Tag: Spafax

Brand managers (or guardians – that’s a much grander sounding word, no?) are busier than ever. And sometimes they’re confused. They should be. Brand guardians are having a tough time seeing themselves as publishers, as content managers. The world is changing rapidly and sometimes it’s tough to get your bearings. That they never “owned” their own brands has long been established but even today some brand guardians seem to think they do. Worse, there have never been more brand touchpoints – consumers can literally access a brand whenever or wherever they want to. And if they can’t, that’s also a potential problem. Some basic basic truths in 2012:

1)   No one cares about your brand. Absolutely no one. Consumers only care about your brand as it pertains to them. Does your brand make them happy? Does it improve their lives? Is your brand and the values it espouses in line with how a consumer sees him/herself? Everything about a brand has to be seen in relation to the consumer. Without the consumer you have no brand. A brand isn’t just PR. It’s an outreach program and it needs recipients. Without a recipient and a brand is just floating in space, lifeless and meaningless. Without form.

2)   Without brand consistency you have nothing. How many touchpoints does your brand have? I remember once walking into a secret lair, an office hidden behind a staircase in a non-descript building. Inside, a giant windowless office that was a client’s rebranding nerve centre. I was shown a very simple Excel document, printed out and pinned up on the wall. And on it were the almost 200 consumer brand touchpoints that had been identified to that point. All this to say, your brand is more than just some words. It’s more than just a story. It’s a voice. It’s your company’s voice. Its humanity. And if you have different voices for different media, you’re just confusing the customer. And that’s bad branding.

3)   Don’t confuse a mission statement with a brand’s meaning. You should be able to describe your brand in one word. The mission statement (say “Generic Corp’s brand embodies the values of honesty and simplicity in improving the lives of its customers”) is just that – a statement and something for the staff. It’s internal. The word? That’s the nugget that goes out to the world.

4)   Your brand is the source of all media. Or it should be. A brand may start as a nugget but it sets a lot of stuff in motion. In this sense, perhaps nugget isn’t the right word. Pearl is. Your brand is like a pearl. Get it right, execute properly, and your brand shines. And since your brand is the source of all media, and your company is a publisher of content, you need to get that right. Everything is content. Brochures. Video. Your website. Any print materials. Custom publications. Newsletters. E-zines. Signage. Stationary. Posters. Ads. All of it is content. Because every company in the world is a media centre.

5)   Just because your brand was successful yesterday means nothing tomorrow. Brand maintenance is hard work. We all know that. And the worst thing a brand guardian can do is rest on his/her laurels. A brand review should be regular. Even when things are going well. Especially when things are going well. And a brand review should include all stakeholders. Both internal and external. Sometimes external agencies have a better idea about a company’s brand than its internal guardians.

6)   Don’t take your brand somewhere just because the competition is there as well. If the answer to anything is “Because everyone’s doing it” your brand is in a bad spot. Yes, the consumer demands and expects a lot more than they did just a few years ago. That’s why you need a solid strategy. Too many brands have rushed into various platforms and spaces without understanding what they were doing. The resulting brand black eye is both predictable and unfortunate. Does thinking things through make you slower? So what? If the brand is strong, it will survive the wait. And it will probably thrive.

As a content marketing agency, Spafax has seen some brands get it really really right and then others, well, not so much. We often tell potential clients that we want to “get under the skin” of their brands so that our work makes sense in a larger context. So that the message we create fits seamlessly into the existing brand universe. If we do our job well, we can even lead a brand to a new space by enhancing it in ways the client hadn’t ever considered. Content marketing is, in essence, another way of pushing brand values out to the consumer in a way that is relevant to them. Difficult? Yes. But definitely not impossible to do properly.

The word “brand” has gone through a huge shift (and will probably continue to do so) but the essence, the pearl of it, has remained constant. A brand embodies the soul of a company, how it wants to be perceived by consumers in a world of almost limitless choice. It is an amazingly powerful thing. And needs to be treated with respect. And intelligence.

Niall McBain, CEO of Spafax, announces strategic changes to the Spafax senior management team in London

ANN WILLIS appointed Managing Director, Spafax Specialized Networks and Development

Ann Willis has been appointed to the role of Managing Director, Specialized Networks and Development. This new position will support expansion of our content offer onto new platforms and networks – including the world of Digital Out of Home media (DOOH).

In addition to launching a new creative / production team in London, Ann will be working closely with Spafax Inflight Entertainment, Spafax Media & Publishing and Spafax Interactive to develop tailored content packages that promote client products and services to targeted customer audiences. Spafax Specialized Networks will also support and collaborate with WPP’s new venture tenthavenue.

SUE PINFOLD promoted to Executive Vice President, Inflight Entertainment, EMEA

Sue Pinfold has been promoted to Executive Vice President – Inflight Entertainment (IFE). Sue has played a vital role in the development and delivery of our IFE services and this appointment reflects her contribution to the strength of our business and ongoing development of client relationships.

Sue is now responsible for the IFE departments in London and Dubai. She’ll continue to work with Ann Willis, Managing Director Specialized Networks and Development on new services and with Al St Germain, VP Spafax USA, in managing our entertainment business worldwide.

In our quest to create the very best entertainment experiences for our clients and their customers, our London entertainment team have recently struck a deal between British Arts and Entertainment website CultureCritic to feature a collection of their Culture Shorts series on British Airways. These short pieces can be seen exclusively on British Airways and feature leading figures of the Art world discussing their favourite installation at London’s famous
V & A museum in South Kensington.

“These short films are a celebration of British creativity and design and as such are a perfect fit for British Airways and their customers.” says Henry Gummer, Spafax Client Services Director. “As such, they’re emblematic of the kind of “content curation” that sets Spafax apart from the competition”.

Upcoming episodes feature BBC presenter and host of Question Time David Dimbleby, iconic fashion and interior designer Barbara Hulanicki, Bond Film production designer Ken Adam and milliner to the starts Stephen Jones.

For more information on this and other initiatives, please contact Henry at the London office. hgummer@spafax.com

Follow @CultureCriticCC on Twitter.

Two Spafax publications (Fairmont and enRoute) were nominated for P&G Awards and enRoute ended up doing quite well, winning two awards overall. The P&G Awards are normally dominated by fashion titles. How did our magazines break through?

As travel lifestyle publishers, we’re able to create fashion writing and photography from a very different angle. I think the judges appreciated that. For our Best Cover win, for instance, we had commissioned two incredibly talented fashion photographers, Leda & St-Jacques, to do something very unconventional: shoot a model in front of the iconic Orange Julep in Montreal, with a pack of French poodles. (And yes, that was a fun wink to the sophisticated, French character of the city.) It’s a mix of highbrow and lowbrow that’s really striking; it’s certainly not your regular fashion shot or cover. The same could be said of senior editor Jean-François Légaré’s stories, which swept the editorial nominations. His winning feature looked at how emerging fashion designers can help brand cities like Amsterdam and Toronto. Many of the fashion magazines wouldn’t necessarily produce a piece on that scale, or with that innovative an angle.

What does it say about our magazines that we can “compete” with the major fashion titles in this country and win major awards on their turf?

I think it says something not only about the quality of our photography and our creative roster, but also the depth of knowledge about everything from fashion to art to science that we have in-house. As a group, we cover a lot of diverse areas of interest and do it very well.

The awards were attended by a who’s who of the Canadian fashion industry hosted by the fabulous Queen Latifah. We have to ask: What’s she like in person?

She’s very lovely, very funny and very natural. She had a script but most of the time wasn’t even reading it. Not to mention that she’s stunningly beautiful.

This December the Spafax-produced Aeromexico Clásica audio program will feature an exclusive interview with Alondra de la Parra, the young, modern classical superstar conductor of the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas.

Our music industry savvy and long-standing ties to Sony BMG and Comuni-K Public Relations helped us secure the interview with this conductor-musician whose approach to music is anything but ordinary. She’s caught the attention of music world aficionados not only through her impressive talent but by transcending genre labels via collaborations with artists like the electro-tango group, Bajofondo and rockera, Ely Guerra. Given her mission to challenge the perceived barriers of classical music and expose the rich musical culture of the Americas, Spafax recognized Alondra de la Parra as a perfect fit for Aeromexico’s audio offering.

During the course of the interview, produced in our state of the art audio facility in Orange, California, Ms. de la Parra explains how forming the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas was an important step in reinvigorating the classical music experience for all audiences and exposing new talent to the world stage. Her debut CD with the orchestra, Mi Alma Mexicana, has been a strong vehicle for advancing this campaign: It features up-and-coming soloists and presents works from the last 200 years penned by revered composers like Chávez and Revueltas as well as a number of surprisingly enchanting pieces from lesser-known Mexican composers. To learn more about de la Parra’s musical philosophy and how it shaped Mi Alma Mexicana, tune into Clásica when you fly Aeromexico.

For more information on this initiative or on our audio programming service, please contact Christine Anaya at our Orange, California office: canaya@spafax.com