In which there are some magic words.

You had me at intense

Some brands tell their truths using just a single word.

The endline on this 1990s ad for Pot Noodle (see below) is INTENSE.

The presenter, Phil Hartman, looks you in the eye and recites the brand promise:

“If this isn’t snacking at its most intense, the devil don’t scuba dive.”

He recites it with style. He somehow manages to be earnest and unhinged at the same time. He’s intense. He’s intensely cool. And he’s fronting an ad that’s pure audio-visual intensity. It’s wall-to-wall intense. It’s a 40-second, supersaturated truth bomb.

The graphics for the original version of this ad were so intense that it was taken off air, having triggered a few photosensitive epileptic seizures. It prompted the introduction of the Harding Test for adverts with flashing imagery. I’m pretty sure that the ad below is the revised version, but take care if you might be affected.

When the ad broke, every student in the land had a ‘true dat’ and a ‘dat me’ moment. Pot Noodle spoke its truth in their language. Messrs McCann and Erickson would have loved it. It’s the epitome of “truth well told”, which remains, in my view, the best ever definition of advertising done properly.

Let’s hit the mat.

You had me at silk

Half a lifetime ago I was account director on the Cadbury’s Dairy Milk (CDM) account at BBH. CDM was the moulded chocolate market leader by a long way. Our job was to defend its manor.

CDM’s main competitor was Galaxy. Galaxy was recruiting a growing band of devotees by flaunting its smooth texture. They dramatised this feature in sensuous ads with the endline, “Why have cotton when you can have silk?”

The ads (see below) were literally a dream come true for many chocolate-loving women (the main buyers in the category). Asked to describe their ideal chocolate moment, women would talk about savouring and luxuriating in moments of sublime escapism. The Galaxy ads simply pointed a camera at these fantasies.

There would be one, two, sometimes three Galaxy advocates in every CDM focus group. They’d swear blind about its smoother texture and quote its slogan with feeling, drawing curses from the Cadbury clients behind the screen.

Galaxy had these women at silk. It was a single-word brand promise every bit as true and every bit as powerful as intense for Pot Noodle.

These are magic words because they evoke and explain at the same time. They cast their spell on the head and the heart with equal potency.

Galaxy had the Cadbury clients at silk too. As in it had them spitting tacks. As in it had them doubting themselves. The silk campaign made Galaxy’s smooth USP feel like a fatal weakness for CDM. The fact that CDM was clearly the “cotton” made it feel personal. Cadbury felt slighted, which they were. And they felt threatened, which they weren’t, not really. They wanted to respond and tackle head-on the texture issue that Galaxy had created. We had numerous debates in which we argued the folly of engaging on terms dictated by a much smaller competitor.

The experience showed me how a challenger brand, going all-in behind an attractive niche positioning, can rattle an apparently unassailable market leader into doubting its strategy.

Around the same time, I was working on the Weetaflakes account. We came up with a campaign based on the idea that Weetaflakes were “Weety, not corny”. It was the silk/cotton strategy but for breakfast cereal. Position your strength as their weakness. We thought it was dead clever.

The client had a fit. They didn’t see “Weety” as their magic word. They saw it as bad ju-ju, a spell that would rebound on the brand that cast it.

They didn’t have visions of carving out a devoted niche like Galaxy. They pictured a vengeful Kelloggs unleashing hell in the trade (wholesale and retail) and wiping Weetaflakes out.

They made a compelling case to be fair. The experience taught me that retail clout trumps consumer affinity. It schooled me in what a ruthless market leader can do if a reckless challenger goes too far.

You had me at subversive

My interview to join the board of Puppet Animation Scotland (PAS) - which does what it says on the tin - was a pleasant chat with its CEO and its Chair. It went well and they invited me onto the board there and then. I’m not sure exactly when I had them, but they had me when they described puppetry, animation, and visual theatre as subversive art forms. Phwoar!

When you see puppetry, animation, or visual theatre done live in front of an audience, it’s both subversive and spectacular. The storyteller is on stage. Their manipulative skills are as impressive as their stories. These art forms are at their subversive best when they tell stories that couldn’t be told any other way.

One of the last things I did as Chair of PAS was to help recruit a new Artistic Director/CEO. Once she’d settled in, she changed the name of the organisation to Manipulate Arts. It’s a brilliant piece of brand strategy. It makes the truth of the organisation irresistible. Manipulate captures the subversive essence of these storytelling art forms. And it sets up an aesthetic that’s mystical, magical, and anarchic.

They had me at subversive in my interview. Now they have their artists and their audiences at Manipulate.

You had me at overengineered

My Yeti travel bottle is as rugged as a naughty four-letter Saxon word beginning with F. It’s hefty and solid. It looks like a spent howitzer shell casing. It exudes indestructibility. It’s utterly leakproof and it keeps coffee properly hot for hours and hours.

In a world of disposability, flimsiness, and built-in obsolescence, Yeti’s beyond reasonable philosophy makes it feel like a rebel, like an outlaw. How sad is that? But also how seductive is that? It speaks to a longing for build quality and longevity that’s tragically underserved in most categories.

This product information card (above) came with my bottle. It’s designed to make me feel good or even better about my purchase. It worked, but it’s overdetailed, overwritten, and overkill. I don’t need the long list of product points. You had me at overengineered.

(It doesn’t need the hyphen.)

(And, yes, I saw Russell’s video about the power of unread copy.)

Evoke and explain

Brand strategy is the art of managing meaning. And meaning is a combination of thoughts and feelings. In fact it’s mainly feelings. A lot of brand strategy “wet work” happens at the subconscious level. We create submerged meaning that’s triggered to a brand’s benefit at appropriate (buying) moments. Making this kind of meaning takes a little bit of explaining and a lot of evoking. If you can strike the right balance between those jobs, that’s mastery. If you can do it in a single word, that’s magic.

Post Script: a plug

My partner writes and directs plays in her spare time. For this year’s Fringe, she’s staging her first fully professional show. She wrote the script and is personally underwriting the costs of hiring a venue and paying her cast and crew.

If you’re based in Scotland, or if you’re visiting Edinburgh in August, and if theatre is your thing, please take a look. It’s a dark and funny story of love and radicalisation. The show runs from Friday 7th to Saturday 15th August.

The two-for-one tickets for the Monday and Tuesday shows are nearly all gone.