I think I counted five, maybe six logos

Lovely short film called Logorama http://vimeo.com/10149605

You know what was awesome? The Recession

The recession was a glorious time. Businesses loved us! They were good friends who would always tell us how much they felt our pain and cut prices to help us.

Supermarkets for instance. They cared about the environment and they cared about our difficult financial situations. They said NO to But One Get One Free offers, as they encouraged waste and over spending. In their place were simple money off offers like half price McCoys crisps - because supermarkets cared.

Then the recession (apparently) ended. Suddenly supermarkets weren't under pressure to care, so they didn't care. And so McCoys became 3 for £3. In fact, everything in Sainsbury's became 3 for £3. They thought we wouldn't notice, because all is rosy with the economy again. Well I noticed Sainsbury's. I noticed!

To me, the way the supermarkets have acted highlights the worst of brand behaviour. A good brand should have a core set of beliefs that it then applies to each situation to form a point of view. You should be able to look at a brand and be able to guess how it feels about certain subjects. That's how you create brands that people care about and that they can believe in.

What's happened here is that the supermarkets have seen an opportunity, made a big fuss about their 'beliefs' and their 'values', then abandoned them as soon as they feel it's not necessary.

To many it may be 3 loaves of bread for £3, but for me it's Jamie Oliver teaching kids how to order a Big Mac.

Actual product may not include what we're selling you

Time for one of my favourite subjects - How Mass Effect promotional material annoys me.

I loved the original Mass Effect game. It was all about space adventuring, with a character you designed yourself and whose personality you shaped with the decisions you made.

Mass Effect 2 takes the character you made in the first game and continues to play out the consequences of the decisions you made in the first game, while adding extra levels of story and personality to your character.

So, given the very personal and unique nature of each character, surely the last thing you would want to do is focus all of your marketing and packaging material on a generic version of this character that won't actually appear in anyone's game.

It just seems like a complete waste, considering all that the product has to offer. No thought has gone into what makes games and customisable experiences like this different from film advertising (which this seems to aspire to).

Customisation is becoming such a big part of all products these days, but especially computer games. I understand that from a marketing point of view we're used to working with and selling linear stories, but as more and more games innovate away from this, I can't help but feel that the advertising is holding them back, by clinging on to traditional story telling methods.

Mass Effect is about travelling the universe and changing it with the decisions you make. That's not an easy story to tell, but it's a lot more interesting than being told the story of a man you won't even see in the game.

Go away

Now the big move to London is over, it's time to kick start some blogging again. I'll start with an exciting story of my time in London.

The other day, I thought I'd purchase some tickets for the Hot Chip gig at Brixton Academy. So off I go to the website and click the "order tickets" button.

What it linked to was this:

Which is awsome.

It laughs in the face of CRM, usabilty, and many other words to do with making me, the all powerful consumer, happy.

In fact, it was such a hilariously bad way of giving bad news, that I found it hard to get angry at them.

So, I hope to continue experiments in treating consumers so badly that they decide it's too funny to get mad about. That's the dream...

No Daves (We're allowed one)

Brands being able to have conversations with their consumers around the world is brilliant. But far from giving them the power to appear more active towards individual concerns, some companies are using social media to appear more distant than ever.

The fact is, most big brands are only talking to their American fans, and it can feel like those of us in Europe are just rude passers by, listening in with a cup against the door.

I can see why brands would want one world voice, but when they get people to post great deals on social networks for their online store, only for it to be exclusive to American users, that's not good enough.

It creates a kind of second class consumer, who can see great deals and great bonuses, but isn't allowed near them. If you're a fan enough of a company to follow them on Twitter or Facebook, then being treated like this is a massive kick in the teeth.

So lets get some more localised brand voices can we?

It's not the winning, it's the taking part

I've recently been reading about Goal Theory in education and it's made me ponder some of the recent new media promotions that have been around recently.

It seems people tend to fall into two categories when approaching tasks. There is the Performance group, who want to complete a task to show how talented they are and the Mastery group, who want to gain the skills from completing the task.

What's interesting is how this effects motivation for tasks. The Performance group will be highly motivated for short tasks that they know they'll be good at, but they will quickly lose interest if they struggle, or do not receive praise/recognition.

The Mastery group on the other hand are more motivated by tasks with deeper engagement, that offer them new skills for their hard work.

So here's the advertising bit.

I'm sure I've stated several times before on this blog that I'm not a fan of the 'design a video/ad for our brand' promotions. They look to get people to engage with the brand for a long period of time, but then they only seem to offer any reward for the one winner, who probably already knew they had the skills to win the competition.

Most of them play to the Performance orientated audience, but this leaves the talented winner of the competition happy, while the others gave up long before because they weren't getting a reward.

This doesn't seem like a great way of getting consumers to spend a long period of time engaged with your brand.

I feel the best forms of interactive advertising are those that appeal to both the Mastery and Performance groups, in that they celebrate the best, while offering self improvement to all those who enter. I suppose the best example of this is the Nike + work and I think this kind of work that rewards all who take part is by far the best way of getting genuine long term engagement, not just a few YouTube uploads for the novelty of it.

C-lists' friends lists

I have to admit, I did quite enjoy seeing the 'Stephen Fry: Tweet Me!' sign from a member of the crowd in the Darts final yesterday, and of course the following shout out from the man himself.

However, I can't help but feel as Twitter gets bigger, all live news and sporting events will collapse in a sea of people trying to get Andi Peters to say their name.













There used to be an art to celebrity stalking...