November 2006

COLONEL SANDERS GOES STELLAR

Colonel Sanders goes stellar

There seems to be a "mcflurry" of PR activity in the food and confectionary world. Burger King and Cadbury have both taken proactive steps to pull advertising and sponsorship. It is brilliant brand opportunism perhaps driven by the deep sense of paranoia that these respective industries are consumed by that has forced safety first action.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/organgrinder/stuntwatch/

It's interesting to note that across the Atlantic the Yum! food empire is rather more bullish at the same time and has chosen to take a proactive step to emblazon the KFC brand across the globe.
I suspect I am not the only publicist that has to listen to the whining and pleading of a client asking to be bowled over by a big idea: one of those "pearlers" that might signal a brand defining moment.
A stalwart "hero idea", (God I hate that phrase from the marketeers slanguage), which gets regularly trotted out by a retained ad agency is the suggestion about create a big poster. Brands usually feel comfortable with this ubiquitous ad agency suggestion and often consider spending an obscene amount of cash to create a poster to end all outdoor posters because it comes from that end of the street. If I had a pound for every time I have heard a brand custodian suggest that a billboard might either be a) projected on the moon or b) seen from space or snapped by a orbiting satellite, I might be as rich as Sir Martin Sorrell.
This week KFC decided to flash its corporate dick by unveiling an image of Colonel Saunders on a horizontal billboard that could be seen from space. When you are peddling your boneless chicken bits in over a 100 countries and still have global ambitions to plunder even more territories, then marketing ploys need to have global appeal. So this stunt deserves a slap on the back, even if it seems not to have made much of a splash in Britain. I loved the idea of using the medium but failed to see an underlying message other than a brand identification.
Before some blogger starts to think that I am going to whine on about how it was all done years before by some long forgotten pr man who died in penury in a flea bitten motel in the mid West, then shock horror, I am not. Praise to the brand for taking the risk, but the stunt has a potential problem. We are in a brave new world, and food brands in particular have to watch their backs. The modern world demands that fast food brands have a greater transparency about the products that they peddle. Perhaps the most talked about health issue currently is the one which surrounds Trans Fats. Yum! Brands that owns Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC seems to be demonstrating the need to tackle this issue, but by pulling this brave stunt before they have global ubiquity, they may run the risk of opening up a debate that they are trying to manage.
These companies that strike a pose, raising their heads above the parapet run the risk of provoking debate. Thousands of corporate PR companies make huge amounts of dosh managing health messages on behalf of global brands. We are all now more conscious about what we digest, and huge food brands are clearly anxious about their corporate responsibilities in this arena.
It's surprising that KFC have pulled this stunt while they are trying to steer themselves through some vicious global currents. The internet is a powerful medium for anti- corporate message and a tidal wave of blogs operate to wound brands that fail to engage with online debates. A stunt of this scale has no message, it's just designed to make powerful connections for the brand, and as such will always fuel net chatter.
The art of any great stunt is to generate word of mouth, but if the brand (in this case) has failed to get his house in order globally, then the fall out could be immense. Tackling the Trans fat issue on a global level, to try to produce healthier products, could open up avenues for marketing agencies to produce this kind of stunt more often in their drive to sell more product. If this position lacks integrity, then it will drive the corporate terrorists to their keyboards and web publishing software to attack the underbelly of the smiling Colonel Sanders.

ONE OF THE JOYS OF LIFE FOR A HUMBLE PUBLICIST IS TO MARVEL AT THE POETRY OF PURE PROPAGANDA.

One of the joys of life for a humble publicist is to marvel at the poetry of pure propaganda.

Often when a pro-active campaign is shaped like the proverbial clay on the potters wheel, it is moulded by a ham-fisted half wit resulting in acres of print that work against the original aim. The new Britney Spears soap opera, centred on her  marital problems, seems to be holding its own against the real news agenda as it contemplates the results of the U.S. congressional elections and the sacrifice of Donald Rumsfeld. Normally such a truly trivial story would be relegated to the pages of the Weekly World News or the National Enquirer, but such was the perfection of the strike against Spears’ wayward spouse Kevin Ferderline, it managed to generate ink even when the global news agenda had more momentous things to consider.

Even for those who can’t be bothered with such trivial fare it has not gone unnoticed that Britney seemed to have slipped out of favour with the celebrity tabloid media. The acres of press that came from her marriage to Ferdeline, when she wore a white strapless gown that was designed by Monique L'Huillier and carried a bouquet of pink and white, is a thing of distant media memory. Her brand had degenerated into a frumpy, trailer trash non entity. A steady flow of unglamorous images in the press, as the star seemed to balloon in size, seemed to suggest that the once glamorous teeny bop queen had put her career on hold and abdicated from the celestial hemisphere. Her fan base sighed as she was no longer the incandescent supernova of the entrainment universe.

Spears has had a nightmare with publicists over the last eighteen months and she instigated a change after her much talked about failure to deliver on the U.S. television show “Dateline”. She was filleted by Matt Lauer's pummeling questions and pundits feasted on Spears' weepy, disheveled collapse.
"Neither of her publicists, Leslie Sloane Zelnick or Nanci Ryder, showed up," said a source at the time . Spears insisted on doing her own hair and makeup - a regrettable decision. Web sites derided her hair as a "rat's nest" and, when she started crying during the interview, one of her fake eyelashes fell off. But the recent events seem to have the hand of powerhouse celebrity divorce lawyer Laura Wasser, who has repped Angelina Jolie, and Kiefer Sutherland in domestic cases The campaign instigated over the last 72 hours, has got the showbiz pundits buzzing that they have got a fantastic story on their hands, and the queen is back. The same website that turned against her seems now to be suggesting that her bad boy husband was not taking on the responsibilities of fatherhood with any sense of seriousness. Instead, while Britney was a stay at home Mum after their second child, he was enjoying the pleasures of benders in Las Vegas.

Ferdeline has borrowed on his wife’s celebrity status to help launch his own career, and with a new album at the dawn of its release, his wife has hit back in a spectacular way. Her strategy was to not only destroy his well laid plans, but use the occasion to reassert her brand assets. In a blitz we have seen the new glam, combat hungry Britney unveiled, complete with weight loss and new hairstyle. The brilliantly orchestrated outing established that she was no longer some forgotten frump but a chic craving column inches. Consider the campaign; she chose to break the news to her spouse that she had filed divorce papers by texting him in the middle of a TV interview he was doing to promote his new album. Following this, she was seen and photographed on the arm of her old business manager, ice skating in the Rockefeller Plaza, looking at ease and teasing out the soundbytes. Finally, she was pictured leaving a restaurant with figure hugging dress and fishnets, about to enjoy the NYC night life. Simple reinforcement underpinned with well prepared briefings to key media under lines a new assurity.

The art of reinventing a brand whether it’s a tired celebrity or an old household favourite is to go spectacularly on the attack. She has demonstrated the merits of being bold and adventurous without employing any risky gimmicks. At the heart of Spears’ proactivity is the old skool Spears, girl next door, glamour. The “girl from” has always seemed cheeky and playfully provocative; perhaps some times controlling, but her attitude was always well cast. She was always a chic with front, never afraid of exposing her midriff in a trashy way in the pursuit of ink. Her advisors have gone back to basics to reassert her spirit , and just as Ferdeline used her to launch his musical career, the worm has turned and chosen to fight back at the time when he would expect to be getting maximum lift.

There has been nothing complicated in the re-syle but it’s the use of the media agenda spinning out a fantastic script that has got the showbiz world engaged. All the key messages are there and overnight the whispers of Federline’s behaviour have been underlined. This is not an opportunistic campaign, it’s a well orchestrated strategy that has played to Spears’ strengths. We wait to see if a new record deal is close by. But by leaving nothing to chance and going on the attack, I suspect prime time U.S. T.V. might just be getting a cute Spears interview. Perhaps the waring parties in the McCartney v McCartney/Mills might learn a thing from the queen and her courtiers.