Six of the best: Sports edition

I must say that I'm really impressed with ESPN's coverage of the World Cup. Not just the quality of the commentary but also the fact that they've been able to cover all the matches across multiple media, plus cover Wimbledon and the 2010 College World Series as well.

1) The World Cup's Lessons in Narrative and Marketing: Justin Fox (HBR)
By way of a prolonged attack on basketball in general and New York basketball in particular, Justin Fox wonders if ESPN hasn't missed an opportunity with its coverage to help viewers latch onto all the great stories that the World Cup generates--"The national epics, team dramas, individual Bildungsromans. And of course referee-induced tragedies. Lots of those." He thinks ESPN has played it too straight. Personally, I'm happy that ESPN hasn't gone the NBC route with its endless backstories. But I can see his point. Maybe there's a happy medium. P.S. The ESPN: USA-Algeria game was the largest US audience ever for a sports event online. 1.1m unique viewers spent avg 43 minutes watching.

2) Mahut v Isner Haiku: Wimblewords
It's tough to compete with the World Cup but Wimbledon found a way to grab some attention. In first round action, John Isner (USA) and Nicholas Mahut (FR) played the longest game in tennis history. This epic encounter lasted for more than 11 hours of play over three days with Isner eventually winning 6-4, 3-6, 6-7, 7-6, 70-68. Just an incredible sporting event.

Matt Harvey, Wimbledon's official Poet in Residence, captured the feeling at the end of the second day (when the score was tied at (only!) 59-59 in the fifth) with this haiku:

high performance play

all day yet still no climax

it's tantric tennis

In this post, he invites readers to post their own Haiku as well. Readers have responded with examples like: songs will long be sung_of their battle on court 18_finished but not done. Indeed.

3) Andy Murray Tennis Street Magic: headtennis (via brandflakesforbreakfast)



Sticking with tennis. We ask: Is it Henman hill. Or Murray mound? Is this video real? Or is it fake? OK. Too many questions. It's a great video by Head and, if you like the song, it's here: www.head.com/tennis.

4) Get your World Cup kit on! What's up below deck? (Landor)
“We have 1.5 billion people in China, yet we can’t find 11 people that can kick a bloody football.” That was the frustration expressed by a Chinese friend of Ray Ally's who blames it on the one-child policy and the non-team-oriented "little emperors" that have been the result. Despite the absence of a Chinese team and the fact that the games start late at night, the World Cup is hugely popular in China--In a recent survey, 45% of people in Beijing said that they put football ahead of their work.

5) Nike's Not a World Cup Sponsor, but It's Stealing the Show: AdvertisingAge
Whenever there is a worldwide sports event, whether that be the Olympics or the World Cup, there's always a separate game going on--the one between the official sponsors of the event and those who want to crash the party. This time it's Adidas, official sponsor vs. Nike, playing the ambushing role. According to AdvertisingAge, Nike is winning. It has the biggest uptick in positive consumer perceptions based on its "Write the Future" ad and its relationships with several of the star players.

6) WRITE THE FUTURE: Nike Football
And here's the full length version of that ad in case you haven't seen it. No Wayne babies yet but if he scores the goal that beats Germany, there will be.



That's it! Back soon with more stories from the world of brand strategy. More thoughts and comments also available on Twitter (@martinjbishop).

Photo: World's Favorite Sport by vramak (Flickr)

Branding essentialism: Looking for cues

In matters of taste, most people, most of the time don't know what to think unless someone or something tells them.

In 19th century Paris, the official arbiters of taste in art were the Salon jurors; the people who decided what would and would not be displayed in the yearly Salons. The artists that made it into the Salon got the glory, prestige and, most importantly, the commissions from the well-to-do. Back in the 1860s, the jury liked big portraits of grand subject matter — history, mythology and the classics, like this Birth of Venus painting by Alexandre Cabanel.

That left the early impressionists out in the cold. Their paintings were considered by the jury to be unfinished, uncouth and undesirable. They were certainly dramatically different from the accepted style as shown in the excellent Birth of Impression exhibition at the de Young Museum which includes works by impressionists and artists who painted in the style the Salon preferred. Some of the impressionists (particularly Manet) kept trying to get into the Salon but others (Rodin, Monet..) gave up and set up a rival exhibition of their work. Many art critics continued to find their work "despicable" but a few critics and art dealers liked what they saw and the tide started to turn. These days you could buy quite a few Cabanels for one Renoir.

Let's move from high art to wine appreciation. In How we Decide, Jonah Lehrer describes a Cal-Tech experiment where 25 people sampled what were described as five Cabernet Sauvignons. They were distinguished solely by their retail price (from $5 (my end of the spectrum) to $90). In fact there were just three different wines and the same wine would appear in the test with two different price points. Not surprisingly, the people preferred the wines labeled more expensive whether or not the wine was really the more expensive one.

But this was a Cal-Tech experiment so it had an interesting wrinkle--all the tastings were sipped inside an fMRI machine. The fMRI showed that there was a specific region of the brain that responded to the price. The high-priced wines got the medial orbitofrontal cortex all fired up and it sent out instructions to the rest of the brain telling it that these wines tasted better, overriding any evidence from the taste buds to the contrary.

As one of the comments to Jonah's post points out, there are people out there who really know their wine. These experts can tell you everything about a wine just by tasting it, sometimes down to which side of the hill, in which vineyard it comes from. They don't need price as a cue. Or even the label. The rest of us may think we know something about wine but we really don't know that much and our medial orbitofrontal cortex rules. That's not a criticism of the rest of us. We don't have the time or money to be expert in everything--using cues like price or, in the case of art, critical opinion makes sense.

Feel like we're drifting closer to a point about branding? Here it is. Most of our customers are not experts either so we've got to go out there and support that medial orbitofrontal cortex. We've already seen that price works (and P.S., it works both ways--if you're constantly price discounting, that's a cue that your product is no better than the cheap version). What else? Talking about a product's essences is one approach--Coors brewed with 100% Rocky Mountain water or Evian water sourced from the Alps. In other categories, things like the Hemi engine for Dodge. What you come up with doesn't have to necessarily be that impactful on actual taste or performance--it just needs to fire up that cortex of ours.

And lest you think that this seems a little cynical and we should be spending our time creating "real" differences, let me remind you of something. One our cortex has spoken, that is our reality. For those people stuck in the fMRI machine drinking their wine, the ones with the high price tag really did taste better whether it was the expensive wine or the cheap one. Still don't agree? Do a blind taste test with Corona in it. Then you'll know what I mean.

Painting: The Birth of Venus by Alexandre Cabanel (1863)

Six of the Best: European snapshots edition

Back from a week of European travel to the beautiful capital cities of Paris and Dublin, plus stops in Birr and the airport in Frankfurt. Let's see if I can build a story around some of the pix I took along the way:

1) The love padlocks on the Pont des Arts are back! (Paris)

The Daily Telegraph reported back in May about the mysterious disappearance of the love padlocks attached to the Pont des Arts bridge. The padlocks, with lovers names written on them, were called an eyesore by Paris' town hall and then, days later, they vanished in the dead of the night. (The town hall said it wasn't them.) But now the padlocks, just like the seals on Pier 39, are coming back. According to The Daily Telegraph, the tradition of lovers attaching padlocks to bridges and throwing away the keys was sparked by a romantic Italian novel called I Want You, by Federico Moccia. What started in Rome has now spread all over Europe. Here soon?

2) CDG: Most improved airport? (Paris)

The last time I was at Charles de Gaulle airport, I was trying to catch a plane to the USA, not long after 9/11 and before the airport had figured out how to implement new security measures. I remember being stuck in a hot and noisy corridor with hundreds of other people pushing, shoving and shouting to try and make it through to the gate in time for their flights. What a change this time round. The airport has been upgrading its facilities to try and stay competitive with Schipol and Frankfurt. It's working.

3) Lovely day for a Guiness (Birr)

As tradition has it, Guinness in Ireland tastes better than Guinness anywhere else. It definitely tasted good, I'll say that.

4) There (may be) ain't no finer Diner than Eddie Rocket's (Dublin)
Johnny Rockets younger, Irish brother? Johnny got started a few years before Eddie, modeled on the one and only Apple Pan in LA.

5) Temple Bar, not the bus station (Dublin)
Like other trendy and/or tourist-attractive destinations, Temple Bar had its period of neglect and urban decay where nothing was developed and then an effective public outcry that stopped some monstrous planned redevelopment. (In the case of Temple Bar, the state-owned transport company proposed to buy-up and demolish property in the area and build a bus terminus in its place.) So its medieval streets are largely intact and it's now a cultural center as well as a tourist and stag/hen party magnet.

6) Camel sponsored glass smoking cages (Frankfurt)
The pros and cons of Camel taking on sponsorship of these glass cages for smokers in Frankfurt airport? Is the grateful recognition from those desperate enough to need to venture inside the cages (which included the warning: Rauchen kann tödlich sein /Smoking Kills) worth it?

That's it! Back soon with more stories from the world of brand strategy. More thoughts and comments also available on Twitter (@martinjbishop).

Six of the Best: Your questions answered edition

You have questions. We have answers. Especially if your questions are a little odd.

1) Google's Top 10 Questions: GawkerIf you type in: "Why is" on the Google Search page, it will give you some helpful suggestions. Gawker did this and then, even more helpfully, provided some answers. For example: "Why is yawning contagious? Answer: "It's because you are lame, your stories aren't very amusing, and no one wants to be around you..."

2) people actually searched for this: brandflakesforbreakfast

Along the same lines, SEO LOL chronicles all the "ridiculous, stupid, or hilarious things that people search for?" From this "best of" list: "Nigerian investment opportunities" and "Star Trek Costume Xxxl"

3) thought of the day: unattainable (via designismine)
"let's focus on the unattainable," a new ink & watercolor work by Marc Johns.

4) Sounds like work: Indexed

Something to bear in mind the next time you are reading (or writing) your next B2B presentation or sales piece.

5) KNVB Supporter Shirt: Bas & Dan (via Phil Sykes)

Got to have at least one World Cup-themed reference as the kick-off gets closer and closer. For the uninitiated: "A lot of football players celebrate by pulling the shirt over their heads" (when they score a goal). So, the heads of the popular players from of the Dutch national football team were printed on the inside of these supporter shorts. Genius!

6) Marks & Spencer 125 Years Anniversary Packaging: the dieline (via Meredith Allen)

Ah! I remember their opening day so well! To celebrate the 125th anniversary, Marks & Sparks has launched a retro-style design scheme. Some designs, like the jams and fruit jellies, are from the archives. Others are "inspired by." The dieline shows part of the huge collection.

That's it! Off to Paris and Dublin next week to catch some World Cup fever (and do some work). Back after that with more stories from the world of brand strategy. More thoughts and comments also available on Twitter (@martinjbishop).

Lost and Found: Advertising engagement

My kids couldn't be more delighted. What once was Lost is now Wipeout. Much bouncier and more fun, as far as they are concerned. But for those of us who survived six gripping, largely incomprehensible seasons, there's a little hole in our schedule, a little sadness in our hearts.

The Lost audience in the final season wasn't as big as it was at the beginning--some people did manage to get off the island. And it wasn't anywhere near as large as the typical audiences for American Idol. But the people watching the last few episodes did have one thing that many other shows don't have. And that was engagement. Not just with the show but with the ads too.

Nielsen reports that nearly 90% of the national advertisements aired during the final episode achieved higher brand recall compared to their average in other primetime programming. To be specific they, on average, generated 51% higher recall, 92% higher message recall and 66% higher likability. And customized ads that incorporated themes from the show did even better. This smoke monster ad from Target did the best of all:



As James Poniewozik points out in Time, that's why ABC was still able to charge a reported $900,000 a spot. He wonders if this fact suggests that it may be coming easier to monetize a smaller, but intensely interested, audience.

There are not many shows I would put in the same category as Lost in terms of engagement. My list is down to two at the moment: Breaking Bad and Mad Men. But for these few shows, I think advertisers can and should declare themselves as fellow fans and supporters. As the Nielsen numbers show, the audience will definitely give them credit for that.

Photo: lost by sebas on Flickr