Radio Shack has launched an ad campaign aimed at overhauling its brand image. In its marketing, the retailer has shortened its name to “The Shack” and adopted a wacky tone (presumably à la the bizarro-world marketing antics of Burger King) that seems designed to reach a younger audience.

“If you think about how you use nicknames, you generally use them with friends, people for whom you have an affinity and trust. Those are important attributes for any brand and certainly for us,” RadioShack’s CMO Lee Applbaum told AdWeek, adding that the retailer’s customers have used the shortened name “for years.”

I for one have never heard a person, ever in my life, call a Radio Shack “The Shack.” But I’m more struck by a deep lack of self-perception of this company. Radio Shack has become one of those legacy brands that seems like they would fade into oblivion if it weren’t for a long-standing consumer belief that you can do anything — make any technologies work together, hack any electronic system — just by shopping at Radio Shack. It’s a brand that has bred a whole generation of mini MacGyvers.

The reality is in fact different than the perception: the Radio Shacks I’ve visited over the past several years have been stale, cluttered, dimly lit stores in strip malls and on blighted city blocks, inside which products are so poorly merchandised it’s impossible to find anything, the selection is very limited, and the salespeople are unknowledgeable and unhelpful. I get better experiences and better prices shopping for cables, routers, adapters, or whatever hack-it-myself equipment I need through online retailers. Yet whenever I bring up a technical problem I have, people automatically suggest I “buy something at Radio Shack” to rig up the solution myself. The brand has become synonymous with DIY technology.

Yet rather than leverage this brand perception and actually focus on delivering on the promise, Radio Shack instead seems to be distancing itself from the tech-geek crowd altogether and trying to make itself over into a hipster brand. I have to say, I’m puzzled and intrigued. The “informal” name change, as AdWeek termed it, is a tactic other long-standing consumer brands have been taking in their advertising of late, most notably and recently by Gatorade. Their Superbowl-timed advertising campaign relaunched the product as the swanky, cool-as-ice “G,” departing from the brand’s long-time image as the drink of sweaty, fresh-from-the-field athletes — a move that branding expert Sarah O’Leary called a “senseless marketing tragedy” on The Huffington Post:

If you have a brand with an awareness level that rivals God, the last thing you should do is walk (or in this case wind sprint run) away from it. Instead, the Gatorade team should have figured out why they were losing at retail and invested in that solve.

Gatorade’s brand stewards spent 40 years building unparalleled brand equity for the beverage, a true household name in an oversaturated marketplace. Most companies would kill to be in Gatorade’s place, O’Leary says. Yet with sales stagnant, the first thing PepsiCo execs did was decide to throw brand equity out the window.

Back at The Shack, the retailer’s attempt to be something different to a whole new audience feels unauthentic and miscalculated. If the retailer wants to move away from being just the “cable store,” fair enough — but it’s important to do that in a way that feels believable, rather than pandering.

Did you hear the one about the ad agency that wrote a 27-page creative brief for the rebranding of a major beverage brand that was so pretentious, self-indulgent, and ludicrously aspirational it had everyone in the ad business rolling in the aisles?

The story has been hard to miss since someone leaked the “Breathtaking Design Strategy” document drafted by the Arnell Group, the branding agency charged with rethinking the Pepsi logo last year, onto the Internet in March. The creative brief waxed poetic about Vitruvian principles, the Golden Ratio, and magnetic dynamics, resulting in a dense tome that reads more like the notebook scrawls of a mad professor than a project roadmap for a rebrand.

Since getting their mitts on the brief, industry-watchers have been hooting and cawing non-stop about the silliness, especially in light of the several hundred million dollars Pepsi ultimately spent with Arnell to develop what many critics say is, at best, a pretty generic new logo, and at worst, a rip-off of the Obama campaign. Gawker for one can’t let it go: “Breathtaking bullshit,” they called the exercise.

The saddest fallout of the leak and the ensuing brouhaha, in my mind, is that it has made a mockery out of the creative brief as an essential part of communications projects. Steve Hall wrote on AdRants: “We’re not defending the document’s overblown inanity but pick up any creative brief or major rebranding document you’ve ever written and read it. Then multiply the idiocy you just read by about 100 and it makes perfect sense, given the size of the Pepsi account, the Arnell/Pepsi document is as hilariously verbose and mind-boggling as it is.”

Maybe for some agencies the creative brief is yet another vehicle to prove to the client how smart they are. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The creative brief is the guiding light of a communications project: a brief (there is a reason for the document’s name), flexible framework for the creative to be developed. It’s also a way for everyone involved to agree on objectives and direction, keeping clients and creatives alike on the right path and in check if anyone begins to lose sight of the overall vision of the project.

To me, a creative brief is successful when it:

• Provides clear direction – without trying to solve the creative problem. I like starting with a brief because it’s a chance for everyone to agree on what we’re setting out to achieve. Which is important. Often you can talk and talk about a problem and the solution, but when the work is finished it’s clear that there was a lack of mutual understanding about what was really needed. The brief is a chance to clearly define parameters and direction; the actual creative concepts are the next step in the process.
• Is specific. Too many times I’ve seen creative briefs that seem to generically outline a project approach. These are typically fill-in-the-blank kinds of forms that aim to answer the same questions for any kind of project. But every client, industry, project and audience is different. I like to write each creative brief from scratch, thinking about what exactly we need to answer as we define the project.
• Is succinct and targeted. There is real beauty in the ability to boil down into just the right amount of perfectly chosen words a project’s objectives and key messages. Really, there’s only so much you can communicate even in the most complex campaign. If you can get to the heart of what you are trying to say in the brief, it will be easy to deliver creative concepts that hit the target.
• Makes the client say, “That’s it!” After the initial intake meetings and discussions, the sending of PowerPoint decks and past collateral and forwarded emails, there is often so much information floating around it’s hard to know where to start — and most likely the client is feeling frazzled and confused. A creative brief takes all background information into consideration but provides real clarity of purpose, cutting through the clutter to play back to the client what the project is truly all about. I’m always excited to start a project when a client receives the creative brief and replies, “That’s exactly what I want to communicate!” Even more exciting is when the client interacts with the document, adding or revising key points — because the more engaged stakeholders in charting the course for the project, the more successful the project will be.

So if someone delivers you a creative brief as you begin your next communications project, resist the urge to roll your eyes or be skeptical. A well-done creative brief can make the difference in the successful and satisfying outcome of your brand communications.

With the announcement of the OBIE Awards, the annual awards from the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, came a brief interview in Adweek with this year’s chief judge, Mark Tutssel at Leo Burnett. Tutssel summed up quite succinctly for readers the three criteria that deemed an advertising campaign an award-winning work of art:

1. “The work has to surprise and delight.”
2. “It has to bear repeated viewing.”
3. “It has to be rewarding each time you look at it.”

I liked this 1-2-3 of successful creative, because I think it sums up the formula of all successful communications. A B2B product brochure may not “surprise and delight” the same way that McDonald’s “Fresh Eggs” billboards (the winner of this year’s OBIEs) do — making people laugh or intriguing them to watch the mechanical egg “crack” each day at dawn.

Yet each communication, whether it’s a Web site, a brochure or an email campaign, has the potential to engage audiences in the same way: with a new way to talk about an old problem, a fresh approach that makes people sit up and engage, and rich content that draws in audiences and keeps them coming back for more.

The Adweek article is a reminder that we should never fall into a rut. No matter what you’re working on, always aim for top honors.

British Airways won an award for a newspaper ad campaign it ran to promote the fact that Terminal 5 was no longer a complete and total nightmare, thank you very much.

Conceived and executed in 24 hours, the ad campaign features one short, frills-free statement: “Yesterday at T5 average time through security was 4.7 mins.”

“This campaign is about the reality that T5 is working,” Abigail Comber, the BA head of marketing communications, told The Guardian. “It is about transparency and dispelling what people may be thinking, have seen or heard. This is as close to providing that information in real time as we can get.”

As basic as it is, the copy is powerful. Considering the horror stories coming out of Heathrow the past several months (including my own contribution over at Nobody’s Fool), a simple statement proving the problem has been cleared up is just about as effective as British Airways could get. No bragging, nothing too creative; just a simple “we fixed it” was enough to reassure customers. I, for one, am glad to hear it.

It appears we are finally here: recession. The 24-hour news stations are talking around the clock about the economic implosion, and sharing the nightmare stories of what’s happening to ordinary Americans (these would be the people who live on “Main Street,” according to the folksy colloquialisms of our political candidates) — they’re losing their houses, they’re losing their jobs, they won’t be able to retire until they’re 103. Those of us who haven’t been directly impacted fear that we somehow eventually will be. It is not, to put it lightly, a happy time.

And contrary to the industry wisdom about maintaining a strong marketing presence during an economic downturn, marketers are indeed thinking about cutting back. A Marketing Sherpa poll in September shows that 52% of marketing departments at large companies are cutting their budgets. Of the survey’s respondents, 48% say they’re scaling back on traditional advertising while 29% are cutting back on online.

But what about what the marketing is saying? With so many consumers stressed out and, in some cases, downright suffering, how does the tone and substance of marketing and communications need to change during this time?

I have one client who responded very quickly to the crisis in the area of internal communications, acknowledging that some of its employees may very well be in the midst of foreclosure, and that all of them are most certainly worried about their 401(k)s. The call was to be more sensitive in their communications, always mindful of how messages might come across to those struggling in their personal lives.

In external marketing and advertising, high-profile brands are already making visible changes in their approaches. In the U.K., a major national bank yanked a funny and popular TV ad in which an abusive bank manager at a fictitious rival bank insults customers, at a time when the image of all banks is suffering there. And here in the U.S. of A., our ol’ reliable WalMart headed off the financial crisis last fall with its first new tagline in 19 years: “Save money. Live better.” As the economy gets worse, WalMart’s payoff for the new message gets better — same-store sales are way up over last year and the stock has risen by 30%, according to AdAge.

Brand mavens say the best possible way to fine-tune marketing during tough economic times is to come back home — to return to a company’s core brand and reinforce a company’s “brand soul,” as one reader put it during an online discussion on brandchannel.com, in all communications. Many say with grave wisdom that a recession is in fact a test of a strong brand — the strong will indeed survive.

But what does that actually mean in terms of how to think about your internal and external communications during this tumultuous time? Many companies stray away from their core brand message over time, with brand extensions and evolutions intended to capture new audiences or put a contemporary “spin” on a brand — brand experts say it’s time to revisit who your brand really is, and use your advertising and marketing dollars to communicate that original vision.

There’s also never more important time to really focus on your customers – their pain, their goals, the context of their reality. What do they need from you? If you’re still guilty of navel-gazing in your communications (as most companies are), this is an opportune time to turn that around.

In terms of marketing messages, we should take a page from the book of companies who marketed successfully during the 1990-1991 recession. The companies who did it right focused on two core strategies:

Value. Marketing case studies look at the success during the early ’90s recession of a companies such as Dell, which increased its advertising spending by 346% during a time when all other computer companies were slashing their marketing budgets, and pushed a clear message about cutting out the middleman and offering superior customer service. Also, at a brand such as A1 Steak Sauce, which rolled out a campaign about how “A-1 Steak Sauce isn’t just for sirloin anymore” — it offers so much more for your money.

Values. Losing money, jobs, houses, or even just watching it happen to others around us, is incredibly demoralizing. To survive, people begin revisiting what it is that’s truly important in their lives: love, marriage, family, friends. Emphasizing these core values during an economic downturn pulls at heartstrings that perhaps weren’t so easy to pull previously. One case study from the ’90s is that of De Beers, the diamond company, which aimed to increase its slumping sales at a time when consumers simply weren’t spending money. Taking the tact that “love conquers all,” De Beers and its ad agency J. Walter Thompson introduced the now-famous De Beers “Shadows” campaign, those uber-romantic black-and-white TV ads that stirred the emotions of even jaded consumers for more than a decade. (Just as an aside, when I was a journalist covering the jewelry industry, I once got invited to JWT to a viewing of a newly created “Shadows” commercial. When the lights came up, there wasn’t a dry eye in the place — even the account execs, who had seen the commercial a bazillion times already, were crying.) The campaign worked: it contributed to a considerable rise in sales during a challenging time.

In fact, WalMart, in its simple new tagline, has managed to capture both “Vs” in its tagline to speak to consumers’ major needs and desires during the downturn: the need to dig in and save money, and the desire to remember what life is really all about.

Always remember that even in B2B marketing, delivering value (time and cost savings, superior service) is often just a means to an end — what your audience really wants is satisfaction, whether that’s in the success of the work or in a great work/life balance. The “2Vs” promise that to your audience during a time when they need more for less and desire real happiness.

The lead story in The New York Times’ business section today featured James Farley, Ford’s CMO (and chief “believer”) who left a cushy position at Toyota to turn around sales for the Detroit automaker. A former Ford owner myself, I count myself among one of the people Farley is trying to convert. I am a nonbeliever in the brand, based on the number of times I got stuck on the side of the interstate waiting on AAA with my Ford. (Easily four or five. Compare that to the big fat zero times my previously owned Corolla has broken down in the 10 years I’ve owned it, and you can see where my brand loyalty lies.)

I’m fascinated by this article, because Farley has a really interesting story to tell — the renewed commitments to innovation and quality at Ford in recent years — and a seemingly insurmountable obstacle in telling it: public perception that the company’s product is crap. The outcome of this story remains to be seen, but I’m interested in the elements of his strategy:

• He seeks the truth. Farley talks about how, when he first worked for Toyota in Europe, he used to walk around parking lots for hours looking at what kinds of cars people were driving, and then he started exploring why. “When I’m in a new situation, my formula is to really find the truth in things, to observe and get close to the truth.”A couple of my clients told me recently that their organizations “don’t believe in testing,” making me realize how rare it is for companies to want to spend the time getting to the true heart of the matter, especially if it makes things much messier. Farley’s approach takes longer and isn’t convenient, but when he’s a position of turning things on their ear, it’s what’s necessary to find the right direction.
• He engages his sales channel in a unique way. Through the years of Ford’s lame advertising campaigns and watered-down messaging, the real victims have been the dealers, who don’t know how to talk about the product at the point of sale. The Times article talks about how Farley has brought together small gatherings of dealers and paired them up with Ford engineers, so the true experts can bring valuable information about what the company’s doing to improve its cars to the salespeople, who can in turn use real-life examples and anecdotes to educate and impress customers. The article shared how in one case, a Ford chemical engineer was talking in great detail to dealers from agricultural communities about the soybean foam used inside Ford seats. “‘Do you know how happy it makes me to see a Ford engineer talking to Ford dealers about soybean foam so they can tell their customers who are farmers?’ Mr. Farley said. ‘I mean, how freaking cool is that?’”
• He’s building a brand on real emotion and tangible facts. Rather than rolling out yet another series of copycat TV ads with pop songs and Gen Y actors, Ford is figuring out a way to talk about its brand with actual examples of technical innovations and improvements, while trying to express real heart in the importance of Ford as part of America’s heritage and its survival in the future. The article said Farley recently told a crowd of Ford dealers: “‘I believe, in many ways, the future of Ford is the future of our country … The work here is simply more important than the work I was doing at Toyota.’”

I was sitting in traffic coming off the Bay Bridge onto 80/101 in downtown San Francisco the other night around dinnertime, heading to my book group meeting at the worst possible time of day to be commuting from one side of the Bay to the other. As I idled, I started to read billboards. That stretch of highway in downtown S.F. has some of the best billboards, but I rarely get to see them anymore because when I go into San Francisco at all it’s usually under the city on BART.

I started to come out of my fog and become cognizant of Washington Mutual’s new slogan. In its entirety, it is: “Whoo Hoo!” The two words take up the bank’s whole billboard, a fancy piece of real estate in one of the highest-price outdoor ad spaces in town.

My stream of consciousness response to this ad went something like this:

1. “Wow, I wonder how their ad agency talked a bunch of bank executives into that.”

2. “Actually, it says a lot about the strength of the brand that they’re building. I like it. They’ve turned a bank brand that didn’t formerly really stand out as anything special into a fun personality that people can relate to, and that attempts to make banking fun. I guess the people who bought into this are the same ones who knew nicknaming the bank “WaMu” would contribute to a friendly and accessible brand character.” (OK, so my stream of consciousness doesn’t sound like it’s trying to be Harvard Business Review, but the sentiment of all this was there.)

3. “Wait a minute. That is not seriously a TM mark I see up there, is it?”

Yes, Washington Mutual somehow managed to trademark “Whoo Hoo.” According to news reports, the company was able to score its trademark by insert an extra “h” in “Whoo.” A WaMu spokesperson told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that they added the “h” because they didn’t want to use a term that “somebody else is already using.”

So, by adding the “h,” naturally they were trying to avoid any kind of pop culture reference. Yeah, right. It’s impossible to see “Whoo hoo!” and not snicker on the inside at the Simpsons reference.

Interestingly, though, a search at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office shows that it isn’t Matt Groening and his crew WaMu actually had to worry about from a legal standpoint. The Iowa State Lottery Commission as well as what appears to be some kind of promotions company own trademarks for “woo-hoo” and its derivatives.

The company’s CMO told BrandWeek: “We want to become an iconic brand that people love.” But when it plays in your head, “Whoo hoo!” inevitably takes on the voice and personality of the dopey, though beloved, cartoon character who’s been shouting it moronically for 19 years. The bank might be trying to express the simple joys of no-fee checking, but the phrase comes across as an inside joke. It’s not even a good attempt at being hip, since Simpsons references stopped being hip about 13 years ago. What it might be doing instead is suggesting the profile of the audience it’s trying to relate to — a bunch of dimwitted Homers?

Having said all that, I’ll admit that as a consumer I’ve been taken in by Washington Mutual’s overall consumer-friendly approach, which started with the new design of its branches to eliminate the transactional, teller-window approach. As an 8-year Wells Fargo customer I recently had a bad experience with my bank and immediately thought: I bet Washington Mutual wouldn’t do that to me. I didn’t investigate it further to compare their policies, but it speaks to the success of what they’re doing with their brand.