For a while at Base One we’ve been questioning the logic of the single big idea as the basis of a brand’s campaigns. Having spent years creating consistent and compelling campaigns around a single idea, why change? It’s been proven to work and buyers are still buyers surely?

Well yes, and no. The fact is that Buyers are changing as this extract from a post by Chris Tacy, Chief Innovation Officer at Brand Experience Agency, Method implies:

 … now we have an entire new demographic who have grown up not having to take it. And as a result, the control relationship between brands and consumers has changed. And it's not going back. Technology has helped - but behavior is a big part of this. And at then end of the day... the chickens are coming home to roost.

In this new world... The Big Idea doesn't really hold water. Without the control relationship on the side of the brands, it's not even justifiable. [http://method.com/#/thoughts/ideasculture/detail/WpPost/17/]

It’s this change of relationship that is making us rethink. Brand owners have to realise that they will no longer have control of what people think or say about them. We can influence what they say and think but not control it. And our buyers fit many Persona we know that and for each of them the brand can mean different things. Therefore, we need to start developing clusters of brand ideas that can be relevant to different groups, and yet all relevant to the brand.

Strong brands in the future (even B2B brands) need to resonate as part of the sub-cultures that exist within our markets. Sub-cultures are different yet they overlap, so too must the ideas we place at the centre of our brands.

Regular readers will have already noted my admiration for all things Apple, but also my dismay that its recent marketing has sought to distance itself from its B2B heritage. This was illustrated in its campaign using comics Mitchell & Webb, suggesting the PC is for work, and the Mac is for home – ironic given that it was the design and publishing industries that kept Apple alive in the 1990s. I can’t blame Apple for moving with the times, but it seemed rather disingenuous to abandon its heritage and – more importantly – its core market in such a fickle fashion.
So naturally my heart was warmed by the news that Apple has had a road to Damascus-style change of heart, and is refocusing on the corporate sector for its iPhone product. The logic would seem to be simple: to take on BlackBerry, which is rapidly developing a stranglehold on the business mobile telephony market, where both usage and functional requirements are growing rapidly, making it highly lucrative.
Ironically, Apple’s bid to re-engage with corporate users comes at precisely the same time as a change in direction by rival Blackberry – targeting the consumer sector, and positioning it as a lifestyle tool rather than business accessory. As discussed in our news analysis article, in effect each one is moving into the other’s territory, and creating potentially bitter rivals from two brands which until recently would seem to have little overlap.
This potentially sets up a fascinating conflict between two of the leading lights of the technology industry. What both must consider, however, is that they don’t neglect their existing brand strengths and loyal audiences in the pursuit of new ones. Particularly in the current climate, woe betide brands that fail to keep existing clients happy whilst heading off into new territory.

I stumbled out of bed, went downstairs and staggered through the Saturday morning ritual of forcing as much finely ground coffee into the espresso maker as is physically possible, to achieve the necessary caffeine hit to deal with the kids’ inexplicable enthusiasm for early morning daylight – which had been audible for several hours earlier.

The next stage, prior to Saturday’s light fluffy pancakes – griddle baked to a golden brown, lovingly stroked with lightly salted butter and smothered with lashings of Canadian maple syrup – was to open the post whilst waiting for the caffeine to make sense of the weekend. So as I sat in the kitchen wearing little more than my nightie and curlers, I was more than a little put out to open a mailer from a publishing house announcing that as a director of Birddog I had been identified as one of the UK’s most successful businessmen and that my profile had been ‘chosen’ to be listed in the said publisher’s directory of most-brilliant-awesome-people 2008.

The mailer told me, at some considerable length, how well wicked I was, how well wicked they were as publishers and what a complete privilege it was for me to be selected for inclusion into this few, this happy few, this band of brothers. I was to be honoured. I was to receive the attention I so rightly deserved. I was to be applauded for my unsurpassed business acumen – and could I please just visit their website and complete further details about how truly magnificent I absolutely am.

I immediately fired up my laptop (not my favourite Saturday morning pre-caffeine activity), located the publisher’s website and searched for the ‘shove it’ button. Duly located, I told them where to go and hope never to be distracted from my pancakes and Canadian maple syrup again.

I’ve never been a big fan of sending business communications into the home – but nor have I realised how vehemently opposed to it I quite clearly am. I’m aware that company directors’ home addresses are readily available from Companies House and I have regular discussions with clients seeking to reach a senior executive audience about whether or not they should use a home address database. I always advise ‘not’ – and now I know why. I can’t actually recall another such mailing that I’ve received at home – either because it hasn’t happened before, or just because I’ve simply refused to engage with it and put it straight in the bin. But this one was different.

I regret to admit that the difference was that I nearly fell for it. Flattery, ego-massage, self-gratification… all of those things are powerful response-generators. I like to think I have a healthy and well-formed opinion of my own ego so I should have loved this. And here’s the thing. If I’d received this mailer at work, I probably would have loved it. The publisher would have been able to build a rather astonishing database of directorial detail that I would otherwise be unlikely to tell my own pedicurist. Instead, they got nothing.

It may well be that the publisher was genuinely just seeking to publish a directory of the great and the good of British business and I’ve just scored an accomplished own-goal. But it didn’t feel right. It felt like an invasion of privacy that, if left unattended, would lead from the database to a mountain of other unsolicited business communications in the home.

There’s work – and there’s the weekend. They’re related, no doubt. But nothing should ever get in the way of screaming kids and Canadian maple syrup.

Spielberg’s been caught out for once. For the latest Indy adventure, he used the latest CGI technology. Unfortunately his audience hated it, preferring the old days when stunts were performed by real spiders. Sometimes, though, there’s no option but to keep up with the times. Take email, for example. It’s amazing to think it’s now 37 years since the first true email was sent by Ray Tomlinson.

Even more amazingly, it took another seven years for a Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) marketing rep to create the first spam. History doesn’t record the response rates, but boy, were people angry. Not only because ARPANET (the world’s first Intranet system developed by the United States Department of Defence) had been hijacked for marketing, but because the first 324 lines they waded through were nothing but addresses.

Hopefully, the latest technology lets us be a lot smarter and more profitable, especially when we’re pushing products that sell off the virtual page.

Triggers are one of the ways we’re getting cleverer in sending emails – when the system recognises when an item is purchased and automatically emails the customer with a special offer on a related product.

More controversial are smart ads. Whereas Yahoo and others work out what banners are relevant based on your site searches, smart ads (allegedly) read emails and put up ads triggered by key words they contain.

Here’s a thought. Maybe we don’t just have to rely on the latest technology. Web design guru Jakob Neilson has studied the way in which we scan web pages (it’s in an F shape, apparently) and it’s well worth considering whether we can apply his findings to give emails more impact.

And here’s a tip – don’t start with 324 address lines.