And another thing . . .

A while back, I put up a something about how a tag line is not your brand. And my earlier post today kind of made me want to expand that further. Here goes:

A tag line is not your brand. (We covered this already.) But neither is a logo, corporate color, font, advertising or graphics standards.

Your brand is a promise. A unique claim of distinction that is supported by evidence of performance.

A brand is an asset. It can keep customers from considering the competition, help you get premium pricing, help you recruit employees, help get new products accepted . . . and all kinds of other stuff.

Brand development is the discovery of a brand’s distinction. Branding is tactical ― delivery of the brand message. This is where things like colors, advertising, fonts and the logo come in. But in and of their own personal selves they are most certainly not your brand.

(And while we’re at it, “over” and “more than” do not mean the same thing. There’s a big difference between “ensure” and “insure”. And for God’s sake stop confusing “it’s” and “its”.)

Meanwhile, this blog has impossibly rigid design guidelines.

I’m really not exactly sure which side of the fence I’m on when it comes to identity standards.

I’ve seen guidelines as simple as a few pages and I’ve seen them bound in massive volumes. I’ve come across some that made sense and some that make none.

(One that makes no sense to me is Hershey Resorts. One mandate is that “Hershey” and the different property names are always CAPITALIZED and another is that you always have to have the ® immediately after the “Y” if you use the word “Hershey” alone. This means ― and I am not making this up― that if the occasion arises, you are required to do this: “HERSHEY®’s”. But that's just my personal opinion and does not reflect any official position by Nasuti + Hinkle, its employees, subsidiaries or any of our relatives.)

Then again, I’ve been in a situation where three people from the same company handed me three totally different business cards for no good reason. And I’ve seen logos so misused that somebody ought to be hung out to dry. Honest, I understand how identity standards can help protect the value of a brand. But let’s live in reality.

I’ll buy you lunch if you can show me one instance of someone not doing business with a company because they stacked the logo in a narrow ad or, the company name was in white on a black background instead of black on a white background. Or how on earth the brand is compromised because the HOTEL HERSHEY® wasn’t all caps in an ad.

Like I said, I’m really not exactly sure which side of the argument I come down on when it comes to identity standards. Common sense, perhaps.

Which, I guess, usually leaves out all the lawyers.

This has GOT to be a joke.

I have a couple of tattoos. One on my arm and one on my ankle. Nothing that shows if I don't want it to. And I like tattoos. But this is totally insane.

It has to be a joke. It can't be real.

Laptops Direct in the U.K. is offering to pay people to tattoo their logo on themselves. Fees range from 5,000 on the forehead to 100 for your leg.

This has to be a joke.

For one thing, would you want some loser who would PUT a tattoo on his forehead walking around with your logo?

This has to be a joke. It just has to.

Copyranter goes bye-bye

After nearly three years, The Copyranter blog has ceased to be.

Oh, it's still up and you can go "thumb through" the posts there, but he's not going to write it anymore. And it's a loss for anybody who liked to read funny posts about advertising. Dead-on posts, that is.

I don't know who "the copyranter" (left) really was, but it was one of only a few blogs I made a point of reading every day. Usually several times a day. "Irreverent" is putting it lightly. His enemies were B.S. advertising (i.e. Ketel One), pretentious ad guys (he hated Donny Deutsch and Alex Bogusky equally), gratuitous sex (almost anything from American Apparel) and stupid real estate advertising (the list goes on and on). He was vulgar, outspoken, argumentative, cynical -- and right on the money damn near every time.

I was the guy who rounded up the judges for the D.C. Addy Awards this year, and I should have tried to get him. It would have been interesting at the very least. His take on What Advertising Should Be has a real purity to it. We had a client in the condo sales arena (who has since gone on to Better Things) who once said his goal was to do condo advertising that copyranter liked. I'm not sure that's possible.

So before Blogger takes it down, set aside any objections you may have to borderline pornographic vulgarity and check it out.

I would love to go have a beer with this guy.

Heard any good radio lately?

I heard one the other day -- for the Northern Virginia Clean Water Partnership. It’s a storm sewer in front of some guy’s house calling him up to complain about over-fertilization and uncollected dog waste. (“Hey Johnson, it’s me . . “) I love it. The casting and writing are terrific. It was originally produced for the Texas Commission on Water Quality.

Unfortunately, it’s a long stretch between water holes on the Radio Desert. Spots like this one pop up only now and again. The crap that assaults us on our way to and from work is usually somewhere between awful and terrible, amateurish and insulting, and a waste of time and a waste of money. I don’t know who writes this stuff or who approves it, but I know some good radio writers ― Ed Stern and Brian Klam come to mind ― and I’ll happily give you their phone numbers. And Clean Cuts is as good a production company as you’ll find.

You can do good radio. Honest. There is always some good radio in the local awards shows.

Maybe it’s because radio is relatively inexpensive and advertisers don’t want to invest in a quality spot. Or all the good copywriters down at the agency really want to do TV so they blow off radio. Maybe radio salespeople are really good at selling station produced stuff. Probably a bit of all three.

But the funny thing is, it seems to me that it would be in the best interests of everybody involved to run better (read it: attention-getting and memorable) spots.

Personally, I love radio. If I could, I’d do nothing else. Listening to this stuff ― and realizing that somebody got paid to do it ― is taking years off my life. So if you’re looking for a radio writer, I can find you one. Call me at 301-222-0010. That’s 301-222-0010. Don't forget -301-222-0010.

Operators are standing by.

One of these you could actually do in DC.

That would be the one on the left, something I found on I Have an Idea. The other -- also from IHAI -- I don't know whether Metro or Union Station or anybody would going along with it.

But I like them both anyway.

How to get Capone.

Fairly early in “The Untouchables” Sean Connery’s character, Officer Jim Malone, challenges Kevin Costner/Elliot Ness, demanding to know if Ness is willing to do “whatever is necessary” to get Al Capone.

And here’s how I think this relates to advertising. “Whatever is necessary” for the agency folk might mean anything from recognizing when somebody else's idea is better than yours to working the weekend or a late night just to Get It Right. It might mean finding a way to make a good idea out of a client mandate, rather than just bitching about what buffoons they all are.

For a client, it could mean actually listening to agency's ideas and thoughts about your product or programming, and involving them in something more than just "the advertising". It might mean pulling your pants up tight and taking a creative risk in search of big rewards. It might even mean telling the boss that his cousin/golfing buddy/brother/college pal’s agency just really isn’t Getting it Done.

But maybe for everybody it first means deciding whether we’re actually willing to do “whatever it takes” to succeed.

Or not.