For years they have bared cheek and raised several fingers up to the often recklessly conventional cabal of mainstream TV.
Horseferry Road’s finest have been the country’s most diligent purveyors of thoughtful and slightly uncomfortable promotion for decades. Think Jamie’s School Dinners, the internet-only swear-fest, and Superhumans for starters. To this esteemed collection of premier league media branding we must now add the current Sochi spot (Gay Mountain).
Did you know that Angry Birds has thus far been downloaded over 1.9bn times, putting it in the hands of almost 1/3rd of the world’s population? Truly astonishing, and hats off to Finland’s finest.
As a curious brand person I wondered what was the secret of their unbelievable success. How did they manage to turn flying fowl into a worldwide phenomenon bigger than Manchester United? What was the magic potion?
I sensed that they have played a very smart hand indeed. Their monthly user base of 263m is second only to Facebook, and as I write over 400bn birds have been shot.
They have clearly done plenty extremely well.
They crafted the game well – learning as they did from at least 30 previous games before hitting the jackpot.
They’ve recruited well – securing Accel in 2011 has provided cash, momentum and expertise. They’ve monetised the core product well – each in-game upgrade is increasingly successful.
They’ve innovated well, eg Star Wars themes and location-based gameplay.
They have extended the brand wisely and well, taking in books, learning, drinks, retail, activity parks and an impending full-length film release.
And they’ve partnered well – from Slash to McDonalds to NASA.
This is all very well, but does it explain the success of a property that is currently the fastest growing consumer franchise ever?
I think not.
Like most mega-mega-properties (those that even my mum has heard of), I suspect that the biggest single contributor to worldwide success and untold fortune was…..luck.
Lady luck has shone brightly in Finland since 2009. Rovio didn’t plan for the iPhone to be the runaway platform it became. It didn’t plan for Apple UK to promote the game in the early days of the app store. David Cameron’s admission of his bird habit was not in the PR plan.
But to be fair, were the Rolling Stones ever the best band in the world? Or did they arrive with an anti-establishment message during a perfect storm of social change?
Or would Oasis have ever been so shatteringly important without the fortuitous foil of Blur?
For all the expert delivery of a winning strategy, and the onions & pyramids that so many brand people peddle, it is usually a massive and unscheduled dollop of luck - being in the right place at the right time – that turns something good into something priceless.
Google Zeitgeist 13 provides a much needed relief from the hurried, urgent and short-term lives that many of us lead. As well as inspiring with wild visions of the future, the real benefit of this gathering of young and old wisdom to remind us what all this is for, and to give us time to ‘Rethink. Reset’.
As usual, Google gathered the great and good of politics, technology, the arts, military, media, charity, academia, business, and of course Google, to educate, enlighten and entertain.
As a brand man, I wondered how any of the above luminaries could usefully instruct our craft of brand building? Quite considerably, as it happens.
For starters, all the invited speakers I caught were successful ‘brands’ in their own right – elevated above their peers through a combination of being in the right place at the right time (luck), strength of conviction (belief), infectious charisma (personality), persistence (hard work) and a fresh, relevant perspective on the world around us (differentiation).
My favourite example of all the above was Leymah Gbowee, Liberian activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, who confessed to living her life by diving in, never walking on tip-toes.
They were also, unsurprisingly, great communicators. Each had a different and interesting story to tell, they had insights that were fresh and challenging, and they made the audience feel things they weren’t feeling before. This included conductor Charles Hazlewood who, against seemingly insurmountable odds, succeeded in getting 300+ weary executives enjoying themselves singing together in 3-part harmony.
Most concluded that success in most things is to be judged over the long term, so much that it leaves a legacy. General Sir Michael Jackson shared some of the challenges of long-term strategy building (eg 25 years in his case), and in so doing relegated most of our ‘strategies’ to the short-term box.
And we were also reminded that if we don’t think there is a relationship between money and happiness, we’re clearly not spending our money right. We should be spending it on other people!
And lest we forgot, Jessie J reminded us in person in song after dinner.
So the shared metaphors with the world of branding are obvious - courage, conviction, communication, long-term, and being good to those you value.
Congratulations to Google for providing the space to think…about brands.