Sam McEwin and Dean Millson are the hosts of the Brandwidth podcast. They are marketing and branding experts who bring their knowledge and insights to the show.

Summary: Sam and Dean discuss the power of visual assets in marketing and branding. They reference a chart from Ipsos that ranks different visual assets based on their effectiveness in grabbing attention. They highlight the importance of using visual assets beyond just a brand name in ads. They also discuss the effectiveness of jingles, characters, and celebrities in advertising. They emphasize the need for distinctive visual assets that can be easily recognized and associated with a brand.

Key Takeaways:

• Visual assets, such as logos and slogans, make ads more effective than just talking about a brand.
  
  
• Characters are highly effective visual assets that can be owned by a brand and evolve with the brand’s creative style.
  
  
• Sonic brand cues, such as jingles, are underutilized but have a significant impact on brand recognition and recall.
  
  
• Celebrities can be effective visual assets, but they can switch brands and do not provide the same level of ownership as characters.
  

Quotes:

• “Visual assets beyond just a brand name in an ad make it more effective.”
  
  
• “Characters are highly effective visual assets that can be owned by a brand and evolve with the brand’s creative style.”
  
  
• “Sonic brand cues, like jingles, are underutilized but have a significant impact on brand recognition and recall.”
  
  
• “Celebrities can be effective visual assets, but they can switch brands and do not provide the same level of ownership as characters.”
  

TimestampSummary0:28Introduction to the podcast episode2:05Discussion on the tendency to focus on doom and gloom3:49Explanation of the podcast format4:36Introduction to the chart on visual assets6:20Effectiveness of logos and slogans in ads7:10Example of an ad without branding8:51Discussion on attention and QR codes9:29Mention of McDonald’s unbranded campaign10:31Introduction to distinctive visual assets10:39McDonald’s jingle and distinctive assets in ads10:31McDonald’s made a distinctive asset with their Big Mac jingle.10:49Market leaders like McDonald’s don’t need a logo if their distinctive assets are strong enough.11:12Heinz’s tomato sauce ad looked like a Heinz ad even though it wasn’t.12:15Sonic brand cues are underutilized but highly effective.13:21Characters and celebrities are powerful assets but not cool.16:13People don’t deeply engage with brands or want a brand relationship.18:51Characters are more effective than celebrities.19:17Characters can be owned, celebrities can switch brands.19:46Kanye West switched sneaker brands from Nike to Adidas.21:01Colonel Sanders is a character who represents KFC, not McDonald’s.21:01Discussion about Colonel Sanders and the KFC brand21:57Talking about creating brand assets and characters23:01Conversation about the effectiveness of influencer marketing24:38Sam’s experience with influencer marketing and a billboard26:26Influencer marketing as a way to prime consumer interest28:35Using celebrities and characters as brand assets29:37Branded characters offer flexibility and storytelling opportunities30:48Discussion about the malleability of brand characters31:08The effectiveness of uncool branding elements31:50Wrap up and mention of potential podcast character31:48Discussion about needing a character for the podcast32:00Mention of Salesforce and their use of characters32:26Mention of the successful execution of the Meerkat character33:30Discussion on whether characters can be human or animated34:02Explanation of how brand assets and characters work34:38Examples of ads with characters that become the brand35:40Mention of Flight Centre and Amy as characters36:19Speculation on the future use of characters in ads37:01Discussion on the effectiveness of characters in ads38:14Conclusion and invitation for audience to share character examples

[TRANSCRIPT]

0:00:28 – (Sam McEwin): Yes. And welcome back to another episode of the Brandwidth podcast. Vodcast. What do we call it, these vibes?

0:00:33 – (Dean Millson): Oh, no. I don’t know.

0:00:34 – (Sam McEwin): It’s getting difficult. This is why line extensions are about. We go with podcasts.

0:00:41 – (Dean Millson): We’ll go with podcast.

0:00:42 – (Sam McEwin): Welcome back to another episode of the Brandwidth podcast with myself, Sam McEwin. Across from me, Dean Millson.

0:00:47 – (Dean Millson): How are you, Dean? I’m mate, I’m really good. Really good. Good to be here again.

0:00:51 – (Sam McEwin): These are the things we should probably talk about off air, isn’t it?

0:00:53 – (Dean Millson): Yeah. How we’re doing? No, we don’t have to get straight into it straight away. We can include our audience. We include our audience in that. And we include our lives. Lives, okay. We’re just so saying off air, we’re pretty busy at the moment, which is good, considering all the doom and gloom in the world.

0:01:12 – (Sam McEwin): I’m too busy to know that is the doom and gloom in the world.

0:01:15 – (Dean Millson): Yeah, there’s a little bit going on.

0:01:18 – (Sam McEwin): More doom or gloom? Bit of both.

0:01:21 – (Dean Millson): Bit of both, actually. But on that, I’ve just finished reading the book The Psychology of Money. As a side note, it’s really, really good if you haven’t read it. And one of the chapters is about kind of how pessimism and doom and gloom is the narrative that always becomes a dominant narrative. And I think there’s a bit of kind of loss aversion in that we kind of sit up and take note. But it definitely made me think of the economy is going to crash. And it just made me think of right now, there’s an anecdote in it where he said, if after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, if the next week, you had have said, don’t worry, everyone.

0:02:05 – (Dean Millson): In 50 years time, we’ll have one of the strongest economies in the world, and the Americans will be our allies. And they’ll be looking to us, to how we run business and processes and how we innovate. And we’ll own some of the most expensive property in the world. And you would have been sent to a mental institution. Yet that’s essentially exactly what happened to Japan over the next 50 years. But we’ve really sidetracked here already. But I love it.

0:02:32 – (Dean Millson): We’re predisposed to kind of latch onto those doom and gloom stories.

0:02:37 – (Sam McEwin): That’s a good one, though. It’s a nice one to remember.

0:02:39 – (Dean Millson): Yeah.

0:02:39 – (Sam McEwin): No, you’re facing a problem. Well, it’s not a nuclear bomb is.

0:02:44 – (Dean Millson): No, no, that’s right. And you hear, I think there’s plenty of books talking, not books, but if you actually look at now, Byron Sharp even did this in, I think it was around climate, and he’s got some interesting views on that. But it was in general, like how much better the world is now. If you actually look at the numbers on most metrics, you can think of the world’s a much better place than it was 50 years ago or 100 years ago or whatever. But it never feels like it feels like that.

0:03:16 – (Dean Millson): There you go. It’s a podcast in itself, but it is. Read that book. It’s a good one.

0:03:20 – (Sam McEwin): It’s good. I will check that out. So, yeah, for the uninitiated, as we say, this is a podcast or podcast, whichever you prefer, depending on how you’re experiencing it right now about marketing and branding and the format is that one of us comes to the table with a topic that we’ve done some level of research on but we haven’t told the other person about, and we see where it takes us. We have a discussion.

0:03:49 – (Dean Millson): That’s the show.

0:03:50 – (Sam McEwin): That’s it.

0:03:50 – (Dean Millson): That’s it.

0:03:50 – (Sam McEwin): And we’re going to do that again today. And it’s my turn to bring a.

0:03:54 – (Dean Millson): Topic to the table.

0:03:55 – (Sam McEwin): And my topic was really based off, I think it was one or two episodes ago. You brought up the jingle.

0:04:03 – (Dean Millson): Yes. Fun episode.

0:04:05 – (Sam McEwin): Underutilized. It was a fun episode. I had fun. And it reminded me of something I saw on Twitter, a particular chart that sort of ranked out visual Assets and their effectiveness in grabbing attention, which sort of leverages back to another podcast we did recently on the power of attention and the different channels. So I thought this might be a nice one to talk about. So for those who are tuned in on YouTube, this is the chart Dean I’ve sent you.

0:04:36 – (Dean Millson): I can see it. Here it is.

0:04:37 – (Sam McEwin): I’m looking at it.

0:04:39 – (Dean Millson): I know what we’re going to talk about here.

0:04:41 – (Sam McEwin): Yeah, well, there’s a few things. I mean, I really just wanted to talk about this chart and Visual Assets and those kinds of things. The first one to point out, though.

0:04:49 – (Dean Millson): Is where’s it from.

0:04:50 – (Sam McEwin): So this is from sources Ipsis. Okay, double points if you can tell me what Ipsis stands for. No, me neither.

0:04:59 – (Dean Millson): International? That’s all I got.

0:05:03 – (Sam McEwin): I don’t know. I can’t visit it, but I’ll find out. But they’re an organization behind some really good research, some really good data they put out. I mean, there’s the Ipsis polled, they obviously do some polling, they do a lot of research. And in this case, they put out a really interesting document, which was influenced a lot by wait for it, professor Byron Sharp and Jenny Romaniak and the team out there at Erenberg Bass and Distinctive Assets.

0:05:37 – (Sam McEwin): And they did some research to try to understand what is the power of Visual Assets? Are they important and what’s the impact of them. And, yeah, I guess somewhat unsurprisingly, they found that having Visual Assets that, you know, beyond just your brand name in an ad makes it more effective. So hey ding, that’s great. But interestingly, I think it was, how effective? And so, you know, they had things like, you know, having a logo on your ad makes it like 1.17 times more effective than just merely talking about a brand.

0:06:20 – (Sam McEwin): And I think most ads have a logo and a slogan, and you can see there that makes an ad slightly more effective if you use those things, which isn’t saying much.

0:06:33 – (Dean Millson): Right.

0:06:33 – (Sam McEwin): Because how effective can an ad be without a logo on a slogan?

0:06:36 – (Dean Millson): Well, funny you should say that because I saw and I’ll have to find this tweet and put it in the to. I can’t remember who it was. It’s not Peter Benedolisfield. Is that the right way around? I’ll find it but it was an ad I wish I could remember the guy’s name. He’s amazing. I’ll find it will be in the show notes. Okay. But he put up this example. He reckon it was the worst ad he’d ever seen. And it was in a subway in the New York or London, I’m not sure.

0:07:10 – (Dean Millson): And it was like a big poster on a column and had a big QR code. And the copy on it was something like, they’ve been writing songs about us forever. Right. And that was it. Anyway, if you actually and he said he walked past this for like weeks, right. And then finally and he’s like, what is that? And he QR coded it. And it was an ad for Cadillac and the playlist. It was a spotify playlist that came up and it know all songs with Cadillac in it.

0:07:45 – (Sam McEwin): Right.

0:07:46 – (Dean Millson): But no branding. No branding, no Cadillac logo, no nothing. And then it was on LinkedIn, he put it up and people arguing, oh, subtlety, and advertising. And now that I’ve clicked on, I remember he goes, but I walked past it every day for three weeks. It’s just completely wasted money. That is an example of someone trying to be way too abducted for what they need to do.

0:08:15 – (Sam McEwin): I was hoping you’d say, but they came back and reported that it was the most successful.

0:08:19 – (Dean Millson): Okay. Don’t know. So he was just more talking about the fundamentals you are to get noticed. You’re paying to get eyeballs and to get people to think of your brand or see it. And this took a lot of effort for you to find out what it was.

0:08:36 – (Sam McEwin): Yeah, exactly. And perhaps if that was the headline, it probably wasn’t catchy. Intriguing enough.

0:08:41 – (Dean Millson): No, that’s right.

0:08:42 – (Sam McEwin): Mind you, just putting a big QR code somewhere and saying, don’t use this QR code.

0:08:47 – (Dean Millson): Yeah, well, you’ll get people to do it.

0:08:49 – (Sam McEwin): Some people could do it.

0:08:51 – (Dean Millson): But that attention thing, you’re not going to get any attention unless you so.

0:08:56 – (Sam McEwin): I get the although the attention you maybe get is a lot deeper if you listen to the whole playlist.

0:09:00 – (Dean Millson): And that’s true. And that’s know, I think his point was how expensive this would be to have these posters here. Know, you can use the playlist in another way, can’t you? Anyway, it’s an interesting one.

0:09:15 – (Sam McEwin): I thought were going to say McDonald’s because they came out with the completely unbranded no logo and it just said, like, lettuce cheese.

0:09:29 – (Dean Millson): So that was a T shirt originally. And I actually have that t shirt from threadless, and they turned it into yeah, we’re showing our age there. And yeah, that was a t shirt originally. And then was it actually a campaign or did it can’t I don’t know. It feels like I think it was.

0:09:49 – (Sam McEwin): A campaign with the muffin as well. Egg muffin, bacon, which is interesting because it’s almost the most unbranded McDonald’s burger. That’s right.

0:09:59 – (Dean Millson): I have.

0:10:00 – (Sam McEwin): But it was still associated with McDonald’s, and you still instantly knew McDonald’s. The reason I thought you might say that why I jumped in with it anyway, is because I think that’s a nice segue into what really this is talking about, which is visual cues, distinctive visual assets. Distinctive visual assets, exactly. And I guess maybe in Cadillac. Well, there’s songs written about them. So they have some distinctive not visual, but assets associated with that. McDonald’s. Well, their distinctive assets were the ingredients.

0:10:31 – (Dean Millson): And they made know this goes back to our know they made especially with Big Mac, that they made it a jingle and they made a distinctive asset.

0:10:39 – (Sam McEwin): The, you know, I guess you could argue there, well, they’ve got their distinctive assets in the ad. You don’t necessarily need a logo if your distinctive assets are strong enough.

0:10:49 – (Dean Millson): Well, no, that’s then and Dave Trott would say, if you’re the market leader, at the end of day, if you’re just wanting people to eat more hamburgers, then you’re going to get the lion’s share of those hamburgers. So you can make a case for something like that, which is unbranded, but gee, that makes me hungry when I want a hamburger. What’s the thing I’m going to think of first? Probably McDonald’s. So that would be a mistake. He tweeted out during the week.

0:11:12 – (Dean Millson): I’ll find this as well. The tomato sauce ad. Yes. See, I looked at it and I thought it was from a smaller competitor of Heinz, and it was just all about kind of get some more flavor on your sausages and use tomato sauce. And when I looked at it, I just went Heinz 100%.

0:11:34 – (Sam McEwin): And I did the same thing. Even though the name, I think, was.

0:11:37 – (Dean Millson): Libby, it looks nothing like it.

0:11:39 – (Sam McEwin): Their logo is like, literally their name written three times, which was everywhere. And they mentioned, like, they must have mentioned their brand name, like four or five times in the copy, and it still looked like a Heinz ad. And I still checked for a moment to just is this a sub brand of yeah.

0:11:56 – (Dean Millson): Okay. I think it might have been the bottle, too. Maybe the bottle shape was which is yeah. So there you go. There you go.

0:12:05 – (Sam McEwin): If we look at the chart, package shape is one of the highest performing visual assets there.

0:12:15 – (Dean Millson): And celebrities. Yeah.

0:12:18 – (Sam McEwin): There’s so many interesting things to unpack here. First, Sonic brand cues down the bottom. So if you sort of look at it, they’ve split it into visual and audio. So Sonic brand cues by a mile. That podcast we did on the jingle, there’s your jingle. Right. But I guess that would also include things like intel.

0:12:37 – (Dean Millson): I was just having a conversation about this this morning, actually, because we’re working on actually some employer branding stuff and creating these videos. And one of our designers is like, well, what if we made it like the sign off, something we could continue to use. And I was like, what? Like ding ding ding. They’re like, yeah, well, kind of. It works. You remember it, you talk about it, and then you just hear it.

0:13:03 – (Dean Millson): It’s amazing how much more it is, isn’t it? So for something that’s so underutilized, we talked about jingles have gone out of fashion. Intel comes to mind. McDonald’s. Is it the I think apple.

0:13:21 – (Sam McEwin): Open your Apple computer.

0:13:25 – (Dean Millson): But they’re not in ads, though. Is this for advertising?

0:13:29 – (Sam McEwin): Yeah, that’s true. They don’t use it in the ad.

0:13:32 – (Dean Millson): No, but anyway, it’s one of those things that only I can think of a handful that come to mind yet. They’re so powerful, but people don’t focus on them. So yeah, I wouldn’t have thought there’d be more. So the one at the top there, which I’m going to assume you want to talk about a little bit.

0:13:50 – (Sam McEwin): Well, I think we have to because at the top, which is characters for those listening. But I have no agenda here. I just wanted to sort of discuss some of things because the two at the top we take sonic brand cues is like the most effective asset by a mile. And what the report says is completely underutilized. So exactly what you were saying there. And we sort of discussed that on the other podcast, the absolute sort of top performers. And again, it seemed to be actually there was a direct correlation with how often they were used and the effectiveness. So the least common and least used sort of assets were like characters and Sonic brand cues.

0:14:36 – (Dean Millson): Yeah. So two things that are kind of uncool to designers, let’s say, or people that create brands, the characters. One I think is really interesting. And maybe I’m thinking, I know we’re going to go with this because I’d read something similar about this recently as well. Characters come to mind for me. Compare the meerkats as probably the first one. But then even I think the research I saw was just creating a character for your brand, whatever it is. You might not create a whole campaign out of them, but they just we remember them.

0:15:08 – (Sam McEwin): And that was a big part of this, I think, the research and what they sort of found. But also the hypothesis, I guess, that they had potentially going into it, is that our brains remember these things better than actual brand names. And there’s a stat. I pulled a few of the quotes out there and this was referencing another research project by Havas Media. They found that 77% of people wouldn’t care if brands disappeared completely.

0:15:45 – (Sam McEwin): I think I may have may have butchered exactly what put that up on.

0:15:48 – (Dean Millson): A mob and the wall at our office. Right.

0:15:50 – (Sam McEwin): Well, it’s a good reminder for us who work with brands, right. That, hey, nobody cares, and they’re seen as a means to an end. I’ve got a problem to solve, and brands can help me solve them. And they’re important at that time. I’m solving a problem and then I do not care about them. And all that nonsense that we like to hear of. People want to deeply engage with brands. They want a relationship with their brands.

0:16:13 – (Sam McEwin): I don’t hear as much of that anymore as I used to. It was big for a couple of years. I think we’ve all hopefully grown grown out of that one. But it’s nonsense. People barely want to interact with other human beings, let alone brands.

0:16:26 – (Dean Millson): That’s right. The last few years.

0:16:29 – (Sam McEwin): Yeah, right. Not surprising.

0:16:33 – (Dean Millson): And characters, I swear it’s been proven as well. I love coming to singer Go. I read this somewhere. I heard this somewhere. I promise you. I think it’s right. We’re more predisposed to animals, and a lot of characters are animals.

0:16:51 – (Sam McEwin): Right.

0:16:51 – (Dean Millson): And that’s probably an evolutionary thing somewhere. We like characters, and a lot of them are animals, and a lot of them make you smile. So I can totally see there. But they’re not cool. So I’m going to do this new brand. I’ve got this idea from character. It’s kind of like the skill set that we talked about with Jingles that’s not there. Maybe like going back to the were talking about with especially in Australia there’s that Mojo had that real skill set, but in an agency, it’s not there. And I reckon that’s the same with characters.

0:17:30 – (Dean Millson): They’re a bit more artistic. Yeah. And they’re not that cool.

0:17:37 – (Sam McEwin): The other thing they talk about there is the ability to recall. So we can recall Louis the Fly quicker than we can recall.

0:17:44 – (Dean Millson): Yeah, that’s a good point. Interesting. With McDonald. So Ronald McDonald was the guy, but you never see Ronald anymore.

0:17:55 – (Sam McEwin): He’s not cool.

0:17:57 – (Dean Millson): He’s not cool. He’s been parodied a lot as well.

0:17:59 – (Sam McEwin): My son is so scared of Ronald McDonald’s.

0:18:03 – (Dean Millson): That’s a good you’ve done a purpose, haven’t?

0:18:05 – (Sam McEwin): No, no. It doesn’t stop him from wanting McDonald’s for every meal.

0:18:08 – (Dean Millson): The Scottish restaurant, my wife’s parents used to call it, so that they had no idea what they’re talking about. So that’s one up the sleeve for the parents out there. But I wonder that you never see him clearly. That’s been like he’s there killed.

0:18:24 – (Sam McEwin): He’s hanging around.

0:18:25 – (Dean Millson): Is he? Yeah.

0:18:25 – (Sam McEwin): If you look hard enough, you see.

0:18:27 – (Dean Millson): I’m going to have a look next time. I’m going to have a look next time.

0:18:29 – (Sam McEwin): But he’s almost like a sort of legacy, and they had them let him hang around.

0:18:37 – (Dean Millson): That’s interesting. Hold that thought. For my next podcast. The idea I’ve got for it. But celebrities so celebrities pushing up to which is.

0:18:50 – (Sam McEwin): Half as effective as a.

0:18:51 – (Dean Millson): Character character make your much more likely.

0:18:53 – (Sam McEwin): To get done doing drugs in the backseat of a car or something. Right?

0:18:58 – (Dean Millson): But I guess, look, there’s the other thing in here as well. You can’t own a celebrity. Yeah, you can own a character. And so, look, that return on investment for if you spent 20 grand, 30 grand, 50 grand, like creating, really working on these characters, you own that asset.

0:19:17 – (Sam McEwin): And who was it? Was it? Oh, God. There’s Kanye West. Was it that he switched sneaker brands? Did he go from Adidas to Nike.

0:19:26 – (Dean Millson): Or no, he went vice versa. I think it was vice versa. So there’s a maybe he did one shoe for Nike. I think his name’s Yee now as well. I don’t think his name’s Kanye. Well, I don’t know. I think Kanye is doing the one that’s apologizing at the moment. If you’ve read is that part of.

0:19:44 – (Sam McEwin): The Doom or the Gloom?

0:19:46 – (Dean Millson): That’s another podcast. I don’t think he’s very well, unfortunately, people should stop wheeling him out. But I think he did want something for Nike and then I heard and so we should okay, this may not be true, but this feels like it’s either a great it’s been made up by a marketing salesperson or it is true. It was a bit unusual for him to get a shoe with Nike because their brand essence has been kind of some people think it’s authentic athletic performance or something like that. And if you think about it’s all about sports stars and athletes, and their whole brand is about athletes.

0:20:32 – (Dean Millson): And even though people wear them for fashion, their brand is about athletes. So he either had one shoe and then they killed it. And the reason it was I think he got offered more money for Adidas or I’m sure I’ve heard someone go, it wasn’t aligned with their brand and that’s why they killed it, because it was. But let’s find that out first. But it’s a cool story.

0:20:54 – (Sam McEwin): Well, I mean, certainly celebrities can switch brands, right?

0:20:57 – (Dean Millson): Yeah, they can. And then you’re never going to see.

0:20:59 – (Sam McEwin): Colonel Sanders do a McDonald’s ad.

0:21:01 – (Dean Millson): There you go. A character and a celebrity. So that’s an interesting one because he’s not he’s real. He’s real. Colonel, colonel the Colonel was the one that started the was he really chicken? Yeah. Well, now you’ve got me thinking. I think he was, but he found the spices. I don’t know.

0:21:20 – (Sam McEwin): They’re still secret after all these years.

0:21:22 – (Dean Millson): They are.

0:21:23 – (Sam McEwin): Salt and pepper are two of them.

0:21:26 – (Dean Millson): Do you know? We’ve talked about this, haven’t you? About their Twitter account?

0:21:29 – (Sam McEwin): Yes, I saw this the other day.

0:21:31 – (Dean Millson): Yes, they follow Eleven Herbs and the Spice Girls.

0:21:35 – (Sam McEwin): The only people they follow.

0:21:36 – (Dean Millson): That’s it. So that’s interesting. On like turning even this wouldn’t work at all, but turning Steve Jobs into a character or maybe as a brand. How can you create an asset that lives on? That’s fascinating, but I just pictured, like.

0:21:57 – (Sam McEwin): A little mouse version of you on the demand.

0:22:04 – (Dean Millson): Yeah, well, we have characters on our website. There’s illustrations of all of us on there. And we had this awesome photo shoot done in a cinema and it was about building brads that can’t be ignored and you’re watching something on screen, and that’s where it came from. We were like, throwing popcorn each other and stuff. It was heaps of fun. The Sun Theater in Yaraville let us in there, didn’t charge us a cent.

0:22:28 – (Sam McEwin): It’s a great image.

0:22:31 – (Dean Millson): But then two people have left. That’s the problem with something like that. So we’ve now got all illustrations, but we’re essentially characters. There is one of me there.

0:22:44 – (Sam McEwin): But we don’t turn you into a mouse.

0:22:45 – (Dean Millson): Sorry, you haven’t turned me into a mouse. Okay.

0:22:49 – (Sam McEwin): These things, they pop into your head. I don’t know why, but the thing.

0:22:53 – (Dean Millson): With the celebrities just there for a moment is it interesting. I think you talk about all the negativity of influencer marketing. It clearly works.

0:23:01 – (Sam McEwin): I’ve got a story about influencer marketing, too. Go, really?

0:23:06 – (Dean Millson): Is it a celebrity or no.

0:23:08 – (Sam McEwin): So we’re doing an influencer with another agency. We’re running an influencer campaign as part of a much bigger campaign we’re doing for one of our clients, and they sent a list of influencers. And I’m notoriously living a bubble. All I read about is marketing and branding. I didn’t know any of them. And I don’t scroll on Instagram and I only use Facebook to look at the ads.

0:23:36 – (Dean Millson): And you’ve got an iPhone, what, eight?

0:23:41 – (Sam McEwin): It’s becoming unhealthy.

0:23:42 – (Dean Millson): Yeah, I have to have an intervention.

0:23:44 – (Sam McEwin): I’m losing connection with the common consumer.

0:23:47 – (Dean Millson): That probably still uses Flash or something, doesn’t it? The 9.8?

0:23:50 – (Sam McEwin): They never used flash. Don’t be stupid. So, yeah, anyway, I did an exercise with myself. It was like a mental exercise. I spent quite a bit of time actually looking through all the posts of these influences and tried to be very disciplined about that concept of you are not your audience and I am not the audience for these influences. Absolutely. By no stretch. And tried to say, okay, who is the audience and how is this appealing? And all of that. And I won’t go through all the little things I came up with. Although that could be interesting fodder for a podcast. But yeah, so I was doing that and one of the influencers, tom Hawkins wife, someone or other Hawkins.

0:24:38 – (Dean Millson): Oh, Jennifer Hawkins.

0:24:39 – (Sam McEwin): Is it jennifer Hawkins.

0:24:40 – (Dean Millson): No, that isn’t that she’s another influence. She’s a model. She’s tom Hawkins. I don’t know. The football player.

0:24:45 – (Sam McEwin): Football player.

0:24:46 – (Dean Millson): Tom Morgan’s wife.

0:24:47 – (Sam McEwin): Yeah. And they did a funny thing. Tom came out and they were tasting this fruit flavoured beer.

0:24:54 – (Dean Millson): Fruity beer.

0:24:55 – (Sam McEwin): Fruity beer. And I thought, oh, that’s disgusting. And as long as it was interesting and I moved on. But the next morning, I was driving to work and a billboard caught my eyes and it was Dan Murphy’s billboard, the same fruity beer. And that’s who was sponsored this influencer post as well, the fruity beer. And in that split second, there was this moment of recognition of going, oh, that’s that beer.

0:25:21 – (Dean Millson): Ding ding.

0:25:22 – (Sam McEwin): And I thought the interesting thing was absolutely in that moment, I would not have noticed that billboard. That billboard, it was just part of the noise of the world as I drove to work. But by having that recognition of the influencer, it sort of primed my brain, I guess, to sort of say, hey, there’s something important over there.

0:25:41 – (Dean Millson): Yeah. Or you came across it, I mean, you were looking for it, but say you were a fan of Tom Hawkins wife or Tom Hawkins at this time of year, football in Melbourne, Geelong, winning flags, there’s certainly currency in that, but you’re there looking for that content because you’re interested in it and it’s linked to that. So you’re not really taking notice of billboards or looking out for them. But now, once you’ve seen it, then you’re going to see it every I.

0:26:14 – (Sam McEwin): Just thought it was a nice illustration to how advertising works. The influencer post itself. I thought the beer looked gross or whatever.

0:26:25 – (Dean Millson): Now we’re talking about it.

0:26:26 – (Sam McEwin): Now we’re talking about it. That’s right. I saw the billboard. Now, guaranteed, if I walk into Dan Murphy’s, if they’ve done this campaign correctly, and I’m sure they will have, there’ll be a whole lot of point of sale, there’ll be a big old stack of these beers, and maybe there will even be someone doing taste tests.

0:26:42 – (Dean Millson): I guarantee there will be.

0:26:43 – (Sam McEwin): Right now, guaranteed, I’m going to do a taste test because I’ve now had two touch points and I’m interested enough in that to go, okay, let’s taste this. And then chances are I’ll leave with a slab of fruity beer as a talking point at the barbecue that we’ve got planned on the weekend. It’s obvious, right? And we all know this stuff, but it’s nice to have those moments. And I think for me, that’s where influences fit in. And one of the things I’ve gone way off topic now, but I guess it’s celebrities.

0:27:15 – (Sam McEwin): One of my insights, I guess, was like, okay, well, who would watch this? Why are they watching this? I thought, well, it’s no different to the things that, you know, I think I’m being educational or something by watching Photoshop tutorials on YouTube. That’s what you’re interested or whatever, but ultimately what I watch on YouTube or social media is things that I’m doing now. Like, they’re things I’m doing in my real life. And there’s times I just want to tune into other people doing the kinds of things I’m doing.

0:27:44 – (Sam McEwin): And I realize that this was mummy bloggers and I’m like, well, that makes complete sense. These are people just doing the same sorts of things that their audience are doing, and they’re sharing them on social media, and then they bring their celebrity husbands in for time to time and do some interesting taste tests and interesting content. But I think strategically, as a way to prime, particularly something new influences do work.

0:28:08 – (Dean Millson): Yeah. Look, I’d love to know how they define celebrities here, but I assume that maybe it’s probably more mass market celebrities, isn’t it, with what they’re I think.

0:28:21 – (Sam McEwin): Obviously there was a sample set. I think if you found a minor celebrity, which I guess that influencer is, that would go under celebrities, you’d expect it’d be less effective. But I guess it’s who your audience is.

0:28:35 – (Dean Millson): Right.

0:28:35 – (Sam McEwin): If that’s a celebrity that your audience fuels something towards some goodwill or admires in some way, then it’s going to be effective. It’s just those influences probably have a much smaller audience.

0:28:47 – (Dean Millson): Right, yeah. For me, I think that’s the key kind of insight here. You can turn your character into a celebrity and own it, and you probably can pay the same amount of money depending on the celebrity, yet you’ve created a distinctive asset you can use for a long time.

0:29:13 – (Sam McEwin): That’s right. So there’s a quote here exactly on that point, and that was one of the main points. It’s like, well, celebrities are actually one of the more often used sort of assets, if you want to call them that in this. And they scored really high. So that was sort of one of the outliers there. But yeah, characters are just that much more effective. And they said in the report, branded characters represent an interesting opportunity.

0:29:37 – (Sam McEwin): They do not represent multiple brands, unless, of course, you want them to, and they offer the potential to evolve with your creative style and the story you want to foil around your brand. And they did actually reference Colonel Sanders. That’s probably why he came to mind, so and I think they’ve used him in different styles. They’ve had real persons. I think there was something they did in Japan with a very Japanese looking Colonel Sanders.

0:30:03 – (Dean Millson): They use his signature. I just saw recently yes, I was eating KFC recently, like his signature on the side of packaging and stuff like that. They’ve started to try and bring all this heritage back in, and they now say Kentucky Fried Chicken and stuff. It’s another time for another podcast. But yeah, they’re really malleable then, aren’t they? For different I’m sure Snap, Crackle, and Pop don’t look the same now that they did in the could probably turn them into a children’s television series if you really wanted to.

0:30:48 – (Dean Millson): So, yeah, they’re malleable, aren’t they? And you can reinvent them and yeah, I think that’s and the fact that they’re uncool, I find really interesting. We had this conversation to be in the studio with the designers, because it’s like sometimes the things that are effective aren’t cool and they don’t get done.

0:31:08 – (Sam McEwin): Yeah, I thought certainly the character. Is interesting package shape. And then you’ve got the obvious ones, I guess, creative visual style, colors, fonts, logos. It’s amazing, actually, how small incrementally a logo and the font, all the things that we just do that are actually included in just about everything. And then the big ones are the package shape, the celebrities, the characters, and then the good old jingle and the audio cues and things there. So, yeah, I think that’s it.

0:31:48 – (Sam McEwin): We could probably wrap up.

0:31:50 – (Dean Millson): Do we need a character for the podcast then? Do we need a character?

0:31:54 – (Sam McEwin): It could be a mouth.

0:31:56 – (Dean Millson): I don’t know what it is with your mouth.

0:32:00 – (Sam McEwin): So this is two years old now, this research, and I know this has sort of been out there in the world and there has been a small increase in characters. And salesforce is an obvious one I think we spoke about recently. They haven’t made sense of their characters. So I think that will be interesting to see. Whether it was a small data set, an admittedly small data set that used characters. The meerkat was executed beautifully.

0:32:26 – (Dean Millson): I wonder I just had a thought. Can a character be like a character the way sorry, I’m not making any sense. Can a character be like a human character? So, like someone playing a character, trying to think of an example? I can’t think of one now, but yeah, it doesn’t have to be an animated character. It can be kind of the I mean, I guess characters in a way. The one that comes to mind is the Apple and the Apple and Microsoft characters from back in the day, PC. So you’ve got their characters, but they’re not kind of animated, but you’re kind of creating a character like you would in a film or a series going back.

0:33:23 – (Sam McEwin): Colonel Sanders is one of them.

0:33:24 – (Dean Millson): He has been both. Yeah, he’s probably more character than the founder to be, definitely.

0:33:30 – (Sam McEwin): But they’ve had real actors playing Colonel Sanders as well as the character, and he’s a real person. That is an interesting one. So, yeah, absolutely. So there was another quote here somewhere. We see clear evidence of the power of brand assets being linked to stronger branded attention. And we consider it provides some supporting evidence that the assets used do indeed enable more sensory mechanisms for the brand to be weaved into the story and be a part of the creative memories which are encoded.

0:34:02 – (Sam McEwin): So I think that sums up how it works. Therefore, yeah, I’m a Mac, I’m a PC. It’s encoding that brand or that feeling or the sentiment that the ad is supposed to translate.

0:34:20 – (Dean Millson): Try and think one. I’m sure there’s been ads where there’s a character and you go on the journey with that character. So that character is in the ad all the time. They become the distinctive asset and that’s the narrative. You’re seeing what they’re up to. Or I just can’t think of the ad, but I’m sure. Yeah.

0:34:38 – (Sam McEwin): No, I feel like there’s a couple sitting down.

0:34:40 – (Dean Millson): If not, it’s a great idea, but yeah, I’m sure they become the brand for you.

0:34:46 – (Sam McEwin): There’s the flight center being scared.

0:34:49 – (Dean Millson): I used to have a girlfriend that was petrified of the flight.

0:34:52 – (Sam McEwin): Really?

0:34:52 – (Dean Millson): They used to have the statues at the front of the flight center, so yeah, well, he’s definitely and he’s changed over the years. He really has.

0:35:03 – (Sam McEwin): Amy. Amy. But it’s not quite the same. It’s still not the story of their evolution.

0:35:07 – (Dean Millson): No, but that’s a character for sure, and that character has become an idea. I couldn’t even tell you when that was introduced, but it feels like it wasn’t. It’s maybe ten years ago. Yeah. Then you’ve got Katut and Ronda guys on the road, Rhonda, so yeah, look at all the characters. And that’s a good one, actually. So there’s a character that went they would have almost won a logi or something for that.

0:35:40 – (Dean Millson): People were they built their whole ads around those. And she’s still there.

0:35:44 – (Sam McEwin): I think the house falls on her now.

0:35:47 – (Dean Millson): The front of the house falls off.

0:35:48 – (Sam McEwin): And she stands in the door and misses her, and she’s out there saving people by the side of the road.

0:35:52 – (Dean Millson): With their headset on multiple characters. Isn’t that interesting? If you pick it apart a little bit, like it’s got the Amy the smiling woman on the end of your call type idea, they’ve been able to visualize that, and that’s something that can run concurrently with this other character to probably boost that effective as well. That’s interesting.

0:36:19 – (Sam McEwin): Yeah.

0:36:20 – (Dean Millson): Wow. Look at some of the interesting stuff we talk about. Sam, this blows my mind.

0:36:24 – (Sam McEwin): We interest each other.

0:36:25 – (Dean Millson): Yeah, that’s right. As long as we just record it and see what happens if maybe someone.

0:36:31 – (Sam McEwin): Else might be interested as well. That’s interesting. Look, if you’ve got some characters examples, send them our way, we’ll share them somehow and get them up. But yeah, I think actually that was the point I was going to make. Seriously. We’ve wrapped up, we’ve got tried to wrap up twice now. I’d be interested to see whether if they did this in four years time, if we see a lot more characters and a lot more jingles. I’ve definitely noticed jingles.

0:37:00 – (Sam McEwin): People have read this.

0:37:01 – (Dean Millson): People are listening.

0:37:05 – (Sam McEwin): They’Re having a go. And I feel like some of these are going to miss the mark. I really feel like salesforce’s characters are meaningless.

0:37:12 – (Dean Millson): I can’t remember what they are.

0:37:14 – (Sam McEwin): I can tell you their names. I’ve seen them everywhere and they just look like cartoons that go along with salesforce ads. They don’t seem to be intrinsic to the story in any.

0:37:29 – (Dean Millson): Yeah, that’s interesting. But potentially, I would say from Aaronberg Bass, for example, they would say that as long as you’ve got to recognize the character, the character may not need to be intrinsic, but it’s there and recognizable. I think that’s why they use an heard I think I’ve heard Jenny speak about that before they’ve got their identity. So they’re taking their own research and.

0:37:56 – (Sam McEwin): Using anyway out there. This graph will be shared. You can download it. I’ll put a link to the report as well. It’s good reading. It’s light reading, but it’s interesting. And it just gives us a few extra things. Awesome. Think about when we’re thinking about distinctive facets characters.

0:38:14 – (Dean Millson): Characters. All right. I’m going to see characters everywhere out there now.

0:38:17 – (Sam McEwin): Report back.

0:38:18 – (Dean Millson): I will. Thanks, Sam.

0:38:19 – (Sam McEwin): I’ll see you.

0:38:19 – (Dean Millson): Excellent. Bye.