Kevin Roberts.
Love Marks.
Genius or bullshit?
Well, as with most things in life, it’s probably a bit of both – more dependent on what you do [& how you do it] than some magical process that suddenly makes society fall in love with you.
Or an ad only made by Saatchi&Saatchi.
The reason I say this is that I recently read an article that made me like the London Underground a bit more.
I know … I know … the carriages can get hot and very crowded – plus I don’t have to ride them on a daily basis any more – but that aside, Embankment station recently did a little gesture that potentially will have more impact on making people feel emotionally bonded to them than any amount of ads.
This is what they did:
How lovely is that eh?
The guys at Embankment station didn’t have to reuse Oswald’s voice for their ‘Mind The Gap’ announcement – the widow would have been happy to have just had a copy – but by showing some genuine compassion, they’ve not only made me feel good about them, they’ve made me want to tell as many people as possible.
[What a shame only 6 people read this blog and they’re not the sort of folk most people cross the road to avoid]
OK … OK … so the ‘value’ of this act only has merit if lots of people hear about it, plus there’s an incredible amount of data that suggests ‘brand love’ doesn’t translate to ‘brand loyalty’ [Look at slides 18 to 27 or simply read any book by Byron Sharp] … however even though I live in China and only ride the tube a few times a year, I will – from now on – always feel a little ‘pang’ of warmth when I arrive at Embankment station and will always purposefully listen out for Oswald’s instruction/warning … which is more than 99% of ads can ever make me do, despite being planned and executed by bunch of proprietary tools that supposedly have the answer to everything in the Universe.
So remember Mr Roberts, Love Marks isn’t a process, it’s an attitude and a behaviour and while your agency has lots of lovely clients doing lots of lovely work, the reality is it doesn’t need Saatchi to do it to get it.