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Month: April 2014

The fog, the rain and a song of global unity

The fog, the rain and a song of global unity

Last week’s blog was about Virgin Cola, so I thought I would write one about the Real Thing this week, so I went back to the start of that campaign and the story behind one of he most famous advertising jingles of all time

The fog, the rain and a song of global unity

It started with the words so many air passengers dread, the airport you are headed for is fog-bound and the plane is being diverted.

It was January 1971 and Bill Backer, the creative director on the Coca-Cola account for the McCann-Erickson advertising agency, was traveling to London to join two British songwriters, Billy Davis and Roger Cook, to write some new radio commercials that would then be recorded by the popular singing group the New Seekers. As the plane approached Great Britain, heavy fog at London’s Heathrow Airport forced it to land instead at Shannon Airport, Ireland. 

Shannon is a small city in Ireland and accommodation is limited so the mood of the already annoyed passengers wasn’t improved when they were told that they would have to share rooms at the one available hotel or to sleep at the airport. 

Tensions and tempers ran high. 

Overnight something miraculous seemed to have happened and the mood had changed. Sitting in the airport coffee shop the next morning still waiting for clearance to fly, Backer looked around and noticed that several of the passengers who had been among the most irate were now laughing and sharing stories over bottles of Coke. 

As Backer himself, was to recall in his book: “The Care and Feeding of Ideas” 

‘In that moment . . . [I] began to see a bottle of Coca-Cola as more than a drink. . . . [I] began to see the familiar words, “Let’s have a Coke,” as . . . actually a subtle way of saying, “Let’s keep each other company for a little while.” And [I] knew they were being said all over the world as [I] sat there in Ireland. So that was the basic idea: to see Coke not as it was originally designed to be—a liquid refresher—but as a tiny bit of commonality between all peoples, a universally liked formula that would help to keep them company for a few minutes.’ 

Backer scribbled the line “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” on a napkin.

 

The flight never did reach London as Heathrow Airport was still fogged in, so the Backer and the other passengers were redirected to Liverpool and bussed to London, arriving around midnight. 

Meeting up with Billy Davis and Roger Cook, he told them about his idea “I could see and hear a song that treated the whole world as if it were a person—a person the singer would like to help and get to know. I’m not sure how the lyric should start, but I know the last line.” At which point he pulled out the napkin to which he had now added a few more words 

“I’d like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company.” Working together the song took shape

I’d like to buy the world a home and furnish it with love, 

Grow apple trees and honey bees, and snow white turtle doves. 

I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, 

I’d like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company.  

It’s the real thing, Coke is what the world wants today.

It was recorded by the then popular group The New Seekers on February 12, 1971, “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” was sent out to radio stations throughout the United States. 

It promptly flopped. 

The Coca-Cola bottlers hated the ad and most refused to buy airtime for it. The few times the ad was played, the public paid no attention. Bill Backer’s idea that Coke connected people appeared to be dead. 

Backer however was still a believer and with McCann managed to persuade Coca-Cola that there was still something in the ad but that it needed a visual dimension. The idea for that visual dimension came from Harvey Gabor, a young art director who suggested that the song could be the basis for a television commercial featuring the “First United Chorus of the World.”  – a group of young people from all nations, in clothing representing their nationalities, singing the song on a green hillside.

The weather again seemed to want to play a role and the original plan to shoot on the White Cliffs of Dover was scuppered by three days of continuous rain so the location was switched to Rome. 

The finished ad “Hilltop” was released first in Europe, where it received a warm but not exceptional response, but when it was subsequently released in the U.S. in July, 1971, the response was immediate and dramatic. 

By November Coca-Cola had received more than a hundred thousand letters about the ad. 

People were calling radio stations and asking them to play the song but as it was a commercial this wasn’t possible so Bill Backer rewrote the lyrics without the references to Coke. 

Because the New Seekers were initially unavailable to record the new version, a group calling itself the Hillside Singers recorded and released it as a single. Several weeks later as The New Seekers were beginning their American tour, they too re-recorded the song but this time with the new lyrics and released a second single. 

Both versions sold well and at one point, the New Seekers’ version was in the top 10 while the Hillside Singers version was number 13. 

 

How do you brand yours? – An egg-tra story for Easter

How do you brand yours? – An egg-tra story for Easter

For more years than I care to remember, Cadbury’s Creme Eggs have been part of my Easter. Yet for many of those years there has been a little nagging feeling at the back of mind. They reminded me of another product from my youth but one I couldn’t ever quite put my finger on it. that’s is until now when I decided to research the origins of the Cadbury’s Creme Egg and then all was revealed.

How do you brand yours?

In 1875, Cadbury made their first Easter eggs. They were made with dark chocolate and had a smooth, plain surface. They were filled with sugar-coated chocolate drops known as ‘dragees’. Later they made Easter eggs that were decorated and had their plain shells enhanced with chocolate piping and marzipan flowers.

However the ‘Easter’ eggs Cadbury are most famous for weren’t launched until 1971 and even then the Cadbury Crème Egg wasn’t an immediate success. Sales really took off in 1975, following the success of a heavyweight advertising campaign.  Ten years later in 1985, another memorable ad campaign was launched around the theme of “How do your eat yours?”

Nowadays Cadbury’s Crème Eggs are delivered to the shops between January and Easter and over 200 million of them are sold in the UK every year 

They are made by pouring liquid chocolate into a half-egg shaped mold, which is then filled with white fondant and a dab of yellow fondant. Because the fondant has a greater density than chocolate, the two don’t mix together and the fondant pushes the chocolate outwards. The two halves are then quickly closed and cooled to allow the chocolate to set.

Yet they aren’t the original cream egg and they owe their origins and fondant to another brand – Fry’s Chocolate Cream.

 

Joseph Storrs Fry was a revolutionary in the chocolate world, when in 1847 through his addition of cocoa butter to a mix of cocoa powder and sugar and the use of a Watt’s steam engine he created a bar that could be moulded and mass-produced.

Joseph’s firm, J.S. Fry & Son, began producing the Fry’s Chocolate Cream bar in 1866. It consisted of a white creamy fondant centre enrobed in dark chocolate. It was extremely successful, spawning a variety of flavours including Fry’s Orange Cream and Fry’s Peppermint Cream.

Nearly a hundred years later they decided to adapt the Chocolate Cream bar for Easter and in 1963 they launched the Fry’s Cream Egg with moderate success

Now comes the twist. 

Cadbury and Fry had been part of the same holding company, the British Cocoa and Chocolate Company, since 1919, but in 1971 Cadbury completed a take-over. 

One of the ensuing changes was the rebranding and relaunch of the Fry’s Cream Eggs …as Cadbury’s Cream Eggs.

 

Footnote 1: The world’s only surviving original Fry’s Creme Egg was discovered in 2013 and put on display in an exhibition called Chocolate! at the M Shed museum in Bristol. Graham Tratt, the archivist at Bristol Records Office said: “This is the original, it is how the Cadbury Creme Egg started. We don’t know what it tastes like because we don’t want to unwrap it and spoil it”

Footnote 2: A recent Cadbury survey claims 53 percent of people bite off the top, lick out the cream, then eat the chocolate, 20 percent just bite straight through and 6 percent use their finger to scoop out the cream.

Pamela Anderson, the Sherman tank and the failed invasion of America

Pamela Anderson, the Sherman tank and the failed invasion of America

Most of the stories I have written are about successes but you can learn a lot from failure, not least to accept it and move on. So this week the story of a brand that started well but quickly faded and then died.


Pamela Anderson, the Sherman tank and the failed invasion of America

Since Richard Branson started his first business in 1966, the Virgin name has been applied to close on a hundred different companies. Everything from railways to make-up, from vodka to video. Some have been incredibly successful like Virgin Records, Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Media. Some haven’t. In fact, some have been incredibly unsuccessful, sinking without trace. This is the story of one of the biggest failures. 

Virgin Cola was set up during the early 1990s in conjunction with Cott, a Canadian company that specialises in bottling own-label drinks. Cott was looking for a major brand that could have global appeal and thought they had found the perfect match in Virgin. 

Branson too had high hopes for the brand and having secured a distribution deal with Tesco in 1994, the brand got off to a flying start.

“The business that looked like it was going to become the number one business in the world was Virgin Cola. 

We decided to take on the might of Coca Cola. 

We had a great brand. 

We had a great product

It tasted better than Coke.

We launched it in the UK, we were out selling Coke, outselling Pepsi, and for one wonderful year we had dreams of Virgin Cola being the brand on everybody’s lips when they wanted on buy a soft drink.” Branson recalls

 

However after that first year things got a lot tougher, Coke went on the attack increasing its marketing spend and doing widespread promotions which reduced any price advantage Virgin offered. Soon Virgin Cola started to lose share and with it shelf space and even distribution.  

Virgin tried to respond. In 1996 they decided anything Coke could do they could do better and they launched “The Pammy”. 

The Pammy was a specially designed 500ml bottle, with a curvaceously contoured body designed to resemble Pamela Anderson, the Baywatch actress who was at the height of her popularity in the UK. It was both a homage and a pastiche of the classic Coke bottle which is often known as the Mae West bottle as its contours have been compared with those of that famous actress from the 1930s.

The impact was limited and the brand continued to decline

Increasingly desperate Branson decided if they couldn’t beat Coke in the UK why not take the fight to Coke’s homeland, the USA. In 1998 Virgin Cola was launched onto the US market in spectacular style. Branson rode a vintage Sherman tank through New York’s Times Square, taking aim at a huge Coca-Cola billboard. He then placed a 40-foot Virgin Cola billboard right above the Times Square Virgin Megastore.

Virgin Drinks USA subsequently agreed distribution channels with US retailers such as Target but success was again limited and the company closed in April 2001, having managed to establish no more than 0.5% volume share of the market.

In 2002, a vanilla cola called Virgin Vanilla was launched in the UK, ahead of the launch of a similar product from rival Coca-Cola.

In 2007, Silver Spring acquired the UK license. However, in 2012 that company fell into administration and ceased production. No company acquired the UK Virgin Cola licence in its place.

But Branson has learnt to take failure in his stride

“My mother drummed into me from an early age that I should not spend much time regretting the past. I try to bring that discipline to my business career. Over the years, my team and I have not let mistakes, failures or mishaps get us down. Instead, even when a venture has failed, we try to look for opportunities, to see whether we can capitalize on another gap in the market …Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming,” says Branson

 

The longer-lasting nine-day wonder

The longer-lasting nine-day wonder

They say international travel broadens the mind but in the case of Ron Street it gave him the idea for a new ice-lolly which he thought would be the perfect treat with which Streets Ice Cream could win customers from a rival company 

But when he presented his idea to his uncle Edwin (Ted) Street, who had founded the company in the 1930s along with his brother Daniel, Ron’s father, he was not taken with the idea. In fact Ted told Ron that it would be a ‘nine day wonder’.

However Ron, who had chosen a career in the family ice cream business after refusing an offer to join NASA’s space program as an engineer, was convinced of its potential and so continued working on his idea The lolly was six months in development and during that time acquired its name “The Paddle Pop” because its shape resembled that of a paddle. 

When it was finally launched in 1953 it was an immediate success. Ron remembers it fondly and when, on the brand’s sixtieth birthday, he was asked about that time, he recalls that “it took off like a wildfire, it just took off”.

 

In fact it was so popular the factory had to put on an extra shift of workers and Paddle Pops were only produced in chocolate for the first two years, despite plans for other flavours.

Other flavours, including Ron’s favourite, caramel, were introduced later in the 1950s. 

In 1960 Unilever bought Streets and Paddle Pops acquired its shaggy-maned icon, the Paddle Pop Lion. 

The brand still flourishes today, long after those nine days ran out.

Footnote: Paddle Pops have become such a part of Australian culture that one of the most popular forms of fencing is known as Paddle Pop Picket as each strut looks like a Paddle Pop lolly stick.

 

“Maybe it will grow on me”

“Maybe it will grow on me”

One day in 1971, Carolyn Davidson, a design student at Portland State University, was sitting in a hallway working on a drawing assignment and bemoaning the fact that she couldn’t afford to take an oil painting class. A young associate professor overheard her and asked if she wanted to do some work for him and his fledgling company.  He offered to pay her $2 an hour. She accepted.

Phil Knight was that young associate professor of accounting at PSU. He had taken the job to supplement the modest income he made running Blue Ribbon Sports, Inc. – a small, fledgling company that served as a West Coast distributor of Japanese-made Tiger brand sneakers in the U.S.

Carolyn’s initial work involved making charts and graphs for his BRS meetings with executives visiting from Japan. Phil however had bigger plans and wanted to start selling his own brand of cleated shoes for football or soccer that he was having made in Mexico. He gave Carolyn a new brief. He wanted an identity, a “stripe”, which was the industry term for a shoe logo.

Phil told her it needed to convey motion and that it couldn’t look like the logos of Adidas, Puma or Onitsuka’s Tiger. 

For the next fortnight Carolyn worked on numerous ideas, the best of which she would sketch out by hand on tissue paper and lay them over a drawing of a shoe she’d done. In the end she presented 5 or 6 of her designs to Phil and two other Nike executives

Unfortunately they weren’t that impressed and when her initial presentation closed, they asked “What else you got?” 

 

Carolyn said that was all she had to show.

Phil and his team were pressed for time and after discussion it became clear that all three men were at least willing to accept the one of the designs. The “checkmark” they chose just happened to be Carolyn’s favourite too. 

Phil summed up his thoughts at the time saying “Well, I don’t love it, but maybe it will grow on me” and because they needed it so quickly, Carolyn didn’t even have any time to refine or clean-up her initial design. 

In 1972, the company first began selling shoes with the Nike name, named after the Greek goddess of victory. In June 1972, the first running shoes bearing the Swoosh were introduced at the U.S. Track and Field Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon.

For her services, she billed the company for 17.5 hours of her time …$35. 

Footnote: Carolyn graduated from PSU in 1971 with a bachelor’s in graphic design. She continued to work for Nike designing ads, brochures, posters and catalogues. As the company grew exponentially there came a point late in 1975 when it became clear that her one-person design shop was too small to handle all of Nike’s advertising and design needs. Nike and Carolyn agreed it was time for a full-service ad agency. She opted to split her time home-making and doing some freelance design work.

In 1983, three years after it went public, the executives at Nike surprised her with a party. In additional to presenting her with a gold ring in the shape of her Swoosh, complete with a small diamond, they also gave her a certificate of appreciation and 500 shares of stock. 

Of that gift, Davidson says it “was something rather special for Phil to do, because I originally billed him and he paid that invoice.”

She has never sold the shares and they are worth between $½-1 million today.

 

Maybe it will grow on me

Maybe it will grow on me

One day in 1971, Carolyn Davidson, a design student at Portland State University, was sitting in a hallway working on a drawing assignment and bemoaning the fact that she couldn’t afford to take an oil painting class. A young associate professor overheard her and asked if she wanted to do some work for him and his fledgling company.  He offered to pay her $2 an hour. She accepted.

Phil Knight was that young associate professor of accounting at PSU. He had taken the job to supplement the modest income he made running Blue Ribbon Sports, Inc. – a small, fledgling company that served as a West Coast distributor of Japanese-made Tiger brand sneakers in the U.S.

Carolyn’s initial work involved making charts and graphs for his BRS meetings with executives visiting from Japan. Phil however had bigger plans and wanted to start selling his own brand of cleated shoes for football or soccer that he was having made in Mexico. He gave Carolyn a new brief. He wanted an identity, a “stripe”, which was the industry term for a shoe logo.

Phil told her it needed to convey motion and that it couldn’t look like the logos of Adidas, Puma or Onitsuka’s Tiger. 

For the next fortnight Carolyn worked on numerous ideas, the best of which she would sketch out by hand on tissue paper and lay them over a drawing of a shoe she’d done. In the end she presented 5 or 6 of her designs to Phil and two other Nike executives

Unfortunately they weren’t that impressed and when her initial presentation closed, they asked “What else you got?” 

Carolyn said that was all she had to show.

Phil and his team were pressed for time and after discussion it became clear that all three men were at least willing to accept the one of the designs. The “checkmark” they chose just happened to be Carolyn’s favourite too. 

Phil summed up his thoughts at the time saying “Well, I don’t love it, but maybe it will grow on me” and because they needed it so quickly, Carolyn didn’t even have any time to refine or clean-up her initial design. 

In 1972, the company first began selling shoes with the Nike name, named after the Greek goddess of victory. In June 1972, the first running shoes bearing the Swoosh were introduced at the U.S. Track and Field Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon.

For her services, she billed the company for 17.5 hours of her time …$35. 

 

Footnote: Carolyn graduated from PSU in 1971 with a bachelor’s in graphic design. She continued to work for Nike designing ads, brochures, posters and catalogues. As the company grew exponentially there came a point late in 1975 when it became clear that her one-person design shop was too small to handle all of Nike’s advertising and design needs. Nike and Carolyn agreed it was time for a full-service ad agency. She opted to split her time home-making and doing some freelance design work.

In 1983, three years after it went public, the executives at Nike surprised her with a party. In additional to presenting her with a gold ring in the shape of her Swoosh, complete with a small diamond, they also gave her a certificate of appreciation and 500 shares of stock. 

Of that gift, Davidson says it “was something rather special for Phil to do, because I originally billed him and he paid that invoice.”

She has never sold the shares and they are worth between $½-1 million today.