I chose to write a curiosity piece on why I think the F.C: Barcelona brand is so interesting, and my curious view on the Nike sponsorship, which in my humble understanding of the objectives of both brands, seems a bit confusing. Here I will provide the highlights and some extra video links for the readers of the column.

First on the F. C. Barcelona Brand. Relating to simple guidelines about strong brands having a clear simple promise, F. C. Barcelona stands strong with their uncompromised focus on collaboration and the Tiki Taka way of playing football. The club is building their play, talent development and organization on the power of the team. The team is everything and always much bigger than the individual. And having Messi onboard this is quite a claim.

Tiki Taka

This idea is greater than football. It is a mindset, a belief and religion. And this makes the club appeal to someone like me, not even that keen on football. But I believe in the Idea.

This position is very different from e.g. Real Madrid which is, in many evil tongues, build on buying fame and stars and the performance and will to victory from the individual. Also a strong clear position of victory and success, but very different from the warmth of the FCB brand.

And from this difference the curiosity towards the sponsorship goes. FCB equals The Team and building results and talents from scratch and in the idea. Real Madrid equal the collection of the best, when they are at their best, and the power of being able to do that.

Looking at Nike, the platform authentic, athletic, performance is strongly build on individual performance and victory. Where Adidas is the team brand build and stuff bigger and sports. Lifestyle, Culture and being All in.

So why is Nike sponsoring FCB, and Adidas Real Madrid?

Adidas ought to be the perfect match for FCB and Nike being almost the perfect fit for Real Madrid. Assuming that all four brands are quite content with their brand position and not trying to cross over.

I do not have the answer, but this really is really food for thought.

Not much to say on this. Just love it.

Kyrie Irving dressed as Uncle Drew is kicking ass at a local basketball court.

A lot of debate going around on if it is true or fake? Either way, the idea and execution is demanding attention. 5 bio + views on Youtube.

TED: Brené Brown

Brené Brown: Listening to shame

And here’s the original vulnerability speech which made her famous. Admitting publicly that she had a breakdown during her research.

Brené Brown: The power of vulnerability

(Credits to TED.com for all of it)

Lots of material available on the website: projectrebrief.com

Introduction to Project Re:Brief

Re:Brief – Coca-Cola – Hilltop by Harvey Gabor

Re:Brief – Volvo – Drive it like you hate it by Amil Gargano

Avis – We try harder – is not yet available

Alka-Seltzer – I can’t believe I ate the whole thing – is not yet available

Working with brand planning it is quite relevant to ask yourself the big question of why is this brand actually relevant? Why would or could the world miss us if we where not here? What is the value we deliver to the consumers – and the world?

Often it is difficult to answer these questions merely looking at the products or stores. Maybe our brand or product isn’t really that much different? Maybe we are just another toothpaste. Then advertising and communication becomes even more important. Branding derived from the industrial age where products where basicly all the same and there was surplus in production. Therefore the companies needed to build brands with enhanced meaning – often just added values – to be able to enhance perceived value of the products.

We still do that. And abundance is still here. So we need to do more than just create good products.

But what do we do when fluffy values aren’t enough? Why not do something new or different. Instead of adding values, start adding a bigger ideal. Spend some time finding the meaning with life… of your product or brand. Find out what you can deliver to the world. How you can actually help the consumers by either products, services or communication. How can we add value to the world. Not only talking about the big idea – but starting talking about the big ideal. What is it we want to change? This is actually the starting point for making really good ideas.

Ogilvy started working with this approach making The big IdeaL (stupid spelling, but this is how it goes) their platform for working with big ideas. Read more at Ogilvy website and see case studies here.

Some examples:

At Wibroe, Duckert and Partners we created a campaign for BDO Denmark focusing on how BDO is fighting for the small and midsize companies rights and terms when driven their business forward.

Dove’s Campaign for real beauty is the really too much talked about –  but still needs a mention here.

Call me created a campaign called Tal ordentligt encouraging people to behave better when speaking to each other.

Jamie Oliver builded his brand on wanting to change how british people eat – and what they eat. Focusing on school food and how we educate our kids to healthy eating habits were key to massive press and good will for his personal brand and the surrounding portfolio of products. More about the Jamie Oliver School Dinner Project.

I first met the concept while studying the 13 steps of the communication process outlined by McGuire, where the step of self-efficacy was analyzed as an important step, where the receiver of communication could dismiss the further steps of successful communication.

At first this didn’t seem to make much sense to me. Do we really need to perceive ourselves as being able to deliver on the desired action before we will take in the message? I wasn’t sure.

Working with the complexity of motivation recently, I once again stumbled upon this. To what use is communication about “How to run a marathon” if you do not see yourself ever (like really never ever) being able to do that. Will you engage in the communication? Will you allow it more than 2 seconds of your time? What are the chances that you will spend the 30 minutes of times it actually demands for the communication product to actually explain to you how you can get closer to the marathon goal? Will it more likely alienate you and make you spend less time on the message? I am pretty sure that the answer to the last question is “yes”.

In this case it is pretty obvious that communication you perceive as not talking to you, will quickly be ignored.

In a totally other context I was catching up on TED2012 and fell over the always amazing David Kelley from IDEO talking about creating creative confidence. There is still only a blog summary of the talk available, but the point is clear. You have to keep your confidence in creativity to be able to deliver. Read the summary here.  In other words; if you do not see yourself as creative, you will not continue to be creative. I know Kelley has another point to make with this example, but for me it was just another brick in understanding human motivation. And as contemporary creatives and planners our key task must be to motivate the consumers.

Taking these into account I am getting to a point where I will advocate the idea about considering self-efficacy when planning campaigns. Ask yourself the following three questions, to be sure your message will be more likely to get through the difficult path of successful communication.

1: Will the target population find themselves able to actually buy, do or act as the communication directs them to?

2: How will other receivers (intentional and unintentional) see themselves in the desired actions?

3: Can you draw out different scenarios for interpretations in the target population according to their ability to perform the actions suggested in the creative solution? Will this affect the need for further segmentation of the receiver group?

These has always been relevant questions in the planning process, but I will from now on stress the importance of these.

And to be honest. It was very disappointing. For 50 % of the ads, I wished that they have found a less expensive commercial break to show their ad – and instead use a bit (or a lot) more on both creative development and production value. Yes, it is true that most of the Super Bowl viewers are already drunk and skewed to the male side of the population, but you need to be really drunk to see through production value this low.

On the creative side, the ads where ranging from really lame to okay. Only few stood out. Back to those later. On the lame side, it was horrifying to see how the creative fell into the feared creative “save zone” of funny dogs, cute babies, sexy women (and men – thank you H&M) and the lowest common denominator for human emotions. It is cheap tricks and will not score high on any creative hit list, even though a few of the ads where quite funny. But funny “haha”, not at the least “aha”.

But besides creative save zones and low production value, there was a lack of conceptual framing for the ads. If any focus group should elaborate on the greater meaning of the content or the intention of the commercials, most of the ads would met a simple “I think they want to sell stuff”-answer. This is really sad. The biggest advertising scene in the world is used merely to short term goals. Where is the ambitions and the big, big ideas?

Yes, many of the advertiser could argue that there is elements of long term branding in just the context and even in the content. But really? Would really have liked seeing the pitches (or the briefings) for these. Please seeks back to the virtues of classic television ads. Make us feel something. Real entertainment is not only about the laugh (or the attempt to make us laugh). It is about feelings. And about having a story to tell. Something so valuable that I want to talk about it afterwards. Only few of the ads this year deserves this.

But besides this, it is not all bad.

Personally, I get really touched by the Chrysler Ads. The campaign launch last year with star rapper Eminem. The concept is “Imported from Detroit” highlighting the true american dreams of struggling, fighting and learning to rise after a fall. It is very patriotic and one could say, too much. But it works and in the depth of the crisis it talks to the american soul of hard work and success.  Olivier Francois, president and CEO, Chrysler Brand, Chrysler Group LLC says, “The new tagline was created to convey the message that one does not have to cross an ocean to obtain luxury, its available right here”. (Due to the merger with Fiat, this message is important to the Chrysler brand, ensuring the customers that they are still true american)

This is something more of selling products. It is selling hope, dreams and the spirit of america. And besides that, great work with the context of the ad in the halftime.

And here’s a few other favorites.

Honda CR-V. Just because I love (all) the Ferris Buller-references. With 57 views on the old videotape, we actually get them.

Kia Optima. Great concept of what would happen if the sandman actually drop the whole bag of dream powder. Great idea. And I like the shot where he rides the Rhino.

McDonalds. Touching. A bit too much. But it works.

M&M. Because you actually want to see it again. And again.

Here’s the short summary on key tasks in the new Consumer Decision Journey.

1. Align – Marketing organizations will need to align their resources with “where consumers spend their time.” The “evaluate” and “advocate” stages will likely become more significant to consumers than the “consider” and “buy” stages, and marketers will have to respond accordingly. Edelman suggests this could result in shifting media dollars from traditional paid media to customer-created channels.
2. Link – Marketers will face the considerable challenge of ensuring that every message about a product or service is consistent across every channel. With so many different online and offline outlets, maintaining that consistency will be harder than ever.
3. Lock – Marketers must “lock in” a customer’s attention by providing direct, opt-in channels, such as email promotions, Facebook and Twitter feeds, and apps that truly benefit the customer. This means allocating resources to media that engages the customer at every stage of their journey.
4. Loop – The journey is a loop — so marketers must accommodate that process with a continuous loop that mines data, uses it to create valuable, relevant content, and then analyzes the response to the content. Edelman uses Amazon as a classic example: The company provides the ability for customers to rate products and then shares the information with customers; it then analyzes that information and uses it to create personalized recommendations.

(With thanks to Barry Silverstein)

Captive Media has based this on an insight into how difficult is is for brands to gain the young males attention while out socializing. Now they can use their average of 55 seconds of waste time at the urinal to actually engage in branded entertainment.

Will be fun to see if this is a quirky one-hit-wonder or will be a new way of engagement.

Four years after it seems as the discussion is almost the same. Cookies are being discussed as never before. I am now more clear on my stand in this matter. I need to redefine trust. Getting access to knowledge on my web behavior isn’t that risky. I trust the content providers to actually use it for shared benefits. I will get a better web experience. They will be able to select ads and content relevant to me.

This morning I stumbled upon the discussion again in The Economist, where Google had 3 ads on the subject. Not typical ads, but ads to address the discussions going on right now.