Actually, your company is world famous. It’s been around for centuries.

And depending on how you look at it, those in charge over that time have either been some of the finest minds of their generation, or utter buffoons.

Still it’s different now you’re there. You can’t do anything about the past. And today, you’re happy to be in the chair.

You knew it wasn’t going to be easy when you took the job, because the previous board were frankly incompetent and you didn’t mind letting them know it.

They were popular while the going was good and many seemed to agree they were once doing a decent job. But the wheels came off and it’s down to you to clean up the mess.

So times are tough because of someone else’s clueless handling, and you’ve got to be seen to take action. You should know the value of PR, and the ‘brand’. Got to do something.

Your firm’s international standing is far from what it was – as far away as it’s possible to be, in fact, although that was down to someone else’s watch. Nothing to do with you.

The books don’t look good. Your expenditure is outstripping income, you owe people, and without a unique ‘understanding’ with the bank, you’d be closing the doors and turning off the lights.

You’re having to lay off a lot of people and close a few branches of your operation.

And because so many rely on what you do, the decisions you take now are going to form people’s opinions of you – in the unlikely event that they didn’t already have plenty.

Problem is, the decisions you decide to take are some of the toughest you could have come up with.

A lot of people don’t like it, because it wasn’t like this before. They think it’s all unfair.

They think you don’t know what it’s like for them. They can’t see why you’re doing what you’re doing.

And there are people who want to be in your chair, who think they could do a better job, stirring up the dissenters.

So.

You do what any respected and ultimately successful brand does.

You put yourself in the shoes of your employees/customers/suppliers.

You think long and hard about how what you do affects their lives, and find a way of explaining clearly and simply what’s in it for them at the other side of this difficult period.

You show them you understand their concerns. You talk in their language.

You’re honest. You’re human. You sound real.

You show them you’re doing all this, so the future will look like that. So it’s easy to grasp and they see that any difficulties today are a price worth paying.

You underline the benefits to them of listening to you, and the future you’re attempting to construct for them.

So they clearly understand.

Because then people believe you, believe in you, and go along with you.

That’s what any company with a rudimentary grasp of people and motivations and brand loyalty and good communications would
do.

So why isn’t the government – or any politician – doing it now?

Aren’t we all in this together?

For the nobility, he was useful in giving the French fleet a bellyful of hot iron, but the fellow was a damned philanderer.

Living brazenly with a former whore in a home garishly hung with portraits of him and his deeds, while keeping a wife silent with filthy lucre.

But the people of the nation saw him differently. They feted him wherever he went.

They read about him in the press. They bought pictures of him; as well as mugs, prints, plates, statuettes. They followed him in and out of shops. They applauded and they cheered, and he smiled back.

Someone in Norfolk (where Nelson was born, and where he acquired the accent he kept) has a collection of 605 different pieces of Nelson memorabilia – all made during his lifetime.

In his time, Nelson was a brand. And it’s not hard to fathom why.

As a boy, he didn’t just want to be an officer – he wanted to be a hero.

He became a Captain at the absurdly young age of 20.

He made five decisions, striding decks slick with his own and his men’s blood, any one of which would have guaranteed him naval immortality.

He boarded a French ship at Cape St Vincent, took it, and immediately ran across it to take another ship that was close to the other bow (before filing a report to the Admiralty quicker than an officer’s less complimentary dispatch which accused him of being too gung-ho).

He sailed straight at the enemy line off Cape Trafalgar, waiting and waiting and taking a fearful battering from French and Spanish ships, yet refusing to open fire until the Combined Fleet should taste the hot breath of the Victory’s guns.

He lost the sight of an eye, his right arm, and eventually his life to a sniper in the rigging while pacing the upper decks slowly, his mind plotting and calculating while men screamed and battle roared.

He respected his men; his men worshipped him. The nation owed him. When they finally heard, its people cried for him.

That’s why they bought his picture.

Nelson knew his fame, and rejoiced in it. He also cultivated it. A naval officer was rarely at home, and he knew Merton Place would be seen by visitors as much as a gallery as a house. So he obliged with the ostentatious show most people would hope to see.

He once decided a god-like image was inappropriate for a print of himself alongside his ships, and asked for a simple side portrait instead.

With England on the point of invasion, Nelson mattered to its people. His name above all others.

As he took his last step on English soil, he waved to the cheering crowds who had followed him. He seemed unusually tranquil and focused as he said to a colleague: “I’ve always had their minds; it seems now I have their hearts.”

Whatever people expected of him, whatever he promised, whatever was needed, he gave.

Nelson was a brand.

He was also human. Profoundly so.

Fallible, egotistical, gentle, thoughtful, inquisitive, remorseless, fearless, loyal and dutiful.

Like every one of us, he was an individual.

What made him different was that he did, better than most, whatever he believed needed to be done – and people loved him for it.  

Brands, people, humans, us – who’ll cry for us when we’re no longer part of their world?

2) Stumble into 3 other people. Over a shared musical interest, say. Find out you have a lot in common. You can all play. Three of you turn out to be songwriters. Able to sing in three-part harmony. The other is vastly underrated and indispensable.

3) Take a chance and leave your home country when you’re about 18 to go and sleep in a small windowless room in a German red-light district with your three mates, playing eight-hour shifts, day and night, of songs you learn on the hoof, by ear, to sailors who want to get drunk and have a fight.

4) Return home hardened, tight, loud, musically accomplished and mature with a strange, clean haircut and get a residency at a sweaty underground club where you get a fanatical following and around 20 shillings a session.

5) Be on stage when some posh bloke, somebody in music, with contacts, decides to drop by, who likes you but doesn’t quite know why and offers a contract for a management commission of 25 per cent of your gross income.

6) Be ushered the way of a certain music producer and his team of sound engineers, vastly talented, experimental, way ahead of their time and a bit bored with the humdrum acts they’re accustomed to making sound good, and who get you to record 10 songs in as many hours for your first LP.

7) Turn up in America just when the world’s most powerful and persuasive nation is recovering from the grievous loss of a popular president and in dire need of a new hero, to play almost a concert a night for 32 nights. When everyone is watching.

6. 3. 18. 20. 25. 10. Bonus: 32

Maybe you’re a rich man, too…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1SG5ekJi7Q

A sandstorm had just settled and a battle lay ahead.

Men wiped sand from their faces and waited.

As Collins began to speak, Sarah Oliver, a reporter with the Mail on Sunday, began to write.

Here is part of what she sent back to her office:

“We go to liberate, not to conquer.

We will not fly our flags in their country.
We are entering Iraq to free a people and the only flag which will be flown in that ancient land is their own.
Show respect for them.

There are some who are alive at this moment who will not be alive shortly.
Those who do not wish to go on that journey, we will not send.
As for the others, I expect you to rock their world.
Wipe them out if that is what they choose.
But if you are ferocious in battle remember to be magnanimous in victory.

Iraq is steeped in history.
It is the site of the Garden of Eden, of the Great Flood and the birthplace of Abraham.
Tread lightly there.

You will see things that no man could pay to see – and you will have to go a long way to find a more decent, generous and upright people than the Iraqis.
You will be embarrassed by their hospitality even though they have nothing.

Don’t treat them as refugees for they are in their own country.
Their children will be poor, in years to come they will know that the light of liberation in their lives was brought by you.

If there are casualties of war then remember that when they woke up and got dressed in the morning they did not plan to die this day.
Allow them dignity in death.
Bury them properly and mark their graves.

The enemy should be in no doubt that we are his nemesis and that we are bringing about his rightful destruction.
There are many regional commanders who have stains on their souls and they are stoking the fires of hell for Saddam.
He and his forces will be destroyed by this coalition for what they have done.
As they die they will know their deeds have brought them to this place. Show them no pity.

It is a big step to take another human life.
It is not to be done lightly.
I know of men who have taken life needlessly in other conflicts.
I can assure you they live with the mark of Cain upon them.

If someone surrenders to you then remember they have that right in international law and ensure that one day they go home to their family.
The ones who wish to fight, well, we aim to please.

Our business now is north.”

The speech was flashed around the world, and drew comparison with Henry V, Elizabeth at Tilbury Docks, William Wallace at the Battle of Stirling and Lincoln after Gettysburg.

A masterpiece of rhetoric, delivered off the cuff, and a battle cry of both ferocity and humility.

A copy hangs in the Oval Office.

But how did the men receive it?

In his memoirs, Captain Doug Beattie revealed he ‘saw men’s heads starting to go down’, and ‘frowns on more and more faces’.

He claimed the stark realities of what lay ahead were being made all too plain to them.

Far from being readied for battle, he thought they were beginning to think of home, what they had left behind and what they may never see again.

Captain Beattie said he had to ‘kick them back to life’ with ‘a string of barely separated profanities’.

To sit, debate and comfortably savour the flow of the words, the light and shade, the defiance and the deference is one thing.

To stand in a desert facing an army of millions is another.

It doesn’t matter much now that Collins may have got the brief wrong.

His words at least would have made his men think. About who they were, what they represented, how they should act.

He gave explicit facts and instruction with logic and emotion. He made men think. Thought before action is always wise. And his words will be remembered a century from now.

Just think, he could have showed them some mood boards and concepts over cappuccino…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx-277MRYuM&ob=av2n

Been said in the pub for the last 30-40 years.

Of course it bloody isn’t.

Never saw my mum chanting the name of Brains’ Faggots in the aisle at Morrison’s. And I don’t recall having a team photo of Blodger Punt & Mason solicitors on my wall in 1977.

As a business model, it’s terrible. The players/employees have infinite control over the club/company.

Most ‘companies’ have an almost guaranteed market share which will fluctuate only marginally over years and years. Customers will continue to buy, no matter what the quality of the product.

Managers are hired not after exhaustive search and interview, but on a whim, snapped up blindly and quickly because indecision by the Board is surely a sign of weakness.

Or because they’re available (and briefly showed leadership promise over a six month period chivvying the human resources at Leyton Orient & Sons.)

The directors run scared of the man in the street, whose opinions – delivered not by email or boardroom discussion, but rhythmic chant – they hear and chew on and agonise over in private.

Popularity is everything. Please like us. Don’t shout. Especially not in those forums and phone-ins.

However, let’s put that to one side and say football is a business.

Depending where you live, or the influence of your father, or the club that’s doing well at any one time (tut-tut…) you will have your own preferred ‘brand’.

Mine is Wolverhampton Wanderers FC. I’ll always choose them, no matter what special offers the competition bring out. And so will my son and daughter.

But.

Although I prefer Innis & Gunn ale, I’ll also take home a Fullers London Porter. I take an interest in the market sector. See what else I might find interesting.

I look around at the competing businesses and look for a brand saying something I might like. In a new way.

I loved the Nottingham Forest ‘Brian Clough Entrepreneurial’ brand. Who didn’t? Newcastle United’s Kevin Keegan ‘I’ll love it’ was great for five minutes. Even the Wimbledon ‘Up Yours’ stirred a bit of me.

Never much cared for the Liverpool ‘Shankly/Paisley Respect Us ‘Cos We’re A Juggernaut’. Respect, yes. But that’s about it. And don’t get me started on the current top four ‘Bankers’ Bonus’ brands.

However all that’s on the pitch.

What I want to know is, with all the apparent marketing muscle of the national and international brands of the Premier League and the Championship, why is there no difference away from the pitch in the image of Bolton, Birmingham, Sunderland and Stoke?

From Monday to Friday, what’s the competitive advantage – in the eyes of national football consumers – of Everton over Leeds? Newcastle over Wigan? Wolves over West Brom (although this is really explanatory).

What do the companies of Preston, West Ham, Hull and Middlesbrough do apart from put their employees on show once or twice a week, inform the press of personnel changes and sell corporate merchandise?

Come on. Show us your USP.

You’re a brand. You want my goodwill? Future overseas investment? So tell me how you’re different.

What do you do better than the rest?

Of the SMEs, Ebbsfleet, whose web-based owners decide on team selection and player transfers, might have a shout. FC United maybe.

But the multinationals? They’re all the same to me.

Not one proposition, not one point of difference, not one iota of creativity.

And not one successful business.

Now. Here’s what you call a creative pitch:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5HbmeNKino&feature=related

So design must be “as pleasurable and emotionally rich as possible.”

Form before function, then?

Margaret Thatcher famously described unassuming and largely taciturn Labour Prime Minister Clem Attlee, whose post-war government created the NHS and the welfare state, as ”all substance and no show”.

Or function over form.

A pair of scissors is immediately and satisfying recognised as a piece of iconoclastic design that does precisely what’s required.

Form? Check. Function? Check.

Gateshead’s recently demolished Trinity Square (off the top of which Michael Caine flung Alf Roberts in Get Carter) was both a poorly accessed car park/shopping centre with too steep, too narrow ramps, and a prime example of the stark Brutalist school of architecture prevalent the sixties and seventies.

So neither form, nor function? (Although Brutalism is held by many to have as much relevance and aesthetic importance as, say, Baroque or Gothic. And Trinity Square’s lead designer Rodney Gordon said “architecture should appeal to the emotions…and… give you that feeling from your balls to your throat.”)

What comes first, then? Form or function.

In any piece of marketing communication, I think form=creativity, function=message.

And I’ll leave the rest to Bill Bernbach:

“Just be sure your advertising is saying something with substance, something that will inform and serve the consumer, and be sure you’re saying it like it’s never been said before.”

“You can say the right thing about a product and nobody will listen. You’ve got to say it in such a way that people will feel it in their gut. Because if they don’t feel it, nothing will happen.”

Bob Bly (www.bly.com/blog) gives the instance of an article which sought to paint a picture of a priest alone with his thoughts outside his church one fine evening.

 “The minister was drinking in the night air,” proclaimed the piece.

Although it didn’t say what was in his glass.

Some well known products have claimed as their own a USP other companies could have boasted had they got there first.

Take M&Ms.

These candy-coated chocolates were developed by Forrest Mars Sr. who, legend has it, had the dubious privilege of travelling through Spain during its civil war of the 1930s.

He watched up close the snacking habits of soldiers who munched small chocolate pieces wrapped in a candy shell which didn’t melt as easily in the blazing sun.

Curiously, Mars was travelling around Spain with none other than one of the British Rowntree family who had already invented Kit Kat bars and Smarties.

However, the fact that M&Ms weren’t the first candy-coated chocolates didn’t stop Mars from hiring legendary ad man Rosser Reeves to pen the line Melts in your mouth, not in your hand.

Mars claimed for his company a USP that others might have adopted had they got there first.

The story’s probably apocryphal.

But it goes to show that if you have something of real benefit and interest to a customer, which you dismiss as being commonplace, it’s maybe time to spell it out for all to see.

He was also an MP, owner of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, noted public speaker and poet.

He wrote the most beautiful thing a man ever said to a woman.

“Won’t you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.”

Though he died in poverty, Sheridan was buried in splendour in Westminster Abbey by colleagues who loved him.

Words, just words.

Interesting man, Gossage.

Dubbed the ‘Socrates of San Francisco’, he was an advertising writer in the fifties and sixties apparently working in an industry he hated.

Although this manifested itself not in spite and rancour, but amusing ramblings tossed nonchalantly aside as he constructed his next compelling piece of copy.

Given to sentiments such as: “I like outdoor advertising. I just think it has no right to be outdoors,” he was known as ‘the most articulate rebel in the advertising business’.

Through his writing, he used to invite his reader to interact with him, believing that in doing so she would be more likely to understand what he was trying to say.

He thought ‘an ad should ideally be like one end of an interesting conversation’, and wanted his reader to be able to respond in some way, for example by returning coupons, or taking part in quirky competitions and contests.

He once included a coupon in an ad asking you to send in a bit of yourself along with your name and address.

Whole books were created from responses to his competitions.

More than anything, he wanted be interesting.

For him, the customer was far more important to the marketer than the product.

No customer, no sales, no profit, no business.

He knew that getting his reader really interested meant not just offering clever copy, but getting her to join in and be involved.

In the 1960s, he offered an analogy:

“Advertising may seem like shooting fish in a barrel, but there is some evidence that the fish don’t hold still as well as they used to, they are developing armour plate. They have control over what type of ammo you have, when the trigger gets pulled, and how fast your shot moves. Oh, and they’re not all in the same barrel anymore.”

Social media. So what’s new?

Source: www.adbuzz.com/firehouse.php