The Queen She Came To Call On Us

He thought he saw a buffalo, upon the chimney-piece.
He looked again, and found it was his sister's husband's niece.
'Unless you leave this house,' he said, 'I'll send for the police'
from The Mad Gardener's Song, by Lewis Carroll

He thought he saw a sweet old lady admiring the gardens by the river, but when he looked again, this mad gardener found it was a wise monarch healing the divisions between her people and the peoples of this island.

Islandbridge, indeed.

By any account, this has been an extraordinary week in our island life, and each of us here has been moved in their own way by the words and deeds of Queen Elizabeth as she made friends and deeply influenced people. Her visit had added resonance for me, as it put Islandbridge, the place for which I named my business, firmly on the map, and for so many good reasons.

For most people, Islandbridge is an unfamiliar part of Dublin, its name only heard in occasional traffic reports. Many people would struggle to say where it is exactly. For me, there are strong family associations with the place. My dad played there in the fields and worked in the market gardens as a boy, and rowed on the river above the bridge as a young man. I was born a long stone's throw from the spot, and remember crossing it with friends to get to the playground of the Phoenix Park beyond.

When it came time to name my new business back in 2004, I knew I wanted to locate it by land and water (for enterprise has always sprung up in these places). As I crossed over landscapes in my mind, I naturally came to the banks of the legendary river of the city where I was born, and walked its length, stopping briefly to consider Leixlip (or Salmon's Leap, which struck me as a bold name for a new business) before coming to rest at Islandbridge.

(You'll appreciate that I gave neither Ballsbridge or Butt Bridge a second's thought...)

I liked Islandbridge for all of the childhood associations they held for me, but most of all because it seemed to me to indicate something of what we do for our customers. There is a gap between buyer and seller, and it is the task of the brand-builder to bridge it.

But of course a brand does so much more. It takes nothing at face value but helps the trader to look beyond the thing itself to understand what it means for the other person. And in understanding what that means, the brand honours it. That for me is why the visit of a sweet old lady to my Islandbridge is even more powerful.

She understands that she is not just any old lady. She understands too that she is not even any old monarch. She is someone who stands for so much more in these islands. For some of us, she is the familiar face of a once-oppressive regime. For others, she represents the core of their cultural heritage, the head of their church and the source of their identity. Others again see her as a dinosaur, a relic of another age with no relevance in this.

But this week, she stood for something else again, something that really matters. This week, she played the part of healer, acknowledging the hurtful divisions, and somehow rendering them less painful, less relevant. In honouring our dead, and charming our living, she helped us to find a way to connect again with these neighbours of ours who are so maddeningly like us and so maddeningly not like us. Which is, of course, the case in all extended families.

She also changed for me the meaning of my Islandbridge, and made it even sweeter, more significant and more powerful. For if a little old lady can make such an important gesture at Islandbridge, what can a mad gardener do for the courageous entrepreneurs who make their way to that place?

He thought he saw a queen of hearts, bow down before the flowers.
He looked again, and found it was a crown with healing powers.
'If she mends hearts,' he did declare, 'we'll make her one of ours.'
(with apologies to Lewis Carroll)

Recession Refusniks

When I heard others boldly announce that they 'refuse to participate in the recession', my first instinct was to admire their bravado and positive thinking. Those who know me would describe me as a natural optimist so it's not at all surprising that a call to step away from the abyss towards a sunny future would appeal to me.

But the more I thought about it, and met with others who were clearly suffering a catastrophic downturn in business, or the loss of a job, and the crisis of confidence that typically comes with either of those, the more I felt that there was something a little smug about almost denying a state of affairs that had brought them to their knees. They may not wish to participate in a recession but the recent turn of events has left them little choice.

Now, I know there's an important attitude at work in the stance of the refusniks, and I'm all for finding silver linings in the storm clouds overhead, but my boldly announcing that I'm off to where the grass is greener probably does little to help my colleagues who are up to their oxters in the mud.

I do agree that we shouldn't wallow in it (as too many of our media commentators are inclined to do) but I do think we need to look recession in the face and stare it down, rather than appear not to engage with it. Whether we like it or not, recession and its crippling effects are the lot of many of those we care about, so we owe it to them to confront the beast and send it packing.

(And, whilst we're at it, can we please stop coyly referring to the monstrous creature in the room as the R-word. Cancer-sufferers tell us that they can't abide furtive references to the C-word, so I can't imagine those enduring recession are any different).

By all means, let's not listen to the nay-sayers (some colleagues report that turning the radio off for any current affairs-type discussions can be a good place to start) but let's not blissfully pretend that nothing's happening either.

That's why I'm delighted to be participating in a recession-busting event, Confidence In Action, this Thursday 10th at Dublin's Burlington Hotel. I'll be standing shoulder to shoulder alongside the battle-hardened warriors of a downturn or two, such as Louis Copeland, Bobby Kerr and Jack Black, to square up to this particular monstrosity. And we'll be armed with more than a slingshot of optimism (although it's extraordinary how potent a pebble that can be).

The organisers put it best: 'An eclectic panel of top economists, established and aspiring entrepreneurs and adventurers will be sharing a stage in Dublin for the first in a series of nationwide ‘Routes to Recovery’ seminars. Confidence in Action features a host of companies, agencies and guest speakers providing answers to the big questions facing us all. It will also help with practical solutions to current issues like reducing overheads, tax efficiency, pension security & maximisation, new markets, job opportunities, accessing capital, re-skilling, start ups, re-financing to name but a few'.

Other events in the series are planned for later in the autumn and will see us travel to Cork and Limerick to rattle a few cages.

So don't just participate in the recession, let's line up beside those who are suffering its brutal effects to tackle it head on and send it packing.

Nothing But The Same Old Story?

At Islandbridge, we like to say that we work with brands that ‘live happily ever after’. That talk might seem a little naïve or clumsy in the current climate when much of the talk is of unhappy endings. What place is there for the storyteller in a world where the monsters under the bed are just waiting for us to turn out the light?

Driving on the gridlocked streets of Dublin in the early July rain with the radio bringing news of economic gloom, doom and echoes of the dark days of the 1980’s, the classic Paul Brady line popped uninvited into my head: “It’s nothing but the same old story”.

There’s more than a touch of gleeful spite in much of the “We said it would all end in tears” commentary which suggests that the sins of the greedy and the insatiable are inevitably visited on the children of the boom economy.

But, as we see it, it’s anything but the same old story. It’s easy to forget that the opening lines of many of the success stories of the past twenty years were heard in an Ireland that had been in a deep economic sleep for hundreds of years. They were dismissed as fairytales, the never-neverland imaginings of the naïve and the foolish who needed to open their eyes to the harsh realities of the grown-up world.

They said it would all end in tears. But, of course, it didn’t.

It’s true there’s a certain naivety in every entrepreneur and small business owner. We still believe in happy endings. And then we work hard to make belief come true.

There are other narratives at work besides the self-pitying one of the naysayers. Lots of them. So let’s switch on some lights and chase those monsters out from under the beds. This is the time when strong brands come into their own. We may be sitting a little uncomfortably right now, but I invite you to stand tall and tell your brand story.

And where to begin? Like all the great stories: ‘Once upon a time...’

Cabin Crew: Disarm Cynical Passengers

In general, I like to travel but have been back and forth to London so often over the past couple of months that I've seen more of airports and aircraft than I care to in that time. I always choose Aer Lingus over Ryanair, despite the fact that the grand old lady of Irish aviation is a little down on her luck of late.

She does her best but there's always that air of quiet desperation about her that translates into hiccoughs on boarding, not- irregular flight delays and the strained-smile of understaffed service. But give me her inefficiencies any day when compared with the competing service of the obnoxious upstart.

I was reminded of this forcibly on Friday when I boarded the plane just ahead of an elderly man on crutches. Two of the Aer Lingus crew abandoned their welcoming post (or security detail, depending on your point of view) to help the man to his seat, settle him in and stow his sticks safely away. Then, despite the fact that the plane was still boarding with arriving passengers, one of the stewards offered to make the man a cup of tea.

I almost lost it. She might have left her best years behind her, but the old girl had it in her yet. I found myself strangely moved by the simple courtesy. No doubt airline procedures had tea-making much further down the line of priorities (and just before perfume-hawking) but the crew-member recognised this man's need for a cup of tea and acted on it.

A line I heard years ago from Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin sprang to mind: "It's not in the nature of the soul to abandon its home." I'm not sure quite what that line means, even in this sense, but I thought there something essential about the steward's gesture that harked back to another time, when Aer Lingus was the soul of Irish aviation and travel and my twentysomething-year-old self thrilled to the sight of the uniform as I made my way home from far off places.

Old-fashioned courtesy had not abandoned its home. I was completely won over by the simple offer ('cabin-crew: disarm cynical passengers and make ready for flight').

Mind you, I was brought back down to earth with more than the bump of undercarriage on tarmac when my return flight was delayed four hours with little explanation. But still, something of the sweetness of the gesture remained.

The Adventures Of Johnny Bunko

I don't usually lead with the title of a book I haven't even read but this one is too good to pass up. I heard an interview just now with Dan Pink (new to me but well-known to the readers of Wired Magazine, I believe) who was plugging his new book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, a career guide delivered in the popular Japanese comic-book manga style.

Dan told us how almost a quarter of items in print in Japan are in manga, and readers aren't confined to the teenagers who typically choose this form in western countries. Nor is the style confined to amusement. Books on topics as wide-ranging as How-To guides, business education, history books and political tracts appear in manga.

This struck a real chord with me. Regular readers will know that over at Islandbridge, we use Kevin McSherry's illustrations to help bring our own business offering to life (in fact, that's Kevin's 'Jack The Giantkiller' illustration playing a blinder at the top-right of this blog). Recently, I've been trying to push this further and have been exploring with my colleagues over at Create Design the possibilities of using imagery to capture how a company might picture itself and its brand.

It seems the world is a-buzz with this thinking right now. A recent Fast Company article, The Napkin Sketch, describes how a number of companies in the US are looking to the depth and warmth of hand-drawn diagrams and doodles to help capture strategy and process.

I believe there are great opportunities in going this route - and not just as an antidote to the awful clip-art that litters our reading and viewing material. I'm not quite ready to campaign on the streets for this but I am going to do all I can to encourage our own customers and collaborators to consider using illustration (in the broadest sense) to breathe a little life into how we capture important discussions, ideas and messages.

I'd love to hear from you if you know of other places we might look for inspiration and resources. Let's see if we can't do what Kevin's pictures do for our business and draw a crowd of business people eager to bring their brands and businesses to life through illustration.

Brandwidth 2007 - The Year In Review

It seems 2007 was the year which brought everyone to their feet.

Whilst it’s been bubbling under for the past few years, 2007 saw the social revolution came above ground as a number of leading brands finally joined in the conversation. And they didn’t stand still either. More and more conversations between buyer and seller (and eavesdropper) took place on the move as the hand-held vied with the desktop to host the critical exchange.

As it’s done with impressive ease for the past few years, Apple proved that you can be both social butterfly and busy bee with the introduction of the iPhone, a brand extension that seems to have captured the imagination of much more than the generation of early-adopters who typically embrace the new technologies.

This was the year too, when the big players began to cotton on to the social niceties, with fewer talking at us and more prepared to chat with us and listen to what we have to say. Facebook applied more than a little face-paint to lead the new dance when it introduced its clumsily named but twinkle-toed Application Programming Interface, which allows us to play with the technology and make adjustments that suit our own social purposes. But traditional players such as Xerox (with its re-printable paper), Levi’s (with its branded virtual world) and UPS (with a desktop widget that tells you where your parcel is right now) showed an impressive turn of foot as they quickly learned the new dance and added some fancy steps of their own.

Despite our fondness for a social gathering here in Ireland, our own leading brands have been wallflowers over the past year and have shown little enthusiasm for stepping out onto the floor with the customer. Whilst there has been some token foot-tapping by advertisers using the new media, there’s been nothing to capture the popular imagination in the way that we’ve seen elsewhere.

The announcement in July by Funda that they were shutting down their Irish operation seemed a reflection of this. Their viral campaign of the previous year for Shamrog Island, which promised “the biggest construction project in the history of the state” delivering a “self-contained city on the sea” in Dublin Bay, had proved to be a real talking point, particularly when it was found to be an ingenious hoax designed to promote their new property website. However, a poor follow-up, including a rather lame website which did little to stand apart from the competition, had seen this bold, brand initiative trip over itself. So it was no surprise to learn that they had decided to bow out, citing a failure to meet targets within their timeframe.

But perhaps that was just a sign of the times? The Irish property sector, which had tripped the light fantastic for the past ten years, also missed a step or two in 2007, although its brand leaders were quick to assure us that the party wasn’t over yet, it was simply time for a slow-set. Maybe this is the cue for entrepreneurs in other sectors to sashay in and take the lead? There’s considerable evidence from incubation units across the country to suggest that a whole new generation of busy bees are waiting in the wings, all ready to strut their stuff.

Two brands that have made a song-and-dance in a more traditional setting have been Rabo Direct and Permanent TSB, both of whom have displayed a willingness to talk about what matters to the bank-customer and have been pulling in the crowds as a result. Whilst the effect doesn’t quite rival that which Riverdance had on the dance-floors of the nineties, the pair are clearly shaking up a market that has been poorly served by ranks of stiff performers, arms firmly to the side whilst earnestly going through the motions.

Meanwhile, two towering figures on the Irish hospitality scene made their exit during the year as Jury’s Ballsbridge and the neighbouring Berkeley Court shut their doors for the last time to make way for a new development. At least, we thought that the ball was over, but the new owner did a quick about-turn when he learned that permission for his project had been refused. The two properties reopened as bed-factories, with all services outsourced, whilst his designers went back to the drawing board. Not surprisingly, this sudden supply of cut-price rooms prompted great confusion in a local market that had typically taken its bearings from these two landmark properties.

On the political front, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern proved himself lord of the dance once more as he stepped out and he stepped in again following the General Election. His main rival Enda Kenny had hoped to cut-in by proposing a pre-nuptial agreement with Irish voters (and reminding us of his opponent’s financial indiscretions), but the elusive Ahern’s dazzling footwork continued to impress and he was rewarded with another five years by an electorate that seemed to prefer his brand of politics over all others. Dirty dancing indeed.

Overseas, political branding has been taken to a new level in the US as it gears up to elections in 2008. Barack Obama, a leading contender for the Democratic nomination as we write, has been backed by one of the most powerful personal brands in America, Oprah Winfrey. Political commentators are suggesting that this is likely to prove much more significant than other celebrity tangos and may have a huge impact on national politics. Described by The New York Times as “without a doubt, the most powerful endorsement in pop culture”, Oprah’s blessing can turn an obscure book into a national bestseller. We’ll watch with real interest to see whether her surefootedness in front of the TV camera sees her candidate dance all the way to the White House.

So what can we expect in 2008? If the quickstep of the last year is anything to go by, we can look forward to a year when the social whirl continues to gather pace. As the music picks up, this is no place for wallflowers. For the brand-owner and entrepreneur, 2008 is clearly the time to face the music and dance.

Two Bald Men

When I was a child, it was common to hear a certain type of argument dismissed as being like 'two bald men fighting over a comb'. With my own hairlines receding faster than the Sahara desert, I'm not laughing quite as hard at the image that conjures up as I once did.

It came to mind recently as I read KZero's intriguing 5 Rules For Virtual Brand Management, where I learned that avatars in Second Life, the '3D online digital world imagined and created by its residents', were vying to purchase expensive virtual cars to park in their online digital driveways (Second Life's residents sadly haven't yet imagined or created virtual highways on which to really open up their new machines). Meanwhile, real-life brands such as Adidas, Nike, Oakley and the other usual suspects are doing a roaring trade in that other world.

I've heard people in the last couple of weeks marvel at what they see as the foolishness of those who would pay top Linden dollar (Second Life's currency) for simulated brands to sport in their second life online. At one step it seems foolish, but when I recall the games of make-believe that we all played as children, it begins to make sense. A writer once noted that there is nothing as serious as a child at play and it's not unnatural that we want to bring that same seriousness to our play as adults in the make-believe world of Second Life.

In fact, you could argue that once any object moves beyond mere function and we shell out the premium required to wear this branded shirt or drive that branded car, whether on or off-line, we are anyway behaving more and more like those two bald men scrapping it out over a comb.

No Branding Required

Recently, a colleague in my business network (let’s call him Mike) came to me and suggested that as my regular pitch to the group made sense, he would like to hire us to work with him to build his brand. I was delighted. Like anyone else, I love a new piece of business and the opportunity to work with a colleague that I greatly admire was hugely appealing.

But as we teased out his reasons for branding, it quickly became apparent that he had no real need of our services. Mike has built a successful business around his very personal delivery of a professional service. For his customers, Mike is the brand. They love the way he does business. They trust his personal touch, his obvious commitment and attention to detail. They feel safe with him, which is terribly important when it comes to the nature of his work. Given the choice, they would deal with nobody else.

For many business owners, this state of affairs would leave them feeling trapped and unable to grow the business. But it suits Mike down to the ground. He likes working alone. He wants to grow his business piece by piece and has no wish to hire someone else to work alongside him. He has secured the financial future of his family by taking out insurance against serious illness or death. He is largely irreplaceable but that seems to work for him.

I quietly wondered whether his being irreplaceable worked as well for his customers as it does for Mike (what if he falls under a bus and they are obliged to deal with someone else?). He agreed that, as extra insurance, he would identify a colleague who might make a very good ‘second-best’ and could pick up the pieces in his absence, if the unthinkable happened.

Apart from that provision, we agreed that it made no sense for Mike to go to further trouble and expense to build his brand. The truth is, he would get little return on his outlay. It would probably amount to a vanity project.

There’s little point in investing in branding services if yours is a business best delivered by you personally and you have no wish to grow beyond that. For your customer, you are the brand and it is likely that you, and you alone, know best how to deliver it.

Bear Essentials

Whilst the new ad campaign which has Paddington Bear giving Marmite a try (instead of his usual Marmalade) is both charming and, I suspect, effective, I must confess to having mixed feelings about the rewriting of classic children's stories to suit the commercial agenda of one product or another.

Conscious that there is something a touch fuddy-duddy in my reaction, I just about resist throwing up my hands with the cry 'Is nothing sacred?'. I know we can sometimes be a little precious about seeing our favourite performers, teams or even theatres fall into the hands of advertisers (witness the current griping about the naming rights of Lansdowne Road although the Irish rugby team are doing their bit to make sure that this isn't the only thing to disappoint the loyal rugby fan right now). But am I alone in finding that there's something just a little disturbing in seeing classic storylines make way to opportunities for product placement in much the same way as many of the new stories being told in film and games?

Although I'm not a big fan of the Paddington Bear stories myself, I do know that I would be troubled to read that the hero of 'I Am David', my own favourite children's book, was to make his epic journey across Europe to rediscover the taste of true butter rather than be reunited with the mother he hasn't seen since infancy. And I would imagine that there would be uproar at Hogwarts if Harry were to endorse a 'muggle' brand in the course of one of his adventures.

Let's stop the spread. I'm not sure where to draw the line but I am inclined to issue a stern 'hands off' to advertisers everywhere when it comes to the childhood stories that we take with us into our adult lives as part of who we are and how we make sense of the world. Let Paddington Bear stick to his marmalade and let the makers of marmite peddle their spread elsewhere.

Something True

Gathered at the feet of the legendary Pierce Turner with perhaps a hundred and more others at The Village in Dublin last night and marvelled again at my being there at all. Whilst he doesn't finger the world of branding as such, the man that Hot Press Magazine described as 'Joyce with a voice and Yeats on skates' is scornful of much of what passes in modern life for getting on, driven by the constant 'pep-talk' of business. Instead, he champions a gentler, uncalculating life that is content to be an end in itself and resists the measure of the progress report and the balance sheet.

As I sing the words, I sometimes feel like a fraud or a fugitive from another regime. To read the newspapers and magazines of that other world, it's as if there's no place for anything that's not Premier League, global or franchised. The Village on Saturday night is a far cry from Premier League. There's little that's slick or hyped about Pierce Turner and yet he enjoys a rapport with his ragtag supporters that the big players can only envy (even if they are likely to sneer at his takings at the door).

Most of the businesses that I'm lucky enough to work with are brands that live in a place that's closer to Pierce Turner's '3 Minute World' than to the stadia of the global players. Most are vendors working closely with a loyal group of customers to build something substantial. They resist the temptation to hype their offers, preferring instead to build a business that's based on a genuine exchange between buyer and seller.

If you are to believe the headlines, these are the 'forgotten' businesses, yet they are more real for their customers than many of the celebrity brands that strut across mainstage.

Just as there is something true about a Pierce Turner gig in a three-quarters full Village ("this is my song...and I'm the boy to be with"), there is a brass tacks certainty in the honest exchanges that take place on shop-floors in tens of thousands of small businesses across the country and in millions more across the world.

Backchat Or Sweet-Talk?

'Our waitresses pinch back!'

Last week, I visited local retro diner Eddie Rocket's with my family and was reminded how much I enjoy their particular sassy brand of communication, especially the signage. Dotted around the walls are notices telling diners: 'Be nice, you might have to work here someday', 'In case of fire, pay the bill and get the h*@% out of here' and 'Be patient, gourmet food takes longer'.

You could argue that, in the words of the old wisecrack, 'I didn't come here to be insulted!' ('No? So where do you usually go?') but there is something charming in the irreverence of the one-liners that proves highly popular, not only with our family but with the dozens of teenagers and other families around us that help make Eddie's one of Ireland's most successful franchises.

So why do we go there to be insulted? I've long believed that the popular notion of the customer as king is flawed as it suggests a subservient relationship between seller and buyer. Instead, I think it's much more important to ask what role the customer (or situation) demands of the seller and to play that to the utmost. At Eddie's, it's clear that we like it when the seller is sharp rather than honey-tongued.

In part, it's because it matches our own sense of the type of service likely to be found in a classic American diner of the '50's. It's also charming when a brand doesn't take itself or its customer too seriously. Eddie Rocket's is quick to remind us that it's only American-style food after all; but with the assurance that what it does, it does very well.

Here, the customer isn't always right. Instead, Eddie's works hard on building rapport rather than old-fashioned respect and allows its customers to kick back and enjoy hospitality diner-style. And judging from the happy buzz during our recent visit, it's apparent that Eddie's does offer a cure for the summertime blues.

The Latest Squeeze

I was quite taken aback at the supermarket during the week to see that local soft drink-maker C&C has launched a pure orange juice under its traditional Club Orange brand. Club Orange once enjoyed great kudos here in Ireland as one of the few local brands to beat Coca Cola into second place anywhere in the world. The brand prides itself on using real oranges to make its fizzy drink and makes much of the 'bits' of real fruit that it contains.

For me, it's more than a 'bit' of a stretch for a fizzy drink brand to offer a natural fruit juice - although perhaps no more so than McDonald's addition of salads to the menu or Coca Cola's flogging of natural water (although at least the drinks giant doesn't do so under its flagship label). At the very least, it plays as a clumsy effort to sugar-coat the unpalatable evidence of the effects of soft drinks on health (whether teeth, tummy or artery).

Or maybe it's more of the same addiction to all sorts of spurious spin-offs that afflicts brand-owners in all walks of business? When asked by our clients to bless such tenuous extensions, we brand them a 'bridge too far'.

What do you think? And what's the most unlikely addition to a brand offer that you've seen over the last while?

The Cream Of The Icebox

How do you switch off when you take a break?

Some years ago, we made the mistake of holidaying in our own country (Ireland) where, apart from the poor weather, I found it difficult to completely switch off thanks to the almost hourly reminders of my working life through newspaper, radio, billboards and overheard conversations. In particular, I found any mentions of brands that I was working on or alongside heavily distracting.

Since then, we've holidayed overseas, typically in France, where the change of language and scenery offers a good, easy-to-access balance between the novel and the everyday. Once we step off the plane in France, I have the impression that I've left all professional responsibility behind me on the tarmac in Dublin. Any thinking that I do around brands over there tends to be of the daydreaming sort.

Snoozing by the pool this summer, I basked in the background sounds of children making their choices at the refreshment booth and marvelled at how comprehensively Magnum towers over the ice-cream market in France and elsewhere. When I recall my own childhood, a time when ice-creams were sold as childish treats and the only adult choice in the refrigerator was choc ice, it seems extraordinary that it took so long for a brand to capture some of the more sensual and grown-up flavours of the treat.

Within my own family, I've seen how Magnum has firmly established itself as a brand of arrival, something you qualify for as you grow up. This summer, my youngest graduated from the ice-pops that had previously been his favourite poison to Double Chocolate Magnum, and I heard the talk of similar rites of passage echoed by other parents and children as they made their way to the kiosk and debated their purchase.

Magnum's more recent advertising for its Java flavour plays explicitly to this sense of ritual, makes for a brand that has truly carved out virgin territory for itself in the forest and leaves behind those of its competitors who wish to stay playing in the sandbox.

Brands Across The Water

In a recent Business Common Sense, Denny Hatch suggests that tourist boards should partner with overseas museums to promote tourism to their country. He thinks they should choose museums exhibiting related art or artifacts on the basis that "People that go to museums love art, have spare time and often plenty of spare cash. Many of them travel incessantly and are constantly on the prowl for ideas of new places to visit."

This is something I saw our own development agencies use to great effect in the '80's and '90's when Ireland was an economic backwater struggling to raise its profile. I'm not sure whether it was policy or not as arrangements seemed quite informal but it wasn't uncommon at the time to attend an Irish trade or enterprise event that had more going on from a cultural point of view than any other. Against a backdrop of Irish nostalgia for the 'old country', those first handshakes and 'what-are-you-havings?' set the scene for much of what followed.

Mind you, that same informality played sweetly to the brand Ireland values that our salesmen were plugging across the world. Once the link had been made, they could get down to the horse-trading of inward investment, joint venture or whatever.

I believe we often underestimate the social side of a brand when we go to market and I see those same salesmen as bold pioneers who played a much greater part in our economic success than we give them credit for. I think there's a lesson there for smaller brands who want to extend into new territories. A social route (which often crosses nicely with a sporting or cultural exchange) allows us to make much greater inroads than a more direct approach.

Sticks & Stones

I see that Mentos are offering visitors to their site the services of Trevor, your own Mentos Intern who you can have carry out a range of tasks for you including: 'call you in sick to work, prank call your friends for you and tell you how wonderful you are'.

Now, I don't want to seem too po-faced but I can't help but see this tendancy for companies to jump on a more sophisticated version of the British public-school brandwagon (with its glorious 'fagging' tradition) as a bad thing for both customer and brand-owner. This is not too far away from the nasty strain of bullying that has crept into parts of the online space and I wonder whether it's because that particular playground is as poorly supervised and regulated as the traditional public-school quad?

Nor is it clear to me how this particular venture fits the Mentos brand positioning (although I appreciate that the business may be 'minting' it in terms of visitors, brand awareness and confectionary sales). Tango went a similar route with its 'happy slapping' a few years ago and suffered when the phenomenon made its way into the real world.

I don't like bullies and it seems to me that too many brands go for the cheap thrill of tormenting the smaller ones in a bid to win some easy popularity.

What do you think? Am I taking some harmless fun a little too seriously or will this "all end in tears?"

Play It Again, Sam

I caught the tail-end of the game between local Gaelic Football rivals Dublin and Meath on Sunday and rushed to read all about it in the papers on the following day. Now, this isn't the first time I've caught myself doing this. What is it about reviews that has us turning the pages to see what someone else has to say about our experience?

Earlier today in a meeting with a client who's building a hotel here in Dublin, I was reminded of this and wondered again about the power of review. And not just the review of an expert but any skilful retelling by another of something I've just seen, heard or felt for myself. I think that this replay effect can be used very successfully in building up the story of a new brand, especially in prompting word-of-mouth to move at a quicker rate than usual.

A new business can't always afford to wait for things to move at normal pace and retelling the experience for a happy customer is likely to prompt them to revisit it for themselves as well as giving them something to say if they're inclined to tell someone else about it.

As a brand-owner, you might ask yourself what opportunities there are to review your own brand experiences and whether this is something you might use to good effect in driving word-of-mouth.

*Note for our overseas readers: Irish Gaelic Football teams play to win the All Ireland Championship and receive the Sam Maguire Cup, affectionately known as Sam.

White Smoke & Mirrors

A recent mail from Brandchannel included news on a charity, Habitat For Humanity, and a piece on some of the branding issues facing private military firms (old-fashioned mercenaries to you and me).

I'm not sure whether the juxtaposition was deliberate or not but it reminded me of one of the things I almost always have to address with a new client: the notion that branding is somehow a cloak and dagger activity, some machiavellian art practised behind smoke and mirrors.

Whilst it robs my craft of some of its mystique, I'm quick to point out that branding is a tool like any other in business and one that can be put to work selling deep-fried food to overweight children just as readily as it can work on behalf of a homeless project. In the right, or the wrong hands, it's a powerful tool for positioning and for change and whilst I'm against the NRA on issues of gun-control, I do believe that brands are a generally a good thing (they make our choices simpler for one thing) and that every business-owner should have one.

But then, you'd expect me to say that!

Marrow Envy & Other Stories

I went along to the marvellously-named exhibition of Kevin McSherry's illustrations at the Alliance Francaise here in Dublin yesterday. The pictures included two which we (Islandbridge) commissioned - one is the signature image for this blog over to your right whilst the other was our new year greeting card for 2006 - and I enjoyed the buzz of seeing them displayed as part of a collection that celebrates (and often pokes fun at) Irish business life and culture over the past number of years.

I also heard with dismay that the Irish Times, which has featured Kevin's and other great Irish artist's work over the years, is to largely discontinue using illustration.

I think this is a great shame. In addition to capturing difficult ideas that might otherwise escape the reader, illustration provides for great warmth and humanity, something that the great newspapers and magazines of the world have long recognised. What a pity that our national paper of record is abandoning this classic art-form in favour of the often-humourless and two-dimensional graphs and stock imagery that now seem to grace their pages.

Reds & Blues

As I write, boxing fans the world over are being whipped into a frenzy by the make-something-out-of-nothing fight between De La Hoya and Mayweather. Of course, there's nothing new in this. Sport has always been about much more than the game being played out on the park.

Watching the European Champions League soccer match between Chelsea (owned by the Russian Abramovich) and Liverpool (recently taken over by Americans Gillette & Hicks), I was struck at how the game played like one of the bad Rocky movies of the '80's (yes, there was a good one - the first).

Once upon a time, we loved to pit the doughty American against the remote Soviet. Mind you, there is a glaring weakness in the analogy in that Chelsea wear blue and Liverpool red; nevertheless...

Chelsea, under a manager who grows more and more isolated by the day, seemed to approach the tie with a bleak and humourless contempt both for the opposition and the game of football itself, whilst Liverpool sought to box above their weight and rely on bottomless courage and energy (and precious little skill, if we're honest) to overcome the grim leviathan. Viewers were once again presented with a classic confrontation which drew on the earliest storytelling.

This seemed to prompt an untypical bias amongst the TV pundits at RTE (who can usually be guaranteed to offer a fairly even-handed analysis of the game) and they were adamant as the game progressed to a penalty shootout that each of them wished to see the plucky underdog win.

This power to oblige us to take sides is what makes story so very powerful and is something that brandbuilders might weave into their own framework if they truly wish to influence the viewer.