Brands could learn a lot from Ricky Nixon, Marc McInnes and those unfortunate soldiers caught in the middle of this month’s Facebook scandal.

In a month of powerful popular cultural cues we have seen our front pages swap between the emotion of unprecedented natural disasters, AFL scandals, cricket captaincy and politically incorrect soldiers on Facebook.

And we have seen overwhelming evidence that despite our best wishes to be sophisticated, new age and correct, the natural human state is far from it.

And it’s that same human state that shops, chooses brands and consumes.

At Bastion, we travel the world trying to convince business that it’s taking the wrong cues from popular culture and that our newfound sophistication is merely an illusion.

We are forever begging business to look to the places where consumers roam and to understand the emotional truth of what a business must be for people and their real emotions.

After all, how sophisticated is it that Ricky Nixon and the 17-year-old schoolgirl dominate news bulletins. How is this major ‘news issue’ going to have any bearing on anything remotely important to our society?

How is it that Charlie Sheen’s rants propel his brand, not kill it and that his ‘concert tour’ sells out in just 18 minutes?

Or that Justin Bieber is ranked at the top of the most relevant sources in social media!@#!

Get a grip! We are not an evolved species. We crave colour, entertainment, escapism and emotional connection. We need heroes to cheer and villains to jeer.

Throwing tomatoes at freaks has always been a societal need.

None of this should be overlooked when understanding what your brand can BE for its customers. These are the stories we need to understand, not ignore.

If you pitch your business at a point where you think society should be, you’ll miss the heart of consumers. And they won’t tell you. They’ll merely ignore you.

Yes, the board will nod appreciatively at your circumspect approach and well chosen words or your friends will blow wind up your proverbial at your efforts – but the ‘great unwashed’ will move on to find someone else who hits their hot button.

Remember the likes of Warney and big Bill Clinton when you think about influencing people. They remain two of society’s biggest sinners yet get more popular with every flawed act they seem to lurch into. Marc McInnes was doomed as a businessman only a few months ago only to make a spectacular comeback this week as head of Premier, owners of Just Jeans, Jay Jays, Portmans, Jacqui E and Peter Alexander. 950 stores mainly aimed at women. Solomen Lew hasn’t employed him for his female communication skills, but rather his tough retail talent.

Society accepts flawed heroes because they give us someone worse off than us and they also provide the colour that comes with attempted recovery. We love it. We love comebacks and bad boys. And we love brands that have some ‘real’ about them.

You don’t have to be squeaky clean and perfect. You have to be real and emotive. You have to have a colour and character for people to choose.

We secretly love Big Fev struggling with his demons in the spotlight of society. So much so that he wanders into a suburban pokies venue and a punter rings 3AW ensuring Melbourne goes live with another crucial bit of news journalism.@!#

For business, it’s hard deciphering between the loud minority who manage to take so much media space, pushing their extreme views of political correction – versus the vast majority who sit at home scratching their heads, quietly enjoying the colour of life and wondering if the whole world has gone mad.

It’s difficult for business to set a course through society’s contradictions – but set course we must.

Take the army scandal where soldiers will be discharged by the disgusted establishment.
For god’s sake, we have these guys over there to kill the enemy, then we criticise them for disparaging them!
Doesn’t kill trump a slur?! It seems it’s ok to blow their heads off, just don’t call them names in the process.

Have any of these out of touch military and political leaders ever sat in the outer at a Collingwood game or worse still, sat in the stands at an English Premier League London Derby?

Business cannot afford to disconnect with customers by believing everyone is correct and sensible. Brands must have character and personality based on real emotional truth.

Humans love colour and colourful brands, where they can buy more than a product – they can buy a belief, a stance, an attitude, a fresh thought.

Read and view the article below.

“WHY BAD BOYS ARE GOOD FOR THE GAME

Men behaving badly only seems to enhance the football brand, writes Chloe Saltau

FOOTY starts in four sleeps, bringing to an end a pre-season dominated by Brendan Fevola and his addictions and Ricky Nixon and his indiscretions. Executives need not, however, sweat on the damage done to their brands by footballers behaving badly. The evidence would suggest – and marketing experts agree – that off-field problems that have plagued the AFL and NRL over summer might actually have made the sports stronger.

”I think it increases our interest and appetite for the colour and the spectacle of the overall sport,” said Melbourne branding expert Simon Hammond, who has advised the AFL and helped develop the Gold Coast Suns’ image in the expansion club’s infancy. ”Some people would say it turns people off, but I would say that’s a loud minority.”

It will be impossible to assess the impact of the scandals to have beset the codes until later, but early figures suggest the sports’ brands are, if not bulletproof, then coated in teflon. Attendances for the AFL’s preseason competition were 13 per cent higher than for last year’s NAB Cup. In the background, Fevola checked out of rehab, was sacked by the Brisbane Lions, hired by the Casey Scorpions and poured his heart out on national television about his alcohol and gambling problems.

His tell-all interview on Channel Nine made The Footy Show the most-watched program that night, with an average audience of 390,000 across two hours, peaking at 511,000 in Melbourne. (In its second week, with Fevola out of sight on his US holiday, the program’s average audience settled at 282,000, peaking at 434,000.)

TV ratings for the pre-season were 6 per cent higher than for last year, supporting league boss Andrew Demetriou’s hunch that recent scandals have not done lasting damage as the AFL seeks to finalise a new broadcast deal worth more than a billion dollars.

Officials believe the record round-one attendance of 367,000 could be under threat when Carlton and Richmond clash in the season opener at the MCG on Thursday night. This is in the aftermath of the scandal involving the teenage girl who released nude photos of St Kilda footballers, and the suspension of Nixon as a player agent for his inappropriate dealings with her.

Simon Hammond believes bad boys can be good for sport if they are dealt with properly because they tap into the primal instinct that is at sport’s core. Even in the NRL, which is notorious for its misbehaving players, evidence suggests the code is in good health.

The opening round drew a record attendance of 201,212. Last Monday night’s Wests Tigers-Canterbury match attracted an average TV audience of 365,000 (peaking at 464,000), the highest-rating pay television program since the Australia-Japan World Cup soccer qualifier in June 2009. This against a backdrop of a betting scandal and off-field trouble for stars Benji Marshall and Todd Carney, charged with assault and drinkdriving, respectively.

“There is immediate commercial evidence of bad boy behaviour paying off in the brand-building for Nike, looking for athletes who are outside the boundaries of expected behaviour – [John] McEnroe, [Andre] Agassi, Charles Barkley – who in a strange way are not the perfect role models but increase our fascination with elite sportspeople and what they do off the field,” said Hans Westerbeek, a professor of sport business at Victoria University.

He believes the appetite for scandal will continue to grow with an insatiable, not always discerning, media. Throw in the explosion of social media, whose potential for good or evil in 140 characters or fewer is only just starting to be understood, and you have a perfect storm. While the public might tire of Nixon or Fevola, the media will soon enough deliver a new bad boy to dominate the talkback-radio air.

Demetriou has emphasised that the vast majority of football people are socially responsible, and that they have enormous power to do good things. “They [off-field problems] have got the potential to hurt the brand, but I think the AFL family and industry put a hell of a lot back into the community,” he said during the pre-season. “We do our best to support the community and that does build up a lot of equity. I don’t think they do long-term damage.

“If we did nothing, if we ignored them, if we covered them up, that has got the potential for damage.”

Demetriou will hope that when the ball is bounced at a packed MCG on Thursday night the scandals fade into pre-season memory, if only for a few hours.”

See below for Today Tonight clips about the Best Ads on TV, Meat Wars, Discount Televisions and the new Real Estate Marketing.

See below a couple of the stories generated by the ad. Please click to view the articles, or watch it here.

Belief can do amazing things. People will respond when they are emotionally engaged to something. This is what it is all about, getting your customers to belong to your brand based on something more than just what your business offers. It is about engaging them on why you do things in the first place, engaging them on your belief.

A great brand understands that humans don’t have the ability to care about something unless you give them a reason to care. Companies don’t succeed the people do.

When
Tuesday 7 September 2010

Where: The International of Brighton, 81 Bay St, Brighton 3186

Time: 7am to 9am

Cost:
Free to Bayside Business Network Members,
$41 BBN members’ guests, $41 for Deakin Alumni
$48 non-members

Click here for more info and bookings.

Click on the following links to view the articles:

http://www.adnews.com.au/news/loyalty-is-key-to-brand-success

http://prettyraw.com.au/australia%E2%80%99s-top-brands-revealed/

http://yourbusnews.blogspot.com/2010/07/fw-bikies-apple-and-salvos-in-same-club.html

Well, now comes the 21^st century mega trend of ME Branding.

According to its creator, our illustrious Creative Chairman, Simon Hammond, ME Branding is the inherent and often subliminal art of choosing companies, services and leaders based on how they make ME look.

“We have arrived at a seriously savvy brand society where people now clearly understand, often without even being aware of it, how to brand themselves,” says Hammond.

“They choose their brands, whether it be clothes, schools, computers, cars or friends, based on how they fit with enhancing or creating personal brands.”

The ME Brand trend is a natural extension of BE Branding because consumers choose brands with beliefs and use those brands to state their own beliefs.

This will have direct bearing on the federal election as we, as people, look for substance and belief to follow.

ME branding explains how the Apple phenomena came about after Apple reinvented itself, not through function, but rather form. Having an iMac made you look cool. Cool people embraced the pure design decadence and others followed. It made your personal brand. It said something about you. The rest followed.

Google was adopted  over Yahoo when those in the know deemed it the way to go. All of a sudden the search engine you used said a lot about your ME brand.

Toyota’s Prius was the expression of caring for the planet by the planet’s uber trendy; having a Body Shop bag said you cared; Ecko says you believe in free speech; and Harley Davidson says you’re probably mid 40s, get paid a lot of money and want out – albeit for a wreckless afternoon each week!

Brands are now being measured on what they say about me, not just what they do.

For all types of business, this must surely become the new litmus test. What does your brand say about those who choose it.  And, would your brand pass, what Hammond calls, the T test?

Put simply, would an employee proudly wear the logo of the company they work on their T shirt as they enjoy a Saturday out with friends.

Nike passes that test, so does Apple, so do many rock brands – but does your business?

Moreover, can your brand be known merely by its belief, like Dove is known for changing the perception of female beauty or Apple is known for thinking different.

The big challenge for all business is the belief of its people in the collective and substantive mission of the company. In other words, do your people believe in something that binds them together as a tribe?

To have this all binding belief strong enough and connected enough for employees to proudly promote it when they’re not working makes for one cool and commercially successful brand.

To have a logo or set of words mean enough to the ME generation so that they wear it with pride is the new holy grail.

It’s the ultimate test for ME Branding.