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…

The ink is barely dry on Richard Key’s resignation, the colour only just starting to fade from Andy Gray’s blushing cheeks, yet this great little advert featuring women explaining the offside rule is already doing the rounds on the web. Created by McCann London for the charity Kick It Out, the ad seeks to build on the wave of media attention that the Sky Sports presenters’ sexist slip-ups have received in this week’s press. And what better moment to do it? You’d be hard pushed to name a time when sexism in football has dominated so many column inches.

This is viral marketing at its best: relevant, reactive and instantaneous, with a healthy dose of wit.

The strength of an idea, much like the emotional perception of a brand, is reliant on some fairly intangible measures: how relevant is it to what we’re trying to achieve? How thin is the line between a silly, risky idea and a bold and brilliant new concept? Whose idea was it anyway?

At The Value Engineers we deal with ideas all the time – whether it’s helping our clients to generate and use ideas for effective innovation or using ideas to solve business problems and develop a truly bespoke process to achieve a goal.

Here are some others’ thoughts on ideas:

• ‘Every brand is an idea; it’s an idea for how to communicate something in a different, values-led way’ – Anon
• ‘A really good idea is simple, unexpected and relevant. And it unites extremes: it should risk a lot but nevertheless be easy to implement. Everyone should talk about it, but existing customers should not be irritated by it’ – Nadja Schnetzler
• ‘It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all’ – Edward de Bono
• ‘While a brand idea can never be too big, it may well be too big for advertising’ – Richard Huntington
• ‘Take up one idea. Make that idea your life. Think on it, dream on it, live on it’ – Swami Vivekananda

Stolen with pride from all over the place.

Moxie tampons will be one to watch in the feminine hygiene category.

Founded by the Australian entrepreneur Mia Klitsas who runs the company ‘Millie & More’, Moxie tampons aim to bring ‘a touch of style and glamour to a really unfashionable category’. Moxie has already established success in Australia has now recently been launched in US, UK and Scandinavia.

It will be interesting to see how well this brand fares in the UK market. From past research we know women have been looking for a ‘revolution’ in this category; which is functional, unfeminine, highly sanitised and also ‘embarrassing’. The Moxie packaging achieves this revolution by celebrating femininity and bringing discretion in its pack design. The pack design is in line with current fashion trends – vintage, retro a la Benefit cosmetics and unlike ‘Tampax’ does not shout ‘time of month’ in the basket, scanning through the check-out , in handbag or in the bathroom. Therefore, this makes choosing a feminine hygiene product a positive enjoyable choice rather than embarrassing. 

The only downside is lack of product knowledge. This is a category where women need reliability – but what product credentials does Moxie bring? Is it just a matter of style over substance? It will be interesting to see how many trialists become regular users.

Also, how long can it last as a single niche brand? It will be interesting to see which of the big players produce a copycat and nudge Moxie out due to the weight of a reliable ‘tried and tested’ brand behind them. There is also another nagging doubt: if this was the way for the category to go, surely the big players would have already done it? Or have they been too scared?

Moxie is making a big bold statement in the feminine hygiene category but will consumers follow? They may need greater product reassurance to jump ship.

2011 sees  The Value Engineers celebrate its 25th anniversary. As an homage to the branding world which has been our life for the last quarter of a century, we will be posting a blog on the 25th of every month, discussing everything ’25′.

To start our year of twenty fives is a story from 25 years ago but one for which the moral is as central to branding today as it was then. It’s a story of when 250,000 people were wrong and involves the world’s most valuable brand; Coca-Cola.

In the early 1980s Coca Cola (which according to some surveys is the second most recognised word in the world after ‘ok’), was in trouble. It faced the frightening prospect of losing its number one spot in the American soft drink market.

Pepsi’s aggressive ‘Taste Challenge’ campaign was winning market share and Coke had to rely increasingly on its dominance in restricted markets such as vending machines and fast food outlets to maintain its market leader position. Adding to the problem was the success of the brand’s stable mate, Diet Coke. As sales of Diet Coke increased and people become converted to the new brand, the pool of available sugar cola drinkers was getting smaller.

The team in Atlanta embarked on a mission to beat off the Pepsi challenge. Blind taste tests, whereby people are given samples to drink and rate but are not told what brand they are, were conducted. They showed – horror of horrors! – that people preferred the taste of Pepsi.

So the team decided to develop a new Coke. The new formulation they settled on was based on Diet Coke but instead of artificial sweeteners, high fructose corn syrup was added to create a drink that was sweeter and smoother than original Coke and in fact more like Pepsi.

It is reputed that Coke then undertook the largest ever programme of taste panel research, interviewing over ¼ million people.  A clear and significant majority of these preferred the taste of New Coke.

So what should the executives in Atlanta do, launch New Coke alongside ‘Old’ Coke or replace it outright?  Worried that if they retained the original alongside the new it might split sales and give the leadership of the sector to Pepsi they chose to replace the old with the new. The need to maintain secrecy, however, meant that this decision had been taken without ever asking the consumers whether they wanted a new, improved Coke.

On April 23 1985 New Coke was launched and production of the original formulation was halted later that week. And everyone in Atlanta lived happily ever after. Well no, not exactly….

America was outraged. Rather than welcoming the better tasting New Coke, millions of Americans decided they hated it, even before they tasted it. Even amongst those who did taste it, the vast majority were convinced they still preferred the original! (So much for the 250,000 people with whom it had been researched!)

For so many Americans, Coke was much more than just a product: it was an institution, a way of life. It was something they had grown up with, something with which they felt they had a relationship. It was their brand. They reacted with horror to this change. They protested long and loud.

In the end senior executives were forced to hold a press conference to announce the return of the original – now called Classic Coke.

Perhaps luckily for Coke, the real surprise was that after the outrage came forgiveness and then celebration and while Coke did lose leadership to Pepsi in 1985, Classic Coke, the re-launched original regained its leadership in 1986 and kept growing. New Coke faded away.

And the moral of the story? Today, as well as back in 1986, a brand is much more than a product; it exists in the mind as much as it does on the ‘shelf’.