Brand communication for 2014.

It’s the start of a new year and everyone’s sharing creative ideas around the globe. Here are some of the biggest findings plus a few ideas on how to go about working with them.

Authenticity in globalisation. To start with we need to infuse authenticity into the globalisation effect we are experiencing if we are to fulfill engagement potential with consumers who are clearly stimulated by both areas.

As creative people, we will be providing major focus on this to bring tangible qualities to the digital age.

Increasingly mindful of life style and substance, authenticity will become increasingly sought after by people in all walks of life as they seek to create their own strategies and ideas to deal with circumstances. Mixing traditional values with new thinking and consideration on a global level is a hot topic - ask any religious leaders.

Instant gratification isn't as effective anymore. Brands need to develop means of pre-gratification. I see this as a way to incorporate a more authentic and humanistic approach to overall brand communication and strategy rather than something to hit on in the short term.

At the heart of everything for me is love – it always will be. We're humans, not robots.

However, as markets become more aware of this and so more immune to this style of approach. Brands will need to convince the consumer of their empathy if they want to create and maintain meaningful connections that enable a continuous dialog of engagement.

Celebrating imperfections. Perfectly imperfect will prove to be bigger than ever this year. This creates a more authentic feel to brands and brings the type of tangible qualities needed for business, especially online, to thrive in the digital age. Check out our work for Stilton Butchers over the past few years to see this in effect. Our work has helped to create back to back record years for the company in several areas including the bottom line.

Two second communication; the world in pictures. I’m sure you don’t need to me to point out the we are communicating more than ever with pictures. A high level of creativity and understanding of this quick and direct form of communication is key. Consumers get things much faster using this strategy but be careful; they will dislike as quickly as like.

To summarise: Applying harmony and authenticity to creativity that is skilfully integrated in to our complex, globalised environment will help to provide the nourishment we crave as humans.

Brands that do this will win in 2014 - and way beyond.

Simon Bell.

Director at Sensation Creative.
www.SensationCreative.com

Screenager Love

Mobile, Mini Tablet, Tablet, Laptop, Desktop, TV, The Big Screen.

Welcome to the 'Screen Age' where we are all ‘screenagers’, virtually immune to distraction away from our interest onscreen.

In this world, advertising for business has become all but a brand awareness exercise for many. Ads fail to connect, people are disengaged and harder to reach. Anyone that tells you anything different is not speaking the truth.

Consider how many ads you were subject to yesterday. Depending on your environment it could be 100, 200, 300 even more.

Now ask yourself this: How many adverts do you remember from yesterday?

Think of just three.

Struggling? Have you become immune to most types of advertising - have you switched off? You're not alone.

Now think about your adverts wherever they may appear, online in print it doesn't matter. 

Take Facebook as an example. You might have 10 thousand, 50 thousand or 100 thousand likes on your page but what is the real engagement with your brand’s adverts in a business sense - to actually make money - be honest with yourself, this is where the journey begins.

The fact is money to the tune of billions each year is wasted on ads that fail to engage with their own potential let alone potential with the consumer mainly because business assumes that it's safe in the middle.

Brands that seek to address the issue of real engagement, not statistics that point out the quantity of traffic or where it's pushed from, will find value in creating truly meaningful connections with consumers. These are the brands that will create the highest revenue both now and in the future.

There is a real need to move beyond, 'Oh that's the new ad for X,Y or Z' to 'Wow, I need this in my life!' Brands need to create a movement.

Businesses that want to understand this will find loyalty and even love for their brands that goes beyond price point, beyond attribute, beyond reason. And this is the most powerful position for any brand. This change will not come from the safety of the middle where everything is average – it will come from the edge where all great ideas come from, just like natural evolution.

This is part of the future beyond brands.

It will takes guts, a leap of faith, call it what you will, but it will work and will get your brand in a better position in the heart and mind of the consumer than it currently occupies today. If you have kept up with Sensation Creative you will know our client’s are proof of this.

In 2014, stop being a slave of the ordinary. Start creating meaningful consumer-brand connections and start experiencing some screenage love for your brand in the era of now. 

www.SensationCreative.com

A Case Story: Stilton Butchers - Christmas Past, Present & Future

Case Story: The Special Editions

#1 Stilton Butchers, Christmas Past, Present and...

Christmas 2013 marks the third Christmas that Stilton Butchers have been a client of Sensation Creative. So what has happened in that time and how has our work helped?

We take a look at Christmas Past, Present and...

Our work began in September 2011. We took on an award winning business with the simple task of “making it even better”. 

Since this time we have completely re-branded the company which has included; creating the new logo, re-designed the website to provide a more welcoming feeling, created vehicle graphics and designed online social media content, in addition to originating very successful advertising campaigns across printed and digital media.

 The website prior to Sensation Creative (Left) and (Right) after.

During the period 2012 to 2013 despite the uncertain economic climate and massive supermarket competition our work helped to double the company's turnover.

Our 2012 Christmas advertising campaign which featured the poem entitled 'At Christmas Time' proved to be Stilton Butchers' most successful to date adding to the company's increasingly growing and loyal customers base.

Then this year after an incredibly summer,  in late November 2013, Stilton Butchers recorded there busiest, day-month-year since the online side of the business was set up 5 years ago. 

Stilton Butchers' new fleet livery is clean, adaptable and features
a simple, clever play on words 'Let's meat online'.

Stilton Butchers has become one of the iconic butcher brands which is respected and loved through out the UK by its customers. Many of these customers can often be found on the social networking site discussing their purchases and also sharing images of what they have achieved with the produce and their culinary skills!

This evidence supports the ultimate position for any brand: super evolving beyond trust to find love where it can really flourish and generate a type of loyalty that goes beyond rational thoughts and reason. 

Business seeks to grow and become more profitable. To our way of thinking this is achieved by creating more respect which hopefully leads to the ultimate for any brand; consumer love. This is the true measure of becoming ‘better’.

Understanding this and making it happen; this is the Sensation effect.

So that's Christmas past and present. And as for the future, well that’s still to be decided but it's looking pretty good...



If you like the sound of this case story and would like to see more of our favourite projects just like our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter.

www.SensationCreative.com

And then there's Google+

You can Google just about everything you want to find out in terms of research. You can blog from Blogger, a Google product, have a Gmail account. There's more - Google this, Google that.

And then there's Google+.

You know about it but how many people really use it. I've looked over this a few times and like many just can't get to grips with it. Technically it's brilliant and offers so much choice and integration and maybe that's the problem. Google deals with data and they're brilliant at dealing with it.

Big data helps them provide the brilliant search engine that we all love. The thing that makes the Google search engine so good and so attractive is the fact that it provides quick and easy access to just about everything you could ever want to know and more besides that you probably didn't. This is presented in a brilliantly simple way: A white screen with a Google logo and a search box.

More information than you can learn in one lifetime made irresistibly attractive by simplicity of interaction that the Google search page offers.

Surely Google should look at who, not what, they are designing Google+ for. Humans aren't programs that can be set up to harvest huge amounts of data in one go - this is stressful. Naturally we want to read between the lines and get to the point - we're curious, irrational beings after all. 

For most, great functional design for humans is the simplest way to fix a complex problem so to my mind Google+ could do with a massive simplify button. Get rid of everything that's in the way of close human interaction. Maybe this will help by letting people engage with each other a little easier online.

That was the original idea right?

www.SensationCreative.com

When brand love comes to town.

The effects of consumer behaviour towards brands and vice-versa is astounding. So when brand love comes to town you'd better be ready to understand it and what it means for your business.

The list is endless: People attach themselves to brands for many reasons from necessity to luxury indulgence. What I find incredibly interesting is what happens to the consumers mind when they attach themselves to a brand.

When brands are created specifically to tap in to areas such as mystery, sensuality and intimacy they stand a far greater chance of becoming not just respected but loved. Brands are loved for all types of different reasons and playing a part in people's lives to improve them is common reason to fuel a purchasing decision.

These days brands are also relied on to provide support in other ways; from helping to overcome global problems to helping people overcome tricky or difficult emotional circumstances - even when the specific circumstances seemingly have nothing to do with the brand itself. When a brand is being used in this way to engage with the consumer and successfully creates participation, it's clear that a strong emotional connection between the brand and the consumer exists.

This is all beyond the obvious 'on-the-tin' benefits and this is where brands are winning the hearts of the consumer as they get closer than ever to our lives and create emotional connections.

Indeed, emotional connections to brands can be so powerful that the only thing in common with a consumer-brand relationship could be that of the brand simply linking a set of relevant circumstances with the consumer for one particular moment in time.  The desired effect could be equally as simple; to create an enabler for the consumer to interact or deal with a situation in an easier way than they might otherwise have had the opportunity or thought to do so.

In many cases the result often ensures a means to end an internal emotionally based conflict, providing closure, streamlining and simplifying the consumer's life at the same time. These actions are beyond the boundaries of where a brand traditionally sits and offer a set of new, holistically structured, emotionally motivated rewards.

Looking at social media is a good example: Social media provides an accessible platform for brands and consumers to hook up and when this takes place an irresistible opportunity often arises for brands and consumers. In situations like this, brand love comes to town.

For the brand it's win, win. It creates a platform in the mind for the 'feel good factor' to thrive in and the chance of creating a stronger emotional bond with the consumer. For the consumer it's an enabler of participation in what can often be seen as 'the bigger picture'. It rewards consumers by enabling them to position themselves in a caring or responsible way with minimal effort, low risk and a perception of higher social standing.

This is good for consumer-brand relations because it gives the brand increased recognition within existing and potential markets. Crucially, for the consumer it provides a voice and opportunity for recognition on an even playing field and, at the same time creates an environment to help the consumer 'feel better' by rewarding her with warmth and empathy which of course are strongly linked to love.

Understanding this comes with a great deal of responsibility. Ensuring that Sensation Creative practice advertising techniques for our clients that are in line with ethical values is something that is very close to our heart.

As my old primary school teacher once taught me; 'It's nice to be important but it's more important to be nice'.

To my mind, the same can be said for brands.

Find out more at: www.SensationCreative.com 

The next generation needs our help, so let's inspire them.

I get asked lots of questions from students about the creative industry. Most of the time people ask me about design but occasionally I'm asked about other areas. These are from the people that want to be creative but in different areas. Therefore it's very hard for these young people to know how to ask the right questions or seek the right advice about possible careers.

This morning I received just such an email from a young person called Jack. He asked about graphic design. This would be a good area for him to study.

“Potentially as a job I would like to not design graphics but be creative in my own way. I'm sorry but it is hard to explain but an example of what I would like to do is me (be) given a few pictures, a title and text from my employer for a poster and i choose how to lay it out, what colours to use, what font etc.

I was wondering if choosing graphic design in college for me is a good idea and if not what would you advise? A response would be really appreciative.”

The answer about graphics is simple - 'Yes'. But there is much more to think about. I thought by sharing this it might help other people in a similar situation.

I replied:

“Hi Jack,

You know, firstly I wanted to do graphics so I got good at understanding what good graphics look like. Then, when I set up my first business I found out that to be really successful in this this industry you need to understand much more. Much more than they will ever teach you at school or college (your school and future college will not like me for saying this but it's true). Don't get me wrong, your schooling and college teaching is absolutely required to help provide a solid grounding to begin so please work hard in this area.

The creative industry is huge. It's not just about 'being a graphic designer'. These days consumers are faced with an overload of information - adverts are everywhere; TV, mobile, tablet, laptop, high street – you name it.

Try remembering 3 adverts you saw from yesterday. Most people I ask this question with struggle and I've not asked anyone your age before so you might be different. My point is this though; most advertising, which is produced by all different types of people in the creative industry, goes to waste. These days the thing that business that wants the most is the best IDEA.

You mentioned wanting to become successful in your own way. Well one of these ways is to be the person that comes up with ideas for TV / internet adverts and printed media / websites etc. These people are called 'advertising' and 'marketing people' - they create ideas that are in tune with the dreams of the consumer. These people work with designers in addition to other types of creative people and directly with clients.

There are some really good people to listen to on a global level for when you're ready. Perhaps the best person (for me at least) is a guy called Kevin Roberts. He is the World-Wide CEO of a company called Saatchi & Saatchi and he looks after a global creative team of over 5000 people over the world. You can YouTube him and listen to some of the stuff he talks about. I think that if you look in this direction you might find the inspiration and direction you're truly looking for.

I hope this helps you Jack. Good luck and don't ever be afraid to reach for the stars.”

Some people though want to head off in their own direction; coming up with powerful ideas that they have created themselves to help market brands and then combine them with graphic design they are also creating themselves to hopefully produce great advertisements.

www.SensationCreative.com

Table stakes aren't enough.

Bigger, brighter, whiter or faster. These are all table stakes – the minimum requirements. They might let you sit in the mix for a while but playing with table stakes alone is a dangerous long term business strategy. Brands need something more to create meaningful consumer relationships.

It’s not enough to market products at people based on table stakes alone. As we know, ‘yell to sell’ doesn't work and repetition is a turn off; it’s intrusive and borderline offensive which is an insult to our brains – ‘I didn't give a shit the first time around, so why would I care the second, third, forth etcetera’ kind of thing.

I know that sounds harsh but it's just what every consumer is thinking when you start pushing the same tech / products that everyone else pushing. So what are brands to do in the battle for attraction and to win the consumer over?

The pulling power that brands once took for granted has diminished. The supermarket’s own brands have keyed in to table stakes – they do the same stuff but without the premium. Our consumer is wise to this which has led to another problem; it’s killed marketing.

The traditional marketing they teach you at college has been surpassed. Yes, you will need to understand this first to understand what comes next – a bit like a history lesson.

The hype is over.

Just in case you missed it, this happened in the 90's. People don’t believe the majority of marketing hype – it’s all been done. The role of marketing is now about connecting our consumer with a product or service. And don’t worry about having to explain much - she is very savvy and capable of making up her own mind on your idea. The important thing is that she gets it and fast. Complex, long-winded processes aren't going to simplify her life and make it any better.

With brands that struggle to maintain their premium and marketing strategies that lead to intrusive advertising that no one wants, connecting with our consumer is more difficult than ever.

For example: How many ads do you remember from yesterday? Try remembering just three. Having trouble? Of course the reality is that you have in fact been subject to hundreds. And there’s another problem; people have become immune to advertising to the point where they simply switch off.

These days we need to be much more empathetic and creative. We need to inspire movements but we can’t do anything without engaging the consumer first. How do we do this?

Become irresistible.

In a world where virtually nothing is irreplaceable the trick is to become irresistible.

What is needed now are ideas that are able to connect with consumers emotionally. This helps to create purpose inspired movements and drive brand engagement through free will and choice. Understanding consumer engagement is complex and different for each brand. However, the fact is the consumer wants to be in charge, is in charge and has the power to pick and drop at will. We need to recognise and understand this.

Respect.

For a start we need to stop treating consumers as cash machines and start respecting them as humans. Shareholders and business people who are concerned by figures only will no doubt disagree. To them often the point of business in the first place is to create shareholder value. They’ll change there ideas eventually.

It’s important to hand over power to the consumer. I know, people in business like to be in control but we need to shift focus and here’s why.

When a product really connects with a consumer it becomes more than a ‘like’. You’re more likely to hear ‘I love’ that or this.

People that 'love' a brand for example (it could be anything else such as a product, service, place, football team) means that they are more likely to go beyond logical reason in order to pursue it. This is because it reaches beyond rational thoughts digging up irrational feelings associated with love as emotional behaviour.

Kevin Roberts, World Wide CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi calls these brands ‘Lovemarks’. Lovemarks are what Roberts terms as ‘The future beyond brands’. It’s when a brand super evolves to ‘create loyalty not for a reason but loyalty beyond reason’.

Love.

For something to be loved it needs to connect with us as humans.

Only the consumer can own love for a product or service. It can’t be owned by the brand, the business that owns the brand or the person that owns the business. This is why the consumer is in charge. We need to create brands that the consumer loves and for this to happen we need to consider what really connects with them.

So as mentioned previously brands need to forget trying to be irreplaceable and concentrate on becoming irresistible. To achieve this we need to understand consumer emotion.

We need to create purpose inspired ideas that understand the consumer and taps in to her dreams. Brands need to be infused with emotions that create mystery, sensuality and intimacy – what all humans crave. Only then will the consumer want to connect and fully engage with your brand.

Ideas that connect with consumer emotions go way beyond table stakes. They inspire movements and connections. They create long term brand engagement that lead to the ultimate for any brand: Human LOVE.

A Lovemark example.

Apple is a good brand example of a this; they never have sales, people queue up over night in the cold in advance of their product launches.

This isn't the type of behaviour usually associated with humans and technology. The Apple product can't love back so this is a para-social relationship made possible only by an understanding how to connect with humans on an emotional level and this in turn creates the ultra strong consumer-brand relationship or Lovemark.

Anyone can put an idea on some paper. In truth though it takes a lot more to create and execute an idea that is capable of cutting through the overload of information to deliver a meaningful, memorable connection.

This is why ideas are the principal currency today.

In as fewer words as possible, this is what I have learned about consumer brand relationships through the work that Saatchi & Saatchi World-Wide CEO Kevin Roberts has done. It has enabled me to create and position brands very effectively in a multitude of industries.

Sensation Creative have some very interesting brands currently being worked on at the moment which I think are going to change a few rules locally, nationally and (it’s about time!) globally. Look out for these starting in November this year and heading in to what’s looking like being a massive year for Sensation Creative in 2014.

www.SensationCreative.com