Aaron Hoos

Funny little action-packed commercial for ANZ. Overall, the message falls a little flat but it’s very engaging.

FROM THE DESK OF THE DEVIL

January 1997

Dear Mr. Jobs,

Congratulations on your return to Apple. I received your letter expressing concern over your lack of marketable ideas and was quite interested in your proposal offering your soul in exchange for some compelling products.

I think I can help. I’ve got some top-notch people in Hell’s Idea Kitchen and I’ve told them to develop brands and products that Apple can offer its customers. Our plan is to first build a legion of devoted followers and then provide you with a line-up of products and brands for a phased roll-out over the next couple of decades.

We’re thinking of clean looking designs with intuitive functionality. We think a brand with the selfish “i” prefix would fit really well here: iTunes, iPhone, iPad, etc. We can dialogue on this but I’ll have my people put together a quick PowerPoint Keynote on our ideas.

I’ve enclosed a contract to solidify the exchange of your soul for our ideas. Sign it and fax it back to 666-HELL at your earliest convenience.

Oh, I also received your note about not owning enough shirts. I respectfully disagree: Black looks good on you and I’ve enclosed several more black shirts as a gift. You’ll find they fit perfectly.

On a personal note, I love the “Apple” brand. I’ve always had an affinity for apples since the Garden of Eden, so I think there’s a potential brand alignment here!

Sincerely,

The Dark Lord of the Underworld

PS, In the interest of full disclosure, I should let you know that I have a separate agreement with Bill Gates.

Every year I revisit my brand and determine whether it still meshes with my goals and whether it needs a facelift. A lot of those decisions come from how I’m using the various brand elements in my marketing.

For 2010, I’ve modified my brand to what you now see on my blog. In case you’re curious, here are the details:

My previous logo was fun — I really liked it — but it wouldn’t scale well to the places I needed it to appear:  It was quite tall and skinny, and the lines were very narrow, so if I wanted it to fit somewhere small, it would need to be shrunk to an imperceptible size. My new logo took the same elements — a square and an arrow (which have been common elements of my logo over the years) — and updated it. Now it is depicted as a diamond and arrow, two elements that each speak to success in some way: The diamond as an indicator of a standard and the arrow as an indicator of a positive direction. As well, the diamond is a loose reference to my Business Diamond Framework™, a strategy tool I developed that is gaining prominence in my work. Together, the diamond and arrow look like the nib of an old fashioned pen and like a wrench; both “pictures” hint at the work I do: I write and I work on businesses.

My previous color choices were very light and I couldn’t use all of the matching hues. These colors are darker and bolder, they have been intentionally selected so that I can use all of the matching hues in various situations. It also allowed me to switch to a white background on my blog, giving more contrast and making the content more readable than when it was against the light gray background that I used previously.

My name was switched to a serif font (Georgia) because it matches the font on my site. I like the “Business writer and strategist” label and have kept that. I think it still reflects what I do. It changed about a year or two ago; previously it was “freelance writer”, which is close to what I do but doesn’t quite position me the way I want to be positioned. I also like the balance between the serif and sans serif font. One says traditional and trustworthy; the other says new and fresh.

Changing a brand does run the risk of causing it to lose its effectiveness. However, it’s also important to revisit your brand from time to time and make sure that it still reflects you. I try to do this intentionally every year (with minor modifications here and there as needed).

It started with a tree-meets-Cadillac mishap and then descended into a media orgy of news: There was speculation about Tiger Woods’ condition; his mother-in-law was rushed to the hospital; there might be some marital “transgressions”, advertisers are rethinking Tiger-related marketing, and today he won a court case prohibiting the publication of any nude or sexually suggestive pictures of him (not that anyone is admitting that they exist).

Until two weeks ago, Tiger Woods was the best golfer in the history of golf. From now on, even if he destroys previous golfing records and regains his advertising magnetism, every article or news story about him will now contain the “you might remember” factor in which the media will report “you might remember that in 2009, Woods smashed into a tree and shortly after admitted to marital infidelity.”

There’s very little he can do about it; all of the news stories will add that “you might remember” point. However, Woods isn’t alone.

• Tom Cruise has the “you might remember” factor now thanks to a couch-jumping incident on Oprah.
• Michael Richards — Seinfeld‘s Kramer — now has a “you might remember” mark, as well, thanks to some racial slurs during a cringe-worthy improvisational comedy.
• Until his untimely death, Michael Jackson’s “you might remember” factor were the sexual abuse allegations.
• O.J. Simpson. Well, do I even need to say what his “you might remember” spectacle was? In fact, his Bronco-chase and court case (and then his later court case) were such profound debacles that his “you might remember” factor was his career!
• Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton. Respectively: Total meltdown, total meltdown, and a (ahem) homemade “film”.

There are a select few celebrities that have transcended this “you might remember” factor.

• Sean Penn, who formerly had a “you might remember” occasion when he assaulted a reporter, has since eclipsed that aggression with a series of remarkably good movies and has generally stayed out of the spotlight.
• Angelina Jolie kissed her brother at an awards show and that appeared for a while as her “you might remember” factor until her humanitarian work with Brad Pitt.
• Bill Clinton has eclipsed his “you might remember” Lewinsky-fiasco by successfully combining his “boys will be boys” attitude and an active political and humanitarian effort.

These celebrities are brands and when the brand is tarnished, the “you might remember” factor appears in news stories. Company brands aren’t much different.

• Tyco‘s “you might remember” factor is an executive scandal in 2002
• AIG‘s “you might remember” factor is their bonus payout
• Firestone‘s “you might remember” factor is their rollover issue, although Ford has transcended it, partly because the issue occurred on only one of their many vehicles.

Home Hardware is a building supply company based in Canada. It’s like The Home Depot, but they tend to serve smaller local markets than the big-box Home Depot.

For years their tagline was…

“Home Hardware: Help is close to home”

…which is a good tagline. It makes sense and it highlights both their expertise and their local small market focus. And, as The Home Depot’s presence grew in Canada, this message became even more relevant (since Home Depot is frequently NOT helpful, nor is it close to home for a lot of small-town customers).

But in the past few months, they’ve switched their tagline to…

“Home Hardware: Homeowners helping homeowners”

… which is the weakest tagline I’ve ever heard! To begin with, they’re using the word “homeowner” twice in five words; and the word “home” appears three times in five words. I think they were trying to go for a memorable alliteration but alliteration is really only effective on a sharper-sounding first letter, not the soft-starting “H”.

Not only is it an annoying tagline to say, the message of the tagline is weak and they’ve stopped highlighting their two biggest strengths: They’re no longer highlighting their expertise “help” factor (I don’t want a homeowner helping me when I go into Home Hardware. I want to feel like I’m talking to an expert!), and they’re no longer highlighting their local market “close to home” factor.