What the parties promised and what they really meant.

Party Lines

What’s the biggest brand in politics now? The polls have shown it’s ABFF. In the World Cup last year the majority of the Irish cheered Anyone But France. Now they’ve voted ANYONE But Fianna Fail.

Democracy by definition means you can never get a political party to have a brand that sticks to any real consistent values. Instead, to try to please all the people all of the time, they chop and change and promise anything and everything.

So we got the same tired promises. Taking their cue from Obama when he faced Bush, they all promoted change – however vague (although I don’t remember Barrack rapping, unlike Labour’s Michael Conagahan, whose Horse Outside parody made your ears weep blood).

Sinn Fein set about rewriting their history to now love everyone on the island, even promising them jobs to show there’s no hard feelings. And who better to offer to burn the bondholders? Who’s going to argue with Gerry Adams? The Greens promised the earth…literally, while Fine Gael were very proud of their digital prowess (despite the PR disaster of the hacking of their website). A section on their site allowed you to send a Valentine Card that proclaimed your “love for your country” as well as your Valentine.

Fianna Fail’s brand was already so badly damaged that their posters were the only example in marketing history when the client had actually asked the advertiser to make their logo smaller. They were microscopic! In the run up to the election in the Irish Times, a Fianna Fáil insider said “The brand is toxic, it’s almost beyond help.” But their brand has gone through so many changes anyway – from Irish language speaking frugal comfort socialists to the party of big business and back to frugal discomfort.

Most interesting, we could see what the start-up brands were doing. One that stood out was young Dylan Haskins. IT STARTS HERE was as brilliant and ambiguous a campaign line as we’ve seen.

All political parties should remember that real brand loyalty is only really reached when people feel that their brands are being loyal to them. So what should the parties really have promised? We gave it an hour of brainstorming. Here’s ‘where they are’ and what they really mean.

We are where we are

Let’s take a look what the political parties promised:

Fianna Fail: Real Plan. Better Future.
(Really? Who were they fooling? We don’t accept that)

Sinn Fein: Sick of the tired old politics of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour? There is a better way.
(To be honest, this was the best of the ‘change’ lines)

Fine Gael: Let’s get Ireland working.
(A clever line that tricked people into thinking it meant: let’s get the people of Ireland working)

Labour: Jobs, Reform, Fairness and a vision of One Ireland.
(They talked the talk but it still seemed very blue collar)

Green Party: Renewing Ireland.
(A clever line, but renewing Ireland at what cost?)

United Alliance Left: Building a real political alternative.
(Don’t know – building has a bad connotation nowadays)

Dylan Haskins: It starts here.
(What starts here? And where? Doesn’t matter – he was advocating change to the kids)

What we meant

Sinn Fein: EU and whose army?
Labour: Let’s keep Public Sector Ireland working.
Fianna Fail: No plan. No future.
Fine Gael: We’ve got the solution. But you’re not going to like it.
Independents: Keeping the parties in check (as long as we get our cheques).
Green: Ask not what we can do for your country,
But what you can do for the planet.
United Alliance Left: Nothing Left.
Dylan Haskins: Vote me for Hall Monitor and the Milky Bars are on me!

With very special thanks to Zoe Bradley, Dialogue and Karl Rock, Independent Candidate, Dublin.

Generally it’s not hard to see why award-winning campaigns end up collecting the silverware. They’re arresting. They’re unique. They’re hilarious. They’re shocking. And if things really went well, they’re all of the above.

What’s not so easy to understand is what made it all come together in the first place. Was there something special about the brief? Maybe the client brought something different to the mix. Was the agency just having a good day?

You could muse over this until the cows come home. Or you could do a bit of digging to find out. Recently, we did the latter when we presented ‘Winspiration’, a survey of last year’s international direct marketing awards show winners to members of the Marketing Institute of Ireland.

Different countries – similar opinions

To begin with, we tracked down and talked to clients and agencies in countries as diverse as New Zealand, Spain, the UK and Belgium. While each had produced radically different creative ideas, there was a distinct convergence in their views on what needs to happen before great work can emerge. A random selection of quotes bears this out:

“When there is passion behind an idea at both ends and belief that it is a strong strategy, the commitment comes” says Andy DiLallio, Executive Creative Director of Leo Burnett in Sydney. It’s a view that’s remarkably similar to that of DDB’s Brett Colliver in New Zealand: “…the other crucial factor was getting everyone involved excited about the possibilities. Not always easy, but everyone was right behind it which meant a lot of stuff was done for free (or cost) on weekends and after hours.”

So successful projects need passion and excitement. But what else? This time, a client, Christine Haru of the New Zealand Coastguard, got to the heart of it when she identified a requirement for open minds: “Sometimes as the client we have an idea on which we brief the agency, but we can be constrained in our thinking. At the end of the day we use agencies because they are a pool of incredibly talented and creative people who can think outside the box and come up with a different solution than you had imagined.”

And that’s pretty much what Spanish multi award-winning agency Shackleton also think. Creative Director Juan Nonzioli’s view is “If I was a client I’d say to my agency ‘I have this need and I need an idea. Maybe it’s a TV ad, maybe it’s something else. Twist your brains around it, that’s what we’re paying you for.”

His client, Montse Balas Lara of the charity FSA Inserta, agreed: “They (clients) should place themselves in the hands of professionals like the Shackleton team, and be prepared to truly empathise with them.”

Fortune favours the brave

Back in New Zealand, Charlotte Speed, the Head of Customer Engagement for Orcon Broadband, threw in another humdinger when she said ‘Be brave. Let the experts be the experts and brief agencies well.’ And the need for bravery was also being flagged on the other side of the world by Nick Moffat of Proximity London. Nick was one of the team that won the DMA Grand Prix for their groundbreaking RNLI campaign, ‘Mystery Packages’. He summed it up by saying “Internal client politics does scupper a lot of creative work, but having someone who’s prepared to crusade on your behalf is invaluable.”

So what have we found after a quick spin around the winners of the world’s most respected direct marketing awards? The secret of knock-out creative work appears to lie in everyone involved being brave, empathetic, passionate, excited and open-minded. But before any of this is possible, one other factor needs to be in place. I’ll leave the final word to the NZ Coastguard’s Christine Haru: “…it comes down to trust also – trust of the agency that they have your brand’s best interests at heart too and if you succeed – they succeed (and win awards too).”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Like to see the Winspiration presentation in full? Email us at winspiration@dialogue.ie

It’s only a game right? Not on your life. Consider the following depressing thought: by the age of 21, a typical American has spent 10,000 hours playing computer games. Consider also that it took eight years and 100 million hours to create Wikipedia but that’s only half the number of hours spent in a single week by people playing ‘World of Warcraft’.

Why do young adults spend so much time solving meaningless puzzles in virtual worlds? We constantly denounce them as ‘addicted and escapists from the real world’. What we really should be asking are questions such as why are these virtual worlds so much more absorbing than school and work? And how can marketing engage and involve our own prospects using gaming dynamics to get closer and active with our brand?

Research shows that active gamers are engaged, focused and happy! Market research also shows that prospects seeking goods are in their prime for sale in similar conditions.

Gamers’ lives are extremely similar to a typical worker’s daily life: looking at information on a computer screen, discerning immediate objectives and seeking solutions and being rewarded for success. Marketers must use these insights to aim higher in terms of the engaging consumers with the work we do.

Games provide instantaneous feedback and continual encouragement both from the computer and the players. Players get rewarded for achievements as they amass points and progress to higher levels with challenges becoming harder as their skill levels increase. And even though they continually fall over they turn this sense of failure into the sense that they ‘haven’t succeeded yet’. This is an area that schools and workplaces the world over are attempting to encourage.

I spent a day with Niklas Fornelius, MD of the world class digital agency ‘ROI division’ in Stockholm. He showed me samples of his team’s use of gaming dynamics in all aspects of their work. He calls this process ‘Advertainment’ which is designed to influence consumer behaviour in entertaining ways. Game dynamics offer experiences such as communal discovery where groups of customers engage together. The ‘groupon’ movement is a powerful example of this.

Dialogue recently won a significant digital pitch where we leveraged gaming techniques successfully by presenting items such as high end recognition and progression bars throughout a quote process. It was key in aiding in a simpler online experience and stronger recognition of the customer’s value. Inviting customers to learn more about further products is also rewarded while the ultimate reward for the referral of a friend is like hitting three cherries in Vegas. We also recently delivered a campaign where venues invite customers via mobile and the more people who turn up to the venue that evening will determine how low the product cost is. There is no doubt that gaming is at its most successful when group behaviour is influenced.

Marketing must learn how to use the masses of data being created in the digital world. Most marketers are clearly competent in creating the standard one way communication. But today’s game is all about creating real dialogue. Engagement, involvement and action is key and passive marketing cannot compete with this form of dialogue. Mixing data insights with gaming techniques to give a rewarding experience is the post digital space we all need to operate in.