The Future Beyond Brands, London

Wednesday, 24 May 2006 - London, United Kingdom

Lovemarks London Future Brands

Presentation Summary

Address to the London Business Forum at Fabric Nightclub: Dangerous ideas are the ones that people think won’t work and aren’t worth doing. The ones that a year later everyone is taking credit for. They are spontaneously reckless, they make the competition irrelevant and they make you feel – wish I’d’ve thought of that!


This feels dangerous…. which is where we need to be. Dangerous ideas are the ones that people think won’t work and aren’t worth doing. The ones that a year later everyone is taking credit for.

  • They are spontaneously reckless.
  • They make the competition irrelevant.
  • … and they make you feel – wish I’d’ve thought of that!

A CEO’s job is simple. Get to the future first.

Lovemarks was a dangerous idea. Six years ago Saatchi & Saatchi saw itself going out of business; the premiums that brands were created for were dissolving. Like Elvis, they were leaving the building. The “-er” words – bigger, better, faster… cheaper – were running riot. Brands were becoming commodities.

Success is about foresight and insight:

  • The Lovemarks insight > The most powerful relationships run on deep emotional connections – and the deepest connection is love.
  • The Lovemarks foresight > To fuel the engine of human progress with the best of what makes us human, and make the world a better place for everyone.

I asked the biggest question in commerce: what comes after brands?

Lovemarks are the future beyond brands:

  • Lovemarks inspire loyalty beyond reason.
  • Lovemarks are built on Love and Respect.
  • Lovemarks are owned by the people who love them – consumers not companies.
  • Lovemarks can be everything that people care deeply about. Visit www.lovemarks.com for thousands of examples. Hotels, flags, shoes, magazines, breakfast cereals, cars, beer.
  • Lovemarks read ROI as Return on Involvement.
  • Lovemarks are more than irreplaceable. They are Irresistible

Kung Fu guys are Irreplaceable. Bruce Lee is Irresistible – 32 years on from his death. The classic T-shirt is Irreplaceable. In black – Irresistible. Local or global. you recognize Lovemarks instantly.

  • Harley / Suzuki
  • iPod / The pack.

EIGHT IDEAS TO CREATE LOVEMARKS

Idea #1: Drip With Emotion

Differentiation is beyond reason , beyond efficiency, benefit, performance, functionality. Table stakes all!!

FACT : Emotion, intuition, long-term memories and unconscious motivations control as much as 85% of our decision-making process.

STUDY: A recent Stanford study of city traders and brokers found that 25% of their major investment decisions were made, not on a rational basis, but on an emotional one!!

Humans are powered by emotion. Brands were about rational ideas with emotion clipped on by the ad department. That’s history. To command premium value you need emotion through the core.

For years Toyota made cars like Germans play football – lean, fit and functional. Rationalization and consolidation levelled the game. Respect, trust and performance are incremental, not exponential.

Car dealers always ask each other: “How much metal did you move?” With Toyota: we changed the question: “How much does the metal move you?”

NOTE: Toyota ‘s global sales have risen by about 500,000 cars a year for the past five years. Toyota reported a 17% rise in net profits for the year to 31 March.

Winning is about unleashing emotional energy, emotional intelligence, emotional desire. People without emotion can’t innovate, design, market or sell. People with emotion can do anything.

Reason just leads to more conclusions. Emotion leads to action.

Idea #2: Enter the Attraction Economy

Consumers are saying: “You’ve got three seconds to change my life or you are gone.”

From Information Economy, Knowledge Economy, Interruption Marketing (aka the Mass Market), Permission Marketing, the Experience Economy, the Attention Economy… to the ATTRACTION ECONOMY.

ATTENTION ECONOMY ATTRACTION ECONOMY
Interruption Engagement
Directors Connectors
One-to-many Many-to-one
Reactive Interactive
Return on Investment Return On Involvement
Heavy Users Inspirational Consumers
Big promises Intimate gestures
What you need What I want

Idea #3: Put Love Over Respect

“Like it or not, we are in a global economy and a global political world. Honest to god, the responsibility is huge.” – AG Lafely, CEO, Procter & Gamble

The Internet has a trillion links and a million emails per second. The covers have come off commerce.

Consumers rule. They ignore crap and crucify porkies. Be a favourite, or be deleted.

Trust won’t do it… Is it better to be respected, or loved and respected? Everyone wants both.

This Axis maps how Love and Respect relate. It can undress any business or relationship bollock-naked. It changes the energy in the room.

lovemarks-axis

Low Respect. Low Love. Commodities, utilities, raw material. No names with no claims. The world of discounts, price wars, crushing competition.

High Love. Low Respect. Hero today zero tomorrow. Fads and infatuations, promotions and competitions. Reality shows , J Lo jeans, Paris Hilton, the President of the US.

High Respect. Low love. Brand to bland. Where those “er” words leach you dead: faster, bigger, brighter, cheaper….

High Love and High Respect. Lovemarks. Enchanting innovation. Irresistible appeal.

Idea #4: Use the Three Secrets

Lovemarks have Mystery, Sensuality and Intimacy, the most powerful human attractors.

Mystery – The beguiling power of the unknown. Metaphors and dreams, symbols and stories. The flow of past, present and future. When we know everything, there is nothing left to delight us.

EXAMPLE: Edoc Laundry’s new T-shirts tell a story. Each screen-printed item contains hidden clues and codes. Decode a password and you can access an ongoing mystery story on their Web site. Clothes that tell secrets!

Sensuality – Sight, sound, smell, touch and taste are portals to the emotions. From the roar of a Harley to the taste of a tangerine iMac. Never pay a premium for anything that doesn’t excite most of your senses.

Intimacy is knowing the consumer better than she knows herself. How did Branson take Virgin brides across category? He became the customer. It’s the small touch, the perfect gesture. The connections that win undying loyalty. Intimacy is empathy, commitment – and passion.

Idea #5: Sizzle with sisomo

TV is not dead. 2.3 billion households have one and they love it. Everyone knows how to use one. People love to watch.

TV is part of a bigger faster picture. The screen has stepped out of the living room. Into our offices, cars, stores, streets, hands, pockets.

FACT : 60% of us leave our mobiles on while we sleep.

FACT: Wal-Mart TV has 50+million viewers a month, more than TV shows like CSI, Lost, and The Apprentice.

The digital revolution is transforming marketing, entertainment and technology. As people lean forward to work, shop and play, screens are morphing. TV is becoming more game-like, mobile phones more TV-like, in-store screens more movie-like – even computer screens are likable.

The energy field is sight, sound and motion. Saatchi & Saatchi invented sisomo for the Screen Age, the “everywhere world” beyond TV.

  • sisomo brings technology, marketing and creativity together. This intersection is the future of advertising.
  • sisomo is where art meets science.
  • sisomo puts ideas and potent connections ahead of technology.
  • sisomo brings screens to life in emotional and compelling ways.
  • sisomo attracts consumers with engaging, compelling stories.

The story is an ancient, mysterious, timeless art. Marketers are caught up in technology and methodology. An engaging story well told is priceless. sisomo inspires new formats, characters and ways for consumers to participate on screen. Multi-layered, multi-purpose stories that consumers can be absorbed by, play with, add to, recreate, and spread virally.

SURVEY: 89% of major brands are planning to market via mobile phones by 2008, and more than half of brands plan to spend between 5% and 25% of their marketing budget in the medium in the next five years. (Airwide Solutions)

Idea #6: Be a Creative Connector

All bets are off. Boundaries are collapsing. Categories are blurring. Convergence and divergence are imploding. Entire new industries are emerging.

The Screen Age is about being a creative connector.

Creative Connectors across media, advertising, marketing, design, entertainment, games, phones, ringtones, activations, instore TV, sound logos, animation, sisomo packaging, you name it.

Lovemarks is about Creative Connectors inspiring loyalty beyond reason across the family of screens.

The key connect is the Inspirational Consumer, the ones who love your brand, get there first, tell your story and improve it for free. Inspire and connect them!! They turn brands into Lovemarks.

Lovemarks is about lives taking over brands.

Saatchi & Saatchi has taken youth connectivity to the next level. Pop culture sisomo. It goes b eyond technology, beyond TV, beyond handsets, into the real world of connected communities.

GUM – our global urban youth culture unit – meshes advertising and entertainment to attract young consumers. Want your own brand-embedded hip-hop band, game, TV show, film script, road show or nightclub experience? Done. GUM’S latest initiative is a full length feature film in Brazil.

Idea #7: Unleash the Power of Paradox

Either / Or compromises. You stay static. .And / And explodes through to the next level of possibility.

  • STARBUCKs: home and work. Coffee and music and movies
  • APPLE: Business modelling ($1 a song) and networking (music companies) and branding (white buds and wires)
  • TOYOTA : gas and electric. Short and long term. Competitive and Open. Cost reduction and innovation.

Lovemarks build complex opposites together with equal passion so they enhance each other and take you to a place neither dreamed possible.

Idea #8: Make the World a Better Place for Everyone

The role of business is to make the world a better place for everyone. It’s a powerful, provocative, inescapable statement. It’s plain business sense – you can be loathed, liked or loved.

Business is the big game.

Business plans, connects, and dreams the global flow of goods, ideas and experiences.
Business creates jobs, choices, opportunities and self-esteem.
Business unleashes innovation. The purpose of innovation is to improve to lives.
Your challenge is to leave the world better than you found it.

Philosopher Dan Dennett: “The secret of happiness is to find something bigger than yourself and then devote your life to it.”

It’s down to us. Get started now – before it’s too late.


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