On Monday night, after the England Mexico game, I saw the full Nike advert ‘Write the future.’ It was the first major example, that I can recall, of a brand co-promoting competitive brands by tapping into the passion of the audience. The advert starts with Drogba in his orange Ivory Coast kit (Puma), before cutting to Wayne Rooney in his white England kit (Umbro) before moving to Brazil (Nike). Interestingly involving competitors did not dilute Nike’s positioning but rather positioned it as the leader of the pack.
The current UK electoral campaigns have stirred up new levels of interest in British politics, but how have the political parties tried to capture our covetable attention? Semiotician Dr Alex Gordon analyses the manifesto materials from each of the three main parties and notes how even the smallest details and inconsistencies can affect our overall perception of them as brands. He discusses visual stimuli as one of many touchpoints between a party and its potential voters in the same way that brands must consider everything they do as a potential swayer of consumer trust.
Considering this and the growing trend for transparency in business, the lesson is clear for brands and political parties alike. They must endeavour to keep their values consistent with both communications and behaviour, ensuring every touchpoint is thoughtfully considered.
Key points
1. As brands, political parties achieve actionable trust by behaving consistently, humanly and with a long-term vision of building genuine relationships.
2. In order for parties to build credibility and trust, they must have goals that are outlined and demonstrated through genuine action and communications, in the same way that brands do.
3. In a contentious media environment, someone will always spotlight the worst possible connotations of your message. As with brand messages, those of political parties must be acutely considered in terms of all contextual associations in which they their may be viewed.
4. Ambiguity and conflicting messages create confusion, which leads to inertia. In this context, being the clearest, most transparent contender can increase your influence and help build trust.
Liverpool ONE shopping centre by BDP. Photograph by Ian Hughes.
Canvas8 is delighted to present the third in a series of free events for the design, creative and branding communities. Sizing up today’s retail consumer: the new rules of engagement will be on Monday November 16 at BDP, Clerkenwell.
At the last Canvas8 event David Bausola spoke about brands successfully amplifying consumers’ conversations in order to engage them. Following the deepest recession since the 1930’s there has been much discussion of the long-term changes to people’s attitudes and behaviour.
We are delighted to welcome three fantastic speakers – Canvas8 Thought Leaders, Professor Michael Solomon, Dr Alex Gordon and Alan Moore. They will look at the impact of these changes on people’s relationships with brands and offer their thoughts on how brands can best re-connect and re-engage effectively.
Three Canvas8 Thought Leaders, take a holistic view of retail and investigate retail audiences’ behaviour, communication, imagery and environment.
They say good things come to those who wait. We certainly hope that’s the case as, following several months of hard work we’re delighted to announce the official launch of Canvas8.
After six months of meetings with a host of top agencies and brands we’ve responded to the feedback. We now offer more leaders, straightforward tagging, better search functionality and clearer content segmentation. Our users can now locate the authoritative insight they need immediately.
Please
email us if you’d like trial access to the live service.
We’ve continued to scour the globe to bring you the best minds in industry and we’re delighted to welcome Marc Gobé and Alan Moore as Canvas8 Thought Leaders. Marc is one of the foremost leaders in emotional branding, President of Emotional Branding LLC, an experimental think tank, and renowned author. Alan is the originator of the term Engagement Marketing and Communications and his consultancy, SMLXL, advises on better customer engagement.
Finally, we have published several pieces, touching on people’s digital lives from around the world. A few weeks ago we announced Michael Solomon as a Thought Leader and we are pleased to offer his expert insight into brands in the virtual world, how they are perceived, and how brand identity can best be managed. Continuing the theme, Tom Doctoroff has provided us with his expert take on Chinese consumers and looks at how brands can reach a demographic obsessed by all things digital.
As always if you have anything you’d like to share, any comments, ideas or musings, then we’d love to hear from you.
Best regards,
Nick
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