SU Storybuilding and Content Creation in the Digital Age Questions

part 1:_ Advertising by Design – Chapter 6: Storybuilding and Content Creation in the Digital AgeInstructions for Chapter Summaries

Advertising by Design – Third Edition

After reading each chapter type up a 3 paragraph summary, upload a PDF document.

Please review the Writing Requirements Below.

Formatting of Document for Writing Assignments:

All work must be Typed! No Exceptions. Work must be turned in on a “Designed” Letterhead. Style and legibility are key as

Graphic Designers.

Name, Course, Book, Chapter, and Due Date MUST be on all assignments to be

accepted.

Heading and required information should be part of Letterhead design. NO Script, Decorative or Designer typefaces may be used for the writing portion of the

assignment(s).

Body Copy MUST be in Serif or San-Serif Font. Body Copy Must be no larger than 12pt. Leading is no greater than 14.4pt. – Single Spaced. Margins should be no less than .25in. and no greater than 1in.Finally, you must add your opinion at the end of the summary.

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————————————————————————————————————————–part2:_instructions for Chapter Summaries International Media Communication in a Global AgeAfter reading each chapter type up a 3 paragraph summary, upload a PDF document.Please review the Writing Requirements Below.Formatting of Document for Writing Assignments: All work must be Typed! No Exceptions. Work must be turned in on a “Designed” Letterhead. Style and legibility are key asGraphic Designers. Name, Course, Book, Chapter, and Due Date MUST be on all assignments to beaccepted. Heading and required information should be part of Letterhead design. NO Script, Decorative or Designer typefaces may be used for the writing portion of theassignment(s). Body Copy MUST be in Serif or San-Serif Font. Body Copy Must be no larger than 12pt. Leading is no greater than 14.4pt. – Single Spaced. Margins should be no less than .25in. and no greater than 1in.Finally, you must add your opinion at the end of the summary.—————————————————————————————————————

part 3Advertising Appeals Watch the videos below and write your analysis of the advertising appeals of each. Why do you think that particular appeal was used? Did you find it effective? Why or why not?

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part 4

Discussion Question – Moral Responsibility

• What moral responsibility, if any, do advertisers have to use “normal looking” people in their advertisements?
• Some charities sometimes use shocking images of starving children or abused animals in their advertisements. What do you think of this practice

6
STORYBUILDING AND CONTENT CREATION IN THE
DIGITAL AGE
STORYBUILDING IN THE DIGITAL AGE
The velocity with which technology changes partly defines advertising’s transformation. The
legacy model of advertising pushed at the consumer is crumbling. But storytelling remains
constant. It is a powerful way to communicate, relate to, and connect with one another. The
elements that go into creating a great story remain fairly constant—almost akin to the ancient
storyteller around a crowded camp-fire, where the experience is a communal event in real
time—where anything can happen—where listeners become participants and the storyteller
herself becomes a listener or facilitator. The 24/7 social communities online enable people to
curate stories they find shareworthy and spread stories rapidly. Online communities and
platforms are fertile grounds for storytelling. Whether people share and spread stories for
social status or currency or to be part of a crowd, it increases the need to create and co-create
compelling stories for audiences on behalf of brands and groups.
Stories are such a powerful driver of emotional value that their effect on any given
object’s subjective value can actually be measured objectively.
—Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
The digital world has increased the need for coherent stories to engage and build a brand’s
narrative across media channels. This is a greater need than in the predigital connected age
simply because there are so many more channels of communication. Social media plays a big
role in most people’s lives, providing a fertile place for interactive stories.
Agency Pereira & O’Dell made rich use of social media for its global social film, The Beauty
Inside, for Intel and Toshiba, starring actors Topher Grace and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, as
well as people worldwide who auditioned via Facebook and got to co-star with the
professional actors. (People read from an audition script, recording their auditions via an app
provided on Facebook, and could ask friends to like their video, which was supposed to
increase their chances of being chosen to appear in the social film.) Pereira & O’Dell
combined social media participation with high-level storytelling.
Along with conventional brand storytelling in paid, owned, and earned media, the new
advertising ecosystem is collaborative, co-created, and a forum for two-way conversations. It
is often quick paced and can be local as well as global.
Brian Storm, founder and executive producer of MediaStorm, advises, “To be relevant on the
web your offering needs to be either super funny or the highest-quality story on the topic.
Landa, R. (2016). Advertising by design : Generating and designing creative ideas across media. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
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That’s what readers will tweet, post, and share. Mediocre offerings are just noise.”
Aspects of storybuilding (building the brand through narrative construction, stories, and
actions) take on five major roles in advertising:
Building the core brand narrative
Making each individual story act on behalf of the brand by the agencies across media:
storytelling and “storydoing”
Synthesized stories built through interactions between the fabricated brand experiences
created by the agencies and the reactions from and co-creations made by consumers
Original brand content and conversations initiated by the consumers
Owned platforms for people to tell their stories
THE CORE BRAND NARRATIVE: THE STORY
ECOSYSTEM
When most products and services are on a par what differentiates and illuminates one over
another is its brand narrative. The core brand narrative is a strategic branding premise, which
sets the foundational brand essence and brand values and makes the emotional connection
with the audience. The core brand narrative has to be the point of entry and foundation for all
other specific stories to keep the brand message relevant, engaging, and on track as well as to
aid brand resonance.
The overarching core brand narrative has to take into account what is important to its
audience plus what the brand needs to communicate to meet its goals, developing stories
around that sweet spot between audience aspirations and brand goals. Storybuilding has to be
at the core of the marketing strategy—from branding through advertising.
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Can you treat a brand or entity like a story? A resounding Yes! Aesop agency in London
writes on their website (www.aesopagency.com):
We rigorously apply narrative concepts to marketing problems—treating brands like
stories, and campaigns as chapters in an unfolding narrative starring our clients’ brands
and their audiences.
We also use stories to make better, more joined-up creative. Our narrative approach
produces richer briefs that inspires our specialists in strategy, design, communications,
and activation to work together to tell a seamless story that audiences actively want to
engage with.
The storybuilding strategy should be a foundation for all content, which then becomes a
springboard for developing the brand narrative and individual marketing messages or stories
and campaigns. Every piece of unique content, video, social media post, tweet, and each
individual ad, game, or commercial should deliver visual and verbal communication in
accord with the larger brand narrative.
Landa, R. (2016). Advertising by design : Generating and designing creative ideas across media. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
Created from lynnu on 2023-11-04 01:14:28.
Storytelling is not a new advertising technique, but because of the vast increase in media
channels every individually crafted message and real-time response to consumer messages
and stories must be in sync and build that core narrative, maintaining brand values,
personality, and promises, strengthening what people find of interest and endearing about the
brand or entity. The brand narrative must differentiate—create a personality that is unique
and identifiable with a characteristic emotional or expressive tone (joyful, pleasurable,
exciting, fun, calm, kind, quirky, sensitive, etc.).
There’s a big difference between creating content for a brand and a brand creating
content for an audience. Those who get it will win.
—Scott Donaton, global chief content officer and head of UM Studios, on Twitter
The brand narrative sets the brand’s DNA, its values and beliefs, its integrity. In order for
people to have an affinity for a brand or group, they have to respond to the brand narrative
with trust and some kinship. They also have to believe it is authentic and has integrity. The
audience has to have an emotional connection to it. Naturally, it is easier to connect with the
values of charities and nonprofit organizations, such as the Michael J. Fox Foundation for
Parkinson’s Research or World Vision. Do keep in mind, consumers can and do have an
affinity with some commercial brands they believe to have integrity (honesty and
transparency) and share their core values, such as Apple or Southwest Airlines.
Individual Stories across Media
Why Tell a Story?
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
An interesting and valid story has the power to move us, teach us, and shape our beliefs.
Stories mark our lives and they are how we remember things, how we make sense of the
world. In terms of marketing, storytelling is an effective way to engross and ultimately
influence people.
Well-told stories draw people in, transporting them to a time and place, into a seamlessly
woven narrative that builds a believable world with an interesting plot (often with a
backstory). The story needs to make people care. (People do not pay attention to boring
stories.) We tend to remember a story over straight information, especially one that makes us
feel something. Everywhere we turn, there’s more information—facts, lists, statistics,
ingredients, how-to’s, what to do’s, and more. If you’re trying to persuade someone to take an
action—whether it’s to buy soap or give blood—using a story, preferably an emotionally
charged one, will more likely produce results than any data alone.
Landa, R. (2016). Advertising by design : Generating and designing creative ideas across media. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
Created from lynnu on 2023-11-04 01:14:28.
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Landa, R. (2016). Advertising by design : Generating and designing creative ideas across media. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
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FIGURE 6-1
FILM: THE GIRL WHO COULDN’T CRY
Agency: DDB New York
Client: WATERisUFE
Photography: © WATERisUFE 2014
“Although the film is at times hard to watch, these are real things happening to real children
on a daily basis,” says Matt Eastwood, chief creative officer of DDB New York. “It’s hard to
think that on top of these terrible living conditions, these children don’t even have basic
necessities like clean, accessible water. Imagine not being able to shed a tear when life is at
its worst. It’s tragic even to consider.”
—http://www.aaaa.org/news/agency/Pages/TheGirlWhoCouldn’tCry.aspx
At MediaStorm, we believe that quality storytelling is the killer app. Our mission is to
convey the essence of the human experience in deeply personal, intimate and
emotional ways.
—Brian Storm, Founder and Executive Producer, MediaStorm
The Girl Who Couldn’t Cry follows a girl from the slums of India who, despite all she has to
endure, cannot cry because of severe dehydration (figure 6-1). We see this child sorting trash,
witnessing her mother’s life as a prostitute, being forced into marriage against her will, and
more shocking hardships that no child should have to endure. This film illuminates human
rights violations while letting us know that a lack of a basic human necessity such as clean
water causes severe dehydration preventing one from creating tears.
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
We frame experiences and beliefs through stories. According to psychologists Melanie Green
and Timothy Brock, people are more effectively persuaded by stories that absorb them and
“transportation more commonly occurs in response to narratives.”1
People’s Responses
Consumers can drive the brand conversations. Once a story is launched, a good deal of the
work for the creative team (or others on the agency’s or client’s brand team) ensues. They
need to respond to peoples’ reactions and posts and any content created by consumers in
response to the original story. Sometimes the responses to consumers’ creations are more
casual than the original brand story (an ad, a film, a game), purposely less slick or finished,
in order to make the response appear more conversational.
Other times, a campaign (a social media video, for example) directly incorporates consumer
reactions or suggestions or comments (as did Wieden + Kennedy in their now classic
interactive digital response campaign initiative in real-time featuring the Old Spice Guy
posting personal video responses to fans online) or entirely utilizes consumer comments
Landa, R. (2016). Advertising by design : Generating and designing creative ideas across media. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
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(love songs for Wendy’s Pretzel Bun culled from consumer tweets about the bun).
These campaigns, ultimately, are synthesized stories created through interaction between the
fabricated brand experiences created by the agencies and the reactions (posts, comments,
questions, parodies, or content) created by consumers.
Some agencies and clients take advantage of user-generated content (UGC), material created
and voluntarily contributed by the public, holding competitions and soliciting submissions.
Deutsch LA and Target asked high school seniors to record videos of themselves opening and
reading acceptance letters from colleges. The authentic-feeling commercial created from a
montage of these elated teens’ video submissions ends, “Every kid deserves this moment.
Great schools can get them here. Target is on track to give 1 billion to K–12 education.”
Doritos’ brand management believes that consumers are producers and distributors of content
—they believe in participatory advertising. For years, Doritos has held its “Crash the Super
Bowl” user-generated content campaign, leveraging the creativity of its brand fans. The
Doritos team trusts its fans, a mainly millennial demographic. The Super Bowl competition is
one part of Doritos’ broader marketing strategy where brand fans become brand sirens.
Unsolicited Consumer Content
Some brand advocates create their own stories for the fun of it, because they love the brand
or entity, or perhaps they parody the branded stories created by the ad agencies or the brand.
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Consumers now have the technology to create their own brand content experiences and
conversations, for example, by creating films with smartphones, tablets, webcams, and other
equipment. They also have the power to distribute what they create. Whether they create
motion graphics, videos, or print, they can use online platforms such as Instagram, Facebook,
Snapchat, and YouTube as distribution channels. For example, a young brand siren named
Jess Paul created her own webcam vid about Coca-Cola with the theme of “Open Happiness”
that caught attention. Another Coca-Cola fan created a print ad turning the wave into a
handshake.
With or without the brand’s involvement, consumers are going to join or direct the
conversation. A smartly managed brand will embrace the consumer-generated content. Brand
agencies, managers, and stewards can ignore these consumer initiatives—whether content or
conversations—or respond thoughtfully (though not slickly) in order to deepen the
connection, broadening the narrative and making it more fluid and co-created. Agency
creatives have to listen to what people are saying and leverage conversations that are out
there already, shaping the consumer conversations (consumer to consumer; consumer to
brand and consumers) and generated content.
User-generated content (UGC) implies great enthusiasm for a brand. When people spend
their time creating content about a brand, they are expressing genuine enthusiasm. It doesn’t
get better than that for influencing potential customers. Studies suggest that people tend to
believe their peers’ UGC over agency-created marketing.
Landa, R. (2016). Advertising by design : Generating and designing creative ideas across media. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
Created from lynnu on 2023-11-04 01:14:28.
Platforms for the Public
An ad team can conceive an idea that becomes a public stage. As part of the “Open
Happiness” campaign at the National University of Singapore, a Coca-Cola vending machine
reads, “Hug Me.” if you hugged the machine (squeezed the sides), the vending machine
dispensed a free Coke. The students on campus embraced the promotion (literally and
figuratively), and videos and photos of people hugging the vending machine went viral.
Another example is the first Coca-Cola TV commercial to exclusively feature fan-created
and -submitted footage. “The 30-second spot, produced by Wieden + Kennedy, is the result
of a Coca-Cola contest. … The brand challenged teens around the world to submit short
video clips sharing what it feels like when they take a sip of Coke, for the chance to be
featured in a national TV ad. The 40 clips that made the final cut were selected from more
than 400 submissions. ‘This is AHH’ features an international cast of fans-turnedfilmmakers, with user-generated content from Brazil to Salt Lake City to Jacksonville, Fla.”2
On a platform such as Instagram, an agency can boost brand engagement with consumer
images and hashtag campaigns. Asking consumers to share photos, such as selfies, using
products is a potentially contagious avenue. On Instagram, Lancôme DreamTone asked
women to celebrate their own unique skin tone and feel proud of their skin even without
makeup with a “bareselfie” (figure 6-2).
Utilizing two video-sharing platforms, Nissan invited Instagram and Vine users to create their
own short videos about the Versa Note using a cutout version of the car (a printout kit was
available on YourDoorToMore.com). Entrants had the chance to win prizes and see their
creations in a national Nissan TV commercial. To enter, users were required to make “a sixto-15 second video on Vine or Instagram about what they love, include at least one Versa
Note cutout (making it more fun with a model paper car), and then post the video with the
#VersaVid hashtag,” explains agency TBWA\Worldwide.
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
“Cars don’t just take us places. They help us chase dreams, seek adventure, and enjoy life to
the fullest,” says Jon Brancheau, vice president of marketing for Nissan North America. “We
want to celebrate that freedom and the creativity it can inspire.”3
Landa, R. (2016). Advertising by design : Generating and designing creative ideas across media. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
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FIGURE 6-2
INSTAGRAM: LANCÔME DREAMTONE
Agency: Firstborn
Client: Lancôme
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
“Lancôme DreamTone makes every type of skin more beautiful by removing dark spots and
evening out skin tone. For the launch of the skin perfecting serum, Lancôme wanted to build
product awareness and forge an emotional connection on social media.
During our research, we realized that skincare, unlike makeup, is a private topic for many
women. Lacking the self-expression or artistry that comes with makeup, skincare is centered
around private, personal routines and problem-solution orientations. To invite skincare out
into the open, we decided to tap into the popularity of a recent social phenomenon—selfies,
or self-taken photos. To celebrate DreamTone’s differentiating feature, individual formulas
for individual skin tones, we asked women to celebrate their own unique skin tone and feel
proud of their skin even without makeup. In the campaign, users were asked to share photos
of their makeup-free faces using the #bareselfie hashtag on Instagram. Hundreds of women
shared their photos and the campaign was mentioned as an Instagram Top Moment of the
year, linking DreamTone with the confidence that can come from not wearing cosmetics.” —
Firstborn
Tongal, a web company that crowdsources video content (TV commercials, social videos,
music videos, branded entertainment), takes another avenue. The company works with its
sponsors to define the creative challenges and establish the prizes. “Businesses and judges
select the ideas they want to see come to life and the creatives that submitted those ideas get
paid,” according to Tongal.com.
And, of course social media brands (YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Vine, Twitter, Pinterest,
Snapchat, Periscope, and LinkedIn) are platforms for consumers to tell, create, and distribute
stories. If you give a voice to the consumer in your story, the brand story potentially becomes
Landa, R. (2016). Advertising by design : Generating and designing creative ideas across media. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
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more fluid, meaningful, and possibly shared.
TELLING A SHAREWORTHY STORY
How do you tell a (shareworthy) story? Effective advertising starts a conversation.
Know what is important or of interest to people, and figure out how can you create a story
based on their interest that will attract and keep their attention.
The Essential “Why” Inspiring the Brand
Start with the core brand narrative as your guiding light. Next, determine the “why” behind
the brand. It’s similar to what life coach Tony Robbins speaks about when he says it’s the
“invisible forces” of why we do what we do. Or what ethnographer Simon Sinek talks about
when he urges people to find their “why,” to look beyond what they do or how they do it to
“The purpose, cause, or belief that inspires you to do what you do.”
Wendy Clark, senior vice president of Coca-Cola, says marketing should start with “why.”
She writes, “At Coca-Cola, when we’re at our best, we do the same.
“Coca-Cola was created in 1886 by Dr. John Pemberton, a pharmacist who wanted to create
an elixir that would give people a moment of refreshment and uplift, a moment of happiness.
And thus our why was evident: to make the world happier,” Clark wrote in AdAge.4
The Brand Promise Manifested
Does the brand story you are telling hold a promise—a promise of entertainment or (useful)
information? A story is crafted for an audience, for what the audience wants to get out of it.
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Inform. Entertain. Educate. Or be Useful.
Your story is competing with every piece of content out there for someone’s attention. Make
it worth someone’s time. Brands have information they can share with the public; for
example, BabyCenter.com, a parenting and pregnancy digital resource, is a member of the
Johnson & Johnson family of companies. Bring the brand promise to life—make the
audience’s life better through entertainment or education, make them happier, healthier, or
whatever the brand or entity promises at its core.
Have the Story Do Something
Ty Montague, co-founder and co-CEO of co:collective, writes about “Storydoing” in his
book, True Story: How to Combine Story and Action to Transform Your Business. He
explains that a story is told through action. For example, basketball player Kevin Durant
partnered with KIND, a snack food company, to demonstrate “the best way to show strength
is to choose kindness.” As part of the initiative, KIND has donated $1 million to the Kevin
Durant Charity Foundation “to create specialized education and after-school programming
for at-risk youth to teach them to be STRONG and KIND” (www.strongandkind.com).
Landa, R. (2016). Advertising by design : Generating and designing creative ideas across media. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
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The STRONG & KIND Pledge commits young people to:
Have the courage to be kind when others may not.
Look out for those who can’t look out for themselves.
Stand up when others would rather stand out.
Leave their world a kinder place than they found it.
Be STRONG & KIND.
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Market research can offer insights into what an audience wants from a branded product or
service or from an entity, illuminating the audience’s aspirations. Use an insight as a launch
pad for a story. Think of Dove’s “Beauty Sketches” campaign idea. From their research,
Dove realized that women can be their own worst critics, that only 4 percent of women
worldwide consider themselves beautiful. Dove’s insight helped them create a campaign to
demonstrate to women that they are more beautiful than they think.
Landa, R. (2016). Advertising by design : Generating and designing creative ideas across media. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
Created from lynnu on 2023-11-04 01:14:28.
FIGURE 6-3
GRAPHIC NOVEL: “PLAY FANTA: SAVING THE SOURCE”
Agency: Ogilvy NY
Production: Psyop
HTML5: Vectorform
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Client: The Coca-Cola Company
“Psyop and Ogilvy NY created an immersive storytelling experience that flowed across
multiple platforms and pushed the boundaries of the graphic novel for ‘Play Fanta: Saving
the Source.’ The story encompassed the core cast of the Fanta characters, reinforced the ‘Play
Fanta’ campaign and ultimately translated the now famous Fanta crew from their TV
commercial world to the land of the interactive graphic novel.
Psyop crafted the native iOS and Android versions of ‘Play Fanta’ entirely in-house. Built on
top of a custom Unity pipeline, Psyop created special tools that allowed the team of artists to
work quickly and intuitively. In addition to revisiting some of the favorite Fanta locations,
the Psyop team also dreamed up new locales and incorporated previous spots Psyop had
created for Fanta over the years, adding a special touch throughout the app.
Note: Technology partner Vector-form was responsible for building the HTML5 version of
‘Play Fanta: Saving the Source.’”—Psyop
Landa, R. (2016). Advertising by design : Generating and designing creative ideas across media. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
Created from lynnu on 2023-11-04 01:14:28.
Conceive a story that is a conversation starter, that is relevant and timely, that creates an
avenue for a two-way conversation with the audience; it should be an experience that is,
according to UM Studios’ Scott Donaton, “social by design.” Today, people want to have
their say and be part of the public conversation.
Of course, people will have to find your story, so you need to figure out how the content will
be distributed and discovered.
Immersive Experiences
Whether it is a game, a graphic novel experience (figure 6-3), virtual reality, or augmented
reality, immersive digital and environmental experiences fuel engagement (see Case Study:
Panasonic “Share the Air” at the end of this chapter). Rather than interrupting programming
content, interactive, spatial (3D, augmented, virtual, illusory), and temporal characteristics of
immersive advertising experiences bank on how and why people enjoy technology, providing
people with entertaining or informational activities. People also tend to spend more time with
a game, a branded virtual world, or in an immersive environment. With immersive
experiences you have the potential for multisensory storytelling, engaging people with not
just sight but with sound, touch, smell, and perhaps taste.
Brands are stories. They want to embody a story. When we start working with a client,
we don’t want to take a brief. We don’t want to just say, “What’s your problem?” We
want to go right back to, “Why was your company started? What’s your mission?” We
talk about mission all the time, and it’s just another way of saying, “What kind of
story are you on? What kind of story do you want to tell?” … Part of our job as an
agency is to reignite that and really figure out what that story is.
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
—Ted Royer, chief creative officer, Droga5, in AdWeek
Landa, R. (2016). Advertising by design : Generating and designing creative ideas across media. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
Created from lynnu on 2023-11-04 01:14:28.
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
FIGURE 6-4
NIKE “RISE”CAMPAIGN: NIKE+ “YOUR YEAR: HOUSE OF MAMBA”
Agency: AKQA
International Managing Director: Giles McCormack International Managing Director: Geoff
Northcott AKQA London, International Executive Creative Director: Duan Evans
Landa, R. (2016). Advertising by design : Generating and designing creative ideas across media. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
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AKQA London, Associate Creative Director: Will Battersby
AKQA London, Associate Creative Director: Matt Bennett
AKQA London, Group Account Director: Alistair
Schoonmaker
AKQA London, Associate Project Director: Nick Townsend
AKQA Shanghai, Executive Producer: Joe Cai
AKQA Shanghai, Client Partner: Mike Donohue
AKQA London, Design Director: Carlos Matias
AKQA Shanghai, Art Director: Meeyee Foong
AKQA Shanghai, Designer: Jianwei Wong
AKQA London, Senior Designer: Jose Paz
AKQA London, Senior Designer: Ignacio Gonzalez
AKQA Shanghai, Technical Delivery Manager: Andrew Bao
AKQA Shanghai, Web Developer: Alex Gong
AKQA Shanghai, Account Director: Leslie Cheng
AKQA London, Senior Project Manager: Jenny Lam
AKQA Shanghai, Copywriter: Jason Zhao
AKQA Shanghai, Account Executive: Vivian Liu
Rhizomatiks, Creative Director: Seiichi Saito
Rhizomatiks, Creative Producer: Douglas Diaz
WiSpark, Senior Account Director: Van Wang
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Contributing companies:
WiSpark, Shanghai
RHIZOMATIKS, Tokyo
Mindshare, Shanghai (Media Agency)
Music Credit: Blast Off Productions
“China loves basketball and the next generation has an unrivalled passion for the game. But a
lack of belief and opportunity prevents them from realizing their dream. We reinvented
Nike’s formulaic athlete tour to create opportunity, taking the spotlight off the athletes and
shining a light on the grassroots players. We created ‘Rise’: a real-time docudrama that
challenged millions of kids across China to raise their game to the new heights.
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A pinnacle moment was transforming the historic Jiangwan Basketball Stadium Shanghai
into a futuristic basketball mecca—House of Mamba. We created the first full-sized LED
reactive basketball court that taught aspiring players the fundamentals of Kobe Bryant’s
Mamba Mentality. The court utilized motion tracking and reactive LED visualization to train,
guide, and challenge the players through various authentic drills based around Kobe, reacting
intuitively and instinctively to the movement and sound of the players. The court tracked
movement—responsive instructional graphics guided and reacted to the players and had the
ability to quickly and seamlessly transform into various training scenarios on the fly. Players
were pushed to the limits as the court pushed the boundaries of training. House of Mamba
electrified the nation and the globe.” —AKQA
Immersive experiences engage people. Ad agency DDB and McDonald’s Sweden turned
Happy Meal boxes into Happy Goggles. To make Happy Goggles, a consumer simply tears
along the box’s perforated lines and folds, inserts the VR lenses, which were included, and
uses his or her own smartphone.
You can use multiscreen immersion utilizing virtual reality (VR) technology and headsets,
such as Oculus Rift, to project images off-screen. Motion-sensing technology users and
touchscreen-oriented audiences expect brands to offer fully immersive experiences, in the
form of in-store experiences, kiosks, Kinect-powered games, Leap Motion technology, and
more. Alvio by Qol Devices is one of 10 companies from the first R/GA Connected Devices
Accelerator. According to R/GA’s techblog, “Their breathing training system combines an
iPad with a breath-powered Bluetooth controller to help kids with respiratory challenges such
as asthma. This platform makes breathing therapy fun for kids by gamifying what was
previously a tiresome process for both parent and child.”
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
For Land Rover USA, agency Y&R New York and production company Tool of North
America created an interactive literary experience, based on British novelist William Boyd’s
The Vanishing Game. According to www.landroverusa.com, the
full-length, original online story follows protagonist Alec Dunbar on a mysterious
driving adventure across the U.K. The Vanishing Game is brought to life online through
an innovative multisensory experience comprised of video, photography, animation,
sound, music, and narration. The project’s interactive platform also spotlights personal
driving adventures from actual Land Rover owners. The book’s release on Tumblr
underscores the rich storytelling experience and encourages readers to share content.”
“Nike Rise” is how 30 grassroots basketball players were drafted from the millions who play
the game in China (figure 6-4). “Their game elevated to new heights by Kobe Bryant and
LeBron James. A story watched and shaped by China’s rising generation.” The Nike Rise
idea is explained on AKQA.com:
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China has an unrivalled passion for basketball. Nike set out to create opportunity and
break down barriers to inspire the next wave of players to rise to new heights. The idea:
Inspire the next wave of basketball players to raise their game, by putting them through
their paces at the Nike Rise House of Mamba, the world’s first interactive LED
basketball court, spurred on by millions watching the ‘Rise’ series.
Thirty players were drafted from a region-wide search to be coached by LeBron James
and Kobe Bryant. Nike Rise House of Mamba challenged and trained the final team
using motion-tracking drills and reactive visualization to create a pinnacle experience,
teach the fundamentals of basketball and push the boundaries of sports training.
STORY BASICS
Create a situation that involves a conflict that becomes resolved. According to former Pixar
storyboard artist Emma Coats, rule number 4 of Pixar’s 22 rules of storytelling asks you to
fill in the blanks:
Once upon a time there was _____. Every day, _____. One day _____. Because of that,
_____. Because of that, _____. Until finally _____.
Transcend category by focusing on your role in people’s lives. Compelling brand
stories speak to values, to what your brand stands for and why it exists.
—Scott Donaton, global chief content officer and head of UM Studios
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
For instance: “Once upon a time there was a girl named Emily who was called ‘that girl who
always has her hands over her face’ at school. Every day, a new blemish would appear on her
face and she’d scream, ‘Ew!’ looking at the mirror. One day, her mother bought a new brand
of acne medication for Emily. Because of that, Emily’s face started clearing up. Because of
that, Emily no longer woke up and shouted, ‘Ew!’ at the mirror, and was no longer called
‘that girl who always has her hands over her face.’ Until finally, Emily’s crush invited her to
the prom.”
When creating a story, start with the ending. What do you want to happen? What’s the
takeaway? What’s the insight into the audience’s thinking?
A story gives meaning to a series of events. Mark Twain wrote, “A tale shall accomplish
something and arrive somewhere.” Think of the old example: Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl.
Boy regains girl. This and every other story is an account of change: how something
happened and why something or someone changed.
You start with a situation and then there is an event (boy loses girl, an accident, an eclipse, a
find, a letter, etc.) that impacts the stasis of the original situation. The story tells us how the
protagonist attempts to restore stasis—to resolve the conflict.
Let’s say in our story the protagonist is about to play an important soccer match. The player is
so excited about the upcoming game that he accidentally trips and sprains his ankle.
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Although a small event, the sprain does not coincide with what he was expecting to be the
natural course of events. To be compelling, the story tells us how the protagonist, the player,
takes action to deal with the conflict—the negative force that changes the normal course of
his life events and ultimately reveals some positive characteristic or something heroic about
the protagonist.
FIGURE 6-5
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FILM and BOOK: IF ONLY FOR A SECOND
Agency: Leo Burnett France
Executive Creative Director: Xavier Beauregard
President: Jean-Paul Brunier
Art Director: Stéphanie Thomasson
Copywriter: Stéphane Gaubert
Production: Prodigious / Pierre Marcus
Film Director: Coban Beutelstetter
TV Producers: Elisabeth Boitte / Antoine Grujard
Post Producers: Franck-Hervé Marc / Antoine Daubert / Sophie Leger
Sound Producers: Prodigious / Laurent Favard
The Mimi Foundation
President and Founder: Myriam Ullens de Schooten
Managing Director: Marianne Wagner
Account Managers: Elise Ziri Bret / Cécile Balut / Valerio Pasqualini
Art Buyer: Claire Sougy
Photographer: Vincent Dixon
Hair Designers: Gregory Kaoua / Christophe Martinez
Makeup Artists: Philippe Meysmans / Laura Noben / Marie-Claire Vervaene
Stylist: Chantal Bourbigot
Retouches: Kilato
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Client: Mimi Foundation, http://www.mimi-foundation.org/
“The Mimi Foundation’s mission is to provide support to cancer patients. It has opened
wellness centers in hospitals in Belgium, France, and Switzerland.
Today, in order to develop its action, the Mimi Foundation needs to increase its notoriety.
Our goal was to create awareness for the Mimi Foundation and its mission.
The objective: Launch a PR campaign without any media investment.
Here is the sentence that inspired the If Only for a Second project:
‘You know what I miss the most … being carefree.’
Twenty cancer patients were invited to a studio. Their hair and makeup were done but they
could not watch the transformation. A photograph immortalized the moment they opened
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their eyes. The surprise allowed them to forget the disease, if only for a second.
The collected photographs were published as a book that was offered to members of the
press. Journalists, PR representatives, and influential bloggers around the world discovered
the laughter and carefreeness expressed in the portraits. They were invited to watch the film
of the experience, entitled If Only for a Second, by flashing the QR code on the book ‘s cover.
Results
Articles appeared in the press and national media (Le Monde, Le Figaro, Elle, Grazia,
Libération …) and in the international press (the Guardian, Time, the Huffington Post, NBC,
CNN, Het Niewsblad …).
More than 15 millions views (Youtube, Dailymotion, Vimeo …).
Tweets were sent every 2 minutes.
Several exhibitions of If Only for a Second are already programmed around the world (Paris,
New York, Brussels …). Visitors will discover the collected portraits and will have the
opportunity to buy the book, which is already in its second printing by popular demand.
The book is a success story! Two thousand copies have already been firmly ordered from
China, Europe, or the United States.” —Leo Burnett Paris
Essentially, a story tells you how someone would act when challenged. In Bird by Bird,
author Anne Lamott advises that “plot grows out of character,” so focus on the people in your
story. A character encounters a crisis and resolves it.
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
In an interview in the Harvard Business Review, “Story-telling That Moves People,” Robert
McKee, a screenwriting coach and lecturer, explains:
Essentially, a story expresses how and why life changes…. The story goes on to
describe how, in an effort to restore balance, the protagonist’s subjective expectations
crash into an uncooperative objective reality. A good storyteller describes what it’s like
to deal with these opposing forces, calling on the protagonist to dig deeper, work with
scarce resources, make difficult decisions, take action despite risks, and ultimately
discover the truth. All great storytellers since the dawn of time—from the ancient
Greeks through Shakespeare and up to the present day—have dealt with this
fundamental conflict between subjective expectation and cruel reality.
For the Mimi Foundation, the agency Leo Burnett Paris created a story that expresses what
some people with cancer feel, a story that resonated with audiences (figure 6-5).
Structural Pointers
Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces focuses on archetypal narrative models.
Many people can recognize themselves in these model narratives or archetypal stories. An
archetype is a universal symbolic model. Examples are stories of a journey in search of
something profound, such as truth, a quest, a battle between good and evil, rags to riches, and
defeating a monster. Archetypal stories appear in literature, myths, plays, songs, and folklore
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across diverse cultures. You can apply an archetype to an image, a symbol, a character, a plot
pattern, and more; and it can be expressed in a myth, a dream, a story, folklore, and more.
There are archetypal characters, as well, such as the hero, the earth mother, the trickster, the
mentor, the outcast, and star-crossed lovers.
There are several basic plots that you can use as points of departure for building stories. In
The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, Christopher Booker explains the seven common
archetypal themes in storytelling. (Booker includes the literary genres of tragic dramas and
comedies as plots, but these cannot be delineated simply. As an aside, in the film Stranger
Than Fiction, the character of an English professor offers this distinction: In a “tragedy, you
die. [In] a comedy, you get hitched.”) A basic plot can help you frame or reframe a
customer’s experience and have it serve as the basis for a brand story. These plots are not so
much about the product or service as about how the customer might feel, act, think,
experience, or live. The product or service is the wingman or the facilitator, as in the classic
branded content BMW Film series “The Hire,” where the BMW car allows the driver to do
what he needs to do to overcome obstacles.
The Underdog Overcomes
Booker calls this plot “Overcoming the Monster.” An underdog wins against a behemoth,
David versus Goliath. It’s the story of Rocky or “Little Red Riding Hood,” or Apple’s “1984”
Super Bowl commercial.
Shift from Ordinary to Extraordinary
Booker calls this plot “Rags to Riches.” It’s the story of King Arthur or Hans Christian
Andersen’s “The Ugly Duckling.”
The Quest
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This is the classic tale of someone on a mission to achieve a goal. It’s found in stories such as
Homer’s Odyssey or Steven Spielberg’s film Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Journey and Home Again
Booker calls this plot “Voyage and Return.” It shows transformation through a journey or
travel, as in L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz or Lewis Carroll’s Through the LookingGlass. A hero must journey out to accomplish a task and return home transformed by the
experience.
Renewal
Booker calls this plot “Rebirth.” One can certainly find renewal through a product, service,
or organization, especially a retirement financial service or an educational institution. Some
classic fairy tales center on rebirth, such as “Sleeping Beauty” and Hans Christian Andersen’s
“The Snow Queen.”
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Comedy and Tragedy
One could view all of comedy, except for physical humor, as anagnorisis (Greek for
“recognition”), as the discovery that produces a change from ignorance to knowledge, when
the protagonist recognizes the true nature of his or her own situation.
People love to be entertained and humor is a favorite form.
Tragedies are dark or sad stories with unhappy endings, involving death, despair, or futility,
such as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet or Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.
Most commercial brands would not be well represented or served by a tragedy; however, one
could use tragedy to raise awareness for a social issue or funds for charities or nonprofits in
public service advertising stories. Issues such as dissuading people from texting while
driving or raising funds for disaster relief may rely on tragedy. In his film, From One Second
to the Next, which is part of AT&T’s “it Can Wait” campaign, acclaimed filmmaker Werner
Herzog shows “the interior side of the catastrophes,” urging people to put their phones away
while driving.
Types of Conflict
You can structure a story in a number of ways, depending upon context and channel delivery.
Some formats or channels, such as interactive channels, lend themselves to nonlinear
structures. Some structures work better than others for the content. For example, if you’re
focusing on a heroic character, a journey structure makes sense. There are traditional
structures that you can research, such as melodrama or episodic, which follow a traditional
three-act story structure, and there are unconventional models, such as metafiction or
interactive fiction.
There also are conventional dramatic situations that create conflict within stories, such as
ambition, disaster, flawed judgment, obstacles to love, pursuit, or self-sacrifice.
Main types of conflict between people, ideas, natural or manmade circumstances:
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Relational conflict (person against person)
Situational conflict (person against nature)
Inner conflict (person against self)
Paranormal conflict (person against technology or magical or supernatural force)
Cosmic conflict (person against destiny; person against an omnificent force or universal
forces)
Social conflict (person against a group/society)
STORY STARTERS
1. Start with the insight, which should drive the takeaway. Any story has to be based on an
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insight. For adidas Originals (see Case Study: adidas Originals earlier in this chapter),
agency Sid Lee realized that to connect with the youth market, they had to uncover an
insight: “Youth aspire to three simple values: fun, self-expression, and recognition.”
2. The insight should point to what the consumer wants, to a problem that needs to be
solved, to a prevailing issue, a challenge, or something they need help with. This can
point you in the direction of the ending. The story amplifies a human desire.
3. Set up a challenge or conflict. The story is about how someone deals with the challenge
or resolves the conflict. Start with the conflict. This relates to a plot-driven strategy,
where the goal is pushed onto the character by the plot. Or start with the character. This
relates to a character-driven strategy, where the character conceives the goal.
4. “The best stories are going to drive the best behaviors.” —Geri Wang, ABC
What behavior do you want to drive? What’s the goal? What’s going to happen at the end?
Start with the end—the destination.
5. Conceive a story with something people don’t expect (people like surprises).
Starters:
Bend the story: Change it up. Stretch it. Distort it. Doing this might provide an usual
angle and a fresh way of presenting it. Ultimately, remember the old journalism aphorism
that a story is more newsworthy if it is unusual. “Man bites dog” is far more interesting
than “dog bites man.”
Set it somewhere odd: Change the setting, time period, or location, and the whole thing
may feel different.
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Show, don’t tell (unless you can conceive a story like Gabriel García Márquez or Donna
Tartt): Show us how and why. For example, rather than telling us a person is short, you
could show a man sitting in an ordinary height chair where we see that his feet do not
touch the ground.
Find out what you need to know: Do research by asking people about their experiences,
lives, cultures, hobbies, interests, and expertise. By getting people’s points of view, you’ll
be able to see their experiences through their eyes and perhaps find an insight. By asking
people about their lives, you might find a problem or challenge they face that you were
unaware of—one that a brand could solve. Support what people are faced with. By asking
people about what they do and like, you learn and can conceive ideas and stories through
a more informed lens.
Find an insight, figure out how to craft it and how to activate it.
Work with impurities.
Go further than you think. Exaggerate—take it to the nth degree.
Find the inherent drama of a brand’s purpose.
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Give a brand a role in everyday life.
Aspire to create memories; be unforgettable.
Bring people on a journey. You don’t want to be predictable or be found in predictable
places.
Invite people into a story.
CASE STUDY
PANASONIC “SHARE THE AIR” CAMPAIGN
Agency: Renegade / New York
Executive Creative Director: Drew Neisser
Creative Director: Fanny Krivoy
Associate Creative Director: Alan Irikura
© Renegade.com
The Challenge:
Position Panasonic products as the perfect accompaniment to the action sports lifestyle.
Target Insight:
Action sports fans are all about creative expression, social connectivity, and community
experience.
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
The Program:
Panasonic “Share the Air” is a fully immersive offline and online experience that invites
attendees to play with Panasonic and get inside Ryan Sheckler’s head. Off-line, the
Panasonic “Share the Air” village provided multiple interactive experiences, like the
103-inch plasma TV room that lets you see and feel the eye-popping power of the
world’s largest plasma, and an interactive instant-win game where everyone was a
winner. Panasonic also provided a camera loaner program, where fans could spend the
day capturing the coolest Dew Tour tricks themselves. Participants were given the secure
digital (SD) card inside the cameras so they could take their pics home and load them on
Sharetheair.net to continue the experience. Ryan fans could also take a tour through a recreation of Ryan’s room, listening to his favorite playlists and taking the “Do You Know
Ryan?” interactive test to find out just how much they know about the two-time Dew
Tour skate champion.
Renegade extended Share the Air online, with Sharetheair.net, a destination site for the
action sports
community. Besides being a portal into all things Ryan, including his favorite musical
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artists, Sharetheair.net also allowed visitors to get involved through a photo blog
featuring five of the best Dew Tour athletes, behind the scenes news from the skate
community, and videos of the latest tricks. The site also let aspiring photographers and
videographers share their photos and videos for a chance to win amazing prizes, ranging
from cameras to a $10,000 HD video package.
The Results:
Panasonic continues to engage thousands of consumers at each stop of the Dew Tour,
driving retail and on-premise sales, and converting action sports enthusiasts into
Panasonic evangelists.
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
—Renegade
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CASE STUDY
ADIDAS ORIGINALS
Agency: Sid Lee
Client: adidas Originals
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Challenge:
Adidas Originals was known by teens as a retro sneaker brand that was rooted in sport
and adopted by the street culture of the ‘80s. The brand had ridden comfortably on this
retro image for some time, but the market started to change and the competition began
heating up. Small, up-and-coming niche players were beginning to make their mark on
the sneaker culture scene, and their brands were spreading like wildfire throughout the
web. The allure of the heritage brand had suddenly lost its steam.
Insight:
Originals came to Sid Lee with the objective of reconnecting with youth on a global
scale. Its communications were falling on deaf ears and they did not know why. Sid Lee
decided to hit the streets to get a better idea of what exactly makes the 17-year-old tick.
The universal truth we uncovered was that all youth aspire to three simple values: fun,
self-expression, and recognition.
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Solution:
Our communications strategy was simple in that we became storytellers for adidas and
their youth customer. The idea behind this notion of storytelling was to constantly,
globally, and successfully deliver a series of “stories” that would embody the values of
fun, self-expression, and recognition in a meaningful, tangible, and memorable way.
Apart from becoming brand storytellers, we needed to make sure global sneaker youth
had a stage where they could express themselves and be heard. This meant leveraging
the brand’s Facebook fan page so that it was not just a place to showcase upcoming
collections but rather a space where the brand and its fans could engage in conversation,
develop customized applications, and enjoy a more empowering and enriching
experience. Sid Lee also completely redesigned the flagship store concept, providing a
key anchor in the brand story.
Lastly, Sid Lee injected a new tone for the brand that would transform its retro image
into a contemporary lifestyle brand. The static and snobbery of fashion-centric imagery
was then replaced with action-packed and unexpected fun-themed communication.
Today, adidas Originals is embracing and celebrating the individuality of youth in
everything they do.
Results:
Originals marketing spend shifted from being predominantly bought media to owned
and earned media, and the results were astounding:
12 percent growth in worldwide sales
Growth in Facebook community from 300,000 to over 3.9 million followers
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Campaign viewed and shared more than 5 million times via social channels
—Sid Lee
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Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
ESSAY
THE POWER OF STORY
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ALAN ROBBINS
www.alanrobbins.com
Alan Robbins is a professor of design in the Michael Graves College at Kean University
and was named the Janet Estabrook Rogers Professor of Visual and Performing Arts in
2006. He is also the founding director of the Design Center, which produces exhibitions,
publications, and products in various fields of design and which has won numerous
design awards.
In addition, Robbins is an award-winning writer and the author of 20 books in the areas
of mystery, science fiction, puzzles, and humor. His cartoons, illustrations, graphics, and
games have appeared in dozens of publications and exhibitions. His unique series of
mystery jigsaw puzzles has millions of fans around the world and his featured YouTube
channel has over 3.5 million hits.
His work can be seen at www.alanrobbins.com.
“The World Is Made of Stories, Not Atoms.”
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
We live in stories.
I am not referring to a method of communication here or even to a marketing technique.
I mean something much deeper and more fundamental than all that. I mean that stories
are a form of consciousness, a way we think, a means by which live in a complex world.
There is a theory of mind that suggests that we experience the world in disparate
moments—quantum bursts of awareness—and only weave them into coherence in the
storytelling part of the brain, in the same way you might have a series of unrelated
dream images and only tie them together by telling someone about your dream.
Narrating it, in other words, turning it into a story.
The simple words “and then …” become a kind of glue that pulls it all together.
I like this idea of the centrality of stories to consciousness. I once wrote a sci-fi story
called “The Edge of Time” in which people stop the end of the universe by reading
fiction to each other, so bound up are stories with the very fabric of our existence.
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But even if this idea is too radical for your own way of thinking, it is easy to see that we
also live in stories in another sense … we love them. We have carved, scratched,
painted, printed, and inked our stories onto wood, hide, skin, paper, bamboo, ivory, clay,
stone, silk, canvas, film, and now onto evanescent digital bits. We watch and read and
remember and are influenced by stories for our whole lives—and we tell them all the
time. The growing science of narrative medicine suggests that the stories we keep about
ourselves can affect our own healing. And, in any case, what is most of our common
communication if not an elaborate trading of stories? We are Homo fabula, the
storytelling creature, and anyone involved in creating visual communications should
have this in mind as a powerful tool.
In even the most basic way, every picture tells a story.
The simplest mark—like the handprints found on the walls of the Ice Age caves—says,
“I was here.” A person, a place, an action. Story 101. Jump thousands of years and you
get to the TV show Lost, which presents dozens of characters whose entire lives are
revealed through interweaving parallel narratives looping backward and forward in time.
Story to the nth degree. Yet our ability to recognize, absorb, and react to both those
simple marks and that complexity of storylines shows just how comfortable we are with
story as a basic cognitive ability.
In fact, we recall stories better than facts. Think of any teacher you had who made the
material vivid through great anecdotes rather than a clear recitation of details. Think
about telling your friends something interesting you heard that, no doubt, was not a list
of specifics (not if you want to keep your friends) but a story. A funny joke, a good
single-panel cartoon, and a memorable anecdote all share this power. The best of the
one-minute TV spots is a classic of the form.
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
A true study of the power of storytelling involves a lot of things, from genre and style to
mode and method, controlling idea and theme to plot and antiplot, character, climax,
setting, and much more. Yet all stories also have one fundamental thing in common that
is a bit easier to keep in mind as we work on our visual communications. Every good
story has a simple narrative structure … a beginning, middle, and end.
To create a wildly popular three-minute video for YouTube—nothing more than a simple
visual gag—I immediately divided it into those three basic narrative segments:
beginning, middle, end. Act I was the introduction: the character and basic props were
presented. Act II was the action: a series of events took place but were left unresolved,
and it was not clear what would happen next. Act III was the resolution: character and
action came together to create the final upshot. In other words, the video was not so
much a gag as a short story or tale that lured the viewer along by creating a series of
mysteries from start to finish. Who? What? Why?
As any fiction writer knows, this structure—with its unresolved segments—creates a
suspense that compels the reader to keep reading or the watcher to keep watching. For
visual communicators, it is crucial that we keep this ability—this need, this fascination
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—in mind.
We use words and images and graphic elements to communicate concepts, of course, but
what ties these components together most powerfully is a unifying story.
So we should work with that story in mind. Any consistent attempt to package products
for marketing should have a storyline behind it. And every iteration of advertising for it
should expand on that storyline. What is the tale we are telling? What is the storyline
that we want our audience to know and remember? How does it start, what happens
next, how does it conclude? How do we reveal some information but hold back other
things to create suspense?
This is especially critical as the forms and forums of new media continue to expand. In
an era of transmedia entertainment, every brand plays itself out across the maximum
number of media platforms: television, comics, the web, games, and products, as well as
participatory medialike blogs, fanzines, wikis, videos, and more.
Yet behind all those approaches, all that marketing information and user feedback, all the
moving images and the tidal wave of words, someone has to keep in mind the narrative
engine, that consistent tale to tell and retell. The facts, the details, the benefits of any
product get lost, but the story stays, even more powerfully if the viewer or listener
becomes part of that story. Thus a branding strategy may become a form of complex
interactive storytelling experience. Designers need to understand the story and how it
works because it will, inevitably, influence all other decisions. In fact, mastering
storytelling is as important to designers in the new world of wraparound media as
typeface, composition, and color.
How do you do it?
Same way you get to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice.
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Here’s a good exercise for visual communicators: the Web abounds with spoken jokes,
comedy routines, comic books, interactive graphic novels, videos, and award-winning
TV commercials. Find the best ones and study the stories they tell. Write down the
structures. Narrate the tale. See how they work. Steal from the best.
Think of yourself not just as a graphic designer or ad major or picture maker, but as a
storyteller—narrator, director, scribe—of everything you make.
INTERVIEW
SCOTT GOODSON
Best-Selling Author of Uprising and Founder of StrawberryFrog, the World’s First
Movement Marketing Agency
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Henrick Halvarsson
Scott is the best-selling author of Uprising: How to Build a Brand and Change the
World by Sparking Cultural Movements. He is founder of the world’s first movement
marketing agency StrawberryFrog. Scott has spent 30 years working for the world’s
most admired brands. He has won the top awards from all the world’s top advertising
award schemes. He was chairman of the Future Advertising Summit in New York and
London; has been on the jury for Cannes Lions Titanium and D&AD; has appeared on
the BBC, CNN, and Bloomberg; and writes for Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fast
Company, and the Huffington Post. He is credited with bringing movement marketing to
the world and wrote the lines “Make history” for Jim Beam, “Make your world bigger”
for Heineken, and “Hello tomorrow” for Emirates airline. Originally from Canada,
Goodson spent many years working internationally before moving to New York. He
currently lives just outside Manhattan.
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Q: Please tell us something about how you build a brand through cultural
movement marketing. Why are you shifting your marketing focus to find ways to
connect with cultural movements that are happening throughout the globe?
To be brutally honest, as marketers we are there to drive growth, increase revenue, and
focus internal talent on achieving business objectives. The traditional model of
marketing can achieve these things, but as we follow the behavior of consumers we see
how much it’s changed. People spend less time in magazines and watching TV and more
time on social media. Against this fragmentation growth can be achieved faster and with
less waste through a cultural movement. Whereas traditional advertising is reliant on
paid advertising to push a product USP or an abstract brand idea, cultural movement
focuses on the needs and desires of consumers right now. Political campaigns use
cultural movement to drive short-term results in a campaign. Cultural movement is about
identifying an idea on the rise in culture and then igniting people around that idea.
Cultural movement spreads like wildfire, maximizing investment and driving business.
Q: What’s the secret of a good association with a cultural event?
This is all about driving share, activating consumers, mobilizing them, changing habits,
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and putting your brand dead center of it all. Instead of talking about your brand, initiate
a more meaningful conversation that stirs your consumers’ souls. But remember when
you’re thinking cultural movement, it requires you to have a very specific call to action
to drive share, otherwise it’s too meta concept and would impact the business. What do
you want consumers to do? What do you want them to stand for? What do you want
them to stand against? What is it about your product that can inspire them to believe? A
great movement starts by asking five fundamental questions:
What are your criteria for success?
What are your business objectives?
What is holding your back?
What are your limitations?
How can your product save the world?
Success is a good way of summarizing the basic ABC of cultural movements:
S: Start by looking within the brand itself. A cultural movement should align with
the brand purpose or brand benefit.
U: Understand your consumers. What are they passionate about? What matters in
their daily lives?
C: Curate public passion with your big movement idea.
C: Communicate and engage with your customers through every channel possible.
Remember that they’re the ones in charge—they can either kill off your movement or
make it fly. Word of mouth is the most powerful marketing tool there is, so don’t
keep yours shut. Make the most of today’s technology.
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E: Excite your customers. They want to be part of something innovative and
exciting; this builds a positive relationship with your brand, and so they’re ready and
open to your products.
S: Simplicity. Don’t make your movement complicated. Sometimes, the best ideas
are the simplest ones of all. Keep your message simple, so everyone can understand
it. Any movement that needs an explanation just isn’t working.
S: Softly works best, as it’s not about the hard sell. It’s not about saying, “Hey guys,
we love this, you do too, now buy this.” People are resistant to that. But get inside
their minds, inspire them, align with what they are faced with, know what makes
them tick, and share their passions. Then, and only then, after they’re belonging, can
you say “Hey guys, did you know we’ve got an amazing new flavor of x,” and they’ll
be much more open and receptive to you and what you’re saying.
Q: How do you go beyond traditional advertising in terms of connecting with
people and their passions? How do you identify the right concept?
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Movements are about passions, advertising is about product. Movements are open to a
broad consumer base, advertising is exclusive. Movements are sustainable, advertising is
all about media buys and when it stops, consumers stop purchasing. Movements are
about results, advertising is a cost. Movements are about organizational change,
advertising is about surface and image.
Q: How do you find insights into an audience to call them to action?
There are eight areas we look at to identify ideas on the rise in culture:
Digital
Networks, relationships, and families
Gender
Body and mind
Food and drink
Environment and spaces
Work and money
Play and entertainment
Q: If you were to give a workshop in creative advertising, what points would you
emphasize?
In the service of results and growth, how do you focus marketing efforts in a
fragmenting media environment: cultural movement.
Copyright © 2016. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Q: You’ve said people “want something they can engage with.” What are some tips
on being a good brand storyteller who taps into people’s emotions? How can a
storyteller become “co-author” with the audience to craft a more engaging
experience?
In identifying an idea on the rise in culture, you are identifying an idea people are
passionate about. As a result you can engage with them to spread the word, but also
participate in its execution and even in its development. When we created the True
North brand for Frito-Lay, we relied on the passions of American women to create and
spread the brand. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is another great example.
Q: What are the most important lessons you have learned in your career?
Be nice.
Be honest.
Be adaptive.
Never stop believing.
Q: What is the best advice you’ve ever given or received about the creative side of
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advertising?
There’s a recent Harvard Business Review article about Marketing2020: what CMOs
expect. And what it says is very revealing. They see marketing consultants as a cost
rather than value. We need to use our efforts to drive growth and not for the purpose of
theory. To be brutally honest, what we do must lead to business.
Notes
1 Melanie C. Green and Timothy C. Brock, “The Role of Transportation in the
Persuasiveness of Public Narratives,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79,
no. 5 (2000): 701–21
2 http://www.coca-colacompany.com/coca-cola-unbottled/coca-cola-to-debut-first-tv-ad-
made-entirely-with-user-generated-content
3 http://nissannews.com/en-US/nissan/usa/releases/nissan-to-feature-fan-made-instagram-
and-vine-videos-in-tv-commercia
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4 http://adage.com/article/special-report-2013-opinion-issue/plan-a-strategy-start/245817/
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Chapter 19
Colombia’s Juan Valdez Campaign
Brand Revitalization through
“Authenticity” and “Glocal” Strategic
Communications
Copyright © 2009. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
Juan-Carlos Molleda and Marilyn S. Roberts
“Of all the challenges facing corporations in the emerging era of the
authentic enterprise, perhaps the most fundamental are those surrounding the issue of trust,” states the Arthur W. Page Society in the report
summary of The Authentic Enterprise (n.d., p. 3). According to Kunczik (2003), “The main objective of international public relations is [to]
establish (or maintain existing) positive images of one’s own nation or
to appear trustworthy to other actors in the world system. Trust is no
abstract concept” (p. 413). Sometimes a spokesperson or character is
chosen to assist in building a positive national identity. When a spokesperson is involved, she or he is usually integrated into multiple components of a nation’s campaign strategic promotions. Taylor and Kent
(2006) write that a public relations approach to nation building uses
an “elaborate model of communication that focuses on how meanings
such as national identity, national unity, and the nation state are socially
constructed” (p. 342). Thus, strategic communication campaigns play
an important role in building national trust.
Nation building also implies institution building. Taylor and Kent
state: “the creation of institutions such as political parties, nonpartisan
professional organizations, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
supportive of the government is an important part of the nation-building
process” (p. 342). In June 1927, a private trade association with not-forprofit status was created in Colombia to support an important commodity: coffee. The creation of the National Federation of Coffee Growers of
Colombia (the Federation) integrated the various regions of the country’s
coffee growers into one association (Molleda & Suárez, 2006).
Some 30 years after the Federation’s creation, the organization created a character, Juan Valdez, to “represent the proud traditions of
Colombia’s rural coffee growers” (“The New Face,” 2006a, 2006b). The
success of Juan Valdez as an “Ambassador” of the Federation’s strategic communication efforts to publicize 100% handpicked quality coffee
from the Andes became one of the world’s most successful icons. Global
audiences identify Colombian coffee’s country of origin with a man in a
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Columbia’s Juan Valdez Campaign
381
poncho, wearing a straw hat, carrying a leather bag, and standing alongside his mule Conchita, depicting a typical rural coffee grower.
Entering the 21st century, environmental conditions loomed as threats
to the nation’s coffee industry: internally in Colombia and externally
in the global marketspace. Because of increased global competition,
nation-states are facing domestic reactions from their citizens, as well
as external pressures from competing global regions.
Molleda and Suárez (2005) state that, “[t]oday’s volatile political and
economic environments in Colombia demand public relations practitioners to focus on the need for developing campaigns to regain trust in
organizations, encourage peace and promote organizational changes as
well as nation-building efforts both internally and externally” (p. 28).
The authors underscore that the social gap and increasingly critical
environment full of difficulties, contradictions, resistance, displacement
of rural populations, and bursts of violence necessitated an increased
emphasis on community engagement.
The Federation also faced a major strategic communication decision
regarding the replacement of the aging actor who had played the role
of“Juan Valdez” for many years and whose retirement was imminent.
How should the Federation go about replacing the world-recognized
symbol of Colombian coffee, Juan Valdez? Nations attempt to differentiate themselves and leverage the assets of their unique country of origin
through their commodities and products. Not only did Juan Valdez represent Colombian coffee as a “coffee brand,” but he also had become the
positive image of the “country brand” Colombia.
Streaming video can be accessed on one of the Federation’s Web sites
(http://www.juanvaldez.com), which introduces the process of selecting
the new Juan Valdez. It begins with a view of Colombia’s snow-covered
Andes and the narrator’s voice saying, “[t]he time has come to entrust a
successor with the continuity of this meaningful character. This circumstance led the Federation towards the end of 2004, together with the aid
of David Altschul, head of the specialized and well-known international
fi rm, Character, leaders in the handling of advertising icons (“The Rich
Heritage,” 2006). Immediately, Altschul appears on screen saying, “[t]he
most interesting part of the Juan Valdez story is clearly the authenticity
of it. In North America, companies spend millions, tens of millions, to
hire celebrities to stand in front of their brand. Celebrities have nothing to do [with the product]. Here you have the opposite. You have a
modest ‘cafetero’ [coffee grower] who is a world celebrity” (“The Rich
Heritage,” 2006.).
The purpose of the present study is to underscore the dual-prong strategic communication campaign used to boost morale among the coffee
growers of Colombia and solidify the coffee culture domestically, while
simultaneously revitalizing Colombia’s leading national brand externally
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Juan-Carlos Molleda and Marilyn S. Roberts
in the global coffee market. A case study approach is used. Theoretically,
a multidisciplinary perspective is required to fully examine this unique
phenomenon, which consists of integrating concepts from public relations, advertising, and marketing.
Literature Review
This section presents four major theoretical perspectives. These include
discussions on public relations and nation building, the country of origin
effect, the concept of brand authenticity, and global branding, in addition to a historical overview of the Juan Valdez campaign and character
creation.
Copyright © 2009. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
Brief Political, Social, and Economic Background
It can be said that the Colombian history of major political confl icts
was institutionalized in 1965 with the formation of the leftist National
Liberation Army (ELN) and the Maoist People’s Liberation Army (EPL)
(Sánchez, Silva, Noreña, Asencio, & Blanco, 1997). In 1966, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was set up, which currently
is considered the largest guerrilla group in the country. In addition, the
National People’s Alliance formed as a left-wing counterweight to the
National Front and the left-wing M-19 guerrilla group emerged. Before
the creation of these reactionary groups, there had only been two major
political parties since 1849: Conservative and Liberal.
A series of unfortunate events led to the proliferation of left-wing
guerrilla groups (Sánchez et al., 1997). The assassination of the leftist
mayor of Bogotá ignited riots. Between 1948 and 1957 an estimated of
250,000 to 300,000 people were killed in a civil war. Conservatives and
Liberals formed the National Front with the intention of ending the civil
war.
Insurgency was not the only long-lasting issue affecting Colombia
in political, social, and economic terms. President Julio Turbay (a Liberal who was in office between 1978 and 1982) began an intensive fight
against drug traffickers (Sánchez et al., 1997). Following the assassination of a justice minister, the campaign against drug dealers and traffickers intensified in the early 1980s. The guerrillas added to an increased
climate of violence. Eleven judges and 90 other citizens were killed after
M-19 guerrillas forced their way into the Palace of Justice (Colombia,
“Timeline,” 2008). In 1989, the M-19 became a legal political party
after reaching a peace agreement with the government. In the same year,
Andrés Pastrana secured U.S. aid but failed to decrease the violence.
Colombia is the third-largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid to combat drug
trafficking, left-wing guerrillas, and right-wing militias (“Colombia’s
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Columbia’s Juan Valdez Campaign
383
Struggle,” 2003; “Narcotics and Economics,” 2008), joining other aid
recipients such as Afghanistan, Egypt, Israel, and Iraq. Specifically, in
2000 the U.S. Congress approved “Plan Colombia;” an aid package,
mainly military, of almost $1 billion to fight drug trafficking and the
rebels who profit from and protect the drug trade (“Colombia, Timeline,” 2008).
The headline of a 1996 public diplomatic advertising campaign states:
“In Colombia, the soil and climate allow you to grow just about anything. We consider that a blessing and a curse” (cited in “Narcotics and
Economics,” 2008, ¶ 54). The ad was sponsored by the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia and published in The National Peace
Association’s Worldview. Regardless of the curses of the drug trade and
the guerrillas, Colombia remains one of South America’s most stable
and growing economies. Despite the presence of serious armed confl ict,
Colombia’s economy experienced positive growth between 2002 and
2007, backed by exports such as petroleum, coffee, coal, nickel, emeralds, apparel, bananas, and cut flowers (“Colombia, Economy,” 2008).
While this is good economic news, some 49% of the population still lives
below the poverty line (“Colombia, Economy,” 2008). This socioeconomic situation may not have a significant turnaround any time soon.
Since 2007 the Colombian peso has gained significant value against the
U.S. dollar making exports to the United States more expensive (“Series
estadísticas,” 2008). This has caused higher rates of inflation and an
increase in unemployment.
Coffee is not only one of Colombia’s major export commodities, but
also an important component of the country’s overall culture (Sánchez et
al., 1997). The war against drug trafficking, guerrillas, and paramilitary
groups has had a negative impact on coffee production. The violence has
resulted in the displacement of farm owners and workers away from the
rural areas, where the commodity is cultivated, to urban centers (“Narcotics and Economics,” 2008). The Colombian government and the Federation sought solutions that would increase security and develop better
trading practices to benefit coffee growers and the industry.
In 2002, an independent politician, Alvaro Uribe Velez, was sworn
in as president and declared a state of emergency because of a FARCattributed explosion in Bogotá that killed at least 20 people (“Colombia, Timeline,” 2008). Uribe’s second term began in 2006, which was
achieved after passing an amendment to the Constitution to allow the
reelection of the president. Uribe is recognized as a leader in the fight
against the curses that afflict the country. In July 2007, citizens numbering in the hundreds of thousands in various locations in Colombia and
around the world protested against kidnappings and the confl ict that
have afflicted the country for more than five decades (“Colombia: Timeline,” 2008). In 2008, a debate started about the possibility of allowing
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384
Juan-Carlos Molleda and Marilyn S. Roberts
the reelection of the president for a third term. In the same year, the
major guerrilla group, FARC lost two of its main leaders and 15 valuable
hostages were freed by the Colombian army. Analysts are now predicting a rapid decline in the armed confl ict and violence and perhaps the
fragmentation of this insurgent group.
Copyright © 2009. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
Nation Building
Scott (1966) suggested that the foundation of the nation building process is the creation of a national identity, which is defi ned as a conscious
identification of a group of people with shared national goals. People
identify with numerous identities to defi ne who they are and what values they hold. Taylor and Kent (2006) state that “Communication is
a central part of nation building because communication channels act
as relationship-building tools that bring citizens together and, in times
of crisis or threats, can help to unify them” (p. 343). The coffee industry crisis, resulting from drug war violence and worker displacement in
rural areas and increasing competition worldwide, challenged Colombia
to develop a nation building and global branding campaign centered on
Juan Valdez.
Another important component of nation building is the role of
national unity, which refers to the cultural orientation of events and
institutions that bring people together. Through national unity and
cooperation, national goals can be achieved. In addition to the strongly
held cultural values of family, faith, and language, Colombians identify
culturally with coffee growing, an industry that is made up of more than
560,000 cafeteros.
Molleda and Suárez (2005) argued that failures of previous Colombian governmental administrations to curb violence and corruption and
to improve the lives of the country’s poorest citizens had a negative influence on the level of trust in the institution of government. Institutional
mistrust in the government also affects the business sector. As a consequence of mistrust, “Colombian people are apathetic, resisting engagement in civil society” (p. 25). While the current state of the political
science literature is split on the nature of the relationship between nation
building and communication, Molleda and Suárez conclude that a
“reorientation of the public relations function” from external to internal
communication may be the consequence of internal political and social
instability. The current coffee situation created the need to increase the
motivation internally to deal with the stress and frustration caused by
the external environment.
Taylor and Kent (2006) suggest that, “Mediated channels alone cannot, and never will, be the sole communicative element of national unity
and nation building. Interpersonal communication and inter-organiza-
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Columbia’s Juan Valdez Campaign
385
tional relationships are also needed” (p. 345). The authors stress that
“…the importance of communication in nation building is found not
so much in the technological advances or the amount of information
disseminated but in the relationships that communication creates, maintains, and alters” (p. 346). Communication campaigns are particularly
useful in helping citizens during difficult times of social, economic, and
identity transformations. Top-down communication efforts are not recommended during times of stress, instead applications using relational
and coorientation theoretical perspectives and a dialogic approach to
nation building assist in creating a unified national vision. Citizens’
engagement and commitment in nation building allow them to adopt the
process as their own; that is, with a strong sense of identification and
purpose because of their voice and influence.
Copyright © 2009. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
Country-of-Origin Effect
National unity can also be a by-product of the common pride that citizens have in a specific commodity or product produced in their own
country. Coffee is Colombia’s third largest export behind petroleum and
coal. The country-of-origin effect is defi ned as the “close interconnections between the image of a nation and its economy” (Kunczik, 2002,
p. 68). Papadopoulos and Heslop (1993) claimed that country of origin as “typically operationalized or communicated through the phrase
‘made in___,’ is an extrinsic product cue—an intangible product attribute—that is distinct from a physical product characteristic or intrinsic
attribute” (cited by Peterson & Jolibert, 1995, p. 884).
The country-of-origin effect can take either a positive or negative
valence. The less information that a consumer has about a product
and the more crowded the product category of similar choices, the
more important and influential a positive country-of-origin effect may
become. Kunczik states that, “[i]n such cases the ‘made in’ designation
often is a decisive factor whether or not to buy” (p. 73). Global consumers do not always perceive products or commodities from a particular
country in the same way. Kunczik points out that persons in various
global regions may use different criteria for product evaluation and
decision making.
Brand Authenticity
In addition to the influence of the country-of-origin effect, the concept of
authenticity is becoming increasingly important in strategic communication campaign planning. Cook (2007), writing in The Public Relations
Strategist, examines future trends with a view to reaching a better understand of the issues facing professionals and their clients. Cook states:
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Copyright © 2009. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
We’re at the start of an era where people want authentic stories
about authentic people. PR [public relations] professionals are the
storytellers. It’s our job to help fi nd the authenticity at the core of
our companies and clients, and to tell those stories to the world in
words that will truly be heard. (p. 33)
According to Peñaloza (2000), marketers are increasingly turning to
brand histories and historical associations as sources of market value.
Brown, Kozinets, and Sherry (2003) argue that “the search for authenticity is one of the cornerstones of contemporary marketing” (p. 21).
However, according to Beverland (2005), little is known about how
fi rms “create and maintain” images of authenticity. Peterson (2005)
asserts that authenticity is socially constructed, takes effort to maintain,
and the saliency of authenticity changes over time. He further states, “[i]
ssues of authenticity most often come into play when authenticity has
been put in doubt” (p. 1083).
In an interpretive study, Holt (1998) argues that consumers with
different levels of cultural capital search for different cues that signal
authenticity. According to Holt, “cultural capital resources are accumulated in three primary sites of acculturation: family upbringing, formal
education and occupational culture” (p. 7). Beverland writes that, “[t]
he literature posits that authenticity can be inherent in an object, come
from a relation between an object and/or historical period, an organization form, or nature, or be given to an object by marketers and consumers. Authenticity can also be true and/or contrived” (p. 1006). Meyer
and Rowan (1991) note that the more an organization is derived from
institutionalized myths, the more organizations use elaborate ceremonies to display confidence to both their internal and external publics to
further underscore either “real” and “perceived” authenticity.
Beverland (2005) uses the case study method to examine the strategies
used by 26 luxury wine fi rms when they decided to create brand authenticity. Beverland concludes, “[t]hese images of authenticity represent a
mixture of the real and the imagined, in that product distinctiveness,
although somewhat a result of local climatic and topographical conditions is also a creation by winemakers, marketers, governments, consumers, critics, and other relevant stakeholders” (p. 1027). The author
remarks that brand management is an interactive process of meaning
construction and reconstruction, whereas brand authenticity is infused
in the product by marketers.
Scholars have begun to identify and examine various types of authenticity. Gilmore and Pine (2007) identified five genres of perceived authenticity corresponding to five economic entities. These are: commodities
(natural authenticity), goods (original authenticity), services (exceptional
authenticity), experiences (referential authenticity), and transformations
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Columbia’s Juan Valdez Campaign
387
(influential authenticity). The researchers acknowledge what they refer to
as “the authenticity paradox.” Noting that consumers long for authenticity, but businesses are challenged to provide it, Gilmore and Pine
recommend that marketers follow a set of axioms to avoid consumer
backlash and criticisms of being “inauthentic.”
Beverland, Lindgreen, and Vink (2008) suggest that the term authenticity has recently taken on new meaning. Their fi ndings support the
notion that advertising plays a role in reinforcing images of authenticity. They also argue that “previous forms of authenticity—indexical and
iconic—can be transferred from historic sites to marketing communications” (p. 13).
Copyright © 2009. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
Global Brand Building
The concept of branding is a central tenet of marketing. Defi nitions
vary as to exactly what constitutes “a brand.” Kotler (1988) defi nes a
brand as “a name, term, sign, symbol or design or combination of them,
which is intended to identify the goods of one seller or group of sellers
and to differentiate them from those of competitors” (p. 463). Aaker
and Joachimsthaler (1999) wrote in the Harvard Business Review that
“companies whose brands have become more global reap some clear
benefits” (p. 137).
Aaker and Joachimsthaler also argue that “developing global brands
should not be the priority. Companies should work on creating strong
brands in all markets through global brand leadership” (p. 138). The
authors state that, “[g]lobal brand leadership means using organizational
structures, processes, and cultures to allocate brand-building resources
globally, to create global synergies, and to develop a global brand strategy that coordinates and leverages country brand strategies” (p. 138).
Kyriacou and Cromwell (n.d.) state that “the branding process
strengthens democracy and helps both internal development and successful integration into the world community, on all levels” (¶ 13). The
authors underscore the importance of a “truthful” brand for products
and services, as well as nation branding. They caution that “[a]ny attempt
to brand a nation untruthfully will backfi re, as people and organizations
discover the brand to be dishonest.… For a nation, this can have farreaching consequences” (¶ 22).
Holt (2002) cautions that today’s brands are vulnerable to attack
from an emerging countercultural movement, sparked by such works as
Naomi Klein’s No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (1999). Ironically, in marketing courses such megaglobal brands as Nike, Coca-Cola,
McDonald’s, Microsoft, and Starbucks are heralded for their success.
These same brands are being attacked in reality by the antibranding
movement whose concerns are focused on environmental issues, human
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Juan-Carlos Molleda and Marilyn S. Roberts
rights, and cultural degradation. Holt’s interpretative study, which
focuses on consumer resistance and alternative paradigm, offers some
postmodern branding techniques that are premised upon the principle
that “brands are authentic cultural resources” (p. 70). Holt writes, “[t]he
postmodern branding paradigm is premised upon the idea that brands
will be more valuable if they are offered not as cultural blueprints but
as cultural resources, as useful ingredients to produce the self as one
chooses” (p. 83). He states that the postmodern consumer culture has
adopted a particular notion of authenticity that is proving to be increasingly challenging for marketing professionals.
Holt notes that to be authentic, “brands must be disinterested; they
must be perceived as invented and disseminated by parties without an
instrumental economic agenda, by people who are intrinsically motivated by their inherent value” (p. 83). He states, “[p]ostmodern consumers perceive modern branding efforts to be inauthentic because they ooze
with the commercial intent of their sponsors” (p. 83). In today’s environment, he underscores that “[c]onsumers now understand that marketers
promiscuously stitch stories and images to their brands that may have
nothing to do with the brands’ real history and consumption. So they
look for evidence that suggests that a brand has earned its keep either
at some remove from marketing’s propaganda engines or in historic eras
that preceded the race to invent brand identities” (p. 84). Holt warns,
“[j]ust as critics in the fifties rebuffed cultural engineering techniques,
the antibranding critics are now exposing these authenticity claims” (p.
85). He concludes that global consumers have raised the bar on what
they consider an authentic brand to be.
Copyright © 2009. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
Background of the Character Juan Valdez and his Mule Conchita
Molleda and Suárez (2006) explain that “The national and international
promotion of Colombia coffee is achieved with the use of a popular
character named ‘Juan Valdez’ who is the ambassador of the federation”
(p. 310). The Federation’s strategy was considered a marketing revolution because it fi rst linked coffee quality to a specific country, stimulating a rash of competition in Ethiopia, Hawaii, and Indonesia (Ludden,
2004).
The Juan Valdez character and marketing icon was created in 1959
to help make Colombia coffee famous and also counter the country’s
image as a drug-infested battlegr…