This autumn, I have been involved with something that is rather brilliant. ( I am allowed to say this without it being bragging, actually, since said brilliance is more other people’s than mine.) My company, business magazine Veckans Affärer, has joined forces with Resumé, the largest Swedish communication industry mag, and B2B agency Hilanders, to start a conversation. A conversation about where the industries that define Sweden (hard and heavy stuff like steel and paper) are heading, and what actually drives their growth in the 21th century.

This discussion, between the communication industry, top management in B2B coorporations, and the odd publicist, has been played out on – yes, yes, yes – all our platforms, of which the site b2bconversations.se might be the quickest one to access. (Or, if you’re one of those Facebook-is-the-new-Internet kind of people, well, here then.) It is in Swedish, so it’s not for everybody, but for Swedes, there is some quite interesting stuff in there.

And on the 7th December, the next step on this journey will be the B2B Conversations seminar, at the lovely Berns Salonger in central Stockholm. Big name speakers, a panel with a couple of communication people with very good resumés who will occasionally ring a funny bell of some sort (Yes, buying a funny bell is my responsibility. I haven’t yet gotten around to getting one, but whatever I choose, it will be spectacular.), oh yes, and wine. Stockholmers, I hope to see you there on the 7th. Do get in touch for discounted tickets, I’m sure I can get you some, but you have to act quickly – we close registration this week.

* wiseacre part of myself: “Actually, different media do shape discourses. A pipe is never a pipe when mediated. This example would be only half as good as a Facebook status update.” Non-wiseacre part of myself: “Go away.”

In New York, I once saw a middle-aged hobo type sitting on the street with a tin cup in front of him and a hand-lettered sign reading I USED TO BE QUITE ATTRACTIVE. I noticed his tin cup was flush with bills. Another time, in San Francisco, I spotted another grimy homeless guy with a sign that simply read I NEED $ FOR A HOOKER, which also seemed to be inspiring charity from the local citizens.

from John Waters: Role Models (2010)

Sometimes I’m reminded of this.

They are like those birds that weave intricate nests in which they are as content to hatch out a pebble as an egg.

from Cyril Connolly: Enemies of Promise (1938)

The medium is the message. One of the most famous quotes about communication ever, and almost up there with the fifteen minutes of fame in terms of ubiquity. And during the 2000s, the idea of the media channel has been expanded, to encompass pretty much everything. Adding to print, broadcast, web, mobile, outdoor billboards, etc, brands advertise themselves on any physical object they find suitable to associate with. This kind of advertising uses creative associations between the brand and the medium so that it’s actually the medium in itself that communicates the message. So, really a case in point for McLuhan. Easily translated into entertaining, instantly graspable jpgs, ad blogs love this kind of brand communication. But is it effective?

There’s not much written about advertising outside of ‘proper’ media. Swedish rock star professor Micael Dahlén (a generally very clever man, isn’t he) has written a few things on it though. He calls employing a novel medium that makes a statement in itself creative media choice. Which is fine but could mean a wide range of media decisions, so I guess I’d call it something like creative context connections*. (That’s a nice alliteration which I could use with a trademark symbol, too, should I need to make one of those fluffy agency models.)

In both of these studies (The Medium as Contextual Cue. Effects of Creative Media Choice, Journal of Advertising, 2005 and Dahlén, Friberg and Nilsson: Long Live Creative Media Choice. The Medium as a Persistent Brand Cue, Journal of Advertising, 2009) experiments were made where traditional media (ad posters, print ads) and creative contexts were compared. An egg with an insurance company’s logo and tagline or a fire extinguisher with a salsa sauce label on it were two novel media used. The results: creative contexts were more effective than traditional media use in creating the intended brand associations. (This presumes a good match, of course, between context and product.)

As an added bonus, the medium itself can continue to remind people of the brand, something that hardly happens with regular media that’s normally filled with brand messages. Actually, in one experiment, exposure to an altered creative context (when the brand logo etc had been removed) even transferred new associations to the brand. A phenomenon that could be good or bad, presumably. Maybe you should be a little careful with, as in the first example above, associating your food brand with public toilets, hot air connotation or not.

What I would like to do a study on is a possible conflict with brand personality and tone of voice. The simplicity of the message when it’s created by association overlap between brand and medium (Salsa sauce – Hot – Fire extinguisher) and the inherent witty cleverness in making such associations make every brand sound quite similar, and frankly, maybe a little too advertising-y to suit any brand. An obvious rival is of course what trendwatching.com calls Brand butlers. Brand butlers are all those apps, sites or services that also work by association (Energy drink – Sport – App that keeps track of your exercise) but allow an own voice and add value. Like IKEA France’s brilliant covoiturage service, where you can meet people to share your ride to the store – making both driver and passenger save money, perfectly in line with IKEA’s brand values.

* I really dislike the word guerrilla advertising. It’s an example of the old militaristic language of traditional marketing, with its targeting of consumers and offensive and defensive strategies. In his seminal books on guerrilla marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson actually calls different strategies ‘weapons’. Amazing. (Also, dear creative, you’re in advertising, not an invincible jungle warrior. Deal with it.) So I didn’t use it.

So the campaign for Hurts which runs now is quite interesting. Hurts are, if you didn’t know it already, a Mancunian electro pop duo who (1) look good (2) dress up and shave, (3) are, or are styled as (in pop music, who cares?), hopeless romantics and (4) duet with Kylie. Alas, they would be perfect pop group, if they didn’t insist on sounding like Talk Talk.

Anyway, they’ve collaborated with Manchester novelist Joe Stretch, making an interactive story of sorts, called ‘Don’t Let Go’. Narrated by Anna Friel, the actress, each chapter is a track, and you’ll find the code for the next one at the end of each. Or actually codes, because it offers you alternative actions for your hero. And if you’ve chosen wisely and get through the whole experience (‘to stop arch villain Guy Lockhart from distributing his heartbreak cocktail and condemning humankind forever to a loveless, empty existence’, no less) without getting killed, you’re rewarded with the perhaps not so grand price of a preview track. It starts here, by the way.

Now, there’s something about this … Besides its obvious video game flirtations, it reminds me of, yes, hypertext fiction! The last time I was buried in Communication Studies literature, mid-2000s, the fascinating but elusive hypertext novels could still be described in old editions’ discussions on digital media. For some, inexplicable, reason, hypertext fiction – in which you could, yes, choose a path in the story with the help of hyperlinks – was thought to be an important element of entertainment in the future. Oh well.

The retro-hypertext idea aside, plus points for innovative media use, quality and execution. Some minus points though, for turning it into a promotional contest (with a price that requires real fandom for it to be desirable). It sort of puts the story in brackets, doesn’t it, transforming it from literature to copy. Why not trust the short story, let it be just that (hyperfiction or not). Soundtracked by the Hurts’ music, it would add more layers of the right kind of connotations to the band without the comp element. All in all, though, nice work. In other Hurts promotion media news, an equally nice promo box in line with their lovely Drones Club aesthetics, complete with comb and sheet music (images from Popjustice).

Or they’re just chosen a magnificently frightening dragon poster because they’re located close to the classic movie theatre Draken (The Dragon), and don’t see how this choice of imagery might contradict the first line below it: “We’re happy to welcome people with dental fear“.

But that’s not how it works.
To make good work, you need to gesso it first.

‘Have you gessoed it?’

Gesso is what you use as priming for paintings.
Gesso makes the surface stiffer.
It prevents paint from soaking into the canvas, paper or wood.
And it gives the surface more texture, so the paint sticks better.
Traditionally made of animal glue – skin, bone or cartilage – mixed with calcium sulphate (a form of gypsum) or calcium carbonate (chalk), it’s pretty, well, intimate stuff.

‘Stop! Have you really gessoed it?’

So, gesso.
The gesso is the client relationship.
It’s the trust you build.
The feeling the client gets that s/he’s in good, professional hands. That s/he can stop being scared – because s/he’s terrified – and with good reason. S/he’s bought something from you that’s so important to get right, something that will define how others see him/her, something that can make or break him/her, without seeing it beforehand. Terrified. That’s why s/he instinctively wants to regain a little bit of control, by telling you to centre the logotype because s/he’s asked around a little and a guy in Sales said he just doesn’t like it to the right. Or by treating your best, bravest ideas like they were a separatist group’s demands for independence: like something that should be negociated down until it’s completely toothless. Handling fears.

That’s why, if you haven’t been covering your canvas with client confidence building, calming gesso, your work will end up an ungessoed painting.
Difficult to get right, those expensive and carefully mixed oil colours sinking into the canvas, turning out dull and uneven.
And the surface cracking.
No matter how great this piece of art was in your mind.
So gesso. Understand, inspire, motivate, involve your client. It’s the groundwork to your masterpiece.

P.S. Obviously, not all client critique is down to bad gessoing. It’s often very insightful stuff. But with proper gesso, it will be easier for the client to find that relevant input. And for you to listen to it.

Put aside the sexual connotations of these ads. Even though you don’t have to be that much of a semiotician to find “The young woman and the tiny folds”, illustrated with a girl working on a red handbag – a handbag! A vaginal symbol if there has even been one, according to Freud – with, well, tiny folds, rather obvious. Anyway.

The brand strategy here is quite transparent. Jumping on the luxury-should-be-about-craftsmanship bandwagon, Louis Vuitton tries to associate its brand with old-fashioned, artisan production. The result is, however, a bit like an upscale version of the claim of “using recipes we create at the kitchen table” on the frozen microwave lunch I had today. Why? Is it because, as Business Week points out, most Louis Vuitton products aren’t handmade? Not necessarily. Not that many people have the privilege of visiting a Louis Vuitton factory, and anyway, authenticity isn’t the same as truth.

In “The organizational construction of authenticity: An examination of contemporary food and dining in the U.S.” (don’t you just love academic titles?), authors Glenn Carroll and Dennis Ray Wheaton divide authenticity into four types; moral authenticity (Whole Foods), idiosyncratic authenticity (Dogfish Head brewery), type authenticity (that Italian restaurant where the owner’s mother sits at a table, and is overweight) and craft authenticity. Rather self-explanatory, craft authenticity is authenticity based on the artistry and mastery of the people making the product, and a refusal of industrial mass production. In everything from food to furniture to luxury bags, craft authenticity has been an extremely influential concept over the last years. In fact nowadays I feel rather embarrassed serving guests any food stuff about which I cannot tell a story involving several generations of artisan producers, techniques abandoned by the rest of the food industry before the 1950s, a mythic element of the secret-sauce kind, and a ridiculously long production time.

Projecting any kind of authenticity requires three things, according to Carroll and Wheaton: a visibly projected identity claim, credibility of the claim, and an identity that’s perceived as reflecting the meaning of authenticity in question. It’s obviously the second ingredient that’s the weak link here. The marketing claim is hard to verify, and it’s not particularly consistent with the brand’s general image.

If there is one luxury brand that has totally done away with every connection to Old World quality, instead choosing an aggressive brand exposure strategy that has got it associated with your little sister’s most annoying friends, well, it’s Louis Vuitton. In fact, a typical Louis Vuitton quote goes like this: “Showing off her Louis Vuitton collection (she had the sunglasses, belt, wallet, and garment bag!), Heidi Montag looked cute in a sleeveless beige top and light khaki trousers …” (from celebrity-gossip.net). The demureness of the 17th century-esque seamstress does not rhyme with the brashness of the stereotypical consumer.

The point of Carroll and Wheaton’s article is that authenticity is projected more credibly when it is organisationally constructed. A feature of the organisation – highly visible, costly to change and implicitly permanent, should radiate the symbolic meaning of authenticity that the company wants to project. But modern production is a pre-requisite for keeping Louis Vuitton’s operating margins well above the industry average. Would making a more reality-based campaign on the small part of the company’s production that’s actually made in an artisan way (custom-made products made in an atelier in Paris) do? Perhaps. Or maybe Louis Vuitton should simply rethink their strategy.

Authenticity, of course, is considered a general holy grail for 21st century brands. No wonder, as we live in a culture that’s more or less obsessed with authenticity; almost anything under constant threat of being labelled fake. (Authenticity is a concept with a polemic sort of built into it; it’s never as visible as when it’s questioned).

It’s also, a term that is often either taken very literally as a “real” business (un)strategy in a genuine backlash against, well, inauthenticity, or discussed in an almost outraged fashion as a cunning way to trick people into paying a premium. Either making a fan portrait of Innocent Drinks, or “calling their bluff” by pointing to them being partly owned by The Coca Cola Company. For someone involved in branding, though, I’d say it’s important to have a more thorough understanding of authenticity. Seeing how this concept so heavily influences the way people make sense of their world, knowing how it’s created and how it’s maintained (hint: it’s rarely a one-person-holding-strings kind of job) is crucial.

In short, social scientists tell us these about authenticity as it pertains to brands:

Authenticity has many meanings. For example, authentic can be interpreted as being moral (“being true to your values”), or historically accurate, or true to a type (like a music genre).

Authenticity is socially constructed. It does not tell you anything about metaphysical realness, but about how it’s perceived. A brand, a product, a place is interpreted as authentic and treated as such: that’s when the value is created. (That does not mean that it’s arbitrary, though!)

Authenticity is not stable, but always changing – what was perceived as terribly inauthentic can become authentic with time. And what was once authentic can suddenly have to meet other demands on authenticity, the bar has been raised, by other brands or by other factors.

Authenticity is not universal, but individual – what is authentic for someone is not to another. Judging authenticity is very connected with being a member of some kind of social context; being working class, or being a goth for that matter. More specifically, the concept of authenticity changes with the amount of cultural capital a person has.

There is some great literature on authenticity, of course. For example, Michael Beverland has written about authenticity in premium wines, and Glenn Carroll and Dennis Wheaton about restaurants – I’ll get around to both of them in later posts, which will explore different kinds of authenticity, and how it’s is crafted and cared for.