This Week in Strategy: I just got fired, and as severance, my company gave me a bag of used coffee. They said it was grounds for termination.
Hi Strat Pack,
Guys. If you know anything about me, you would probably suspect that I'm a huge Quantum Leap fan. And if you've ever spent an unreasonable amount of time with me at a bar, I've probably started just narrating the opening theme narration. "Theorizing that one can time travel within his own life time, Sam Beckett stepped into the quantum accelerator an vanished..." Not familiar with the show? Just click on the above link, it literally explains the whole conceit in 45 seconds. Then stick around for one of the best opening sequences ever made. Big Bakula head over here. Anyway, in an interview, Scott said that a Quantum Leap reboot would be a good idea. and that Sam (see above narration) is still out there! Would Bakula and Dean Stockwell (love you Dean!) come back? It sends my heart aflutter! But seriously I would watch the shit out of that show.
Have you seen the new design for the USPS mail truck of the future? It's so adorable. Twitter had a field day. Click through on the above link for no other reason than to check out the tweets. The new truck is being built by Oshkosh Defense Systems, which depressingly (or maybe not actually) has no connection to the overalls that everyone's parents dressed us in. Admit, it, you owned a pair. Why do defense contractors keep winning the contracts for the post office? Northrop Grumman (who made the current, iconic post office truck) manufactures the B-2 Stealth bomber, and Oshkosh (not b'gosh) makes vehicles that look like they came straight out of a Bond movie. Or Austin Powers. hard to say. Either way, it's adorable. I'm all for this new soft edge of the USPS.
If you have a few minutes, I strongly recommend checking out Design Legacies: Momofuko Ando and Cup Noodles Design Legacy. Really interesting read about this seemingly simple and incredibly ubiquitous design. Momofuku’s wish for the product to be embraced by various audiences was a major factor in its packaging design, not wanting it “to look distinctively Japanese, but something that was really universal." For instance, the gold border which gleams round the top and bottom of a packet of Cup Noodles is a nod to “Western-style dinnerware that Momofuku happened to see at a department store,” she continues. “He wanted to make Cup Noodles into a product with international flair, a quality the packaging needed to embody.”
Oh. This is super cool: Frequency of letters in English words and where they occur in the word
D, G, Y, S...I get why those peak at the end of words. But look at Z it's like a progression. And What's going on with L, T, and H. English is weird man. Cool.
Alright, stop messing around trying to figure out to connect the alphabet letters with Post Office letters into a clever punchline. (Actually, if you do figure it out, drop me a line... I gave up.) Let's jump right in.
The one thing to read this week
1) What do you do when the lyrics just aren’t coming? [The Red Hand Files]
The Red Hand Files are such a wholesome way to use the internet. It's literally just Nick Cave answering people's questions in a really earnest way. This question is from Marko, in Zagreb Croatia. And as brief writers, creative or creative adjacent professionals, I think we can all relate.
The thing you must hold on to through these difficult periods, as hard as it may be, is this — when something’s not coming, it’s coming.
The idea of lyrics ‘not coming’ is basically a category error. What we are talking about is not a period of ‘not coming’ but a period of ‘not arriving’. The lyrics are always coming. They are always pending. They are always on their way toward us. But often they must journey a great distance and over vast stretches of time to get there. They advance through the rugged terrains of lived experience, battling to arrive at the end of our pen. In time, they emerge, leaping free of the unknown — from memory or, more thrillingly, from the predictive part of our minds that exists on the far side of the lived moment. It has been a long and arduous journey, and our waiting much anguished.
Marko, our task is both simple and extremely difficult. Our task is to remain patient and vigilant and to not lose heart — for we are the destination. We are the portals from which the idea explodes, forced forth by its yearning to arrive. We are the revelators, the living instruments through which the idea announces itself — the flourishing and the blooming — but we are also the waiting and the wondering and the worrying. We are all of these things — we are the songwriters.
Love, Nick
2) Let's discuss the Anchor Brewing Rebrand Controversy [Beer Branding Trends]
[ED note: I couldn't find this anywhere but the newsletter, so the link goes to sign up. Worth a read, great design]
The iconic Anchor Brewing recently launched a stark rebrand that was met with fervent backlash. The public response was so loud and universally negative that Anchor Brewing actually made a public post addressing the “controversy.”
So in the spirit of constructive criticism, here’re some initial reactions as well as some important lessons that other breweries, legacy or not, can think about if they're considering a rebrand.
ON STRATEGY & GOALS
We don't have access to the project brief and behind the scenes strategy. However, after rebranding a few dozen breweries, we do see a similar set of goals that they typically want to accomplish through this process. I'd put money on Anchor focusing on the following:
- We want to breathe new life into the brand and reach a younger audience
- We want to clean up inconsistencies across the packaging
- We want to better billboard on shelf
- We want to clean up our label hierarchy and fix the "Anchor Steam Brewing" vs. Anchor Brewing issue
- We want to increase revenue by XXX%
Again, these are guesses, but not exactly shots in the dark. Let’s assume they’re correct and move onto the next major point.
EVOLUTION VS. REVOLUTION
Any move to rebrand a legacy brewery is going to include an element of modernizing the overall aesthetics. And while there are no universal rules, it's easy to go just a little too far and lose what was special about an old school look in the first place.
We frame this conversation with our clients as Evolution vs. Revolution. Are you completely reshaping your brewery’s culture and positioning? Are we throwing your logo out with the bathwater and creating wholesale visual change across the board? Or, are we building on decades of work and hard earned goodwill to make subtle updates in a natural progression?
The deciding factor here, beyond specific goals and project context should be driven by Brand Equity. This is the total amount of goodwill your brand has with its customers. What lore and visual cues that, if lost through the new design work, would confuse customers and lead to lost sales.
And while the goals listed above are legitimate and do require some major changes, I just can't imagine the conversations that lead to deciding that nuking 125 years of brand equity is the right move.
ON RETRO VS VINTAGE
We've had a now decade-long conversation at CODO about what constitutes vintage aesthetics and what this means for our current moment in time. "Vintage" is a word that gets thrown around like "craft”—it’s hard to pin down and means something different to everyone.
From 2010 to 2020, hundreds (thousands?) of breweries came to market with vaguely retro / vintage / throwback branding. We called this "Nostalgic Regional" in our 2020 all-decade beer branding trends review.
My point here is that those breweries had to fake it. They had to rip holes in the knees of their jeans, so to speak. They had to use mish-mash typography and faux textures and every other little info type that we designers love to use (e.g. ESTD. 2019, TRDMRK) in their branding to look older than they were because they wanted that story.
And to have a brewery like Anchor—with a genuine provenance that an untold number of other breweries are all seeking to convey—jettison that very story so abruptly like this is just… disappointing.
And beyond all this, ironically, Anchor might’ve had a better chance at courting Millennials (who have forgotten about them) and Gen Z (who have never heard of them) by leaning into their fun vintage look. See recent refreshes like Ranier, Iron City and even Budweiser for reference.
IN CONCLUSION
To conclude, this is a rough spot, both for Anchor and their agency. Anchor desperately needed to make a change, but it seems undeniable that they’ve missed the mark here.
I’ve avoided specifically calling out issues with the design itself in this piece. But to be blunt, even if Anchor had made a different (though equally drastic) update, I don’t think the response would be as negative if the result didn’t look so half-baked and stock. Put frankly, this looks like an early sketch. The typography needs more refinement and consideration. I don’t understand the different type treatment for the porter. The anchor illustration (arguably the most important element at play) is clunky, and has no sense of the history of this iconic brand. And the colors, while technically eye-catching, are garish and unrefined.
This feedback isn’t particularly constructive and we can discuss subjective opinions about design all day. But the real barometer here—the one that matters more than anything else I’ve said—is will this update help Anchor right the ship and sell more beer?
Maybe Anchor knows something that we don’t, and this was the right move.
3) Interview with Rob Schwartz, CEO of TBWA\Chiat\Day NY [AdPulp]
This is a pretty standard interview but there are a few real gems here. Including....
Q. Who are your ad business mentors? What were their central lessons that you continue to practice today?
Well, obviously Lee. Also, Jean-Marie Dru, Chairman of TBWA, and Roz Greene, Copy Chief at Altschiller Reitzfeld and my first boss.
Lee Clow’s Lessons:
Go into the client with art, the process will dumb it down to commerce soon enough.
Make it smart, make it beautiful, have fun
Always buy Southern California real estate. It only goes in one direction—up.
Jean-Marie Dru’s Lessons:
Be strategic in how you approach creative and be creative in how you approach strategy.
Always be one meeting ahead of the client.
Number the points in your memos.
Roz Greene’s Lessons:
“Write things like a writer would,” she would say to me.
No jargon. Don’t be too academic.
Write something that will make someone’s day.
Q. Does organic social media actually work for brands? Or is it all just a sandbox with no point other than learning to play nice with others?
Rare is the brand that’s good at organic social media. Wendy’s is one. I also believe #ShotOnIphone is a wonderful platform to inspire people to use the product. Everything else? I dunno. Ignorable. Infinitely ignorable.
Q. Is there a secret to longevity in the ad business?
I don’t know if these are secrets, but if you want to have a long career in advertising you need to have a few qualities. One, you need to be curious about clients and their business. Two, you need to care. Care about your clients. Care about the work. Care about your teammates. Three? You need energy. Up early. And able to work late. Also, don’t be a schmuck.
4) Department of Great Work
So Jeep is putting the Springsteen spot back on the air after he was absolved of his DUI. Police issues notwithstanding, I was glad we weren't inundated with his platitude-a-palooza for long after the Super Bowl. Jeep picked the wrong reason to do the right thing and pull that resoundingly disappointing spot. Bummer they couldn't stick to their convictions.
A Definitive Ranking Of The Celebrity Wax Figures At Peter Luger [The Infatuation] Now that NYC has reopened indoor dining at 35% capacity (a dumb idea IMO) famed steakhouse Peter Luger's has filled some of the empty space with wax figures from Madame Tussauds. And it's good. Like, it's bad, but it's real good. It might be enough to get me inside though. I do want a photo with Jon Hamm for real.
Dunkin' Plays a Different Kind of Bubble Hockey in Its New NHL Ad [Muse by Clio] I cannot tell you how much time I spent playing bubble hockey growing up. But it was a lot. This really hit the tropes well of that game especially when it got stuck in the corner. And also this: "There's definitely a lot of cool stuff left over from the shoot—the bubble games, Pasta and Oshie figures, plus their tiny heads in every possible facial expression," Fallon says. "Some plans are underway to get them into some lucky Dunkin' fans hands." Nice. From BBDO New York
Woot Woot! Low-Fi Campaign by The New Blank Welcomes Massive Views [Little Black Book] What do you get when you mix a first-time advertiser and an irreverent sensibility from both a brand and its production partner? Woot! and production company The New Blank have the answer in Woot!’s YouTube ads that have earned over 20 million views to date. The spots are a glimpse at what stretching the budget can do to the success (and humour) of a project. Woot’s own writer Matt Klan stars in the series of spots that lift the curtain, literally, on the concept of a slick-looking ad campaign. I really like these. They're kitchy and campy as hell but it works. And low key, you get the point that woot (which is a website I haven't been to in literally years) has discounted goods.
Covid: 'Insane' success of goat Zooms nets Rossendale farm £50k [BBC] Honestly I'm so happy to see success stories like this. A farmer who was half kidding when she suggested hiring out her goats out for Zoom meetings during lockdown has said making £50,000 shows it was no joke. Dot McCarthy, from Rossendale in Lancashire, said the number of people paying for "show goat" Lola and others to butt in on calls had been "insane". She added that it was "more fun" than selling manure to make ends meet.
Anticipation? Heinz's website takes 57 minutes to load — on purpose [Trib Live] Kraft Heinz, the company known for its “anticipation” ad campaign of the ’70s and ’80s, is going for the slow burn — its website now takes 57 minutes to load. On purpose. The company is offering a Heinz Burger Kit, but only to those willing to wait it out. If you have enough patience — and suffer through a Heinz-red screen for 57 minutes — you can enter for a shot at winning a Burger Kit. Nice. From Rethink
Brixton Finishing School - AD-Cademy Launch [Ads of the World] Brixton Finishing School has officially launched the AD-Cademy, a free, online advertising course aimed to help address the lack of diversity in advertising. The AD-Cademy is led by industry experts from all disciplines and it aims to encourage and inspire young people from anywhere in the UK to pursue jobs in the creative, digital and tech industries, no matter their background. Just really great OOH. From Mother London.
5) Platform Updates
Coming back next week! Make sure to tune in for updates on Twitter's Super Followers, Facebook targeting blah blah blah and TIkTok's algorithm seems to be deprioritizing my favorite creator, Sean Barry Parsons, so I'll probably dig into that.
As always, the full archive is available here. Was this email forwarded to you? Want to start getting this on a weekly basis? All I need is your email, everything else is optional. Thanks for sticking around as always. See you next week!