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

Yes, it’s a Canadian car insurance company for the elderly.

Grey Power.

Hmmmmmn … I’m not so sure about that name.

Sure, they might be incredibly successful and yes, I accept they are going after a very specific audience … but I just don’t know if someone who qualifies for their service [ie: someone old] would like to be so blatantly reminded that they qualify for their service.

What if other companies followed the same strategy?

Would Chanel be called ‘Mutton Dressed As Lamb’?

Would Apple rename themselves ‘Creative Delusion’?

Would Heinz Soup be ‘No Teeth To Chew’?

While I appreciate this post ultimately shows my issues rather than theirs, I wonder why Grey Power decided to go with that name?

After hefty consideration [3 seconds] I’ve come to the conclusion it could be because …

1. They’re branding companies proprietary naming tool told them to do it.

2. They think anyone over 65 is a dumbass.

3. They are Canadian.

Sure, they’re an easy target, but let’s be honest they’ve brought it on themselves.

Whether it’s their products … their service … or their ads … it seems that whenever they come to a junction, they always choose the wrong road to go down.

But recently I saw a bank ad that made me nod in approval.

No, seriously.

Sure, it’s not a great ad in terms of design or idea … but then, when you have something to say that is not the usual ambiguous bollocks that most financial audiences spout and you are saying it to a very specific audience, then it doesn’t have to be.

What am I talking about? This:

That ad was in a music industry magazine.

Now when most brands try and be ‘relevant’ to the medium they’re appearing in, they make terrible fucking puns or sad associations like this shit from currency.co.uk but Investec actually are speaking to musicians with something to say.

OK, so the whole ‘supporting talent’ headline is a bit shit and they still try to push their ‘wealth management’ bollocks, but I like that they’ve gone after a specific audience segment [musicians and writers] and their starting point in the copy is how they’ve helped many of these professionals over the years by advancing them cash against their future royalties.

Yes, I know that’s basically a ‘loan’, but I know from my past history that for many musicians and writers, that is huge news given many have to wait years to get their cash from publishers and record companies [Meatloaf took 20 years to get all his royalties from ‘Bat Out Of Hell’, resulting in him almost going bankrupt on 3 separate occasions] and often, few have the type of ‘traditional’ assets a bank will accept when granting a classic loan.

In other words, it’s an ad talking to musicians and writers saying something musicians and writers would actually want to hear.

Now compare that to what most financial organisations say and do and it’s a pleasant change … especially as their version of audience segmentation is either [1] rich folk [2] middle class folk or [3] business folk.

In a world where brands have replaced the quest for effectiveness with a desire to talk to ever increasing audience sizes, it’s little surprise we see more and more bland, meaningless messages being churned out for fear of ‘alienating’ a potential customer – even though 99.9% of these ads end up fading into the background quicker than a woman past her prime [ooooh!] – which is why there has never been a more important time to know who you really need to talk to … not just so you can design messages that have real value for that specific audience [which in turn has real value for the client] but because it’s so rare for brands to have a real POV these days, you might end up appealing to more people than you imagined, simply because it’s nice to have your brain engaged for once, rather than mushed.

So Investec, good on you, and I’m as shocked I’ve written that as I am sure you are.

Yes, I know for most of us, we all started back last Monday – but don’t try and tell me it was a productive week. You probably spent most of your time moaning and trying to work out how you could retire but still have enough cash to buy food, booze and gadgets.

Anyway, to celebrate this horrendous occasion, I thought I’d start off with a product that has – quite frankly – one of the most ridiculous product differentiators I’ve ever seen.

Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls … I give you this moment of product development mentalness from Philips:

Look at that headline, ‘THEY LOOK LIKE JEANS’.

No they don’t, they look like headphones.

Bad headphones.

And besides, who the hell would even want some that look like jeans.

Scrap that, who the hell would even want some that have denim on them?

What the hell were Philips thinking????

Actually, that’s probably the problem … they’re not thinking, because if they were, they’d know this sort of thing was utterly ridiculous – even more ridiculous than that grenade bluetooth speaker? I wrote about last year.

Everything about this product smacks of a company just going through the motions.

There’s no reason for them, no benefit to them … they’re just adding to the noise – and I would bet the reason for this is because the headphone division of Philips had a KPI to launch 3 new products this season and this is ensuring they don’t get told off in their annual review.

They wouldn’t be the first organisation to ‘output for self interest’ reasons, but it still doesn’t make it any better.

When you look at the success of BEATS and countless others, you can see there are ways to make an impact on almost any market, however shoving a piece of denim on a pair of headphones and running an ad that say’s, ‘They Look Like Denim, They Sound Like Awesome Headphones’ is not one of them.

My heart goes out to the creative team that had to put this together. I’m fairly certain it will never, ever, ever feature in their portfolio, just like I doubt those headphones will never, ever, ever feature on a pair of ears that are owned by someone over the age of 7.

And that ad has the nerve to use a tag line that says, “You Need To Hear This”.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Seriously, the last thing anyone wants to do is draw attention to either that product or that ad.

An ad, I hasten to add, that has a background image that is one of the best bits of terrible cliche I’ve seen in a long, long time.

Despite Jeep being the founder of the category, the reality is there are now a whole host of competitors all saying – and showing – almost identical things.

Rather than look into the appeal of emotions like ‘escape’ and ‘discovery’ we decided to look into why those things were so appealing to people and what we found was really interesting.

As we get older, we fight between satisfying our curiosity and fulfilling what is expected of us.

In other words, we fight between satisfying one innate human trait with another.

The reason ‘responsibility’ tends to win is that as we get older and have more responsibilities, we think it’s important to live up to those expectations because we think they are important and we never want to let the people down who matter most to us most.

These are good traits, wonderful traits, important traits … however the cost of this attitude is that, unlike when we were kids, we can’t easily surrender to those moments of curiosity … even if it’s nothing more than seeing what exists down a road you’ve constantly passed, but never been down.

Anyway, the reason I am saying this is that when I was recently in the US, I saw an ad for a Lexus 4×4 and it seemed they were using a similar insight, however in terms of how they expressed it, they went in a totally different direction.

Of course, Lexus and Jeep are entirely different brands and while I am not trying to say one ad is better than the other [though I obviously think one is a hell of a lot better than the other], it’s a good reminder on the importance of brand voice, not to mention how communication works best when it makes you feel something rather than tells you to feel something.

Anyway, this was our Jeep ad …

… and this was the Lexus spot …

Unfortunately for her, she was spotted as she tried to make her escape and a photo showing her departure, accompanied the article.

Even though I am not a fan of the songstress, I want to help and so having studied the photo, I’ve come up with a plan that may help, next time she finds herself in that position.

With that in mind, here’s my open letter to Mrs Jay-Z.

Dear Beyonce …

I appreciate you are an international superstar who is hassled everywhere you go.

I appreciate there must be times where you wish you could walk around unnoticed.

I appreciate in this cult of celebrity, you are the target for every paparazzi.

However I have a word of advice.

If you really want to have some time alone … if you really want to go under the radar … if you really want to sneak around unnoticed.

THIS ISN’T GOING TO HELP YOUR CAUSE:

Seriously woman, it’s bad enough you’re wearing the World’s biggest chequered flag.

Then there’s the fact you’ve put so many rings on your hand they look like knuckle dusters.

And let’s not mention the uber-made up, “look at me” eyes.

But wearing a Louis Vuitton balaclava.

A fucking Louis Vuitton balaclava with the letters ‘L’ and ‘V’ screaming at you louder than a J-Lo dress at the Oscars!!

Seriously?

What the fuck were you thinking?