During pressure situations in the BCM office (such as looming material deadlines or a furious games of table tennis), it’s not unusual to hear the odd swear word being let loose. Despite this, the profanities have not yet sneaked their way into our advertising communications. But there are many campaigns out there which have a bit of fun with four letter filth. These include:

1) Air Asia’s press and outdoor execution which launched their services from the Gold Coast:

2) Fernwood’s foxy positioning across all of their current communication:

3) UK Burger King’s homage to the “king” which launched a  couple of weeks ago…

What do you think?

***king brilliant or ***king lazy? Or can some brands get away with it while others fail horribly?

Let us know what you think in the comments below. All comments will be ***king moderated.

Update (4/3/10): This is the ad Greidy refers to in the comments. Pure gold.

Nathan Bush is an Interactive Strategist at BCM

Thanks to the generosity of my work colleagues I was the recipient of a Nando’s chicken burger today. In fact I had just received the “bonus burger” attached to a 2 for 1 offer – an offer which Nando’s had decided to honour following the decision of their rival Grill’d to pull their latest 2 for 1 promotion to students.

The original 2 for 1 burger offer targeted readers of the print edition of Victorian student publication The Uni Times Magazine, although an opportunistic individual (or individuals) decided to scan and share this offer online.

Updated (7.14pm): It has since been revealed that an electronic version of this voucher was actually available online through the Uni Times Magazine website, although this version had been removed from the site at the time of writing.

In part a victim of their own popularity, Grill’d were quickly on the back foot as people flocked to their outlets (primarily in Victoria) all trying to redeem the offer. Whilst they quickly pointed out that the offer was never intended for anyone other than the Uni Times Magazine readers, the damage was already done. Within no time they were taking a hammering on their website from scores of hitherto loyal fans – many defamatory posts have since been moderated. Twitter also has resonated to the cries of “PR failure” over the last few hours.

The offline to online transfer really does demonstrate just how quickly these things can get out of hand, almost to a viral level – in the context of the intended market. Moreover, it’s a timely reminder for companies to make sure their disclaimers are up to scratch. This exercise in damage control will surely cost Grill’d more than a few burgers and it will be interesting to see their longer term response.

Nando’s response however was swift, and I believe demonstrates their willingness and ability to listen, analyse and leverage this opportunity, as evidenced by their rapid press release and a statement posted on their website. Anyone presenting a copy of the Grill’d voucher to a Nando’s restaurant in Victoria or Queensland would be able to buy a burger or wrap and receive one of equal or lesser value, free of charge.

Kim Russell, Nando’s Australia National Marketing Manager, went on record and empathised.

“This time of year, students are back at Uni, paying for all their books and struggling to make ends meet… Many of our own staff are uni students and so we understand their plight.

“Downloaded, photocopied, scanned, emailed, original, we don’t care where you got them, just bring the Grill’d vouchers in to Nando’s and we’ll honour the Grill’d offer and terms and make sure you’re all well looked after,” she said.

Never shy of controversy, Nando’s delights in running topical ads, such as for the promotion of its Tropico Burger, and its homage paid to Sacha Baron Cohen’s Brüno and the unforgettable “Chips” advert which did the rounds over a year ago. Have a look through YouTube and you will find many more.

So is this timely intervention a great piece of marketing, or is it blatant opportunism from Nando’s? Do you think Grill’d will lose customers over this unfortunate incident? Either way, the famous Nando’s cockerel has good reason to crow!

Steve Jennings is an Account Manager at BCM

More than five years ago we created a brand idea for Sunny Queen Farms’ egg brand that was expressed via a smiley face on their eggs.  It was a wonderfully simple visual idea that encompassed everything we wanted the brand to own ie. happy, healthy, positive and active. It was accompanied by the strapline ‘Crack a Sunny Queen Smile’.

A carefully planned program of clever product development, packaging innovation, trade marketing and a host of other marketing initiatives were executed by the crack team at Sunny Queen (Sorry about that. No more egg puns I promise).

Sales success was immediate, growing over 4 share points to 23.1% within 12 months of launch, and the brand went on to become the only national egg brand from this achievement.  Success has continued for Sunny Queen Farms, with the Australian Marketing Institute recently granting them the National New Product Award winner for their recent Cage Free campaign in 2009.

Then for this year we set ourselves the task of further developing what had become a very successful brand in a highly commoditised category.

Realising the massive potential of the brand, or ’smile’ idea, and of the rapidly growing social media landscape, we embarked on the next phase of the plan to develop this brand into one of Australia’s iconic food brands.

Our ’smiley egg’ became a personality called ‘Sunny the Egg’ who entered the social media arena with a Facebook page.  In short, Sunny has been a massive hit. Sunny the Egg’s public gags and regular musings on life, eggs, cookery and the state of the nation have attracted more than 38,000 fans in just 8 weeks.  That’s nearly 5,000 fans per week.  What’s incredible is how adoring these fans are.  Check out this selection of fan posts…

Recently, much has been made in the media about how people are once more craving optimism and positivity. Sunny the Egg is satisfying their appetite, with regular exhortations to ‘Wake up on the Sunny Side’.

The next part of our plan was to create some ‘noise’ for the brand in our key business development markets of Sydney and Melbourne.  We launched a hoax product called ‘Whinging Pom’ eggs which was brought to life with a bogus viral video and an Australia Day BBQ brekkie for all the whinging poms in Melbourne.

This generated huge ‘talkability’ and garnered coverage in the Today Show, Channel 7 news and many other national and international news platforms.  For relatively little cost we were able to generate massive publicity for the brand.  This stunt also fuelled much discussion in social media.

Last weekend we launched the next phase of our program with our new strapline ‘Wake up on the Sunny Side’.  Late night TVCs encouraging people to wake up on the sunny side were launched as well as a brand TVC featuring a frisky elderly couple who’ve obviously woken up on the sunny side.

We now have serious momentum built for the brand and much of this can be attributed to the skillful use, thanks to our social media team, of Facebook.  With 7 million users in Australia and growing, Facebook has enormous potential for brands that understand how to leverage it effectively.

Naturally, social media needs to be considered as part of a thorough strategic approach to brand development and in many cases will not be appropriate.  But, when harnessed, as we have done with Sunny Queen Farms, the possibilities are very exciting.

How many fans can Sunny ultimately have?  40,000? 50,000? 100,000?  Maybe Perez Hilton will be writing about him soon?

Paul Cornwell is a Partner at BCM

I’ve been enjoying some banter on the home front lately about the merits or otherwise of ANZ Bank’s new campaign, insisting it doesn’t have a bunch of ‘Barbaras’ in its institution, but promises to serve you ‘differently’ to the others.

Thanks ANZ, you had my interest – great talent and an injection of humour which carried through right up until the point you delivered your promise – and what a let down that was.  As a new customer, maybe you might get one handshake at the door – I doubt it – but don’t think it’s going to continue after you’ve opened the account.

So here’s my vent -  it ticks me off when I regularly see discounts or incentives being offered to lure new customers (which of course is a marketing strategy which pays dividends), but as a consumer who’s already signed up, these are constant reminders that you are now a member of the ‘forgotten ones’.

And I don’t mean to pick on ANZ.  This happens across the board – insurance, banking, gym and video club memberships and the list goes on.

To a cynical consumer like me, a marketer is probably between a rock and a hard place.  Those personalised letters that appear in the mail box attempting to up-sell me ‘with benefits’, are seen as just that – and end up in the recycle bin.

With Valentine’s Day romance in the air, what’s a marketer to do to get a tough nut like me to feel the love?  Well I’m happy to report that one marketer has found the way to my heart.

Last week I received a letter from a bank thanking me for my loyalty and acknowledging my value to them.  The note informed me that they’d deposited 10,000 reward points into my customer loyalty account – that’s worth $50 in fuel or shopping vouchers.  I didn’t ask for it, didn’t have to tick any boxes, or send any SMS’s to get it.  I felt flattered and deserving.

So what’s the lesson?  Something we regularly talk about here at BCM – remember to surprise and delight.  Although you need to focus on growing your customer base, don’t forget your existing members.  Remember that they have feelings too, and that loyalty can be subtly bought with a surprise that delights.

Gillian Tucker is BCM’s Agency Manager

You may have read my ‘Crowdsourcing Creativity – Brave Breakthrough or Creative Abuse?’ from October 14. I talked about the fact that through the Idea Bounty website, Unilever has been ‘crowdsourcing’ ideas for its Peperami brand.

Well, here’s a quick update.

At midnight last Friday the Peperami project closed with… wait for it… 1185 ideas!

And what have Unilever paid for all that creativity? For 1184 of the ideas the answer is absolutely nothing! Zero!

The winning idea will earn just $10,000.

This just proves the point I made in my blog post. If we took a stab and guessed that each idea on average had ten hours of work behind it, then that totals 11,850 creative hours.

If we then, as I suggested in my previous post, valued those hours conservatively at $150 per hour, then the value of the time spent on this project could be over $1.7m! Also, the $10,000 bounty values those creative hours at roughly $0.84 per hour.

That’s less than 1% of its real value or a 99% discount.

This is blatant abuse of the creative community in my view. It dramatically undervalues ideas and creativity.

If I’m right then why did the creative community submit 1185 ideas?

Are there that many people who need work or want to be recognised?

Is it simply a case of quantity over quality? Are most of the 1185 ideas going to be rubbish? Only the team assessing the work can answer that question.

If most of the ideas aren’t of a very high quality then this process still has people expending creative hours without being paid for their time.

It’s a rip-off and I think Unilever knows that.

Creativity at less than 1% of its market value means that in this case Idea Bounty is nothing more than a discount idea store. I can’t imagine that’s what its founders set it up to be.

What do you think?

Paul Cornwell is a Partner at BCM

According to our recent online survey, the majority of people (more than 3 in 4) believe that the Vegemite iSnack 2.0 naming and subsequent plan to suddenly change it by parent company Kraft, was nothing more than a ploy to maximise exposure for the new product.

The BCM poll, which elicited the opinion of over 1250 respondents, indicated that more than 75% of participants believe that it was a carefully crafted media publicity stunt. This is despite a statement from Kraft specifically denying this was ever their intention.

The survey was conducted because many industry insiders were debating whether the name was a cheap grab to gain publicity. We thought it would be interesting to know what the public thought.

We now know that overwhelmingly people considered it a stunt. Blogs and forums all over the internet were abuzz with people saying the name must be a joke,  that it was un-Australian and failed to connect with Gen Y – the very audience it was designed to appeal to.

In this environment consumers couldn’t believe Kraft could have got it so wrong. They concluded it must have been a carefully planned tactic to maximise publicity.

More than anything the study sends a clear message to marketers about the lack of trust consumers have for many brands and how cynically they view the marketing community and the lengths we’ll go to to get our messages out there.

For what it’s worth I doubt that Kraft would have been involved in such an enormous hoax. I just think it was poorly conceived and managed. And I don’t think they’re out of the woods yet. They’re currently doing research on some alternative names. The lacklustre contenders are:

VEGEMITE CHEESYBITE
VEGEMITE CREAMYMATE
VEGEMITE SMOOTH
VEGEMITE SNACKMATE
VEGEMITE VEGEMATE
VEGEMITE VEGEMILD

Alternatively, participants in the Kraft survey can decide they don’t like any of the names. Not that I expect Kraft will release detailed results, but I’m betting that the ‘NONE OF THE ABOVE’ option will win hands down.

Anyhow the new name is due to be announced on Wednesday- so stay tuned.

Kevin Moreland is a Partner at BCM

There has been much speculation by industry insiders about whether Vegemite iSnack 2.0 was deliberately chosen as a short term stunt to generate marketing noise and community outrage, or whether it was nothing more than a massive error of judgement on the part of the US owned Kraft.

We thought it would be interesting to know what the Australian public thought. Complete the survey below and see the results in real time.

In the good old days when TV spots were cheap and Colgate-Palmolive seemed to have unlimited budget, a style of advertising emerged under the banner of, “It’s so bad it’s good”.

Mrs Marsh broke the piece of chalk 20 times a night for a year and the campaign worked.

Do we have a new version of the same idea emerging in the digital world?

Is iSnack 2.0 so bad it’s good?  A better name would not have produced 1/1000th of the buzz online. They’re probably looking for it on supermarket shelves in Nome, Alaska.

Kraft is now looking for a replacement name and dubbing iSnack jars a “Collector’s item”. Although they claim innocence, it may be one of the decade’s greatest sampling successes.

How about the Microsoft advertorials or whatever they are, tutorials perhaps?

I suspect they are so bad they’re good -- but for Microsoft or Apple Mac?? But, again, lots of free buzz online.

In this extraordinary age of hyper word-of-mouth it is certainly a very good idea not to suck. But are we seeing a new, weird, counter position with the slogan, “Don’t suck …. blow.”

Bill Bristow is a Partner at BCM

You want people to love your brand, right? To be emotionally connected with it; to see it as a trusted friend; a beacon in the sea of sameness that exists in most categories. And you’ve heard that user generated content is soooh hot right now.

So when you’ve got a new line extension it’s simple- run a competition and get consumers to name it. Tres cool! Tres 2009. Right? Well not quite.

This is exactly what Kraft did for their new Vegemite and Cheese spread- and they have just announced the winner from over 35,000 people. Yep 35,074 entries to be precise. If that doesn’t tell you people love your brand I don’t know what does. And the winning name?

Wait for it…
Drum roll (sfx).
The envelope please.
The winner is:
“ isnack 2.0”

Now I’ll let you be the judge as to whether you think it’s good, bad or somewhere in-between, but to say that the new name has caused consternation amongst Vegemite fans in social media (with some threatening to boycott all Kraft products until the name is changed) is an understatement.

Already a hate site has emerged, Names that are better than “iSnack 2.0″, complete with a widget which has a live twitter feed, confidently named “see everyone hates isnack 2.0”. Take a look. It’s a bit of a laugh. Mind you I doubt the folks at Kraft find it all that amusing.

Vegemite is an iconic brand with loads of Aussie heritage and cred. Just about every Aussie loves it and loves the fact that people from other places just don’t seem to get it. People really do give a shit about their Vegemite.

Like I said, all marketers strive and want people to love their brands, but when consumers feel ownership and connection it’s important to tread carefully.

So what’s the lesson here? I reckon the idea of crowd sourcing the name is great. But if you’re going to get the crowd to help name it then get the crowd to help judge the names too.

There are stacks of case studies about brands that engage in co-creation (Dell Ideastorm and My Starbucks Idea come immediately to mind as two terrific examples of brands that do a great job). The difference is both of these examples entrust the wisdom of the crowd to not just come up with ideas but to also rank and rate their worth.

I dunno perhaps if you’re a middle aged marketer, isnack 2.0 sounds really cool and very GenY.  But if you’re a cool GenYer (or Xer for that matter) it seems it rates as lame and try-hard.

I’ve got to wonder if the pressure keeps up, how long before Kraft crafts a response to explain that isnack 2.0 is the beta version and a name upgrade is due for release soon.

Kevin Moreland is a Partner at BCM

It will come as no surprise that a blog entry discussing brand damage is tackling the issues that the NRL has encountered this year. Let’s face it – negative headlines about rugby league have been a weekly occurrence.

Alcohol, drugs, domestic violence, pub brawls, public nudity, police investigations and much more have kept rugby league on the front page for all the wrong reasons.

Before the first game had even kicked off a Manly player took a swing at a club sponsor and offended his daughter at a pre-season function. Things only got worse when the player chosen as the featured face of the 2009 season campaign, Brett Stewart, was caught up in a serious off-field indiscretion. That campaign material was scrapped as a result. Not long after that the media personality promoted as the 9 Network’s face of the game for 2009, Matthew Johns, was the focus of a career ending Four Corners report into team bonding group sex.

Since then a procession of inexplicable incidents has followed with some players warned or fined and in a few cases contracts torn up.

It’s interesting to think about these issues from a traditional marketing perspective. That is, with the NRL as the master brand that relies on the clubs and the players as the sub-brands to deliver its ‘product’. As with any other brand architecture model you would expect the sub-brands to behave in a way that is consistent with the aims of the master brand.

At BCM we often talk about the brand bank. When an organisation or individual displays behaviour that enhances people’s expectations of what the master brand stands for they make a deposit into that bank. However when they do something that damages the brand they make a withdrawal.

NRL CEO David Gallop and his team have a bank that’s seen some pretty significant withdrawals in 2009. Poor old Mr Gallop must answer every phone call with trepidation these days.

Most recently the superstar of the recent State of Origin series, Greg Inglis, faces domestic violence allegations and has been stood down by his club for bringing the game into disrepute.

In any other year Inglis would probably have featured prominently in the NRL’s campaign promoting the upcoming finals series. Not surprisingly that campaign will not focus on any specific players this time around. The risk is too high.

You have to think that the NRL is very lucky they have such a strong product in the game itself. It continues to rate well and ground attendances are good. But many sponsors have already scrambled to distance themselves from being associated with the grubby headlines and some clubs will do well to retain their sponsorship arrangements.

Of course the future of the game is the kids. In the wake of the Inglis incident schools have threatened to drop rugby league from their sports programs. You have to wonder how many mums will be keen to sign little Johnny up to emulate the deeds of his idols if things keep going this way. And the NRL brand has plenty of competitors vying for Johnny’s time.

It must be said that these incidents aren’t limited to rugby league players but the media and general public now expect that if there’s a negative sports story it’s probably about rugby league and that is no doubt a worry for the NRL.

So again, looking at this from a marketing point of view, FMCG operators rarely persevere with sub-brands that are on the nose with customers. But they will look to change a non-performer in some way, especially if it still has the potential to generate huge revenue when it performs properly. The clubs that are most successful in 2009 are those that have changed their culture to reflect family values and cleaned out the players most likely to cause problems. If you like they’ve updated their brands and deleted product lines.

Unfortunately it seems there are still plenty of other clubs and players who appear to be accepting of the sort of behaviour that will continue to make big withdrawals from the NRL brand bank.

This must be incredibly frustrating for the NRL. The initial decision on how to address bad behaviour remains with the clubs. The NRL has to walk a fine line and only steps in when the clubs don’t respond adequately.

If you were reliant on a string of sub-brands performing at one level but damaging your brand at another what would you do? Wait for the next inevitable withdrawal from your brand bank?

Alan Kewley is an Account Director at BCM Brisbane