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I’m just dashing through the final pages of a book called Convergence Culture: where old and new media collide by a fellow called Henry Jenkins.

Now the first thing to note about this book is that the poor guy spent 8 years researching it, published it in hardback in 2006 and only finally got a paperback edition printed in 2008. So given that he started working on it eleven years ago, you might forgive him for, in some instances, seeming a trifle dated in some of his observations.

The main subject of the book is my pet topic of the moment: user involvement in brands. Media brands in this instance. Co-creation, he might have called it, if he had written it now. And it’s proved to be a wonderful complement to a trio of books I purchased back in November: Wikinomics, The Long Tail (have I blogged about this yet?) and finally this.

Principally valuable for its case studies, Mr Jenkins offers lists and lists of examples of users / viewers / gamers / readers getting involved in producing their own content supporting a hero (media) work. Or building a community around figuring out a challenge set by producers, as in the US show, Survivor. And his examples are brilliant. I, an innocent cinema goer, had no idea that such a plethora of online excitement sprung up around the Matrix for example.

But. And you’ll know by now that there’s a but coming. He delivers this whole fascinating work in about the most turgid, dry, academic tone possible. So let me cruelly give you an example:

What skills do children need to become full participants in convergence culture? Across this book, we have identified a number - the ability to pool knowledge with others in a collaborative enterprise (as in the Survivor spoiling), the ability to share and compare value systems by evaluating ethical dramas (as occurs in the gossip surrounding reality television), the ability to make connections across scattered pieces of information (as occurs when we consume The Matrix, 1999, or Pokemon, 1998), the ability to express your interpretations and feelings towards popular fictions through your own folk culture (as occurs in Star Wars fan cinema), and the ability to circulate what you create via the Internet so that it can be shared with others (again as in fan cinema).

Well yes, but could you not have said the same thing in quite a few less words?

My favourite (cruellest) example of all - and here I refer you back to the publication date to make sense of this - is the following:

The term “blog” is short for Weblog, a new form of personal and subcultural grassroots expression involving summarizing and linking to other sites. In effect, blogging is a form of grassroots convergence.

And here lies my fundamental objection to this book. How can this poor man make such a fascinating phenomena - such a time of extraordinary and unprecedented change - such a time of no-one quite knows where it’ll end up but we’re loving watching all of the twists and turns as people come up with ever cleverer ways of getting involved - how can he make all of this sound so extraordinarily dull??!!

His final chapter, bless his heart, looks at American politics and explains how the digital revolution is revolutionising the world of political engagement. Painfully pre-Obama, I couldn’t quite bring myself to read this chapter as attentively as I’d waded through the others (but bless him. I’ve just forced myself to read to the end and Obama gets a mention in his developed for the 2008 edition afterword. Published long before election day. I take it back. Some of it!).

He has one further infuriating habit - though maybe this is a publisher rather than a writer-instigated decision - of printing long (like eight page long) case studies alongside the regular chapter text. Case study taking a third of the page vertically and the book’s text occupying the other two-thirds. Maybe this was deliberately intended to make the reader take twice as long dwelling on his wisdom as you’re forced to read, retrace, read case study, try and find your original place and then move on.

Anyway, I shall hush with my Preston to Edinburgh train journey boredom fuelled rant. This is worth a flick for the case studies. He’s clearly a very smart man. His writing style in my opinion leaves something to be desired. But as a repository of information about real people moulding, shaping and remaking popular culture, it’s a pretty handy book to have around. We must congratulate Mr Jenkins on his exhaustive (exhausting) scholarly endeavour.

I’ve just read a sweet little book (says it all really - appreciative but slightly disparaging) called “never mind the sizzle…where’s the sausage?” by a chap called David Taylor. He sets out to write about “branding based on substance not spin”. And that pretty neatly sums up the content of the book.

It isn’t such a radical idea that he puts forth. To do really well in today’s competitive market, you can’t just get away with a super-duper advertising campaign (although clearly that can help!), you need a product that’s a bit out of the ordinary. And he dresses up his point in the diarised tale of some guy who gets plonked into the marketing department for a year on a placement to prove himself, knows nothing at all about marketing at the beginning, but wouldn’t you know it, bumbles his common sense way to revitalising the company’s core product and consequently saving the company.

Having been so disparaging, I should say that while I started out tutting at the early diary entries (”As I drove home the immortal words of the Pet Shop Boys rang in my ears, as they continue to do now: ‘What have I, what have I, what have I done to deserve this?’ “), I did find myself warming to the fellow so that by the end of the year in his life, I was racing through the ‘diary’ to find out what happened to him.

The book is also noteworthy for claiming to be the first of its kind to link references in a book to further info on a blog. Where you can find more of the same slightly self-congratulatory but reasonably sensible commentary on brands that market themselves well. There’s nothing earth-shattering there - he talks of the Stellas, innocents and Prets of this world. But again, nicely presented. I’m sure I’ll find myself using it as a reference some point soon.

In summary, I’d say it would be more valuable to those starting out in this industry than those long in the tooth. But then the chap says that himself. And it’s certainly one of the most entertaining Wiley offerings I’ve read for a while. So not a ringing endorsement but equally, you could do a lot lot worse.

There’s a little logo on the current Cadbury Dairy Milk outdoor campaign (more of the same purple and white M&S style creamily slurpily delicious chocolate messages) that reads “glass and a half full productions”. Squinting at it from the bus the other day, it struck me that this was a brilliant opportunity to do more than a bunch of rather functional posters.

But it seems that they’ve got there already. A quick google this morning flung up this website featuring of all things, a drumming gorilla. Seeking a rationale gives you the following justification:

Well it just seemed like the right thing to do. There’s no clever science behind it - it’s just an effort to make you smile, in exactly the same way Cadbury Dairy Milk does. And that’s what we aim to continue to do; simply make you smile. So if a drumming gorilla’s not enough, wait until you see what else we have up our sleeves.

This apparently is the first step that Fallon have taken on behalf of Cadbury to being a branded entertainment provider. The website mentions Phil Collins at one point. Not one of the first men that spring to mind when I think of things that make me smile. But perhaps I’ll be surprised.

We were talking with a client the other day about what makes for cool work.

As good a definition as I’ve ever heard, especially when applied to what we do, is “EFFORTLESS ORIGINALITY”. Trying to be cool never seems to work.

The coolest work tends to come from confident brands that have a strong sense of what they’re about, and which strut that what-they’re-about stuff in their ideas. The least cool work tends to come from briefs that are rooted not in a strong sense of the brand, but in a desire to reflect the interests and lifestyle of the target audience.

We’ve worked on beer here for donkey’s years and done some reasonably cool work. However, in every campaign, from Tennent’s Lager to Grolsch, there have come times when we’ve found ourselves trying to “inject more sociability” into the brand imagery. Invariably this has meant some kind of suitably “cool” on-trade setting. Invariably it has led to an unsuitably uncool dip in campaign quality.

On the subject of cool, there’s some interesting stuff on wikipedia. The entry covers concepts of cool, theories of cool, cool as an elusive essence and cool as a marketing device.

It also includes this conversation on cool from The Simpsons.

Homer: So, I realized that being with my family is more important
than being cool.
Bart: Dad, what you just said was powerfully uncool.
Homer: You know what the song says: “It’s hip to be square”.
Lisa: That song is so lame.
Homer: So lame that it’s… cool?
Bart+Lisa: No.
Marge: Am I cool, kids?
Bart+Lisa: No.
Marge: Good. I’m glad. And that’s what makes me cool, not caring,
right?
Bart+Lisa: No.
Marge: Well, how the hell do you be cool? I feel like we’ve tried
everything here.
Homer: Wait, Marge. Maybe if you’re truly cool, you don’t need to
be told you’re cool.
Bart: Well, sure you do.
Lisa: How else would you know?

That’s the coolness thing sorted then.

Last year we merged our London office with an agency called Farm and rebranded the merged operation under the Farm name.

This means that the Leith “brand” is a wholly Edinburgh (EH6) thing again, which makes it much easier to manage. It means that we can really work the Leith connection in our marketing in ways that we just couldn’t when there was a thing called Leith in London as well. This is evident in the design of our website, but it runs deeper than that.

We’ve started to do more things with the local Leith community. This includes an involvement with the Leith Festival during which we ran a couple of events last year.

It also includes free marketing clinics for small local businesses. These businesses send us a one page summary of what they do, what they’re looking to achieve and what marketing issues they face. We then run an hour long consultancy session on a weekday evening.

Last night we talked to Jason Baxter who is a photographer specialising in the panoramic format.

We also spoke to Jenifer Paterson about her All or Nothing aerial dance company. Jenifer is looking to grow her corporate events business.

Both are nice, passionate people and it was a pleasure to be able to help them, if only in a small way. It’s also good experience for us to talk to businesses of all shapes and sizes about their commercial issues.

Doing the talking from Leith last night were Babs (marketing), Claire W (planning), Gail L (account management), Gerry (creative director), John S (creative) and myself.

This is David, our planning director, blessing us with his latest thinking before a meeting gets properly under way.

The two main items he’s holding court about are 1) Getting a pet hamster for planning, 2) Getting himself a Lord of the Flies style conch shell that he can blow into to summon all planners back from anywhere in the agency to help him solve strategic problems.

Clients will be relieved to note that he saves his best stuff for them.

A few months ago this article appeared in The Guardian. Tyrells, the independent crisp maker, had succeeding in getting its products out of (yes out of) Tesco stores. Tesco had apparently sourced the crisps indirectly, against the wishes of Tyrells. Will Chase, the founder of Tyrells, expressed his desire to support the independent outlets that had supported him. Allowing his product into Tesco would have run counter to this principle.

It was this rare adherence to principles (presumably at the expense of additional profit) that made me want to find out more. This and my memories of working on Phileas Fogg in a previous life and having seen the merry dance that they were led by the multiple grocers.

So I had a look at the Tyrells website.

Gratifyingly the website supports the image I’d gained from the Guardian article. It’s personal, unpretentious and easy to navigate. It’s not quite homemade but there’s definitely no fancy flash stuff. On the other hand there is plenty of interesting back story stuff, like the fact that they grow all their own potatoes. The whole site speaks of cottage industry, principles and a close-knit team.

Indeed, there’s a section on the site that features the Tyrells Team. There’s a photo of everyone from Wayne the potato foreman to Will Chase himself. And there’s a link by each picture that allows you to e-mail each of them direct. This small, cottage, principled thing is accessible too.

Or so I thought.

I sent Will an e-mail basically saying that I’d seen a whole load of marketing veneer in my time and that it was nice to see some genuine brand integrity for once. He’s obviously a busy man with a business to run but, to me, the direct e-mail link carried with it the implicit promise of some kind of response. Is that fair? Anyway, we’re three months on with no reply and the feeling that Tyrells is not as small as it’s cracked down to be.

This web accessibility thing represents an interesting challenge for brands. There’s a general desire to get behind the scenes of things these days, whether it’s via Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares or Google. And offering direct access to the people behind the brand is, in some cases, a valid strategy. But it comes at a price. For a while I had my e-mail address published on our website and received dozens of messages every week. This gave me some valuable insights into who was visiting our site and why, the occasional useful contact, and lots of job applications. It also gave me the burden of replying, which I conscientiously tried to do. In the end I gave up and had my e-mail address taken off the site. But, having removed it, I was left with the distinct feeling of an opportunity missed. That’s sort of how I feel about Tyrells too.

I had a really lucky break the other week.

I attended the UK Customer Management Conference as the guest of TMI. Had I received a mailer for this conference I probably wouldn’t have given it a first glance, let alone a second. It turned out to be a real eye-opener in a number of respects.

1) It was a customer service conference but there were more mentions of “brand” than at most of the marketing events I’ve attended.

2) The speakers tended to be more senior within their organisations than most of those at marketing conferences - it was chief execs rather than marketing directors. Given the amount of discussion of “brand” does this perhaps suggest that chief execs view customer service as a more important branding tool than marketing?

3) If there was a general theme to the presentations it was that the quality of an organisation’s customer service is directly proportional to the level of employee engagement within that organisation. In this context, employees generally fall into one of three categories - engaged, not engaged or actively disengaged. Steve Simpson, a highly entertaining Australian speaker from Keystone Management presented some Gallup data which showed the proportion of each type of employee in the average polled organisation in various countries. On average the proportions in each category were about 20:60:20. A sobering thought for anyone running a business, especially when graphically represented as per the German chart shown above.

4) Not surprisingly in this context there was a lot of chat about corporate “culture” and its eventual impact on brand through service delivery. Steve Simpson’s definition of culture was simply and directly “the way things get done around here”. He argued that culture, “the way things get done around here”, is determined not by induction processes and company manuals, but by a combination of UGR’s and UqT’s (Unwritten Ground Rules and Unquestioned Truths).

5) I was really taken with the idea of UGR’s, especially after having seen some examples from companies that Mr Simpson has worked with. UGR’s are the essentials of company life that are picked up by new employees by a process of osmosis and observation. They are incredibly powerful and often have a hugely negative impact on culture, morale, productivity and brand. Some examples were…

“At our meetings there’s no point complaining because nothing will get done.”

“The only time anyone gets spoken to by the boss is when something is wrong.”

6) This all got me thinking about our own business. On the whole agencies are pretty good places to work, although their cultures vary dramatically. Indeed a lot of agencies make a big deal about culture, often leading with a detailed examination of it in their credentials. It’s always struck me that agencies have a high “centre of gravity” when it comes to culture. It’s a big deal, but people’s expectations are so high that it’s also pretty fragile. You don’t need to knock it far off centre for it to “fall over”. Anyway, I started thinking about the UGR’s at Leith…

…and probably the least damaging one that I came up with is “it’s ok to turn up a bit late to internal meetings”. I won’t share the others yet because I want to do some more homework with people here, and maybe include something in my papers for our next board meeting. Watch this space.

7) Overall, spending a day hearing people talk about business and brands from a different perspective is really valuable. Check those conference mailers more carefully!

Leith is part of Cello Group plc. One of the nice things about Cello is that it was specifically created to allow us and two other founding companies to float on AIM. We bought in rather than sold out. That “buying in” feeling is common to the other companies that have joined the group in the last two years, and it fosters a level of collaboration and camaraderie that is highly unusual in our industry from what I’ve heard.

Another nice thing about Cello is that there are some very clever businesses that nicely complement what we do here at Leith. A couple of weeks ago four of those businesses (Leith, Farm, TMI & TVE) jointly hosted Cello’s first Food For Thought dinner.

The event took place at Home House in London, and we has guests from BP, British Airways, Co-operative Financial Services, ICI Paints, Royal Mail, Sacla, Schroders, smart cars and Standard Life.

The topic of conversation was “Brand Integrity - the importance of doing what we say on the tin”.

This is an issue that affects (should affect) everyone in a business and it was fitting, therefore, that our guests came from Operations and Service Design as well as Marketing.

We had a lively, stimulating debate with some interesting points well made.

If you want a well-researched, recently debated point of view on Brand Integrity as it applies to your business, please get in touch.

“Marmite!” exclaimed my then four year old daughter when I turned to this page in the book we were reading.

“Now that’s what I call branding!” exclaimed I.

The loosely rendered drawing of the Marmite pot doesn’t have any writing on it and takes up less than 1% of the surface area of the page (I’ve measured it), and yet it was instantly recognisable and instantly more relevant to Molly than anything Postman Pat was up to.

Marmite is a product that has its branding built in.

I have a video of Matt Groenig (creator of the Simpsons) talking about similar principles. He doesn’t use the word branding but that’s what he’s talking about. He draws simple outlines of the heads of Batman and Mickey Mouse and describes how he wanted an equally instantly recognisable outline for Bart Simpson. He goes further and shows how the choice of yellow as the Simpsons’ skin colour makes the show stand out and easy to recognise even during the most rapid channel zapping.

How many products have this kind of branding hardwired into their design?

Not many.

That’s why the “Shakin’ that ass” work for the Renault Megane is so refreshing. Renault have actually produced a branded product, and the advertising simply brings it to life in an engaging way. The car’s got it and the ad flaunts it. Is it just a spooky coincidence that the Megane’s ass is shaped like half of a Marmite jar?

Too much car advertising is appallingly branded, mainly because the products themselves are appallingly branded. There’s nothing to flaunt.