John Drake

What Brands Are Considered "Stylish?"

I recently came across an interesting article on Media Post regarding which brands we considered to be most stylish in 1993 vs. which brands we consider to be most stylish today. It's not only interesting to look back with amazement at what we praised 16 years ago, but also to see what brands Americans consider to be most stylish today. The research was compiled from Landor's BrandAsset Valuator.

The 15 Most Stylish Brands

The article surrounding this list is a good read.

After thinking about this list further, a few additional things came to my mind...

1. We Have Evolved, My Friends. With the exception of Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein, in 1993, our most stylish clothing brands conveyed casualness and comfort. But today we want more depth, opinion and luxury when it comes to style. Furthermore, style now means "what you wear." In 1993, car brands made the list. Today, if it's not on your body, or an accessory, it doesn't enter the top realms of "most stylish." (And by the way, what's up with our apparent focus on the bottom half of our bodies in '93? Running shoes and pants make up nearly all our clothing selections.) 

2. Becoming Affordable for Everyone Don't Necessarily Remove a Premium Brand From Contention. Many of the premium brands listed as most stylish in 2008 have diversified their product lines to be accessible at lower price points: Donna Karan/DKNY, Vera Wang/Vera, Ralph Lauren/Chaps. One thing this list proves is that premium fashion brands can diversify themselves, move down-market, and still retain an overall image of high-style among the masses. 

3. Focus + Ongoing Refinement = Longevity. To remain on such a list over a long period of time, a brand must have a focused opinion while ever-evolving its delivery. On this point, I like the rock star analogy: Many of the all-time greats--U2, Madonna, Springsteen--have kept their core brand focused over the years but have evolved their delivery to remain relevant with pop culture. Brands are the same way... Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and Nike (the only three brands to make both lists) all stand for the same things today that they did in 1993, but their presentation over the last 16 years has continually evolved to remain current. 

Tips To Run A Brainstorming Meeting

I was flipping through the Wizard of Ads the other night and stumbled across a section that discussed brainstorming and how different personality types require different brainstorming techniques. It was good insight and made me recall some other good brainstorming tips I've picked up along the way...

Since we're at the beginning of the year when many brainstorming meetings are happening, it seems like a good time to do a post on the subject. 

Whether you call it a brainstorming, a work session or an idea session, agencies and marketing departments should look to embrace five things when gathering a group together to openly think and find new ideas:

1. The Leader Brings Kindling.  When you start a fire you need kindling wood. Brainstorming is no different. There must be some teed up ideas on the table for people to kick around first and debate with minimal effort. These ideas get people warmed up. This means the leader should bring at least one idea for each business challenge that needs discussing. They go first. This takes some courage but it gets things rolling and then keeps the meeting on pace for the duration.

2. Create a War Room. Think organized chaos. In the room should be a white board or large flip chart, a stack of blank pieces of white printer paper, markers, web access and a projection screen. Oh, and Red Vines. The leader should also have peppered the room with key stats & figures--things that may need to be referenced quickly to answer questions. (Also, I recommend not going off site; I've never noticed a difference in results from an on site meeting vs. an off site one. But I have noticed a difference in results between a well prepared room and an unprepared room. Far easier to prepare a room that's on site.)

3. Engage introverts beforehand.  Brainstorming sessions can be hell for introverts. Some people are simply not comfortable openly sharing ideas with a roomful of people. There are also people who can't come up with an idea in 10 seconds... but give them 24 hours to ponder the issues and they'll come in with brilliance. Per the Wizard, before the meeting, email/post an agenda of business challenges/topics to be covered to everyone who will attend. This will allow any introverts or ponderous thinkers to start beforehand. Doing this better ensures full participation from everyone.

4. Encourage bad ideas. I hate (yes hate) the phrase: "there are no bad ideas." Sure there are. The magic is when you create an environment where someone can volunteer their bad ideas and not think that everyone else will tag them with it for the rest of their career. Bring forth those bad ideas to the group and let someone else turn them into something workable. After all, if it came to mind in the first place, there's got to be some merit to it...

5. Focus on three or four great ideas.  In focus groups we recuit 8 people to get 4 or so great participants. During creative concepting we lay out 15 ideas to whittle down to 3. The same is true in brainstorming. A laundry list of ideas is, for the most part, unactionable. After the meeting the leader should identify only a handful of great ideas and immediately back out a plan to implement those. File the others away.

Competitiveness

When the University of Tennessee Volunteers beat Georgia late last week Pat Summitt became the first college coach in NCAA history to win 1,000 basketball games. Some of her other accomplishments: 8 National Championships, 18 Final Fours and 7-time Coach of the Year.

Summitt was interviewed on ESPN radio Friday. I caught the interview in passing but the excerpt I heard was excellent and I wanted to pass it along...

To be great, you have to be able to push your team to reach new heights. But teams are people. And people are different. So how do you know how far you can push each person to successfully maximize their skills?

You understand their level of competitiveness.

Summitt charts every player's degree of competitiveness. She does this through a questionnaire that all players complete. From this she knows how far she can push each player; who can take big pressure situations, and who cannot.

Agencies and marketing departments should look to screen for, and manage, the same trait. It's not just about talent and past accomplishments. Competitiveness makes you stay late, arrive early, take risks and truly push yourself until you get it right. And understanding competitiveness levels throughout an organization allows management to act like championship coaches: aligning specific talent to solve specific challenges.

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

I was recently shown this TED video by Sean and it's fantastic...

"If you're not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original."

Sir Ken Robinson delivers gems like that for 19 minutes and really makes you think about our treatment of education and how we so often do not welcome creativity into the process--all with no visual aids.

The talk is from 2006, but there's still active chatter happening on TED about it.

Enjoy.

Great Work

First, a Great Work posting in early February wouldn't be complete without some Super Bowl stuff. HULU had a hilarious spot. I would argue most Americans don't really know HULU yet, so a great mass introduction effort and good use of the medium. Monster had a fantastic ad for their rebuilt website... I must have seen hundreds of animal heads on walls throughout my life but never once thought about the backside. And I really enjoyed the way Pepsi made me think about them and Coke's continued message of happiness.

Kit Kat, in line with their "Take a Break" positioning, has created a website where nothing happens. I like this idea very much. Good find via Adverblog.

Stinky shoes and their solution. DDB New Zealand. Found on Coloribus.

Stinky market and its solution. Publicis New York. Found on Coloribus.

Digitas, Boston launched Kiss Me in 3D for P&G's Crest Whitestrips Advanced. The point: whitestrips so secure on your teeth you can kiss with them on. Very nice. 

JWT London had a cool approach for Rimmel Quick Dry Nail Polish. Refreshing to see something outside the pages of a magazine for this category. Found on advertising/design goodness.

This Economist outdoor piece was dug up on advertising/design goodness a few months ago but I never had a chance to post it up. BBDO NY is the agency.

Here's a pretty cool idea: for a photographer, how about slides transformed to be business cards? Agency: ohoho d.o.o., Zagreb. Found on advertising/design goodness.

Adverblog found a really cool site from Allstate and the Olympic Committee. The Flash work is worth the trip. 

Can't leave out Saatchi & Saatchi's great 2:30 piece for T-Mobile under the tag of "Life's for Sharing."

And finally, of course, is the latest from Cadbury, courtesy of Fallon London:

Brevity

This excellent social media post by Paul Isakson and the ongoing great posts at Influx and Seth's blog remind me, once again, about the importance of brevity.

Long has been our custom to praise long, complete works: Gone With The Wind, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, November Rain... (Big GnR fan here at Campaign Planning). But that's entertainment, not business. And I've come to the conclusion that it's of the utmost importance today to keep things concise when it comes to business. We say it, but we don't practice it enough.

Actually, being brief takes more effort than being long-winded.

I think Mark Twain stated this best...

One day, he received the following telegram from a publisher:

"Need 2 page short story in 2 days."

Twain's now famous reply:

"No can do 2 pages in 2 days. Can do 30 pages in 2 days. Need 30 days to do 2 pages."

In marketing we drone on and on... whenever we put together a point-of-view, give a presentation or voice our opinion during a meeting. And ironically, our key points are often lost somewhere in the middle.

Let's officially reverse the trend of looking at something short as something that's probably incomplete. Instead, let's think that if something is short and concise it might just have taken longer to create than something three times its length.

So the next time you find yourself--like me so often--tacking on another presentation page in PowerPoint or adding a fourth paragraph to an email, take some extra time, like Twain, and refine your points. And when you worry about leaving something out that's "fairly important," remind yourself of Sir Winston Churchill who sent the following note to one of his naval admirals one morning:

"Pray state this day on one side of a sheet of paper how Her Majesty's Royal Navy is being adapted to meet the conditions of modern warfare." 

If such a subject can be contained on one page, than surely, much of what agencies create for their clients can too.