Brand Story

14 Awards for Rozerem While Ogilvy Spins in His Grave

Leslie at AAA Aardvark Marketing Blog points to this announcement that AbelsonTaylor has won 14 awards for their work on Rozerem, including:

"a silver World Wide Web (WWW) Health Award for the Rozerem Web site, and two DTC National Advertising bronze awards for most innovative campaign and best new brand of the year. The agency also won a Pharmaceutical Executive Ad Stars Award for a Rozerem TV ad co-created with Cramer-Krasselt and special recognition for co-developing one of the most "intriguing icons" of 2007—the Rozerem beaver featured in the ad."

AbelsonTaylor's website includes this gem:

"At the 16th annual Med Ad News Manny awards, AbelsonTaylor, won the 2005 award for most creative pharmaceutical ad agency. This marks the 10th year in a row that AbelsonTaylor has been given this accolade, a remarkable achievement sure to solidify our reputation as the most creative agency in the business."

I guess congratulations are in order. At least they're in order if you're content being creative, but not effective, which is all most agencies seem to be shooting for these days. You see, according to Brandweek,

"[Rozerem] is a distant sixth in its category, with a 2.4% share behind two unadvertised generics and the category's titans: Ambien (36.8% for Ambien, 17.5% for Ambien CR) and Lunestra (12.3%), per IMS Health. Worse, Takeda [Rozerem's maker] may have spent more on ads than the drug made back in sales: between January and September 2006, Rozerem earned $48.7 million in estimated wholesale revenue, according to IMS Health (that number does not include prescriptions handled by mail). But the company has spent nearly $100 million on ads, per Nielson Monitor-Plus."

Yes, you read that right, in the first nine months of the product introduction, Rozerem trails two UNADVERTISED generics in sales and has spent $2 in advertising for every $1 they made in sales.

But they've got 14 awards. Let's see, that's just about $7.14 million per award. Nice work.

I've written about Rozerem's problems before, specifically that the advertising ignores the killer brand story: this drug isn't habit forming. But try to get that from the ads. The competitors don't offer this unique benefit, but the ads focus on dreams/sleep which is exactly what all the other drugs in the category offer. The creative is different, but the benefit is exactly the same. So what's the reason to buy?

The whole thing reminds me of this post from David Taylor at Where's the Sausage about David Ogilvy who introduced an award for the ad that did the most to increase sales for the client. It came with a $10,000 prize and this inscription: “If you, my fellow copywriters or art directors, want to win the award, devote your genius to making the cash register ring.”

None of this is to say that creative advertising doesn't work. Clearly it does. But it works best when the people making it don't forget that their first (and possibly only) job is to move product.

And as an agency, isn't that the the very best brand story you could share with your clients?

5126 Failures—The Dyson Brand Story

James Dyson is a failer. While vacuming his home, he became frustrated with the lousy suction of his vacuum cleaner. The bag and filter clogged too quickly, reducing the suction to the point where it didn't work. I know the feeling. But unlike me, Dyson decided to do something about it. Over 15 years, he built 5126 prototypes before he found the one that worked. 15 years and 5126 failures. How did he find the solution? "Wrong doing." Here's how Dyson describes it:

"When I was doing my vacuum cleaner, I started out trying a conventionally shaped cyclone, the kind you see in textbooks. But we couldn’t separate the carpet fluff and dog hairs and strands of cotton in those cyclones. It formed a ball inside the cleaner or shot out the exit and got into the motor. I tried all sorts of shapes. Nothing worked. So then I thought I’d try the wrong shape, the opposite of conical. And it worked. It was wrong-doing rather than wrong-thinking. That’s not easy, because we’re all taught to do things the right way."

There's are plenty of lessons in Dyson's story. Never give up. Don't settle for stuff that doesn't work. But the lesson I like most is the idea of right thinking and wrong doing. Doing things in a different (new or unexpected) way is the crux of creativity.

To get his vacuum to work, Dyson had to do it all wrong. And when he offered his new design to Hoover, they did the opposite—right doing and wrong thinking. They sold bag vacuums. This new vacuum wouldn't fit their product line. It was too different. They had the market sown up. So they passed on the idea. Dyson went on to sell more than 15 million of his vacuums (for as much as $2000 each). Today he is one of the richest men in Britain.

Inside the box, with every Dyson vacuum cleaner is a small brochure that tells the Dyson brand story. How James Dyson failed more than 1500 times. How his competitors first ignored him, then copied him. And how he succeeded despite the odds. This simple brochure is a great way to reinforce the Dyson brand story with every new customer. Of course, the fact that this is an amazingly good vacuum delivering a great product experience also helps.

This month's Fast Company magazine features a very good interview by Chuck Salter with James Dyson, covering not just his vacuum story, but also his thinking about design and engineering and his latest invention. Read it here. Don't miss the second page, which is even better than the portion of the interview in the print magazine. There's also a podcast interview here.

One more clip from the interview:

"A lot of people give up when the world seems to be against them, but that’s the point when you should push a little harder. I use the analogy of running a race. It seems as though you can’t carry on, but if you just get through the pain barrier, you’ll see the end and be okay. Often, just around the corner is where the solution will happen."

Dave's Insanity—The Brand MakeOver Story

Here's a great story about the back and forth between Dave's Gourmet (maker's of Dave's Insanity Sauce as well as other products) and creative branding shop DESKEY. Short recap: DESKEY offers to help Dave's with a complete rebrand of the company's products at no cost. Dave goes through the process, then balks. Did he do the right thing? Read the whole article here.

Something to think about: Would the final decision be different if the agency were more focused on growing consumption of Dave's sauces, rather than changing the labels? What exactly is the agency selling? Is it different from what Dave needs?

I've been on both sides of these kinds of meetings. There's enormous value in thinking through what a brand represents. And in the end, the process changes Dave's thinking in a good way. But when the product of the process is a new label or ad campaign, I don't think the process has gone deep enough. Branding is about the entire business, not just the look or cohesiveness of the packaging.

DESKEY's website says: "If branding is all you do, sooner or later you're going to get pretty good at it. And we were branding before 'branding' was a word." Well, that all depends on your definition of branding. If branding is advertising, packaging, and design, DESKEY is darn good. But branding is more than marketing. As I've written before, branding is the process of building a great business—from supply chains and ingredient choices to delivery channels and the end-user experience. Yes it includes marketing. But it is so much more. How many successful businesses has DESKEY built? How many has Dave built? Who knows more about branding—really?

Disclaimer: Of course, the article shortens several days worth of discussion into a couple of pages. DESKEY may have discussed other business issues that didn't make it into the article. If they did, great. But it wouldn't be typical of my experience in the advertising industry.

Hat tip: Brand Autopsy.

Thinking About Brand Voice

I've been thinking a lot about brand voice lately. How companies talk to their customers. What brands sound like. How they read.

I'm not just talking about how a brand sounds to the ear, though that is important for products that communicate with broadcast media: think Tom Bodette and Motel6 or Hal Riney (who voiced Reagan's famous Bear Ad) and Bartles & James.

There are lots of examples of companies that consistently use identity design to reinforce their brands, but far fewer brands seem to give as much thought to the voice of their communications. Mini does it exceptionally well, across all mediums. The Economist and Apple too. Harley Davidson does a pretty good job (there are exceptions). Saturn used to have unique voice—before it was assimilated.

But what's the brand voice of Marriott? Cascade? Pepsi? Dell? Citi? Buick? Is there anything unique about the way Kroger, Budget, Hershey's, or Delta speak to their customers? None of these are bad, but none of them speak in a special way to their customers.

Try googling "Brand Standards." There are dozens of examples of identity guidelines showing how to use official logos, fonts, and colors. But very little attention is paid to brand voice—the words, phrases, and characteristics that set a brand apart take a back seat to the more "important" visual aspects of the brand.

Why is this? I have a theory. As we grow up and attend school, most of us "learn" that we are not good artists—that is, we can't draw much beyond doodles. Bureaucrats think of art classes as luxuries, and cut funding because they are not as important as the standard reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Writing on the other hand is more universal. Very few people learn they can't write in the same way they learn they can't draw. Regardless of whether you are good at it, writing is required for most classes from math to English, debate to biology. So most of us grow up thinking we write relatively well (even though we probably don't). Certainly well enough to communicate.

So we don't trust ourselves with the design of marketing and other important business materials. We hire professionals for that. And we create brand standards to help us when the designer isn't there. But we do trust ourselves to write effectively enough to get our point across, even though we don't have the training to create a brand voice. So we create copy. Lots of it. Most of it bad.

Even many copywriters don't think about copy the way designers think about design—tweaking a few words here, cutting a phrase there, rewriting a paragraph over and over until it sounds just right. And that's too bad, because when done right, the brand voice is the most difficult part of branding to copy. You can't fake it.

Have you seen a brand standard recently that includes direction on the brand voice? How well is it followed? Does your business use a unique voice to tell your brand story? Let me know in the comments.

Read a little more about brand voice here.
More thoughts (video) about the failure of our schools to teach creativity by Sir Ken Robinson, here. I highly recommend taking a few minutes to watch this very funny, very insightful video.

Wall Street Journal Letter-writer, Story-teller, Dies

Last week, Martin Conroy, the man famous for writing the "two young men" letter for The Wall Street Journal, passed away (New York Times article). The letter was used by The Journal continuously for twenty-eight years and is revered by writers in direct response advertising for its creativity and success. It is the longest running direct response letter ever used, and has been called the most successful advertisement ever run. I still have a copy of the letter in my swipe file.

Why was this letter so successful? Because it tells a compelling, relevant story. And it sold subscriptions. Millions of them. One source says it was directly responsible for bringing in more than a billion dollars.

The letter begins:

“On a beautiful late spring afternoon, twenty-five years ago, two young men graduated from the same college. They were very much alike, these two young men. Both had been better than average students, both were personable and both — as young college graduates are — were filled with ambitious dreams for the future.

Recently, these men returned to their college for their 25th reunion.

They were still very much alike. Both were happily married. Both had three children. And both, it turned out, had gone to work for the same Midwestern manufacturing company after graduation, and were still there.

But there was a difference. One of the men was manager of a small department of that company. The other was its president.”

The letter then goes on to ask and explain, what made the difference?

Read the whole letter here.

It was so successful, that it has been copied numerous times (never as well-done as the original).

The Times quotes Direct Response Guru, Alan Rosenspan, who uses the letter in his direct response seminars, saying: “I ask people to read out loud the first paragraph of the letter. And what’s astonishing to me is that they never stop at the first paragraph. They keep on reading. And I tell them: ‘You have just proven why this letter’s so powerful. It’s a story.’ ”

Sifting through the stack of junk mail (credit card solicitations, non-profit fund raisers, cable subscription offers) on my desk this morning, I wish there were more writers like Martin Conroy who believed in telling a relevant story. Sadly, they are, very literally, a dying breed (no pun intended).

Hat tip: AdJab.

How You Tell Your Story Makes a Difference

You have a story. Or your company does. Or your product does. Everything has a story. But how you tell your story make a big difference. Great stories are heard, remembered, even retold. Lousy stories are quickly forgotten and often dismissed with a nervous laugh and a "Well, I guess you had to be there."

A few weeks ago Ernie Schenck wrote about two sports writers in 1960. Both watched the same game. Both had the same deadline. Both were hired to tell the story. Here's how Ernie tells the story at his Squidoo page:

October 13, 1960. Bill Mazeroski hits a home run in the ninth inning to win the World Series for the Pittsburgh Pirates against the New York Yankees. With the clock ticking down, every sportswriter in the stadium is furiously pecking out their story, their deadlines rapidly approaching.

Here's the opening paragraph of the story that ran in The New York Times:

"The Pirates today brought Pittsburgh its first World Series baseball championship in thirty-five years when Bill Mazeroski slammed a ninth-inning home run over the left field wall of historic Forbes Field."

Here's what people in Iowa read:

"The most hallowed piece of property in Pittsburgh baseball history left Forbes Field late Thursday afternoon under a dirty gray sports jacket and with a police escort. That, of course, was home plate, where Bill Mazeroski completed his electrifying home run while umpire Bill Jackowski, broad back braced and arms spread, held off the mob long enough for Bill to make it legal.

"Pittsburgh's steel mills couldn't have made more noise than the crowd in this ancient park did when Mazeroski smashed Yankee Ralph Terry's second pitch of the ninth inning. By the time the ball sailed over the ivy-covered brick wall, the rush from the stands had begun and these sudden madmen threatened to keep Maz from touching the plate with the run that beat the lordly Yankees, 10-9, for the title."

Now ask yourself, is what you tell your customers a story or a chronology? How can your story be made more interesting or more relevant to your audience?

Rozerem—A Case Study in What Not to Do with Your BrandStory?

Years ago, Al Ries and Jack Trout wrote a little book called Positioning, about choosing one brand attribute and "owning" it. Great idea. Lots of successful brands have used the practice to build brand equity—Kodak and memories. Nordstrom and service. Volvo and safety. Rozerem and beavers playing jump rope with Abraham Lincoln in some guy's kitchen.

Okay, this last one isn't exactly a shining example of great positioning.

A few months ago I noticed a very weird ad featuring Abraham Lincoln and a beaver sitting at a kitchen table with a chess board. In the background is an obviously tired guy sitting on his bed. The headline: "your dreams miss you" in small type. In even smaller type, the payoff: "when you can't sleep, you can't dream." Other ads show them jumping rope and sitting on a teeter-totter.

The copy introduces a new kind of sleep aid. Apparently it's the first ever proven in clinical studies to have no potential for abuse or dependence. (Talk about burying the lede.) And that's it. No explanation of Lincoln, the beaver, or the chess set.  I don't get it.

Now before anyone comments that the ad obviously worked, because I remembered it, you should know that I read ads for a living. Heck, I read my junk mail. I saw the ad, but didn't bother to read the copy for weeks until after I saw the television version. It took the extra dialog between the man, Abe and the beaver to let me in on the gimmick. Apparently this is all a dream. There's a bus board too. And a podcast. How did I miss those?

There are so many things wrong with these ads, it's hard to know where to begin. Does anyone you know dream about Lincoln, rodents, or chess? What's the deal with the astronaut? Is this a common dream I've been missing out on? Choosing a metaphor that nobody understands is a bad idea. Frankly, if this is how my dreams will go with Rozerem, I'll take insomnia.

Thanks to DVR, I rarely take the time to watch ads any more. It was a fluke I saw this one. Does Takeda Pharmaceuticals really want to bet the ad budget that I'll see both the print and television ads to get what's going on? Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. How many people have skipped over the ad (or the bus board), thinking WTF?

And what about the killer point of difference? Unlike Ambien and Lunestra, Rozerem isn't habit forming. And it works. That's your brand story. But you have to look pretty hard to find this benefit. In fact, it's hard to find any benefits at all. Instead we've got honest Abe and a beaver. Not only do I not get a reason to buy, I don't even get a reason to investigate.

I'm the first to admit, you can tell a very compelling brand story with advertising. But if you choose to do this with your brand, don't make your advertising the story. There's a difference. Your story is bigger than the ad. It has to last longer than the latest campaign.

What will people remember after Honest Abe and the beaver are retired? My guess is, not much. And that should cause a few people in Rozerem's marketing department to lose a lot of sleep.

Others disagree. But even they didn't get the spot when they first saw it. More here, here, and here.

What's Your Story? Would It Make A Good Book?

I'm a big fan of direct marketing guru Alan Rosenspan. When it comes to response oriented marketing, he knows his stuff. He recently shared the following creative execution in his somewhat irregular newsletter:

It's amazing how much great direct marketing is done around the world these days—and not just in the U.S.

I attended the 2006 Caples Award Show in New York City and the Best of Show Award went to The Republic of Singapore Navy.

It was called "Navy Page-Turner" and the objective was daunting. The purpose of the campaign was to encourage 17-year olds to join the Singapore Navy.

It sounds like fun until you learn it's a 10-year commitment.

Saatchi & Saatchi of Singapore were up to the task. They send out bound paperback books, with titles that were personalized on the cover, the spine and the back cover.

The titles were designed to attract the attention of their market and also get excited about the adventures that lay ahead. They included:

Sample A. Sample in
Uncharted Depths!

Sample A. Sample in
Courage at
640 Knots!

The books were blank inside—to dramatize the point that the story—your story—was waiting to be written.

And the copy in the enclosed letter asked the provocative question, "If your life was a book, would anyone read it?"

Great question. And good campaign. We all love a good adventure story—especially about ourselves. Would anyone read your life story?

Chevrolet—America's Brand or an American Revolution?

I've been meaning to write about Chevy's advertising since the Olympics started, but Marc at Being Reasonable beat me to the punch. Read his objection to Chevrolet's current slogan, "America's Brand Salutes America's Best. Chevrolet. An American Revolution.", here.

Memo to Chevrolet: "Huh?"

Try googling "America's Brand" and see what you get. Not Chevrolet. In fact, according to the  Global Brand Score Card for 2005, Chevrolet doesn't make the list. But Toyota (#9), BMW (#16), Honda (#19) and  Ford (#22) do. Even Hundai makes the list at #87. Yes, I know it's a global survey, but shouldn't America's Brand appear in the top 100? Ford does.

In the agency world there's a saying, "Your strategy is showing." My guess is the brief for these ads read something like: "Chevrolet is America's brand. We're sponsoring the Olympics. The ad needs to communicate these two elements and include our current tagline, An American Revolution. Oh yeah, show some good footage of our SUVs to reverse their downward sales spiral."

Credit the creatives for delivering an ad that did exactly that.

Ford and Toyota aren't about to cede the "America's Brand" space to Chevy. Read more here.

Full disclosure: I own (and quite like) a Chevrolet SUV.

A Few Things To Read...

I recently took on some additional responsibilities at work, which have intruded a bit on my personal time—time which, until recently, was occasionally used for blogging. So until things slow down just a bit, I thought I would pass on a few of my favorite posts I've found recently.

Marc Babej grabbed the interview of the century when he caught Rosser Reeves, Bill Bernbach, and David Ogilvy together for a discussion on creativity and the state of advertising. You can read the very enlightening account here. (Yes, I know they are all now working for the great agency in the sky.)

Eric Weaver at Ad-Verse posted his thoughts about Direct Marketing. Funny. Eye-opening. Sad. All at the same time. Read it here.

Mark Silveira at Ordinary Advertising has a little something to say about advertising formulas. Read his thoughts here.

And lastly, BrandWeek carried a story this week about <surprise> branding that's worth a read. Notable because author Beau Fraser argues that the idea of branding is actually doing serious damage to our ability to create great brands. Read it here.

Check out the posts. I'll be back soon with thoughts about another brand story I recently discovered (new to me, probably old hat to others) that I love.