiled. A local joyful experience that had nationwide moment in the sun.

Yet the promised-land is the global multinational Barclays Premier League, where clubs are owned by oligarchs, sovereign funds and betting firms that happen to be located in Leicester or Stoke. As those clubs become global commodities, they risk a fraying of ties between fans and communities, something the Premier League are acutely aware of.

The more money gets made selling shirts in Malaysia, the more disingenuous the ‘clubs in the community’ initiatives can appear. Without depth and graft, they have all the faux-empathy of a community pinboard in your local, global conglomerate, Starbucks.

Roughly 35 chairmen will use the phrase “take our rightful place in the Barclays Premier League,” in their programme notes; mistakenly thinking fans only care about success. We want to win. We want to be on Match of the Day each weekend. It’s nice to have the grandeur and the status. But it is not as important as the shared identity and love of the club, wherever it finds itself.

But you can’t fall deeply in love without the highs and lows. The heart of English football pumping vigorously through the English Football League makes all of football’s vital organs function better – so flat caps off to them, and good luck.

DO MORE THAN PUT FOOD ON THE TABLE

Right, I’ll be Sue Barker, you can be “Tuffers” or “Daws.”

SB: “For one point, can you tell me who the previous official supermarket supplier of the England football team was?”

“And for a bonus point, which supermarket recently ended a four-year deal to sponsor British Athletics and was the official sponsor of the London 2012 Paralympic Games?”

“Yes Daws.” * fawn * *flutter eyelashes disturbingly * “a point for Sainsbury’s back in London 2012, but no, the official supporter of the England football team was in fact – Tesco!”

“Aaahhh!” Daws leans back and grimaces at Gail Emms.

“On to the next round and it’s time for ‘what happened next?’”

What happened next for Sainsbury’s on signing a deal? They pulled off a PR coup during London 2012 by becoming the first sponsor to back only the Paralympic Games. Sainsbury’s then successfully built on its sponsorship with owned media in the form of the first Anniversary Games in the Olympic park during 2013. It is an area in which they had form – raising awareness amongst households over a concerted length of time with their Active Kids voucher programme for schools.

What of Tesco? For them, it all went a bit Fabio Capello. The 2010 World Cup proved to be disastrous for England, much like 2006 and 2014. England fans will remember the moribund performances set to the sound of the vuvuzela. Whatever Tesco was feeding the England lions, it completely failed to make them roar.

The difference between the two is clear – and it does not relate purely to the action on the pitch, track or field. Sainsbury’s with Channel 4, rode the crest of the Olympic wave but utterly transformed Paralympic sport in this country. They bent their backs and took the sport to new audiences via meaningful activation. Tesco signed a contract, supplied the loaves and fish, and crossed their fingers. England bombed. No-one sought out Tesco over the others, to drown their sorrows in the official lager of the Three Lions on special.

Lidl is well placed. Its partnerships with the football associations in England, Wales and Scotland come off the back of a European-wide initiative of signing sports sponsorship deals. It has completed deals with the Italian Football League and the French Handball Association in recent times. The Financial Times points out that it is part of a concerted drive to attract “a new set of customers from higher income brackets,” as well as naturally attract higher market share.

Lidl’s covers ‘support’ for grassroots football including the provision of 1.5 million sessions of professional coaching for children in England, Wales and Scotland. This word ‘support’ is the crux of a successful sponsorship activation strategy. The appearance of a Lidl logos on branding boards and polo shirt collars will not be enough to drive the business return that the supermarket will be looking for.

Meaningful activation and a clear role in improving the experience of football for the audiences you need to attract delivers business return. Barclays #spiritofthegame programme, as part of its Barclays Premier League sponsorship has played a significant role in overturning perceptions and consideration towards the bank. Football has been one of the highways out of a challenging public image for the banking industry. Using the rights afforded by the sponsorship, the bank was able to align itself with a narrative of community improvement, using its platform to shine a spotlight on the real heroes inside the game. Its content has attracted huge numbers of organic views, wrapped in positive comment and sentiment.

Lidl has a platform to build its narrative and establish meaningful connections with this family audience. It is off to a head start – customers are voting with their heads and their wallets and heading into stores. Now they have the opportunity to capture their hearts too – and establish themselves with those new audiences, by meeting the parents of young footballers through those grass roots schemes, and demonstrating their commitment. They already do it in the store through access to better value groceries. Meeting families at the weekend and offering them better football facilities and coaching is a pleasant way to continue to the conversation, and capture that heart.

Lidl is riding high on the crest of the consumer wave, opening more new stores a year and investing heavily in its UK operation. Add in the purchasing power and direction of the business expansion with the acquisition of Kochzauber, there’s a lot of love at local and international level for the brand. Now is the time to win the hearts and minds of its audience for the long-term with meaningful activity aligned to a national football team that is currently showing real promise of its own.

 

What If Cannes Banned Phones?

Mary J Blige played a live set to twenty fans and what looked like fifty uncomfortable programmatic ad guys on Tuesday.

No matter your taste, the opportunity to hear her perform is what one would call an ‘experience.’ The ad guys had two hands. One clutched a beer bottle, the other recorded Blige’s set on their smartphones.

The smartphone is a devious little weapon. Its power in connecting us all, and sharing all the cleverness nipping round the Riviera is both a beautiful and lucrative thing.

But my fear for the boys on the beach and the 12,000 scuttling around the meeting rooms, is that people are neglecting their eyes, ears and brains. We are here, as we document via our social channels — but are we looking, listening and really learning?

The TED brand has been built off the back of the smartphone’s influence. Smartphones and social networks have brought brilliance to millions of people around the world. Last week, the TED London team banned mobilesinside their events for the first time. The ban “gave permission” to properly listen and learn, rather than listen for a quote to tweet.

The most powerful processors of them all — our brains — aren’t getting the workouts they need. The smartphone distracts and tugs at the cells, pulling you mentally out of the room, even if your body is in it. People walking down the Croisette with their heads down are missing people they came out to see. Information and noise is being picked up by ears, but what are the real levels of critical thought?

Rummage around #canneslions on twitter, and the lack of debate, passion, confrontation and joy is palpable when set against the reportage of simply being here.

That $2,000 Cannes Lions pass has been spent to feed the brain. The smartphone is helping give it a week off. Use it wisely.

It's Intelligent To Dumb Down

Here’s a picture of Benny.

His owner Richard tweeted his picture, and Bob’s your uncle, Benny’s “the world’s most famous dog.” (Mail Online). Mail Online, is the world’s biggest English language newspaper site. Benny’s been shared 697 times. A story alongside on it, on the reform of the British welfare system is shared 243 times.

Without stating the bleeding obvious, or building on what Siobhan Sharpe might say; there is, what is often referred to in a patronising manner, "a lesson here."

Agency planners are paid, and build their careers on their intelligence. It is in their personal interest to build their personal brands with the trappings of that evidence. Data, intelligent publications, tweeting Economist and Harvard Business Review links to clients all do their bit to build credibility and sell an idea. Creatives too, lean heavily on culture for commercial gain. Work emanating from art, design and theatrical studios in cities across the world, end up in diluted form for commercial gain within 12 months.

None of that is to be sniffed at – just as long as the intelligenzia that help to shift consume products recognise the power that comes from the lowest common denominator. It’s a world where the written word is simply not needed. The copywriter becomes surplus to requirements.

An image that makes you laugh, fantasise or cringe, is your passport to worldwide fame and access to eyeballs. Benny is living proof and by dint of statistic, cannot be ignored.

The ingredients of imagery - useful for any creative session - include:

• Cats & dogs (Benny).
• Animals displaying human qualities (PG Tips, meerkats, page 3 of Metro every day).
• Physical disfiguration, (Cheryl Cole, C4’s Undateables, war).
• Wealth extremes (Kardashians, Benefits Street).
• Class divison. (Binge drink vomiting montages, Ladies day at Aintree, Kardashians).
• A bikini (Every newspaper site, notably Mail Online’s sidebar of shame).
• Cleavage (ditto).
• Attractive women in dresses (ditto).

In the search for intelligence – it’s best not to overlook what stares you in the face every day.

Cyrus, Jacklin, Higgs & Dignity

There are three stories from the past couple of weeks that are worthy of pulling together.

Cyrus / O’Connor

It’s been seven hours and fifteen days (approximately) since Miley Cyrus and Sinead O’Connor exchanged open letters on the subject of mental disintegration. Within a couple of weeks, Cyrus has transformed herself into a breathing version of Razzle, and reached the global Premier League of celebrity. Hard work? Music? Forget it. The 'tits out and trend' strategy pays an instant dividend, even if she’ll end up in rehab on Sinead O’Connor’s old ward in a year or two. 

Jacklin

Tony Jacklin – a man who would feature prominently in a review of the 20^th Century of European golf – wore purple glitter and was humiliated in front of nine million people watching Strictly Come Dancing. Richard Gillis, who in his own words "likes to take a          (pause)                 (arch eyebrow)                ‘sideways look’ at the sports industry”; picked up on a Tony Jacklin Q&A in Golf International magazine. “I’m told that these days you need to keep on reinventing yourself, to let people know you’re still alive and kicking.”

Higgs

Peter Higgs of Higgs-Boson has won the Nobel Prize in Physics. His response? To go on holiday, leave his mobile on the kitchen table and tell no-one where he’s gone. We won’t be seeing him in the Jungle this winter.

Questions. What has happened to the concept of dignity in the entertainment business? Is it possible for people who crave attention to still do so, and retain a sense of self-worth?

If your output is shit, perhaps it’s a struggle. A listen to the incidental part of Cyrus’s career – her music – would explain why she’s got them out.

Jacklin however, has stories no-one should tire of listening to or learning from (ref: Birkdale, Lytham, the Belfry, Seve). These carry value. The last thing that man, or any of us need, is reinvention. My advice Tony – take a look at the example being set to you by Peter. Less is (commercially) more.

Burger Porn War

Draw a circle on a map around Shoreditch and Soho. If you know people that live and work in it, you’ll be familiar with the terms "Five Guys" and "Shake Shack" from your social media feeds.

George Osborne goes to Byron. Everyone that hates George Osborne, is currently calling judgement on the two rival - authentic but slightly more expensive - burger chains. The tool of judgement is the smartphone.

There's only one way to call who is winning the war. Who is pulling in the largest volume of burger porn from its customers, measured by Instagram and Vine posts?

Early scores on the doors suggest two things:

1. Five Guys is on the back foot.

2. No-one is using Vine

Instagram

#ShakeShackuk 410

#Fiveguysuk 235

Vine

#shakeshackuk 0

#Fiveguysuk 2

(Written for Daily Espress)

Publicom And The Fatberg Of Online Self-Importance

Ten days ago two rich advertising men - closeted by a small, sharkish cabal of investment bankers sniffing a wedge - cut a deal. Ten days later, a fatberg of online bilge has spewed from hundreds of thousands of online sources in over sixty countries. Sift your way through all the opinion, comment and knowledge and two dominant terms emerge: “I” and “my.” No-one knew. But did that stop the advertising and comms industry telling you it knew? (Rhetorical).

Advertising and comms is an insecure and paranoid business. There is an endless race to be the ear that the CEO whispers an insight into, in the hunt for competitive and financial advantage. PR fares little better – in fact, the industry is fairly overt about it – whinging about its inferiority – rather than acting on it.

Perception and reality are two different beasts – as one would expect from an industry whose business is perception. On day two or three of Publicom, what began to grate was reading a stream of links from people roughly one hundred steps removed from the Wren/Levy meetings; giving their own seals of approvals on smartphones, thousands of miles away. 

“The more I see of this Publicis-Omnicom deal the more I like.”

“Here’s the downside to the Publicis-Omnicom merger.”

“Publicis-Omnicom isn’t a surprise for five reasons.”

“Wren’s been smart here..”

Wren and Levy’s surnames were dropped into posts with the ease and intimacy of football managers doing a deal over a £10million “Macedonian misfit,” or a “wantaway striker.”

The reality? No-one knew. Senior clients. Senior staff. Genuine rivals. David Jones memorably tweeted 48 hours before signature that “pigs might fly.”

My advice to the Radian 6, Sysomos and Adobe Socials of this world: for your next update, build in a bullshit filter for us. I’d upgrade.