Filed under: 2025, A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Comment, Confidence, Craft, Luxury, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Relevance, Reputation
Birkin.
The Holy Grail of handbags.
Created in 1984 when the CEO of Hermes, Jean-Louis Dumas met the actress Jane Birkin.
They’re sold exclusively through Hermes stores and you have to jump through all manner of hoops to be able to buy one.
You also need to have a fuckload of cash because they can cost in the hundreds of thousands.
That’s MULTIPLES of hundreds of thousands.
And that’s in US dollars.
Whether those prices are justified is immaterial … the reality is, they are viewed almost like precious gems.
Which is why this ad for a beauty company – MCoBeauty – made me laugh out loud.
Look at it.
LOOK AT IT!!!
It’s more Burger King than Birkin … made even better that it is appearing on bus shelters.
On one hand, I quite like how they have just destroyed the pomposity of the Birkin brand with one simple image … but on the other, they’ve not just destroyed the aspirational value of the ‘prize’ they’re giving away by making it look like a ‘pound shop knock off’, they’ve also just fucked themselves over by reinforcing that however much brands like MCoBeauty may try and claim they’re all about ‘accessible/everyday luxury’, they’re basically admitting nothing compares to getting your hands on real luxury.
But that last point is immaterial when you make an ad that makes a Birkin Bag look less appealing than a supermarket paper bag.
If it was ironic it might work, but it’s not … it’s pure ‘starburst’ sales promotion awfulness
Who designed this thing?
The colours are hideous.
The copy is disastrous.
The art direction is scandalous.
If you want to leverage giving a Birkin Bag away to drive sales … maybe you should make it feel like something you would actually like to own, rather than avoid. And god forbid Hermes see it because they will come after you like a ton-of-bricks. Even if you own it. And even if it is second hand. Hermes understand the value of reputation … it’s why they can sell bits of stitched leather for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
What is so annoying is this could have been really good.
Not just executionally, but for building the reputation and value of the MCoBeauty.
But no, instead – as is the case with far too much these days – they haven’t given a shit and just banged any old bollocks out, because we live in times where marketing is focused more on what you want to say rather than understanding the importance of how you say it.
Or said another way. There’s too much focus on systems rather than appreciating the value and impact of craft.
Which may explain why Hermes – for all the challenges the luxury category are experiencing – are still doing better than MCoBeauty and the entire ad industry put together.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Apple, Attitude & Aptitude, Cars, Colleagues, Craft, Culture, Customer Service, Emotion, Experience, Fake Attitude, Japan, Luxury, Marketing, Mercedes, Money, Packaging, Resonance, Respect
Over the years I’ve written a lot about brands who spend time and money ensuring their customers feel they’ve purchased something of significantly greater value than the functional cost of the item they’ve purchased.
The original ‘brand experience’ as it were.
There’s Tiffany with their iconic ‘little blue box’.
There’s Apple with their packaging and attention to detail.
Hell, there’s even Absolut with their special edition bottles – though I accept that’s more a satisfying novelty than something that builds real additional value for the brand.
But what I find interesting is for all the talk of ‘brand experience’, most brands – except those truly in the luxury space – suck at it. And that’s not counting the masses of brands who don’t even bother with it – often believing their customers should consider themselves fortunate for owning whatever it is they’ve just handed over their cash to buy.
But that aside … the problem with a lot of ‘brand experience’ is it’s starting point is the cost to do it, not the emotion they ignite because of it – so we end up with countless Temu versions of whatever it is they want to do or what they think people want to get.
Now I am not saying that these approaches don’t work or aren’t liked, but we end up in parity status very quickly – which has the result of completely nullifying whatever ‘value’ you hoped you would get from it in the first place.
The reality is experience is less about what you do and how you do it …
Not just for distinctiveness.
Not just for memorability.
But because it conveys what you value and the standards you keep.
This should be obvious as hell – but the problem is, when companies evaluate it against the cost – or time – many view it as an expense rather than an investment in their brand and customer relationship, so before you know it, they strip things back to its most basic form.
It’s why I love how Japanese brands tend to approach brand experience.
As a society, care and attention seem to be built into the DNA.
You just have to see how they package anything to realise they – if anything – over engineer brand experience.
It’s a culture that places high importance on standards, respect and consistency – which is why I like this video of someone picking up their new Lexus car.
On one level, it’s not that different to a lot of car manufacturers around the world who place a bow or blanket over a car when it’s about to be picked up, however when they do it – you know the amount of effort involved in executing is minimal, whereas this – whether part of a fixed process or not – requires commitment and time.
Is this overkill?
Yep.
Is this more culturally influenced than category?
Undoubtedly.
And is the whole thing a bit awkward?
For many, it absolutely would be.
However, the point of the Lexus example is less about what they do and more a case of showing a brand who are committed to expressing who they are and who they’re for – because where brand experience is concerned, too many companies approach this key part of the ‘sales process’ with passive energy whereas Japan is almost aggressive in ensuring its point of view in expressed in an active and engaged manner.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Airports, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, British, Business, Cars, Corporate Evil, Crap Products In History, London, Luxury
Recently, while walking through Heathrow Airport, I saw this:
Put aside the fact these airport shuttles seem to be for either the elderly, the late or the self-important … why the fuck do they need to have one that looks like the bastard lovechild of Liberace and Elton John’s cars from the 1970’s?
Is it a special edition thing?
Is it an business class, collab thing?
Is it a alarming lack of taste thing?
Or is it a tourist thing?
I could kinda understand if it was for tourists as I can imagine it would be very appealing for Americans of a certain age.
But even then, it’s still pants – exemplified by the fact it has a number plate that represents the name of the company who made/drives it.
And that’s before I point out the British Car Industry – that this thing is probably trying to leverage – is, at best, on its knees or, at worst, owned by everyone other than the Brits.
For fucks sake, is there no end to what we will make ‘status’?
What next … lifts?
I’d rather have a lifetime flying Ryan Air than one trip in that pile of gold shite.
Hell – to paraphrase a very old joke – I’d rather be seen coming out the back of a sheep than the back of that, which not only captures just how ridiculous I find an ‘upper class’ milk float at an international airport but also how too many companies confuse charging a ‘premium price’ with being a ‘premium product’.
Or as my friend, George, calls it, ‘corporate status delusion’.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Brands, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Luxury, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Mediocrity
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine sent me this picture.
Yes, they’re varieties of soap but I realised they’re also an incredible ad for the power of brand and brand advertising.
No, I have not lost my mind. Yet.
You see of all those soap brands, 2 resonated with me the most: Imperial Leather and Shield.
That doesn’t mean I didn’t know the others – I did, or most of them – but Imperial Leather and Shield stood out because both played a part in my childhood.
But it’s the position in my mind they have that’s the bit I found fascinating … even more so given I’d not thought about them – let alone used them – for literally decades.
You see in my mind – thanks to their advertising – Shield is still the young and exciting brand. A soap for modern times and new generations challenging conventions and traditions [whatever the fuck that means]
Meanwhile Imperial Leather is a symbol of status and luxury used by the wealthy and elite.
Who am I???
What’s wrong with me???
I’m talking about soap for fucks sake. SOAP!!! The stuff you wash your face and bits with …
But thanks to childhood gullibility and the power of brand advertising, these connections and emotions still exist, despite being decades older and ‘allegedly’ wiser.
What makes me laugh is that Imperial Leather would have a few pence.
Sure, maybe it was more than some of the other brands, but still pennies rather than pounds – and yet, like Vienetta, After Eight Mints or a Hostess Trolley – it created an impression of being very aspirational, even though everyone knew you could pop down to Asda and fill your trolley up with them with no problem.
And while times have changed, the power of brand remains … which is why it surprises me how few companies really invest in it, probably because so many are either fixated on the short-term, think brand equates to spending a fuck-ton endlessly reinforcing rational product features that only they care about or have fallen for the sales patter of the ‘ego guru’™ who – for a price – will tell you their system which they say guarantees an easy path to untold success when all it does is sell category conformity.
Which suggests that for all the possibilities and technicalities that modern marketing practice like to champion, it appears it has [conveniently] forgotten what drives and creates – and what is needed to drive and create – sustainable, premium priced value.
AKA. Brand thinking. Brand investing. Brand behaving.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Aspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand Suicide, Brilliant Marketing Ideas In History, Clients, Clothes, Comment, Community, Consultants, Context, Corporate Evil, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Cunning, Devious Strategy, Disney, Effectiveness, Egovertising, Empathy, Honesty, Innovation, Luxury, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Membership, Netflix, Perspective, Planners, Planning, Popularity, Process, Relationships, Relevance, Reputation, Research, Resonance, Respect, Social Divide, Social Media, Strategy, Stupid
Once upon a time, I was asked to help a client based in Thailand.
They were very successful – having made Thailand the most profitable market in the World for their particular brand.
Anyway, part of the project involved a workshop and part of that workshop was about identifying new variants for their product.
So far, so good.
Until I realized they weren’t looking at this to expand who could become a customer of theirs, but how to get existing customers to buy more of what they make.
Even that was OK, until it became apparent they believed their product was so loved, their customers would continually fill their shopping baskets with 3 or 4 different versions of the same product because they just liked the ability to consume it in more places at more times.
In short, they believed the more versions of their product they made, the more volume of products their customers would buy.
Every time.
Forget that people have a finite amount of money.
Forget that people have other bills, items, people to look after.
They believed, if you made it … people would just blindly buy.
It’s the same blinkered approach that some sales organizations have.
Where they believe if one salesman brings in a million dollars of revenue a year, hiring 11 more will mean they achieve 12 million dollars of revenue.
It’s both blinkered thinking and wishful thinking.
Or – as my father used to say – “the expansion of logic without logic”.
I say this because it feels companies are viewing the subscription model in a similar way.
Once upon a time, subscriptions were seen as the exciting new thing for business.
A new way to charge for your products and services … regardless that ‘direct debit’ payments had been around for years.
There were 3 key reasons why repositioning cost as a subscription was so appealing:
1 It lowered the barrier to entry, so it could appeal to more/new customers.
2 They knew that while customers ‘could’ cancel at any time, data showed most wouldn’t.
3 It could, in theory, allow them to charge more per month than their old annual fee.
And they were right, it proved to be a revelation … until it wasn’t.
Right now, everything is seemingly a subscription model.
Food.
Clothes.
Streaming.
Gym and health.
Car purchasing.
But the one that really is making me laugh, are phone apps.
It’s almost impossible to download anything without it being a subscription service.
And that would be OK, except the prices they want to charge are getting out of control.
I recently downloaded a recipe app that wanted $14.99 A WEEK. A FUCKING WEEK.
$60 a month just so I could send it healthy recipes I see on social media and have them all in one, easy-to-access place.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Sure, it had some features that would make it more convenient than just putting it into a saved folder on instagram … but it sure-as-shit isn’t worth me paying more than it costs me for Netflix, Disney+ and Spotify PUT TOGETHER.
I appreciate everyone thinks their product is the best product.
I acknowledge it takes a lot of hard work and money to make a new product.
But the removal of any ‘human reality context’ – ie: how much money do people actually have available to spend, and the hierarchy of importance they place on the things they spend – is not just stupid, it destroys the potential of good ideas.
Of course, part of the reason for this is because of how tech investment works.
Basically investors want big returns, very fast … so this pushes developers to build economic models based on a ‘perfect scenario’ situations.
For perfect scenario, read: not real life.
So they show things like:
The economic value of the health industry.
The impact of social media on diet choices.
The rise of health-focused products and services.
And before you know it, they’ve extrapolated all this ‘data’ to come up with a price point of $60 per month and said it not only offers good value, but will generate huge returns on the investment in collapsed time.
Except …
+ All this is theory because they haven’t talked to anyone who would actually use it.
+ They probably haven’t identified who they need to use it beyond ‘health seekers’.
+ And they absolutely haven’t understood it costs a lot of money to be healthy and so an additional $60 subscription for the average person is a cost too far … especially when things they use ALL THE TIME – like Netflix [which they already think is too expensive] – is a quarter of that cost FOR THE MONTH.
I get no one likes to hear problems.
I appreciate anyone can find faults if they really want to.
But being ‘objective’ is not about killing ideas – when done right – it’s about enabling them to thrive, which is why I hope business stops looking at audiences in ‘the zoo’ and starts respecting them in ‘the jungle’ … because not only will it mean good ideas stand more chance of becoming good business, it also means people will have more access to things that could actually help them, without it destroying them in other ways.
As perfectly expressed by Clint, the founder of Corteiz …