SunGard Advertising – Wherever You Don’t Care Who Knows What Business You’re In…

I wish SunGard’s new ads told me faster what the business does. I saw a version of this ad in The Wall Street Journal. I had never heard of SunGard.

It’s an arresting photo-illustration, visually faster than the other new SunGard executions. But none of them quickly tell what the company sells. Neither does the slogan, “Wherever the mission is critical.”

In fact, it’s only in the second sentence that I discover SunGard sells software and technology services. That seems to be enough for SunGard and its ad agency, Young & Rubicam.

If you’ve just spent big bucks on creating a new advertising campaign and spiffy new website, with all kinds of customer photography; and you’re running a four-month buy in eight of the world’s broadest business publications, wouldn't you want a more obvious link between brand and business arena?

On top of that, those creative Y&R guys have a little visual letter-play going on the ads – and online, too. Various shapes and alphabetic initials are buried in each of the photographs which, when you know they are there, will enable you to spell out (ta-da!) S-U-N-G-A-R-D. In case you didn’t notice.

This technique is named steganography – writing a hidden message so that nobody, except for the sender and intended recipient, knows there’s a message. It’s what Wikipedia calls a form of security through obscurity. Perfect for expensive advertising, no? Uh…no. (The aggressive website uses Flash to reveal the letters buried in each major photo-illustration to make the gag more understandable.)

There’s a secondary theme: LOOK FOR US. Appearing modestly in ads and far larger on the website, It’s a more directive thought which – I suggest – might have made a stronger campaign, given the visuals with the cutesy code.

To wrap up here, according to that same site, SunGard is:

…one of the world’s leading software and technology services companies.  SunGard has more than 20,000 employees and serves 25,000 customers in 70 countries. SunGard provides software and processing solutions for financial services, higher education and the public sector.

I didn’t know that. Probably would have enjoyed learning it. But not from these ads – even if the fire scene got me looking. 

Ball Watch Website Brand Punch: More Steam, Mad Gleam.

You can read this post or avoid the words and go directly to BallWatch.com for one of the most “atmospheric” websites I’ve run across recently. For brand vision and sheer evocative power, the presentation is hard to beat.

I’m fond of big machinery like locomotives. Especially the steam-powered muscle machines of yesterday. Ball Watch has successfully evoked this yesterday by combining the romance of steam and the love of highly accurate time pieces in a sound-and-sight-show that works superbly on the worldwide web.

Sure enough, Ball watches are expensive. I don’t remember the precise line, but looking at the Ball price list is like hearing a collector say, “Only the really costly ones are interesting.” Ball watches are not, however, the most expensive watches in the world. They do seem to have an intensely loyal following: very few used Ball watches seem to come up for sale on “fleaBay,” for example.

What caught me – catches me still – is the imagery and the scoring. Old black-and-white film footage with evocative music overcomes my sensibility about the amount of time Flash intros normally take. For a brand guy who’s heartily tired of sneering athletes and faux-shock appeals to youth, Ball Watch calls up strong images of a vigorous industrial America. A great branding job.

Unfortunately, that’s not directly apparent in much else the company does. The two-column-by-seven-inch ad that caught my eye in a recent Wall Street Journal is much like other expensive watch ads…except for the “Official RR Standard” line which reminded me I’d been meaning to check the company out for some time. The particular watch, a Fireman B and O “First Mile,” is the kind of historical detail I notice but a third of the ad is dealer listing.

I wish the company website delivered more business detail about the company itself. You need to burrow deep into the Internet to discover that, as of 2007 at least, Ball Watch USA “incorporated under the laws of New York and our major investor is an American citizen.” (This is from Jeff Hess, self-identified president of the firm. “Owners are an investment group. CEO is Francisco Harreraa formerly of Citibank. Two of the main investors are a Swiss guy and an American citizen. VPs are a guy from Kansas City and a guy from Canada.”

No precision there. Still, it’s not the first time that we have looked deeply into the eyes of the watch business and seen the mad gleam of great brand development driving the…train. (Remember the Flying Tourbillon and Watch Obama posts.)

Return to the main point: Ball watches appear to be quality goods. Trend-wise, they look fine. Plus its Explorers Club idea, which could be hackneyed, isn’t because this particular web segment is beautifully scored with a haunting version of “Amazing Grace.” Way more evocative than the sonically ugly Youtube version, by the way.

Though I do not own a Ball watch and am never likely to, I’m calling the website a great branding job. For this could-be consumer, more Americana please, mad gleam and all.

Main photo: Wikimedia.org and US Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division, npcc.32807 digital ID. All rights reserved.

KBR Technology Assumes a Brand of Distinction – and Distinctiveness.

The new brand [or sub-brand, to be precise] for KBR Technology was born when two concepts came together in my mind. First came how the client described her business unit:

KBR Technology is a distinctive global business whose core technologies have significant impact on the productive success of industries, people and countries.

The second was seeing a major work called “Needle Woman” by Korean artist Kimsooja at the Museum of Fine Arts-Houston. In this video installation, the videographer stands utterly still, her back always to the camera, while crowds of people flow by, around and past her.

Her crowds are different from segment to segment; they are ordinary people on the streets of Nepal and Cuba, Chad and the Yemen, Brazil.

KBR Technology’s current and potential customers are in markets in the Middle East, India, China and the rest of Asia – not in Western Europe or North America. The crowd idea allows for the clearest possible contrast for the business unit among companies with similar profiles and “products.”

[KBR Technology licenses technologies which are just as cutting-edge as laser guidance or optical interconnects; but they’re far more focused on the basics of process industries. You will not frequently notice the application of advanced techniques in the more efficient production of ammonia, for example; or in improved ethylene and propylene yields. But for the world’s developing and expanding economies, these produced materials are the building blocks of new and vital societies. These technologies measurably improve the lives of people everywhere and are real examples of a successful global knowledge economy.]

Beyond the rapid business booms and the towering new skylines in so many far reaches of the world, there are the people - always.

So Part 1 is our “world photography” that puts the new sub-brand into a distinctive context, increasing differentiation from the KBR corporate look itself. On the top level, this business unit’s communications feature vivid color, movement…and life, culture after culture.

Part 2 is the contrast (in the ads, at least) with the individuals who offer the technologies. It is not only the corporate entity or business unit which delivers the know-how – it comes via KBR’s own people. A brand has the opportunity to refer to the total experience of an organization. So each combined photo-set can help form the mental picture stakeholders will have of KBR Technology. (Brand voice here is quintessentially visual.)

The repeating headline, Part 3, begins to make the brand package more concrete. KBR Technology is the global company that literally helps put the “HOW in Your World” with specific technologies and processes. These capabilities help customers reach out beyond each plant perimeter to the peoples of their society at all levels.

Then the expanded tagline, KNOW-HOW DELIVERED, ties everything back to the KBR corporate slogan. That’s Part 4.

Well, you know it is never so simple except in hindsight. Even in a sub-branding program there are many moving parts and many people helping to make the concept come true. For the initial steps, getting the new brand up and running, let me first mention and thank my frequent collaborators at Prism Design – Terry Teutsch, Stacy Allen and Susan Reeves.

None of this would look and feel as good as it does without the Prismatics’ touches from the get-go – colorful, dramatic and specific.

And my maximum appreciation goes to the KBR Technology client who has been supportive of the creative and incredibly capable in rolling out the brand internally. She has never been shy about her feelings; at one point, she emailed:

Just a quick note to say thank you. The work is terrific.

Can’t beat that.

“Hi, Honey.”

What I like about the new, full-page newspaper ad for Kellogg’s Corn Flakes® Touch of Honey cereal print is its attempted nostalgia. I saw it on the back page of Wednesday’s Flavor section in the Houston Chronicle. This print ad’s so new it’s not on line yet. Time to use your imagination:

Step 1. Take Kellogg’s classic 50-year-old version of “Sweetheart of the Corn” (above), complete with white gloves – I think they’re channeling Peyton Place without the lust.

Step 2. Replace the old corn flakes box with this new, Touch of Honey box (shown left). The headline is, “Our sweetheart now has something a little sweeter.” And overlay a mild golden glow on the visual. The suburban goddess visual is even labeled Circa 1958.

Unfortunately, mix these elements together and you get another bland ad.

One food blogger said back in May, the sweetening tries to makes the corn flakes “slightly less damn boring.” I don’t think the Kellogg’s advertising agency is going to change that product review very much.

According to a PR release issued by Kellogg’s: The market for honey-sweetened products is expanding among the adult population in the United States. In fact, last year the category grew by 7.5 percent. New Kellogg’s Corn Flakes with a Touch of Honey provides that subtle taste of natural honey people want.

I suggest it’s way too subtle for the category: The product is stuck between corn flakes and frosted flakes. Maybe the ad is targeted at consumers who didn’t find Kellogg’s Corn Flakes lackluster four or five decades ago. Really, I wish Kellogg’s had tried a little harder with this one. Why launch an extension of a powerful brand with so little fanfare?

1958 ad visual courtesy of PZR Services with thanks.

Lifeless Snoozers

I’m about to do Korean Air (and other major international companies) a grave injustice – I guess. But the example ad above, featuring KA’s “reclining Kosmo Sleeper,” is ink-on-paper proof that The Economist has the most boring ads of any major weekly magazine on the planet Earth. They’re mostly tedious. They’re dreary, lifeless snoozers.

Please leave aside, for the moment, whether the entire Korean Air ad campaign, with TV spots created by director Michael Buckley, is good or bad. (This particular print ad has been called “Stunning” and “Absolutely brilliant.” Blog-posters say they love flying the airline.)

No, what I’m after is why The Economist, a massively important and very well-written news magazine, has such generally uninspiring advertising, week after week.

Well, I guess I know why, but I sort of forgot, and then the magazine itself reminded me. A recent article, “Heated arguments,” pointed out that attack ads are on the rise – in America. But, oh dear, the rest of the world still doesn’t like them: “Attack ads tend to go down badly in Europe and Asia.” And, “Some governments even ban them.”

The article really isn’t news, it’s observation. I learned about Europe’s unease with provocatively combative adverts at the knees of my Dialogue International colleagues.

So there are like these…rules…for ad campaigns that will run internationally. Outside-the-US Rule 1, no English-language puns – non-native speakers often don’t get the jokes and they can hardly ever be translated into other languages anyway.

Rule 2: Make only claims that can be proven in court – and if in doubt, don’t make them at all. So paging through, say, The Economist, you’ll see terribly boring ads for SAP or Royal Bank of Canada. (There’s often fancy watch ads on the back covers, though.)

“Stop the reader” is my Rule 1. I call The Economist ad slate boring because I don’t think the ads bring readers to a screeching halt. This doesn’t have to be done with funny headlines or provocative pronouncements . Use a dramatic photo once in a while. (What are you people paying your ad agencies for, anyway? Sleep-aid adverts?)

Wake up. Get a life. And only read The Economist for the articles.

Flying Tourbillon..?

I’ve been watching what other people read – a function of LinkedIn. I had become a little self-conscious about my colleagues’ choices, imposing business and branding books by all the current big names. Whilst I have been sucking down military history and science fiction.

I had the chance to upgrade my reading material with the arrival of the latest special issue of Golf Digest/Index. Don’t know why I received this magazine; though I love the concept, I don’t actually play golf. I also recognize the game’s role in conspicuous consumption.

So it was with no particular surprise when I reviewed the magazine’s back cover ad. This, my friends, is a Cartier Ballon de Bleu Flying Tourbillon Men’s Watch…I don’t even know what half this stuff means, but it’s a damned impressive ad. That copy on the lower right? Here’re a few lines:

Rose gold case on alligator strap. Mechanical movement with manual winding. Cartier caliber 4952 M/C (10 and ¾ lines, 19 jewels, 21,000 vibrations per hours. Seconds indicated by the C-shaped tourbillon cage (aha!). Movement developed and assembled by the Cartier Manufacture…

Pretty fancy copy and not much of it – all feature, feature, feature. The benefit is it’s a Cartier watch.

This Flying Whatever lists for…$96,500. But pick the right online retailer and you can get it for $75k, or $74k…or even $73,340.

I love the magazine. I probably won’t receive any more issues, but my hat’s right off to publisher Thomas J Bair and the other people who produce it. They’ve pegged an upscale audience, deliver some well-written features and do not shrink from the tough job of promoting stylish excess.

BTW, shop www.marketreplica.com and you can get a fine simulacrum of the same watch for $100 – that’s all I can afford after Tax Day, anyway.

Novopelle’s Lip

Now appearing in the Houston edition of Envy: A sharp ad for Novopelle® laser hair removal clinics. Using a stock photo, an ad agency named C&G has taken credit for the work. Those initials could stand for “Carlos” and “Glen,” since an adsoftheworld.com website posting credits Carlos Cortinas (art director) and Glen Day (copywriter). What attracted me, an occasional reader of this hip lifestyle magazine, was the careful, sans serif type across the upper lip of the attractive young woman in the photo:

A closet full of low-cut blouses. Countless hours at the gym. A small fortune in pushup bras. And he can't stop staring at my upper lip.

What an excellent, contrasty way to direct attention. The stock photographer’s shot helps: The young woman’s eyes looking up and to the right. In its cleanest version, there’s no more than the photo, the lip-contoured headline, the Novopelle logo and website. In the version pictured here, jpegged from the magazine itself, you can barely see Novopelle’s services: Fire, Air, Water and Earth. These packages describe the body parts from which hair would be removed and range from the under arm, bikini and upper lip ($587) to the “full” deal – arms, legs, face ($1,945).

In a magazine like Envy, wherein there’s plenty of food/drink/expensive fashion accessories, the C&G ad stands out big time. So you may or may not need hair removed (I could benefit from some transplanting myself). But you’d have to be blind if you don't “get” this one.