Ernest Hemingway once took up a wager proposed by his friends. They declared it was impossible to write a story in 6 words or less. Hemingway disagreed. Thinking for a moment, he wrote his riposte: “For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn”. Poignant, powerful, with a beginning, middle and end. Hemingway won the bet.

This story inspired us at The Value Engineers to set ourselves a similar challenge: sum up the essence of our brand in 6 words or less. We thought we’d share some of the results, wonderfully bought to life by our Studio…

We’d like to share two little pieces of seasonal fun with you: please click here to see our festive video.

We also have a great Christmas story set in New York, to warm the heart of even the most cynical marketer – courtesy of Paul Walton.

With best wishes to all our friends, clients and partners – for Christmas and beyond into 2011 – from everyone here at The Value Engineers!

“I want to tell you a story…” The power of a good story has long been recognised. Scherezade managed to keep herself alive for 1001 nights by leaving her stories unfinished overnight, keeping her husband, the young sultan in suspense. This winter, in the 7 days leading up to Christmas, Director Giles Lury shares 7 festive branding fables and the marketing morals they espouse.

THE STARS FREE GIFTS

Trivial Pursuit was the board game of the 1980s. In 1984 it sold 20 million copies. A brilliantly simple idea based on our love of trivia and our love of friendly competition with questions like

What word was intentionally omitted from screenplay of The Godafather? (Mafia)

How many rows of whiskers does a cat have? (Four)

But do you know what was the main original selling tool for Trivial Pursuit?

The answer is word of mouth, that most powerful form of advertising. However the owners didn’t rely on it alone, rather they helped stoke the fire through the clever use of what is sometimes called ‘Buzz’ marketing.

They sent a series of single sample card to key buyers attending Toy Fair 1983, only revealing the game, its makers and the purpose of the intriguing cards on the third mailing.

Later they were to give copies to radio stations who then used the questions as the basis of competition with people who asked the questions correctly being given the game as a prize.

Linda Pezzano, the PR manager on the launch of the game remembers how the idea developed “In New York there was a guy on the radio who loved to ask trivia questions, so I thought he was a natural guy to do a promotion with. And then I thought ‘well there must be guys like that in every market’.”

So Pezzano hired a student to call up the different station and try and identify their ‘trivia maven’, soon over 100 stations were running Trivia Pursuit competitions.

Taking this idea a stage further the makers of the game distributed sample cards in bars or offered to host trivia parties there.

There was one final, inspired twist. Putting their faith in that perennial constant – the egotism of celebrities – the game’s marketers sent free copies to all famous individuals mentioned in the questions. They aimed to create a buzz and a few trivia parties in Hollywoood with their free gifts.  “The celebrity mailing turned a lot of opinion leaders to the game, and they loved it” recalls Pezzano.

The moral of the story: the more positive word of mouth you generate, the more brand advocates you will create.

I don’t know where the idea comes from or who claims it, and am sure it is not actually a new idea to most present wrappers but the person who identified that the reverse side of wrapping paper could have grid lines on it to make cutting straight lines easier deserves a prize. Something from the Nobel organisers perhaps? What a painfully simple, but enormously useful innovation, that must have stemmed from actually understanding customer frustrations.

There I was wrapping up presents last night – all of them simple box shapes, (yes Tom, it is DVDs. Again!) so i have no excuse for the less than professional final result – when i opened a new roll of paper. I turned it over, brandished my scissors and was greeted by a landscape of fine grey grid lines with handy scissor symbols next to them. Thank you WHSmiths for putting this in your store and minimising my festive angst

“I want to tell you a story…” The power of a good story has long been recognised. Scherezade managed to keep herself alive for 1001 nights by leaving her stories unfinished overnight, keeping her husband, the young sultan in suspense. This winter, in the 7 days leading up to Christmas, Director Giles Lury shares 7 festive branding fables and the marketing morals they espouse.

THE AD THAT DIDN’T LIE

In 1961 the idea of an ad all about a faulty product must have seemed an unusual, if not an absurd, idea. Yet an ad featuring a faulty Volkswagen created in that year was to win a poll selecting the ‘World’s Greatest Ad’ nearly forty years later.

Created by art director Helmut Krone and copywriter Julian Koenig of Doyle Dane Bernbach, the ad for the Volkswagen Beetle featured a black and white shot of the car and underneath it ran the forlorn, one word headline – ‘Lemon’.

The copy went on to detail how this particular Volkswagen failed the stringent quality checks. The chrome ‘fitting’ around the glove compartment door was blemished and so the car was rejected by Kurt Kroner, one of the then 3,389 assembly plant workers at the Wolfsburg factory in Germany.

In a market awash with hyperbole and spin, it was more honest, more truthful than its competitors. It was willing to admit the Beetle wasn’t the most beautiful, the fastest or the most spacious car available. No, it was a small and, to many, an ‘ugly bug’ of a car.

However the Beetle did have its virtues of economy and reliability and together with a humorous sense of self-deprecation and a dash of honesty it set about selling itself and sell it did.

The moral of the story is: a truth well told is the basis for great advertising.