Brand identity can be expressed often more powerfully in
images and in music more powerfully than it could ever be
in words. Walter Pater once wrote that
All Art aspires to the condition of music,
meaning that art exists to express ideas that can’t be well
expressed any other way. Someone once asked T.S. Eliot,
what did you mean when you wrote the line,
Lady, three white leopards sat under a
juniper tree?
and he replied, ‘I think I meant something rather like – ‘Lady,
three white leopards sat under a juniper tree’. If it could have
been said better in other words, he would have said it.
Here are two more campaigns that had a profound effect
on the way brands were seen, externally and, I believe,
internally, which resist paraphrasing in any other way.
Guinness ‘Life on Mars’
Volkswagen ‘Casino’, ‘Changes’
The overused word ‘surreal’ doesn’t begin to do justice to all
the strands of meaning in the Rutger Hauer campaign. And
I’ve spent many hours trying put into words what ‘Casino’
and ‘Changes’ say about Volkswagen: it’s certainly a great
deal more than ‘reliability’, which was the starting point for
the campaign. There are many ways of explaining it, many of
them equally correct and all of them, ultimately, inadequate.
Because it can express things that can’t be said in other
ways, advertising can often achieve things that at first glance
appear impossible.
Consider the following three briefs:
Make an anonymous brand of lager with a German name
and advertising like this something lads want to be seen with
in the pub
Make a car that’s known for safety look exciting – but without
compromising the reputation for safety!
Make a supermarket chain that’s seen as a poor me–three
to Sainsbury and Tesco seem more warm and friendly than
the other two.
If you can imagine these briefs without having any notion of
the advertising solutions, they sound like impossible dreams.
Hofmeister ‘Forest’
Volvo ‘Control Freak’
Safeway ‘ Harry’
CONCLUSIONS
It’s not my object to criticise the concept of ‘integrated
marketing’, nor the usefulness of any of the other marketing
tools that exist. On the contrary: both I, and the agency I
work for, believe that ‘integration’ is essential to effective
brand identity building.
But when we talk of integration, let us not forget the unique
role that traditional media advertising – especially in audio–
visual media – has to play in the overall mix.
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