Here at Acacia Avenue, we often talk about language leaks.  We mean the virtually hidden metaphors that are embedded in sentences that, although barely visible, are still full of meaning.

Here’s an example.  We recently had a couple of meetings, one after another, with senior people in two very large, international companies, and in both cases we heard people using the word ‘piece’, as in “the brand piece”, or “the service piece”, to refer to other work streams that were going on elsewhere in those businesses (’streams’ is another by the way).  Now it’s really interesting that people in big companies talk about ‘pieces’, when it’s hard to see the whole thing.  Perhaps they are hopeful of all the pieces coming together.  Let’s hope so.

Here is a bit of a “there-but-for-the-grace-of-God” entry. We recently received a cold-calling letter from a company that sell franking machines and guess what? No frank or stamp on the envelope, so we had to pay £1.32 on receipt of the letter. Now perhaps this is brilliant marketing, along the lines of, ‘this is what happens when you don’t have your own franking machine’, but if it is brilliant marketing, perhaps someone out there can explain it to us, because frankly (sic), it just pissed us off. (However, not so much so that we have embarrassed the perpetrators directly in the picture by showing their letterhead…)

Our post of January 23rd provoked someone to suggest that we look at Sir Ken Robinson’s talk on schools and creativity that he gave at the TED conference. What a great suggestion. Every TED speaker has 18 minutes to give the talk of their life. It’s a fantastic use of 18 minutes to listen to this talk, and then to move on and graze through the archive.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66

It’s a bit late, but we probably should get round to a bit of boasting, just to say that in December, we won an award at the Market Research Society Annual Dinner.  It was the AQR Prosper Riley Smith Award for Research Effectiveness, for work that we did for the London Underground.  As it happens, it’s the second year running we’ve won this award, for which we’re really delighted.  Perhaps, if we win it again next year, we can keep it, and then we’ll be a bit like Brazil with the World Cup, but perhaps without the same silky smooth ball skills.

How sad is this? Crayola’s Color Wonder (sic, couldn’t they Anglicise it for our market?) says on the back of the packet, “Color Wonder coloring book pages are specially printed so color only appears where it’s supposed to.” Where it’s supposed to? For three year olds? Conformity is starting earlier and earlier it seems. We pity the poor, rebellious three year old that dares to go over the line and use their imagination. Where will it all end….

Here’s an interesting tale from yesterday.  One of us was lucky enough to get two free drinks from well known brands - a smoothie from M&S and a coffee from Pret.  The smoothie was part of a meal deal and was a surprise because the offer hadn’t been spotted on the salad box and was pointed out at the till.  Very pleasant.  But topped by Pret earlier in the day, when in the attempt to buy a latte, it only become obvious to our team member (whose name will be spared, but guesses are allowed if you know us well)  that they had no money with them.  Immediately came an offer of a free coffee.  Brilliant.  Now formal generosity is fine, especially when it’s implemented well at the till point, but how much more impressive is instinctive generosity, when the individual that is serving knows how to represent the brand.  She got the credit, but so did Pret.

Here’s a research game that anyone can try for themselves.  If you have to put up with the hell of commuting into one of the London termini, try comparing the experience of sitting (probably make that standing jammed between a dozen other people) in the front carriage one day, and the last carriage the next.  What you’ll find is a radical difference in the personality types at the front and back of a train.  At the front are all the type A personalities, who start leaving their seats just after the penultimate stop, jostling for position to be out of the train like a bullet the moment it comes to a halt.  Compare that to the back carriage, where half the people continue to sit there, finishing their chapter or article and waiting for the carriage to clear in a desperate attempt to be last off the train.  As an exercise in people watching, it almost makes the commuting bearable.  Almost.

It’s amazing how often it’s the little things that make the difference, that help to make you warm to a business. Here’s a classic example, and a superb illustration of how to make a potentially negative experience - finding a shop closed when you expect it to be open - into a positive. The shop concerned, by the way, is a travel agent…

Going to the Innocent Village Fete the other weekend, led us to think a bit more about the whole Innocent phenomenon. We all know that they are so beloved for injecting personality, tone of voice and so on into their brand, but in fact what with Fruitstock and the Village Fete, there is more to it than that. Most product brands have no human component to them at all. If you think about the typical touchpoints that are available to product brands, you have the products themselves, the communications, and the premises they are sold in (normally not their own). It’s a thin basis to build a relationship with human consumers. But Innocent have strived relentlessly to add the touchpoint that all retailers also have - human contact. Long may they continue to strive and thrive.

Walking through Victoria Station the other day, we were struck by a poster ad for the bestselling author, Jodi Picoult. We’ve got used to publishers treating authors as brands nowadays - the similarity of jacket treatment from one book to another is all designed to reassure readers that they are going to get a similar type of reading experience from the new J.K. Rowling, Alexander McCall Smith, Terry Pratchett etc that they had from the last one. But this was different, because all of a sudden Jodi Picoult has a strap line. It’s

simple and to the point - “she finds the words.” You could carp and say that she shares this quality with all authors so that it’s hardly differentiating, but nevertheless, with a bounding leap, she moves into the same territory as Mars, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and countless other household names

as being worthy of a brand slogan. Maybe this is the start of something new. We look forward to seeing brand slogans for the Arctic Monkeys or Damien Hirst. Any suggestions?