Tag: positioning

Advertising campaigns need to be integrated across the organisation

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Recently I wrote a post about my experiences when I called the number on a billboard selling a luxury automotive brand. You can read the full article here

Basically I talked about how I rang this brand after seeing a billboard outside my office. I got through to the receptionist who asked for my number and said she would get someone from sales to call me back. Nobody called me back, even though the car costs about RM500,000 (US$166,000)! I thought this was an excellent example of why so many brands fail. But I didn’t think much more about it.

Then today I was sitting at a traffic light outside Bangsar Shopping Complex and I saw the same company had another billboard, this time it was advertising their jaw dropping top of the range V10 sports car that costs over RM1,250,000 (US$420,000) in Malaysia. Now this really is an exclusive motor and in the middle of last year there were orders for about 240 of them in the UK and a waiting list of 12 months. If they are only selling 250 odd in the UK I would expect them to sell no more than 50 in Malaysia. So you have to question why they market such an exclusive product on a billboard.

But this is not a rant about using old mass market mass economy models to sell luxury brands, this is about the fact that it is imperative that marketing campaigns are integrated and organisational excellence is at the heart of any tactical campaign.

And I know it isn’t at the heart of this campaign because whilst waiting for the lights to change I decided to call the number on the billboard and see what sort of a response I would get.

I called the number. No answer. Now it was 5.17pm and perhaps the receptionist has gone home. But I doubt the sales team had gone home. I bet they were sitting around wondering how to drive traffic to the showroom so they can make target this month and get a nice juicy bonus for Chinese New Year. Perhaps at least one of them might have been wondering why the expensive outdoor campaign they’ve been running for some time hasn’t generated any results!

I’ve tried to go and see these guys but the marketing manager tells me they are doing well. Here are some basic principles to abide by when you run an advertising campaign so that when you are doing well, you can do better.

1) You advertise on billboards to stimulate, inform, persuade etc. If you want to inform perhaps a 100 people in the country about a luxury product, spending large amounts of money on billboards or for that matter print ads in daily newspapers, is a complete waste of marketing dollars.
2) Consumers who can afford to spend over 1 million Ringgit on a car are unlikely to keep to your office hours. Make it easy for them to spend money with you.
3) Your advertising copy should appeal to a specific audience – in this case, those who can afford over RM1,250,000 on a car – everyone else is just getting in the way. So create copy that will resonates with that target market. This ad just mentioned the engine capacity and that was it! Ever wondered why mini does so well?
4) Develop metrics for measuring channel effectiveness. A simple metric for outdoor ads is a specially assigned number for that campaign.
5) Outdoor advertising is 24 hours. That’s probably one reason why you bought it in the first place! If you can’t have someone on standby 24 hours a day, install an answering machine or after office hours have calls diverted to a sales manager or sales director.

These are elementary and should be included in any strategy document created by a brand consultant.

Is a traditional marketing campaign going to sell motor oil?

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Petronas is Malaysia’s state-owned energy provider and it is the only Malaysian company to be listed in the FORTUNE Global top 500 companies.

Its lubricants division, Petronas Lubricants International (PLI) in association with M&C Saatchi has recently launched a global brand campaign for its flagship product Syntium. M&C Saatchi is responsible for the creation and development of the overall campaign.

The campaign features a 30-second TV commercial that is currently being aired across Astro and Malaysian terrestrial TV channels, radio, print ads and digital initiatives although a quick search of ‘Petronas Syntium’ on Facebook and twitter uncovered zero activity.

And of course, as with any traditional creative driven campaign, there will be lots of below-the-line collaterals.

Costing only about US$350,000 (RM1,000,00) which includes production costs and execution, the campaign has launched in Malaysia and will be pushed out across PLI’s key markets including China, Thailand, Italy, South Africa, India and more. It’s not known if that amount includes the campaign execution across all countries.

M&C Saatchi states that ‘the new Syntium brand campaign was produced using state-of-the-art CGI animation with the core message of the ads reflecting PLI’s fresh approach towards knowledge and technology – Fluid Technology Solutions’.

Do consumers still pay attention to traditional campaigns like this one that haven’t really changed since the 1960s? I know it includes social media but there doesn’t appear to be much going on online. So it’s a yet more noise and clutter to add to the deafening noise consumers are ignoring.

Although I haven’t seen any of the TVC’s, print ads or heard the radio ads I’m sure they will be very well executed and the cutting edge CGI animation will blow me away but the question has to be, will it sell more oil?

I value your comments and thoughts on this issue.

Why are you still using positioning to build a brand?

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Back in the late 1960s, Al Ries and Jack Trout published their first article on positioning. But the term didn’t really become advertising jargon until the articles entitled “The Positioning Era”, were published in Advertising Age in the early 1970’s.

You can read the original articles here

There are numerous definitions of what positioning is today (Google ‘what is positioning’ and you get 24,900,000 responses). Even wikipedia isn’t sure but anyway you can read their definition here

But in today’s marketplace, positioning has multiple problems. Here are 11 reasons why you shouldn’t use positioning to build your brand:

1) Positioning was developed for the US mass market of the 1970’s. Is the Malaysian market similar to the US market? I don’t think so. The Malaysian market isn’t even similar to the Singapore market and they used to be the same country! And Thailand has little in common with Indonesia and so on. So why use the same model here?

2) In a smaller, flatter more competitive world, advertising agencies have used increasingly desperate and outrageous claims in their advertising to position products in the consumer mind. In Malaysia, Proton uses ‘You’ll be amazed’ to describe it’s MPV. I’m sure it is a good car but if it will amaze me, how will a Lamborghini make me feel? Consumers have been carpet-bombed with such claims for so long that now, they rarely take any notice of traditional advertising.

3) Positioning is only suitable for mass markets. Yet branding today is about segmentation and communicating and engaging with those segments via relevant channels and with messages that resonate specifically with those segments or niche markets. It’s also about retention and relationships. Does this mean that a company should develop different positioning for different niches? Or does it use the same approach for every niche? And does it use the same approach for existing customers as well as prospects?

4) Positioning is immeasurable: You can’t say “our positioning has improved our sales by 5 % or as a result of our positioning strategy, our brand is 12% better than competitors. Furthermore, it is impossible to measure the ROI or benchmark positioning.

5) The wikipedia definition is a top-down, company knows best, hierarchical marketing approach. Yet we live in a C2C environment in which consumers define brands.

6) Positioning is one-way. The company knows best and you must listen to us. We tell you how our products are positioned and you will accept what we tell you. But today, if you are not entering into 2 way conversations with consumers you are about to join the brand graveyard. Today, consumers get any information they want on anything from anywhere at anytime and then make their own decisions.

7) Positioning is competition, not customer driven. The basic premise of positioning is that you want to be number 1 or number 2 in a category in a prospect’s mind. If you can’t be number 1 or number 2 in an existing category because of competition, you make your own category. In today’s congested marketplace, the investments required to develop a new category are enormous. Furthermore, besides the difficulty and expense of creating your own category, you are also letting your marketing be driven by the competition rather than consumer demands for value. This means you are always playing ‘catch-up’.

8) Positioning is dated. With limited competition (by today’s standards) in most categories, positioning was a compelling theory. The problem is that the world has changed a little since 1969. Yet agencies continue to recommend positioning as the foundation for any brand strategy.

9) Positioning uses mass market channels such as TV and billboards to reach as many consumers as possible using repetition to create interest. Yet ask yourself, what do you do when the commercials come on TV? Surf the Internet? Put the kettle on? Go to the bathroom? Text a friend? Basically, you do anything but watch the commercial. How many TV commercials can you remember seeing over the weekend? It’s the same with billboards. How many billboards can you remember from your morning commute? And even if you remember those commercials or billboards, how many of the brands have you explored and purchased?

10) Positioning requires massive, and I mean massive budgets that few companies have. If you do have a massive budget and you do execute your campaign across multiple channels for say six months, what happens if it doesn’t work?

11) To use a sporting analogy, in the early 1970s, professional tennis players were still playing with wooden racquets. Soon after the first non-wood racquets appeared. These were initially made of steel, then aluminium and after that, carbon fiber composites. Today’s racquets include titanium alloys and ceramics. As technology has broken new ground, the tools have improved. It is the same in every Industry yet when it comes to building brands, we’re expected to use the same technology and tools as we have been for the last forty years.

If your agency recommends developing a positioning strategy to build your brand politely show them the door and call us!

In a social media world, should an advertising agency be responsible for your brand?

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CEOs need to accept that in a crowded, dynamic, mobile market place, their brand is too important for a traditional approach to marketing. It is time to stop wasting funds on one off campaigns that are not even noticed, let alone remembered.

If you advertise in a daily newspaper or on TV, ask yourself which ads you remember from yesterday’s paper or on TV last night. Be honest. I doubt it is many. Personally I remember the ads from the Sunday paper (today is Tuesday morning) because I was stunned at how many pages were purchased on behalf of supermarkets and hypermarkets having a ‘cheap off’ on baked beans, grapes and cases of beer. And even if you remember the ads, how many of them have you interacted with? And of those how many have you purchased?

Sample ads of Malaysian hypermarkets. Take a look at the Cold Storage and Giant ads and see if you can spot how they put down their competitors. Let me know in the comments section and I’ll buy you a drink in KL if you get it right!

There is nothing wrong with these ads and I am sure they are effective, although I would be interested to know what metrics are used to measure effectiveness. I hope it isn’t CPM.

But in the 21st century, an era of smart phones, social media, increased leisure time activities and abundant choice, firms must understand that a traditional mass economy, mass media approach to communications with its one-size-fits-all campaign driven focus on tactical initiatives such as billboards, print ads, TVCs and so on is not the answer to brand building which is a strategic initiative driven by consumers and based on delivering economic, experiential and emotional value to those consumers and on their terms.

Despite extensive global research by firms such as McKinsey that proves the decision making process is now more about providing economic, experiential and emotional value, advertising agencies and some brand consultants who should know better, continue to talk about positioning products in the consumer’s mind. It’s like nothing has changed since the 1970s when Al Ries first developed the term!

But if you ask an advertising agency to build a brand you’d be a fool to think you will get anything other than a creative campaign. it might be packaged as something else but that is all it will be. Why? Because advertising agencies make money out of creating advertisements. That’s the business they are in.

It is up to CEOs to understand that they have to take an interest, indeed responsibility for the brand and ensure CMOs and brand departments take social media and more engaged communications in a social media world seriously. And this will have to be done in a much more dynamic and fluid manner.

In the past a series of full page ads in daily newspapers or a number of prime time TVCs was generally sufficient to build brand awareness. Many consumers would actually watch a commercial and take a note of the brand and where they could purchase it. Those consumers would then go to the store, look for it and buy it. If it was unavailable they would take time out to come back again and again until they could make a purchase.

Today those same consumers don’t bother taking note of the brand names because they’re carpet bombed with messages throughout the day, every day. Many of those messages are making outrageous claims or are totally irrelevant to them. They’ve been let down so many times by those claims that they now ignore them completely. And because consumers have so much choice and so many information channels, they don’t need to pay attention to messages broadcast via mass media any more.

Now consumers just block out those messages and instead use social media and other tools where they inhabit communities that they relate to and trust, to seek information.

I’ve mentioned this before, the first TVCs consisted of a man standing in front of a microphone reading from a script. Why? Because that was how it was done on radio. Right now firms are at the digital equivalent of standing in front of that microphone.

The Maldives is ‘rebranding’. Why?

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I read here that the Maldives is starting a major rebranding initiative. The republic of the Maldives is an island nation in the Indian Ocean and consists of about 26 atolls with about 1,200 islands spread over approximately 90,000 square kilometers. Of those islands, about 200 are inhabited.

Its area and population of 300,000 make it one of the smallest Asian countries. It is also the lowest country in the world and at 2.3 metres above sea level, it is also the country with the lowest highest point.

Fortunately for the Maldives, it has some of the most stunning beaches on the planet and an ideal climate, all year round sunshine and beautiful calm seas have helped make the republic a popular destination.

You may recall the horrific images of death and destruction caused by the Tsunami in 2004. Despite the harrowing scenes and negative publicity after the Tsunami in 2004, the country has seen a steady increase in arrivals and 2009 saw arrivals surpass the pre Tsunami total of 500,000 visitors in 2003. Indeed, arrivals for 2009 were an all time high of almost 700,000. The main countries of origin for tourists to the Maldives are the UK, Italy, China, France, Germany, and Japan.

And there has been little negative reaction to the recent public relations disaster when an European couple were humiliated by hotel staff who were asked to bless their marriage. Probably because an apology to the couple was almost immediate and other fallout was handled confidently and quickly by authorities.

With limited natural resources, tourism and fishing have become the two key industries although the country does have a thriving cottage industry consisting of activities such as handicrafts and lacquer work.

Currently tourists spend most of their time in private bungalows in self-contained tourist resort islands designed specifically for tourism. Only one resort can be constructed on an island and the maximum built-up area of any resort island is limited to 20% of the land area and the building heights is not allowed to be higher than vegetation levels. Only 68% of a beach length can be utilised for guestrooms, 20% of each resort island beach is reserved for public use and 12% is classed as open space areas.

With such a fragile ecosystem, efficient waste management is vitally important and new resorts must install their own wastewater treatment plants, bottle crushers, incinerators and compactors. Sewerage disposal through soak-pits into the aquifer is no longer allowed. New resorts are also required to install desalination plants and this has substantially reduced the stress on ground water supplies.

The Maldives are seen by many to be the role model for sustainable tourism and it is such planning, strict environmental controls and policies that have ensured the Maldives retain their mystique.

When not in the resorts, most tourists spend time relaxing on private beaches, swimming, snorkeling, diving, fishing and boating. Sightseeing and visits to markets and local artisans in Male the capital are also popular.

So it would appear the Maldives, so to speak, is in a good place. It is managed efficiently, it is a role model for many countries, it has a thriving tourism business that works because of the policies and systems and processes put into place to protect the industry, it handles crises effectively and is probably in the top ten of most people’s ‘must go to destinations’ so you could be forgiven for thinking, “If it ain’t broke, why fix it?”

Thoyyib Mohamed, Minister of State for Tourism in the Maldives aims to “position the Maldives as the must-see destination of our time for all travelers.”

A recent press release goes on to state, “The (rebranding) initiative will focus on enhancing the positioning of the nation’s tourism product, strengthening its image in established key source markets while broadening its appeal to wider audiences and emerging niche markets.”

I’m not privy to just how many visitors the Maldives can take without breaking that fragile infrastructure and I don’t know what the targets are but I am fairly confident that broadening its appeal to wider audiences and niche markets may result in an increase in the number of arrivals. Even another 100,000 visitors, an increase of around 15% will put a tremendous strain on these beautiful islands and in addition to the added pressure on the environment and infrastructure these new arrivals will obviously bring, they may also cause social and cultural problems.

I would hazard a guess that the Maldives are known to most people who travel abroad for leisure. I also think it will be practically impossible to ‘enhance the image’ of what is for many an already perfectly enhanced image. And trying to position the country and creating awareness of the destination amongst those that don’t know the country will be a costly exercise that may do little more than waste valuable resources. Something no country can afford to do.

I recommend the Maldives focus on these 5 key areas

1) Retention. What does it need to do to get people to visit again?
2) Share of wallet. What does it need to do to get more out of visitors?
3) Instead of using outdated mass economy approaches like positioning, leverage the power of social media. There are numerous sites on Facebook about the Maldives but none seem to be managed.
4) If new markets are pursued, chose them carefully, only after extensive brand research. And go after them with a strategic plan that engages relevant communities in those countries and again, not via traditional media.
5) I just realised how good this point is so I have to keep it for a destination we’re working with, sorry!

How to build a brand in Asia today

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Building brands has evolved from the one dimensional, top down era where the company controlled the relationship and essentially managed that relationship using broadcasts across mass media such as TV, Out of Home, print and radio with messages and content created to tell you what the company wanted you to know into the bottom up, customer economy.

In the bottom up customer economy, brands and their success or failure are defined and determined by customers. Those customers will create content and messages and disseminate that content and those messages across multiple platforms and to communities who are interested in their opinions. Now, how you interact with consumers is on their terms.

This is not revolution, simply evolution in the branding space. Brands are to blame for this loss of control because they have consistently misled consumers or over promised and under delivered. Brands can no longer be built using one-size-fits-all messages broadcast across traditional media channels to anyone who will listen. Basically because no one is listening.

Sure, there is still a place for messages, campaigns, and so on but because there are so many sources of information, so much clutter, these messages don’t have the impact or influence they had 20 or 30 years ago. In the digital age you can spend as much as you want on traditional media and reach everyone in the country but if they are not listening they won’t buy your product or service.

If a brand wants to be successful it must learn to communicate with multiple segments, and messages must be targeted and must be dynamic, using content and channels that resonate with those segments. But brands must move away from the traditional demographic approach to researching those segments. After all, how many 15 – 24 communities are there on Facebook? And content must constantly be revised and updated with new content.

And organizations must ensure that they deliver on promises and that promise must deliver economic, experiential and emotional value to each of those multiple segments. In the consumer business, this is most often done, initially anyway, in the store. Because in the customer economy, no matter how much you spend, if your staff don’t know how to build rapport with your prospects then they may buy once but rarely will they become a loyal customer. And without loyal customers, you won’t have a brand.

So if you are looking to build a brand, forget about reach, awareness, positioning and brand equity and trying to be all things to all people and start thinking about delivering value to specific segments and building customer equity.

How to brand a city like Ipoh

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Senior Executive Councillor Datuk Hamidah Osman of The Perak state government in Malaysia announced on a trade and investment mission to China recently that the state government, in an effort to boost its tourism industry, intends to brand Ipoh, the capital of Perak as the “City of White Coffee”.

Datuk Hamidah was quoted by Bernama “ Perak should have its own identity and branding just like Shenzhen that is known as the “Shoe City” and Paris which has long been known as the “City of Fashion”.

In conjunction with the plan, Datuk Hamidah said, “We plan to have a food fair to be held in Ipoh this December. The idea is to promote the local foods and tourism industry. We have the best bean sprout chicken rice and chee cheong fun (rice rolls),” she added.

Faced with increased domestic and international competition for both tourists and FDI, there is no doubt that Ipoh and Perak, need to develop a destination brand. But that brand must be based on a platform of multiple tourist attractions and business potential.

Set amongst picturesque limestone scenery, a diverse selection of tourist attractions include Kellie’s Castle, Perak Museum, Ipoh railway station, Tambun hot springs, Taiping lake gardens and Zoo, and more, Ipoh and the rest of the state have a lot to offer.

Other destinations include Pangkor and Pangkor Laut, Bukit Larut and others. Perak also has a rich heritage that can be promoted, including silver and tin mining. It is historically known as an innovator, having pioneered such advances as the first rubber trees in Malaysia and was also the first state in Malaysia to go wireless.

The tagline ‘City of white coffee’ certainly differentiates Ipoh from other destinations but what else does it tell potential visitors, businesses or investors? How can stories be developed around the tagline, who are the target market? How will it be communicated? If it is a one-size-fits all approach, it’ll need significant resources to communicate the new tagline. Have budgets been agreed and so on?

Today, Destination branding is not based on a tagline. Destination branding must be based on experiences that are successfully delivered to specific segments and not based on attempts to market all places to all people.

Research and data are critical to understand tourist and other stakeholder requirements before developing strategies and not the other way around.

Stakeholder buy-in is critical for brand consistency and fulfillment of the brand promise. As an example, how can a hotel contribute to the proposed approach? How can the same hotel leverage the approach to grow it’s business?

Branding is a long term coordinated and integrated strategic exercise and not a tagline. One-size-fits-all strategies using mass media are no longer effective.

Planning is essential to coordinate initiatives, ensure accountability and avoid wasting resources. Without a plan, activities will be reactive and tactical.

What Ipoh and other cities need is a consistent and organized methodology to brand themselves as domestic and international destinations.

Here is one approach that would definitely help Ipoh:

Stage one: Carry out extensive research
Research develops data on key success factors, generates insights and what current and prospective visitors seek, and provides benchmarks to measure branding ROI. The research should consist of the following activities

1) Destination analysis: Key members of the hotel industry, government bodies, local business associations and representatives of major attractions should be confidentially interviewed. The interview will be based on an agenda designed to explore a number of issues related to the city

2) Visitor audit: Carry out interviews with current and past visitors. Other groups can also be selected, such as conference organisers. The interviews will focus on the experiences and motivations associated with Ipoh, information resources, and suggestions for increasing tourist value.

Special attention will be paid to how they researched Ipoh, what they have heard or told others about Ipoh and the channels or vehicles used to tell them. Additionally, representative travel agents in Ipoh will be interviewed about tourist experiences and requirements. Online surveys will be useful to research baseline perceptions of brand Ipoh.

3) Place audit: A place audit will identify Ipoh’s economic/ demographic characteristics, review major attractions (including strengths and weaknesses of the attractions) and outline all brand assets. The place audit will also look to identify product potential.

4) Communications audit: A comprehensive analysis of the channels, vehicles and materials, both digital and print, current and proposed that are or will be used to communicate with both consumers and businesses.

Stage 2: Ensure community buy-in and set internal branding requirements
Community and other stakeholder buy-in is important both for delivery of the brand promise, development and ongoing funding. Stakeholders must be communicated with and input from stakeholders must be incorporated so that they understand that they play an important role in initial and ongoing brand development.

Such buy-in can be accomplished through a variety of activities, including “townhall” or other community meetings, private presentations and media briefings. Initial research findings and recommendations can be discussed as a basis for soliciting input.

Additionally, community buy-in requires a group of citizens, business people, and local and regional government officials. This planning group will:

• Define and diagnose the community’s condition, major issues and potential solutions

• Develop a long-term brand vision based on a realistic assessment of the community’s values, resources and opportunities

• Work to develop a long-term plan of action involving intermediate stages of investment and transformation

Stage 3: Brand plan development
The results of the research and community buy-in will be incorporated into a comprehensive plan for Brand Ipoh. This customized brand plan serves as a strategic framework for all marketing activities, messages, metrics, timetables and proposed budgets. Special attention should be paid to digital branding and product development to get previous visitors to return again.

Stage 4: Comprehensive and segment-specific execution & measurement
Unfortunately this is where most destination begin their brand strategy. Once the brand plan is in place, execution begins. The execution operates on two overlapping fronts – general and segment-specific:

General: General branding represents the ongoing efforts to ensure visibility and provide value to prospects, agents and visitors, as well as gather data, ensure continuous performance and maintain reporting.

Segment-specific: Segment-specific branding concentrates on two areas where it is important to establish and maintain strong relationships. These include existing customers/visitors, and target-rich segments such as families, agents, previous visitors, etc. The actual segments to be targeted will have been defined in the brand plan.

I appreciate that many cities will view this as a daunting and potentially expensive task. But it will not be as expensive as numerous one size fits all communications based on a tagline that tries to speak to all but really speaks to none.

There is no place for the 4 Ps in a brand strategy

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The four Ps is a mass economy concept based on the ‘sell what we make’ company driven approach. It has no place in the customer economy of today where customers, not companies define brands. The 4 Ps emerged in the 1930s, a time when your doctor would enjoy a cigarette after examining you. A time when there really was lead in the pencil you stuck in your mouth all day at school. A time one, maybe 2 national TV stations. A time before leisure time, mass travel, cable or satellite TV, multiscreen cinemas, the Internet, Facebook and twitter. The 4 Ps were often used in conjunction with another popular formula, AIDA. AIDA was developed even earlier than the 4 Ps, in the 19th century, by door to door salesmen in the USA.

In the customer economy of today, firms have to sense, define, realise and sustain value for consumers based on those consumer requirements for value. They can only do that by identifying the right consumers, talking with and listening to those consumers and matching product attributes to those consumers requirements for value. And once the long and expensive process of gaining a customer is over, firms have to then continue the relationship to ensure they retain those customers. They have to accept that not everyone is a prospect and shareholders must pressurise them to deliver measureable results in marketing.

The good news is, those consumers no longer inhabit the mass economy world of TV, print media, billboards and so on. Today, those consumers inhabit communities of like minded individuals who can and do influence each others decision making process. And because of the effectiveness of new technology and the nature of those communities and where they are, it is possible to identify the right consumers, engage them, build relationships with them and measure marketing effectiveness.

A key element of successful brand building today is a massive move away from the aquisition focussed approach of the 4 Ps and positioning products (you can read my obituary to positioning here) and an increase in retention strategies that look to sell more and more often to existing customers, acquired at such great expense.

You have a 15% chance of selling to a new customer and a 50% chance of selling more to an existing customer. Bain and Co reckons a 5% increase in retention equates to a 25% increase in profitability. But are you still using the 4 Ps to acquire new customers? Are you still sighing with relief every time a new customer walks in and then letting them go without even finding out who they are? And even if you get their card, how much data do you collect and record and how much of your marketing budget is used to market to these existing customers? I doubt very much.

If you want to build a brand, forget about the 4 Ps and start looking at your existing customers.

Louis Vuitton in a spot of bother over print ads

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The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in the UK has received complaints that print ads for Louis Vuitton created by Ogilvy and Mather suggest that the products were made by hand.

Certainly looking at this ad that shows a woman creating the lines for the folds of a wallet

and also this ad that appears to be a woman stitching a handbag

It is easy to see why there have been complaints. Especially as the copy states, “infinite patience protects each overstitch… One could say that a Louis Vuitton bag is a collection of fine details.”

However, according to marketingweek Louis Vuitton defended the campaign by saying that “their employees were not assembling pre-packed pieces but were taking individual handcrafted and hand-sewn parts through a range of hand-made stages to reach a final item.”

Louis Vuitton added that the use of hand sewing machines and associated tasks were “part and parcel of what would amount to ’handmade’ in the 21st century”.

So handmade doesn’t actually mean handmade in the traditional sense?

If that is the case does that mean then that the iconic hand made Hermes Birkin bag that can cost anything from US$10,000 to well over US$100,000 isn’t actually hand made?

Does this mean that the animal skins used in a Birkin bag are not actually spread out on the floor of the processing room and screened by a number of artisans before being measured and cut by hand as required?

Does this mean that the bottom of the handbag is not sown by hand to the front and back with waxed linen threads?

Does this mean that the handle of the Birkin bag is not manually stitched until the shape comes to the fore?

Does this mean then that the artisans don’t use sand paper to smooth rough edges? And does it mean therefore that hot wax is not applied to the handles to protect them from moisture?

And all the effort that goes into the front flap, the metal and lock is not actually done by hand?

Does it mean that the craftsmen in France that all work out of the little lane in Paris don’t actually exist?

And advertising agencies wonder why 76% of consumers don’t believe that companies tell the truth in advertisements. In Malaysia that figure is 86%!

The number one element in any relationship is trust. If a brand wants to build a relationship with a consumer, that consumer must be able to trust the brand.

An element of doubt in communications is not a good way to build trust.