The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

Good point …

I wouldn’t mind if their campaign was now something like “People Can Now Smell How Rich You Are” – but of course, humour in status branding tends to be thrown out the window because the people it tries to connect with are oh-so-serious.

The worlds of Marketing and Reality rarely meet when communicating this sort of status product – and yet, as I wrote here [www.robcampbell.wordpress.com/2006/12/07/fuck-you-money/] they rarely get it right.

Are you insulted by that Jonno?

Well think how I feel …

I spend bloody weeks writing a well argued piece on the destruction of humanity thanks to technology [which, I hasten to add, STILL hasn’t seen the light of day] and then you tell me some rant I wrote in 10 mins is actually better in pretty much every way!

It’s a mad World … haha!

To me, Mont Blanc and all of their extensions are the epitome of the airport marketing you were discussing a while back.

And sorry to say, Rob, but I think “an annoying smell that leaves an even more annoying rash all over your head” has been done before; see/smell P Diddy’s cologne.

touché!

Mont Blanc: Starwalker Fragrance:
Your Bank Manager Will Smell You Coming

You’d better be Jonno – or a certain wife will hear about a certain spending spree in a certain place called Las Vegas!

Here’s one more reason. When they launched mobiles Nokia was present in 7 different industries ranging from farm equipment to tyres! After they launched mobiles, the company actually took the gutsy decision to hive off all other business units and let the brand stand for just one thing and represent it with products related to only one industry. That’s the exact opposite of all the other companies wanting to expand into anything that’ll allow them to forecast 5 cents more as revenue.

what? no sideways dig at rob? you must be new hari!

the reason it doesn’t work is that it’s to close to an “ingredient” (liquid=”ink”) of one the products; the pen. It looks like an accessory. There’s also too much Mont Blanc on the bottle, when a star would have done. But at the end of the today, and we discussed this yesterday, this is something they shouldn’t have done. Somebody, somewhere, should have said no to this.

Good morning. I’m up.

yeah Marcus, there’s only room for one Rob in disguise around here, and that’s me! (well it’s really Rob… but me, as Age, but Rob… meh you get the point.)

I’ve got one of those big Mont Blancs (that a dodgy director at Arc Advertising on the Euston Road flogged me years ago when I was trying to get into planning). I swear I’ve never had a more useless pen, it’s leaked on a pink Thomas Pink, it’s scrambled security at Shanghi Airport, it’s been refurbished in the MB headquarters of Hamburg to stop the leaking, only to be dropped while under the influence of a cheeky cognac, on a mates tropical tile floor patio where at least it had the truculence to stain the white grout black (sorry Alex) before I decommissioned her.

So now she or he, or whatever, is in rehab. I still bring her out for the occasional ‘Is your Monty bigger than mine?’ meetings in Asia where, some people still don’t get the irony of a pen in my shirt pocket that I don’t use. Let’s face it, it’s the snow capped peak that matters most.

Ooh!

Anyway, I’ve been in and out of Mont Blanc shops since I got one of their pencils around the Millennium. It was infinitely more usable, understated and elegant AND gave me a free engraving. I mean the idea of putting my name on my pen is practical because I lose stuff all the time but it’s just so triple whopper cheesy. So I hit on the idea of having the engraving put on my 2nd hand Monty that I bought off a dodgy director at Arc advertising on the Euston road (Sorry).

Arc advertising they called it. I called it ‘Carry on Advertising’ after they pitched (and lost) for Magnet Kitchens. Bless them; Kitchen Feng Shui my ass. How about cheap ‘n firkin wannabe cheerful. Around about this time I started to lose faith with propositions.

Anyway where was I? Oh yes. So the temptation of having my Monty engraved with ‘M*therf*cker’ was just overwhelming, and I even got down to selecting the font (a graceful italicised un-joined up handwriting style if you must ask) but somehow it never materialised, I think because my lead pen was swiped so I couldn’t show the receipt for the new purchase and engrave the old one, but the point is that I fell in love with Monty’s watches during this time and while in Hong Kong I did some research about buying a proper watch, and it was either going to be a second hand Rolex or a Mont Blanc. So I asked around and you know how nutty the Honkys are about watches so there was plenty of opinion. I was given some good advice that the Rolex was a better buy in London just off the Greys Inn road opposite where Robert Maxwell took a leak off the Mirror Building after stepping off his helicopter because he was larger than life and knew how to live off the backs of his workers (pension fund) because he was a proper socialist. Anyway he didn’t know how to cling on to the back of his yacht and he’s buried somewhere exclusive now.

But I digress. I love the Montblanc brand, there’s no reason why really, I can’t pinpoint when it became a sort of ‘in love with a strict machine’ kind of affair, but I love that it only cost 20 euros to have my useless pen reconditioned while on a stint in Dusseldorf and I didn’t even need to post it as the local, ahem, dealer was dead professional and placed it lovingly in a dedicated plastic case for emergency repair and a lovely padded and branded envelope. She came back good as new and still as useless and impractical but I loved her nonetheless and schemed on ways to give her at least some dignity in retirement.

Anyway back to the watch, which apparently has this top notch movement that, all serious watch collectors know about. I shelled out for it, and the lovely lady (Fay Wong I think), who cut the strap for me said, you’ve got small wrists so leave a bit of excess on the strap and it will fall just right on the upper hand and look better, besides if you don’t like it we can always trim it a bit more. She was dead right, (and quite saucy for a Hong Kong Lass too boot, and I’ve loved her and the watch ever since.

When after about a year of the strap, which gets a fair amount of stress with the excess strap movement, burst open and the dealer in Bangkok fixed it for free and has done every year since, and even on the last occasion (as it busts open once a year regular as clock work) replaced the mechanism for free! That’s brand love that is. Not lovemarks or kiss and tell brand love or stormy relationship brand love or dull as ditch brand apathy love mind you, but the Montblanc Brand lovin’ me up, the way I so want to be loved up.

So Brands are a huge mesh of good and bad experiences and clearly mine fall into both categories but I like Mont Blanc brand. Not the way some Mac owners would be quite comfortable if there Puters told them to be ‘at ease’ after the users had saluted their machines on boot up, but in a way that keeps me interested in what they do without making me a slave to them.

Sure I think the move into fragrance is a bit dodgy and I wont have an opinion until I’ve had a sniff, and more importantly tried some on because everyone knows that different people’s skin reacts differently to different fragrances (call it chemistry mash up), but hand on heart if Dunhill can get into fragrance via tyres & fags then I’m blowed if Montblanc can’t via luxury pens 🙂

Morning Mr. Mortimer.

I like the Nintendo, Sega etc examples. They are extensions that make sense, even Namco. That’s what I’m missing from the stinky ink. It doesn’t seem to make sense.

Examples of your thinking young man! Don’t tease the old folk.

OK. Here one for you. What about amazon?

I’d like to have a think about what they could expand into, yes. Let’s assume that Amazon trust us, and we’re allowed, with our expert knowledge, to help in a proper way. Where should they expand, what could they become?

Excellent. You see I think Amazon will soon be about publishing things. Anything. Books, games, music, food, cookers, computers. Yes, I think you could publish food. You could have a whole range of products that interactive with each other. And And at amazon you can anything, from anyplace at any time.

could amazon get into TV? Or would that be like David Bowie and Banking?

Hello … I think Amazon could become the World’s postal service … what do you think to that?

Colin … that was the best post EVER. It was a cross between a stream of conciousness and the World’s best Shrink session. It’s an honour to have you on my blog!

… and Marcus, you still could be me given your description of ‘grumpy, have very little hair and myopic’ is damn near a mirror image of yours truly. Don’t know who should be more upset by that, haha!

The problem as I see it with that idea is that they currently rely on the worlds delivery services… if they were to start one, they would have to make it able to cover the whole world efficiently from day one, as once they started it the other postal companies would probably refuse to ship for them.

Rob M, they’d buy one. FedEx probably.

no, no, no…. they should buy Amazon! There it is.

Haha, ok!

It would scare them, IF they had the cash reserves to see it to the end.

Id actually say they’d buy DHL/Deutsche Post as they deal with virtually every international package ive ever received.

Now…what if eBay bought DHL?

What if I’d been born into the Royal Family?

what if I wasn’t a printer?

my question is legitimate too!

I think Ebay is interesting, but I’m warming to the idea of a carrier buying either Amazon, or Ebay. Yup, I think that could happen. It would make good business sense.

Sorry Rob … I didn’t mean to look like I was taking the piss out of your question. It’s a perfectly legit question and a far better suggestion than Amazon.

I’m having a ‘moment of madness’ so ignore me – I am sure you do normally, ha!

And to be honest, my Microsoft buying SONY was a legit question too … but maybe not as commercially liberating as the ebay one you’ve come up with.

Anyway guess what … I’ve got to fly off again so have a great weekend and speak Monday for more debate on the weird.

back to work everybody. back to work.

Cointreu with a hint of bitter!

A least it’s slightly more consistent with the firm’s brand values than the famous case of BIC discount aftershave. But in general, I agree with the thought that there should be some sort of logical progression to how brands extend themselves. There should be a resonant narrative or myth to how Mont Blanc came to be a purveyor aftershave. Saab is “Born of Jets,” Apple was the product of thinking different, Virgin was the result of one man’s mania and enormous ego. But Mont Blanc is smell freshener for aspiring blue-bloods?

sausage wins. We’re in the quarter finals people.