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

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 can hear the conversations now:

“We can use puppies. Everyone loves puppies…”

“Nope, too difficult. Never work with children or animals.”

“Well, what about using that guy from the ShamWow ad. He can sell anything!”

“Hmmm… that guy is expensive.”

“I’ve got it! Flash mobs! The kids love them. They’ve the flavour of the month! It’s cheap. It’s easy. It will be a viral masterstroke!”

“You’ve got a point, let’s do it.”

Unfortunately for Dr.Pepper and Microsoft it did go viral. It went viral as people laughed at the executions and the brands behind them. It was forced, cheesy and a little bit like a spoilt child crying out for attention.

However, if you want to see some great flash mobs I suggest T-Mobile and ImprovEverwhere’s channels, the Sound of Music mob or Oprah’s ‘I Gotta Feeling’ crowd.

What makes these so good? Surprise, spontaneity, participation and some genuine joy. That doesn’t seem so much to ask does it?

Nathan Bush is an Interactive Strategist at BCM

Everyday a bunch of digital stuff is uploaded by brands who hope it will strike a chord amongst users. Through social media these same brands hope consumers will share what has been created.

Have you ever asked yourself why is it that some stuff hits pay dirt whilst other stuff withers on the digital vine?

For brands, aside from ensuring that there’s a kick arse traffic driving strategy, we reckon it’s all about content and what we call the WTF barometer. Let me explain.

W is for Whimsy
The viral videos we love are often magical moments that allow us to escape from the everyday; think LED lights on a flock of sheep; think a funny looking Scottish woman transforming from a peasant to a princess when she starts to sing.

It could be a fairytale. It could be something that’s fantastic, say an African American defying gravity thanks to his latest Nikes. So if you want viral start thinking ‘whimsy’.

Zymil Tummy Tuner

T is for Topical
How quickly did news of Obama winning the Nobel peace prize buzz around the net? How quickly did we see all kinds of stuff related to Michael Jackson soon after his  death- some was in good taste some in poor. But in this ‘always-on’ world if you wanna be viral, you gotta be quick. Look to topical news and current events.

Eternal Moonwalk

F is for Free
Want to get some buzz. Then offer something for free. Recently KFC did just that for the launch of their Cajun Chicken Burger. People heard about it and shared the news on Facebook with their friends.

Starbucks in the states do this kind of thing on a regular basis with great results, as do Papa John’s Pizza. Strategic giveaways and sampling spreads like wildfire.  And when it comes to Free don’t just think product… It could be access to valuable information, curated content or some kind of utility that makes a consumer’s life a little easier, comfortable or less stressful.

KFC Cayan Grill giveaway

If you want people to share your branding stop thinking WTF are we gonna do and starting thinking about the WTF barometer.

Kevin Moreland is a Partner at BCM

For years it’s been a staple of the TV sketch comedy programs to take a classic piece of foreign film footage and apply to it a set of completely unrelated, hopefully funny, English subtitles.

In the age of YouTube it’s easier than ever for all of us to generate topical, hopefully funny, content using this method.

A year or two back someone had the idea of taking a particularly tense scene from a film called Downfall (Der Untergang) which was all about the final days of Adolf Hitler. In the particular scene they chose Hitler is ranting, tearing shreds off his cronies from the Third Reich. So it’s perfect fodder for incongruous subtitles to make Hitler look and sound ridiculous.

Since that first parody was launched on YouTube there have been hundreds and hundreds more with Hitler seen ranting about pretty well anything you can think of from finding that someone’s stolen his car, to discovering there’s no Santa to being banned from Xbox live.

More recently these parodies have seen people from different countries using that vision as the vehicle to quickly comment on topical, everyday issues from sport to technology and  politics to pop culture. Here are a few title examples:

• Hitler finds out St Kilda lost the grand final
• Hitler finds out Sarah Palin resigns
• Blu Ray has won
• Hitler finds out Lampard is signing for Inter
• Real estate downfall
• Hitler finds out Kanye West disses Taylor swift
• Hitler finds out Pokemon aren’t real
• St Choke (NRL reference)
• Hitler gets angry Manchester United won again
• Hitler finds out about Usain Bolt winning
• Hitler plans to upgrade to Windows 7

Inevitably there had to be “Hitler rants about Hitler parodies”:

The people from surfinglife.com.au have created their own branded version entitled Hitler’s surf trip ruined. Who knows how many other brands might follow suit?

Some clips are better than others but for me the fascinating thing about them is that the more of them you watch the funnier they are.  As you become familiar with the sheepish looks from Hitler’s goons the more you look forward to seeing what the writer will come up with to match that discomfort. It is a little bit Groundhog Day but not annoyingly so.

This is another good example of simple ways people are making technology their own to share opinions and have some fun.

Alan Kewley is an Account Director at BCM Brisbane

You might say your work blog is not the ideal place to confess to something you’ve kept to yourself for too long. However, after finally owning up to my wife and kids last week, I thought I’d keep going while I was on a roll.

It concerns something I did at a boating store in Brookvale (Sydney) last year. I was there looking for a life jacket and a pair of padded sailing pants to protect myself from the hard fiberglass gunwale of my Laser sailing dinghy.

Anyway, after choosing a life jacket I was in the change room trying on a couple of sizes of sailing pants when I noticed a tag on the floor. It was barely branded, had some tiny type that read, ‘Child’s wetsuit pants’ and a barcode with a price, $24.95.

Now the garment I was trying on was a little more expensive. It had purpose-built zipper pockets, key and belt clips, removable padding sections and was made with heavy duty nylon which allowed for sliding your weight up and down a racing Laser’s gunwale.

At this moment, two things went through my mind. The first was disbelief at how the amount for the life jacket and the pants was going to total well over $200. The other was how young and disinterested the girl and the guy at the cash registers had looked.

I approached the check-out and coolly put my purchases on the counter. The bored girl scanned them through, put them in a bag and starting taking my money as the guy looked on, seemingly into space.

‘Excuse me!!’ My heart jumped. The guy’s eyes had suddenly pulled focus on the electronic read-out. In a moment he was right there (much bigger than I remembered) looking accusingly from read-out to barcode to tag to me all at once. A couple of people who were now queued up started looking at me accusingly too.

I remember clearly that it was the actual second I nervously uttered, ‘Is there a problem?’ that he made his mind up that the tag must have been attached fraudulently. I made a small move to the door which he followed like a shadow. ‘Sorry sir’ he said, ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to speak to the manager about this.’

As he ushered me (with evidence in hand) towards an office at the back of the store I started to realise I was not in a good situation. Are they going to call the police? Will I be charged and if so, what with? Do I use my one call to organise legal help or tell my wife I can’t meet her at Coles at 11.30am?

He knocked lightly and we entered the manager’s office only to find it empty. ‘Have a seat sir.’ His look was firm and threatening and I sat down obediently. ‘The manager and I will be back in a sec.’ He closed the door heavily behind him and I heard his footsteps slowly disappear as he hurried away.

I was distraught. My once tiny decision, in the smallest of moments had suddenly escalated into something really serious. I looked around me like a schoolboy in a principal’s office. There was the manager’s desk, all neat and tidy, and who by the look of his kid graduating in a framed photograph, must have been in his forties at least.

I sensed a draught and looking up, noticed a window, only about 30 cms high, running the length of the wall just below the ceiling. I also noticed it was slightly open.

I quickly looked away then just as quickly back again. No, no, no. What I’d done was ridiculous enough surely? I ran to the door and put my ear to it. I could hear a couple of distant footsteps then nothing. I began to realise I could actually get out of this. Get my day back to where it started. Maybe even meet my wife at Coles at 11.30am.

With a huge backward lunge I dragged the manager’s desk over to the windowed wall. It groaned loud as a monster as it vibrated across the lino floor. There was no turning back now. Next I flung the chair I’d sat in onto the desk. As I jumped to join it, I heard the first thump of running footsteps accompanied by wild and aggressive yelling.

Now on the chair, I pulled the window open wide enough for me to squeeze through and as I dragged myself upwards and into the sunlight, I heard them burst into the room behind me.

There I was, three-quarters of my way into a blissfully sunny carpark (for a split second smiling stupidly at a stunned woman and her toddler next to their open boot) when my progress was suddenly reversed as a person (and then another) took hold of my leg.

As much as I could try bracing against the window frame with shaking arms, I was losing the battle. They were just pulling my leg too hard.

Pulling my leg. Just like I’m pulling yours.

While I have to apologise for telling stories, this is one story that for me has great resonance. Ever since my mother somehow kept a straight face telling a version of it to me when I was a teenager.

I just wanted to use it to demonstrate that whether a story is true or not is irrelevant. Only that any story which engages and involves people will always be remembered.

That’s something we would do well not to forget when we’re putting communications of any sort together. As soon as a story resonates with people, it becomes true, and effective.

Geoff Reid is BCM Sydney’s Creative Director

The race that stops a nation seemed like a perfect occasion to get the nation to stop and think about the Artline brand.

And so on Melbourne Cup Day as well as the two days approaching it, we ran full page and page-dominant versions of this ad right around the country.

As usual, Martin ‘The Shark’ Durek wrung incredible value out of our media dollar while Sutts and the studio made it really jump off the page.

Special credit and our farewell wishes go out to Artline’s departing marketing manager, Lynn Dewick whose trust has helped produce some memorable work on the brand which includes executions for Red Alert, Deficit and April Fool’s Day.

Geoff Reid is BCM Sydney’s Creative Director

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

Notice how those spunky young digital natives – when referring to things that existed in non-digital form before the rise of the internet – now refer to them as the ‘offline’ versions?

You know; old fashioned, physical things made out of paper and wood and stone and bits of string, like books and shops and conversations.

I was in an e-commerce briefing the other day, and the young bloke was talking about ‘online stores’.  But when he talked about the original brick and cement and carpeted versions, he referred to them as ‘offline stores’. Not ‘shops’ but ‘offline stores’. I love it! What a brilliant evolution of the language.

In a lot of areas, the rise of the virtual seems to be relegating the original entities to the basket marked ‘terminally uncool’.

It’s the online stores, e-books, online advertising, online learning, and online dating that are de rigueur. If you’re offline, you’re SO off the A-list.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my iPhone like a brother. I get all gooey over a seamless multi-platform digital end-user experience, especially when it’s one I’ve given birth to.

But I also feel it’s important that our non-digital heritage isn’t lost forever. I even reckon that being able to digitally recreate some aspects of the ‘offline’ experience in an online environment makes for a better experience.

If I’d been feeling a bit cheekier during that seminar, I might’ve shared my decades of wisdom with the chap, and mentioned to him that the offline version of a blog used to be called ‘having a chat’.

That an offline e-book was once referred to as a ‘paperback’.

That using Wikipedia  – but in its original offline form – was called ‘talkin’ bullshit’.

Asking your mate on the train what he or she is viewing on YouTube, was once expressed thus: “Oi, what’s on telly?”

Offline gaming was called ‘backyard cricket’.

Online dating, but performed offline, was called ‘chatting up’, and sometimes, ‘pulling a root’.

Offline education was called ‘let’s have a few beers at the Port Office’.

And iTunes offline was called ‘hitting play and record when Dire Straits came on FM104’.

It was a bloody good seminar though. Next time I’m out of milk, I’ll know to pop down to the offline store on the corner and maybe pick up an offline newspaper and an offline Paddle Pop while I’m there.

Andrew Bartlett is a Senior Writer at BCM

For their Peperami brand in the U.K, Unilever has recently dropped Lowe, their agency of 15 years, and decided to crowdsource for their latest campaign.

Through www.ideabounty.com Unilever plans to source ideas from 4,500 registered creatives around the world by offering a $10,000 bounty for the winning idea.

The brief is to continue to build on the ‘Peperami: It’s a Bit of an Animal‘ campaign which was developed by Lowe and has delivered great success for the brand. Peperami is one of the largest UK consumer brands and has been built on the back of ‘The Animal’ which is a tiny snack-man and is the established face of the brand.

This raises many questions for me.

Firstly, how fair is it to use the conceptual skills of a great agency like Lowe to develop the massively successful Peperami campaign and then put the brief out to ‘the world’ to simply extend it?

Secondly, whilst Unilever denies it, how can we be expected to think anything other than they’re trying to save money. The $10,000 they’ve offered on Idea Bounty is a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of creative hours that will go into all the ideas that will be developed.

Thirdly, what value will Unilever derive from the next successful installment of ‘The Animal’ campaign – bearing in mind that sales of Peperami in the U.K are nearly $50m annually. The measly $10k ‘reward’ seems to completely ignore the value that these concepts bring to a brand.

Fourthly, how much time will it take Unilever marketing execs to sort through the multitude of ideas, work out which ones, if any, have any merit and then work with the originator to further refine it. I suspect that if Unilever did an honest and objective post analysis they’d find that the whole exercise proved to be a classic case of ‘false economy’.

Finally, if they do find the ‘big idea’ who’s going to produce it? Unilever? Often bringing an idea to life is as important and coming up with the idea itself. Sometimes it’s more important. I think Unilever has completely missed this point.

I had a look through the brief and Unilever don’t just want rough ideas. They want fully worked up print and TV ads and in video form preferably. Between this and the idea generation each participant could easily have spent 20-30 hours on their submission.

If Unilever receives only 20 submissions then that’s 600 hours of ‘creativity’. If we valued that time at a conservative $150 per hour then the value of the work submitted is at least $90,000. Given that those numbers are probably conservative then I reckon Unilever are ‘having a lend’.

You might expect an instantly defensive response to this from an agency person like me but I’ve thought about this from a very objective viewpoint.

The only conclusion I can come to is this marketer has used Lowe to develop a highly successful property which is worth tens of millions to them, then at a very convenient juncture decided to ‘crowdsource’ an extension of it to save money. In others words, having ‘used’ Lowe they’re now ‘using’ the creative community.

To my my mind it’s creative abuse we shouldn’t sit back and watch it happen.

Paul Cornwell is a Partner at BCM