How is it the 1st May?
Seriously how?
It’s so weird how I used to love this day when I was younger but now …
Well, I don’t hate it but I sure as hell don’t love it.
Back as a kid, the first of May represented the lead-up to my birthday.
A countdown where I could start considering who to invite to my party.
Now …
Well, it’s like a reminder how fast life is passing by.
God, this has gone very depressing hasn’t it.
So let’s leave it there and pretend this post didn’t happen.
And as a way of an apology, I’ll leave you with this …
… even though, in some ways, it’s even more depressing.
Hmmmmm, in that case I’ll leave you with this …
As you read this, I’m overseas. I know … again.
Which means you’re post free till Friday.
I knew I could leave a smile on your face.
See you in a few days.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Comment, Communication Strategy, Food, Innovation
Years ago I wrote about how standards are driven – and protected – by stubbornness.
Well recently I heard a great story about the man who started the sauce company, Si Racha, who embraces this value.
David Tran arrived in America in 1979 after fleeing Vietnam after the communist takeover.
He found himself living in LA with nothing but his passion for spicy food.
The Vietnamese are one of the most magical and industrial cultures on the planet so David decided to turn his love into an outlet and started making hot sauce in a bucket and selling it from his van.
The name Si Racha came from a Thai surf town where he liked the sauce.
[You thought that was the name of the sauce rather than the brand didn’t you?]
Anyway, David didn’t care about branding or advertising … he just focused on making the best sauce possible. And it worked, because word of it spread like wildfire and suddenly people were buying it in their droves and putting it on everything they ate.
Over time, David started partnering with local Asian restaurants & grocery stores … and more and more people got to experience it.
One day someone said his product was “too spicy” and suggested he adds a tomato base to sweeten it. His friends agreed, saying it would pair better with chicken. But this is where David’s stubbornness started to come through.
“Hot sauce must be hot… We don’t make mayonnaise here.”
Over time Si Racha has become a cult phenomenon.
Famous chefs talked about their love of it.
Obama talked about his love of it.
And in many ways, the sauce became a symbol of both the diversity in America and the opportunity of America … because here was an immigrant who pursued his dream despite all odds and succeeded.
Today, Sriracha sells over 20 million bottles per year, generates over $150 million in annual revenue and has made Tran a very rich man.
But rather than just produce more and more of the sauce to make more and more money, it’s production is strictly managed.
David is adamant on quality, so because Jalapenos have a short window for being at their optimum ripeness, he has created a production cycle where a year’s supply is executed in just 10 weeks.
Tran owns 100% of his company – which he named after the ship that brought him to the US.
He still works at his factory in Irwindale, California and he still wears the same blue shirt and hat every day.
But what I love most is his attitude towards why he so conscientiously and strictly makes his product …
“I don’t make hot sauce for money. I make money for hot sauce.”
We could all do with more David Tran’s.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Audio Visual, Brand, Comment, Confidence, Context, Craft, Creativity, Culture, Emotion, Experience, Legend, Loyalty, Management, Metallica, Music, Relationships, Relevance, Resonance, Respect, Trust, Truth
Late last year, Metallica launched a new song called LuxEterna, from their upcoming new album, 72.
While it is a brilliant return to their roots, the choice of ‘yellow’ as a key colour was met with some negative commentary from ‘brand purists’.
I don’t mean fans, but brand and design folks.
This was amazing for 2 reasons.
The first is our job is to keep things moving evolving rather than continually replicating what’s gone before, so if anyone should be open minded to change, it’s brand and design folk.
[It also highlights my problem with people who keep banging on about ‘brand assets’, because they are confusing recognition with interesting. Or worse, thinking recognition beats being and doing interesting stuff for audiences]
Secondly, the album was designed – as many have been – by the brilliant folk at the wonderful Turner Duckworth … and given their body of work, if anyone knows about designing modern iconography, it’s them.
But overall, I just found the whole debate amusing.
Metallica have always approached albums as a way to express their current frame of creative mind … and given they always look to inject something new or challenging into their work, the choice of yellow seems the perfect way to communicate ‘next chapter’.
In the case of 27 Seasons – also known as the first 18, and arguably, most significant years of your life – James said this …
“There’s been a lot of darkness in my life and in our career and things that have happened with us … but always having a sense of hope, always having the light that is in that darkness, keeps us moving. Without darkness, there’s no light, and being able to focus a little more on the light instead of how it used to be and how horrible it is, that can only be a good thing. There’s a lot of good things going on in life — focusing on that instead helps to balance out my life. And there’s no one meaning to it — everyone has some sense of hope or light in their life, and, obviously, music is mine.“
When you read that, it’s not hard to work out that the use of yellow is part of a bigger idea around the album rather than a desire to build a one colour brand which some have claimed.
Unsurprisingly, they’re the same people who talk about brand assets like you can just buy them off the shelf rather than make them a byproduct of what you do, so that they have value in them that you also keep building.
By pure chance, I was asked by people connected to the band to do a talk to a music publishing company.
While not specifically related to Metallica, I was asked by someone in the audience for my opinion on their ‘new image’ and whether it risked upsetting their core audience.
I had thought this question may came up, which is why I had prepared an answer.
After informing them I had never known a brand – let alone a band – who knew their audience as well as them … and if you listen to the track, I doubt any of their fans would mistake a revitalised Metallica for Ed Sheeran … I said this.
“If Rock n’ Roll is about rebellion, then surely there’s nothing more rock n’ roll than Metallica using yellow rather than the category norm of black?”
It was met with applause.
And some disgust, hahaha.
But here’s the thing …
Brands – and bands – don’t move forward if all they do is give audiences the same thing over and over again. Nor will they if they just give audiences exactly what they want over and over again. Longevity is as much about keeping people on their toes as it is satisfying their passion and curiosity and you only stand a chance of achieving that by following what interests you, not what interests everyone else.
Metallica get this more than most.
It’s part of the reason they have stayed at the top … because by doing things that interest them, they do things that interests more people rather than just the same people.
As I wrote for MTV years ago, brands can learn a lot from bands … because while brands may think finding shortcuts or disguises allows them to optimise their efficiency, everyone else can tell it’s because they’ve run out of ideas or energy.
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By the way, 72 Seasons comes out tomorrow. This is not a sponsored post. Well, not directly anyway, hahaha.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Brilliant Marketing Ideas In History, Comment, Creativity, Culture, Cunning, Marketing
Welcome back.
Hope you didn’t vomit too much with all the chocolate eating.
I didn’t eat any.
No seriously.
I fell ill on the Thursday with a virus and basically spent all the time in bed.
No food. Just feeling sorry for myself.
But of course I felt better just in time to come back to work. Bloody karma.
So with that, shall we get on with things …
Over the years I’ve written about the hilarity of naming strategies.
Specifically those from consultancies who sell their process as a proprietary system and then talk about how they start with 10,000 possibilities and then use their filtering algorithm to whittle it down to 3 bland or meaningless options.
Except they don’t say that last bit, obviously.
I still remember working with a client who had paid for this ‘expertise’ only to end up with a name recommendation that [1] wasn’t actually a word and [2] sounded like a cheap water brand than an international digital services company.
This is also the company that tried to charge the client for a ‘signage’ strategy.
By that, I mean they wanted to be paid to help the client know where their signage should placed on their building to achieve maximum effectiveness.
I almost caused World War 3 when I said,
“In my experience, placing signage outside – at the top of the building – works best”
Anyway, the reason I’m saying this is Briar, one of my colleagues came to work with a new set of glasses recently and the company behind them had the best name ever …
How brilliant is that?
Of course it’s provocative … risqué … challenging … but it’s also hilarious, fun and memorable.
The thing is, I doubt most of the consultancy naming processes would even come up with it as an option to dismiss.
In addition, Happy To Sit On Your Face put their glasses in a custom made case that folds flat. This might not sound much, but it means you don’t end up with your drawer or bag filled with a bulky, odd-shaped lump.
While I appreciate the name of this brand may not travel easily … it’s also a brand name that has made glasses memorable and if you can do that, then you are already doing better than 95% of brands.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Brand Suicide, Business, Comment, Communication Strategy, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Effectiveness, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail
A few weeks ago, I saw this …
… and I have to be honest, it’s had me thinking a lot.
Because while I acknowledge you can’t take things for granted, when you get lost in the weeds, you lose sight of what you’re working towards and how you do it.
And a lot of people are doing both of those things.
Nothing sums this up more to me than the issue of attribution.
The quest to minimise risk – or ‘optimise value’ – has resulted in brands forgetting that the easiest way to get attribution is to do something interesting.
But instead – reinforced by industry ‘guru’s – we have ended up with a continual production line of commercially responsible alternatives.
Be a one colour brand.
Place brand assets higher than a brand idea.
And – worse of all – have watermarks in your ads.
While colour and brand assets have a role – albeit not a primary role as so many people seem to suggest – if you feel the only way your brand will be remembered in your commercial is to place your logo all the way through it, then you either don’t know how people work or how advertising does.
Or said another way, you’re admitting your brand and your product are forgettable.
Seriously … why would you do that?
Why would you spend millions on something that positions you as uninteresting.
Worse, why would you spend millions on something that positions you as uninteresting and make sure people know it’s you by ramming your logo down their throat?
But somewhere, someone is measuring the ‘impact’ of this approach and finding a way to demonstrate its effectiveness to clients. Letting everyone feel pleased with themselves. Their choices. Their actions. Creating a precedent others will follow in the blind belief they’re being smarter … more optimised … more effective than all their competitors. All the time consciously and deliberately ignoring the critical fact that it’s undermining them rather than liberating them.
Which leads back to that tweet at the top of the page.
Because while knowing how things are going is important, nothing reveals how lost you are than measuring everything but valuing nothing.