Yes, the world IS listening when you blog...

And here's the proof, courtesy of Naked Wines' Twitter feed. Got my wine today, as promised. In a box with 'cheers' on the top, and a drive back to their website, I might add. Very nice.

I'll spare you the essay today, for there is wine to be dr...

 

It's not the thought that counts. It's the words.

Amazon.co.uk know me too well. My last purchase was accompanied by a £40 voucher enticing me to buy wine from online retailer Naked Wines, and sure as hell, I was on the site before you can say "Sauvignon blanc".

After a bit of perusal, I left - unconvinced that I should buy before reaching the end of the month with spare cash. After that, I forgot all about it. Until this email.

Hi Jane,

Would you like us to sort your wine out for you?

We noticed that you popped some wine in your basket, tried to check out and never quite made it. Oh dear!

Whatever the reason...

Do you need some wine?

If so, just click here to reply to this email with a phone number that suits you and we will make sure you go thirsty no longer!

If you don't mind, it would also help us to know what the problem was:

• Did you have any "technical issues"? If so, please tell us because there's nothing we love more than winding up our techies!
• Did you get distracted? If so, we'll call you back at a convenient time and promise you will have our full attention!
• Or is this internet lark just all a bit out there for you? If so, don't worry! We'll sort everything over the phone.

If you just couldn't decide what to go for, the Naked Angel Case is a great place to start!

Just £74.99 these are a selection of our best wines with a retail value of over £100. Click here to check out this case.

If there is anything you want to ask me, you can write on my Wall at www.nakedwines.com/rowan

Best wishes,

Rowan, Founder

Now, I get so many pushy 'sales' emails from companies various, it's rare that I even open one - let alone read it. But I just LOVED this approach. I love the simplicity and directness of the headline. The way it doesn't try too hard - holds something back for the bodycopy. I think it's incredibly clever. The way it uses humour, colloquialisms and a friendly tonality without being nauseating, desperate or fake. I like the sense you get from the email about the company's values - the comment 'we love winding up our techies' and 'write on my wall' all suggest this is a laid-back, sociable place where corporate dryness is rejected in favour of having some fun. 

And when you're selling wine, that's kind of important, isn't it? Great wine is no longer the domain of the terribly civilised upper-middle-class dinner party. And even if it were, that market, too, is changing with the times. Wine is hip, accessible and interesting. But it's still something special and relatively pricey which we buy a bottle or two at a time, and only when we can afford it. This is the hurdle these online wine retailers have to jump.

Without cheapening the product itself, this kind of marketing cleverly trivialises the act of buying wine, in bulk, and online. After all, I 'just popped some wine in my basket' and 'didn't quite make it' to the payment stage. Naked Wines have almost convinced me that I didn't, in fact, think better of it - but that I somehow lost my way. Of course, I can see through it - but that doesn't matter. It did make me visit the site again. At which point I reconsidered and bought. After all, Rowan's such a nice chap. Helpful. And I did like the look of his website. Plus heck, I've got a voucher...

...And THAT, children, is what successful integrated marketing is all about.

Values and points values

A wee while back, I had a year's stint as a Corporate Writer at Slimming World. One of my most powerful impressions of the company while I worked there was the way in which virtually all its staff (the majority women) were totally head-over-heels in love with the company. Tears of joy were shed at whole-company meetings (including by the MD) and sometimes even during training sessions. And there was more than one staff member who had been with the company for 35 years or more. When we talk about 'genuine passion' for your work, these people had it. It wasn't marketing fluff. I mean, they really had it - in spades. 

Having come from a very laid-back agency, working on a very masculine brand (Audi) alongside quite a few sarcastic blokes, this was a complete culture shock. I couldn't work it out. Did this company have some kind of mind-control system in place? Or were sentimentality and emotional attachment simply a natural tendency amongst a largely female workforce? Either way, I couldn't understand what made these people care SO utterly passionately about what they did for a living and why – without a London presence, TV advertising and international renown – Slimming World was overtaking its world-renowned rival, Weight Watchers. 

Yesterday I think I clicked.

In the name of an excessively fun summer (10lbs worth!) and genuine curiosity, I went to a Weight Watchers meeting (traitor!). I chose it over Slimming World because I wanted a change, and because it's a 25 minute walk from my house. Bonus calorie-burning! Having spent the last year immersed in branding, it became immediately obvious to me what Slimming World's secret ingredient was all along. Their amazingly strong values. Quite old-fashioned ones, actually - based on mutual respect, politeness, empathy and kindness. Nevertheless, very powerful, infectious values that differentiate them from their slightly more 'corporate' competitors at Weight Watchers.

Despite their recent efforts to 'warm up' their image, Weight Watchers still have that feeling of dry 'aloofness' about them. It's not necessarily a bad thing because clearly, its renown and proven efficacy attracts millions of people every year. But this kind of brand doesn't win love and loyalty. Slimming clubs rely on those successful, vocal, dedicated members who come along week after week to inspire fledgling slimmers. They are the spokespeople for the brand, and without them, these weekly pow-wows in community halls and schools up and down the UK wouldn't be what they are.

Sitting there last night, I watched member after member come in, get weighed and then leave. £4 to stand on some scales? Of course, people do have the option to stay to the group talk - but many chose not to; and those who didn't weren't encouraged to do otherwise.

Slimming World has created quite a different kind of beast, where members get a kick out of the way the experience of Slimming World as a whole (not just its impact on their weight) makes them feel. Indeed, the company's 'Love food, love Slimming World' campaign is a blatant, if crude, way of marketing Slimming World as the Apple, Virgin or Innocent of the dieting industry. 

Weight Watchers, conversely, seems to be held up purely by the strength of its reputation and their financial investment in marketing and member resources. 

In any business, customers will come and go as a fact of life; but it's the strength and infectiousness of your values which creates the emotional attachment that keeps those long-term spokespeople committed. It's also proof that the way you behave internally as a company has a massive impact on how you come across as a brand - something I've talked about in previous blogs on the quality of staff training at Virgin and McDonalds. In wonder how these two weight-loss companies will fare against each other in 10 years. Time will tell.

Question is, does tapping away about brand values and slimming clubs burn calories? Here's hoping!

Our first DBA Award and its a gold one!

I was at the DBA Awards last night with Micahel and our client Simon Egan from BeWILDerwood. It as held at the Mermaid theatre and they promised us a Champagne reception and a mercilessley brief ceremony.

And they delivered on both counts. The Champagne was genuinely flowing and there wasn’t any of the usual scramble for the few glasses being paraded round. At the end there was even more Champagne and then a bottle for each consultancy too. Perhaps that’s why I have a headache now.

And then the night got better when or work for BeWILDerwood was announced as a gold winner, which took us all by surprise.

There were 52 winners overall, with only 12 getting gold and it puts us in some pretty big company of the great and the good in our industry.

This is us posing by or winners board.




The Solo Star disposable pen injector, by DCA Design International won the Grand Prix and Elmwood won agency of the year again for their continued exceptional results based work. Is there a year when they haven’t won it?

You can see the design Week article here, but the DBA haven’t updated their website yet.

Updated
The DBA have now updated their site which you can see here

And you can see our category here

I'm lovin' the copywriting!

Back at the tender age of 18, if you'd have told me that one day I'd be writing a blog praising McDonalds, I'd have laughed. Actually, I'd probably have cried, assuming that if this were the case, I must be destined to fail my degree and remain trapped forever in my student job on the drive-thru. And end up actually enjoying it. 

Having said that, this was by far the best part-time job I'd had. I walked out of my waitressing job in tears thanks to a rotund witch of a supervisor. And prior to that, I'd stormed out of Safeway in abject rage after going out of my way to help an elderly customer, only to be publically reprimanded by another power-hungry fatty for stepping away from my till without permission (the corporate term was 'Controllers' – can you believe?) With brand values like theirs – all too obvious when you worked there – it's no surprise Safeway eventually faded away to nothing. 

Compared to this, McDonalds was a breath of fresh air (ironic, considering that I never could wash the smell of chip fat out of my uniform). The company has always been renowned for an incredibly effective staff training system - one that demands fairness, respect and equality between staff members and rewards good performance. You can knock McDonalds for a lot of things – but having witnessed the operation of the brand from the inside, I can see why they are so successful as a business. They were on the anti-corporate bandwagon long before our friends at Innocent and Virgin; and while they have made mistakes over the years, they have never been too proud to learn from them and put things right.

Ever since they were slandered by the docu-film 'Supersize Me', they have fought back with true insight and guts. Most impressively and bravely, I think, in Leo Burnett's latest round of TV ads - where some incisively observed recreations of a typical day's custom at McDonalds are accompanied by poetic voiceover. Slightly absurd in theory, but exceptionally effective in reality. In the space of 30 seconds, they identify and endear the vast majority of their audience. The white-van guys who come in at 6am, the gherkins-removers, the dad and his kids, the hen party. Not the inventions of an ad agency, but the real experience of anyone who works at - or indeed visits - a McDonalds. I wouldn't be surprised if they'd done a lot of research with stores in order to capture the reality of their brand so accurately.

Of course, it's always great to see a brand using copywriting to powerful effect; but to take it one step further and make the increasingly outdated art form of poetry into an effective, emotive and thoroughly modern marketing tool takes some balls. Moreover though, it's the closeness to their target market, combined with the very real promises made by these adverts, that impresses me. The experience of visiting a McDonalds is shared by billions. And as the adverts show, it's nothing particularly mind-blowing - but it does have behaviours, quirks and a culture all of its own: one that has worked itself firmly into the public consciousness. 

Capitalising on those shared human truths is the hallmark of all the great 'Lovebrands'. With such a huge weight of cynicism to whittle away, McDonalds may not be - or ever be -  one of those quite yet; but they're doing a darn good job of trying.

Agency: Purple Circle. Client: The Hoods. Media: Skin.

The Roses and Cream Awards nominations are one thing…but how many agencies can say their client loved a logo design SO much that they decided to have the thing tattooed on their forearm?

Well, it’s certainly a first for us! Check out the video below – specially commissioned for the big event.

Lee – the founder of Nottingham’s first basketball club – fully admits that The Hoods has become something of an obsession for him over the past year. His fire and ambition to create something truly worthwhile for the young people of Nottingham is contagious – so much so that Purple Circle is off to the Wildcats Arena later today for a battle – ahem – team-building training session all of our own.

To find out more about The Hoods and upcoming games or to get yourself a branded hoodie (no transfer tattoos available yet though…), visit www.hoodsbasketball.com.

Brand identity - the diamond standard

Remember when lovely, wholesome River Island went all chavvy back in the late 90s/early 00s? I felt cheated and I wasn't the only one. More recently, New Look did it too. They'd gone from cheap and nasty to affordable and really rather cool. I couldn't get enough of the stuff...Then, alas, back again to the cheap and nasty stuff again about 18 months ago. What a shame. It smacks to me of a brand that doesn't even know itself, let alone its market. 

However, where there is darkness, there's always light just a few doors down. T'other day, on a thrifty birthday shopping trip with my (broke) boyfriend, we paid a little visit to that girly Aladdin's den of pretty things, Accessorize. And having left with a great stonking sparkler of ring (£10), complete with a totally beautiful little box, it struck me how bloody brilliant Accessorize (and Monsoon, their sister company) actually is. 

Ever since the brand emerged in the 90s, their values have always remained clear and firm - despite the waves of ridiculous fads that have come and gone in the meantime. They're a brand you can rely on. A brand that defines affordable quality. One that has taken 'ethnic' and made it timelessly appealing. It's not just tie-dye and mirrors. It's mouthwateringly lovely embroidery, fabulous sparkly beading and bright, feminine colours; brilliant, alluring point-of-sale; a sense that you're getting something special yet disposable (yes, I'd be gutted if I lost my new spangly ring, but it won't be the end of the world and I'll be relieved it didn't cost £100).

Monsoon is just the same - a haven of classic shapes, rich colour, unusual patterns and pretty fabrics in a world where metallic, leapord-print leggings and shapeless neon tops appear to have overtaken most shops' clothing rails (and, dare I say, sense). 

In the fashion game, there's a fine balance between sticking to what you know and becoming staid or unexciting. Monsoon-Accessorize hits it, right on the silk-embroidered button.