Laurence Percival: March 2008 Archives

What brand used the great copy line : ‘One instinctively knows when something is right’? 

I suppose it can't actually have been a great line as I don’t remember which brand, but hey-ho, I thought it was time to let my good friend 'intuition' take a bow.

When it comes to developing great marketing, how much should we respect the I-word?

Old friends will know I’m no great fan of towering structures of ornate marketing strategy – I instinctively believe (yes, my intuition tells me) that the best marketing ideas are really very very simple. And sometimes intuition should take the lead.

To illustrate my point, I thought I’d call on two ancient case histories of creative development around two big brands: Nike and The Sunday Times. Both involve the creation of a central communications idea, and both are very much alive today after two decades.

The former I had nothing whatsoever to do with, other than that I worked in Nike’s European agency (suprisingly, Grey Advertising in those days), while the latter I helped create.

It was '87 or thereabouts (does anyone really remember the 80s clearly?!) and Nike were looking for a new global theme or line. ‘There is no finish line’ had been their mantra, but it was inextricably linked to their running heritage, and the handful of Oregon guys who’d sold Japanese running trainers out of the back of a Volkswagen Bug.

Nike had got bigger and diversified into tennis, basketball, cricket, football and beyond, and the new line had to be comfortable in new sporting arenas.

Nb: This and other anecdotes are brilliantly detailed in “Swoosh, the unauthorised biography of Nike and the men who played there“, a superb read: (http://www.amazon.com/Swoosh-Unauthorized-Story-Played-There/dp/0887306225/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205331322&sr=8-1)

All Nike agencies worldwide were put on alert to come up with the new thought, so yours truly and myriad others had a go at cracking an unbelievable challenge. I wish I still had the Creative Brief, but the idea was to capture the essence of rebellion and kick-butt ‘can-do-ness’ the brand symbolised. Its ambassadors then were gung-ho characters like Botham and McEnroe – it was a much less sanitised Nike than the one of Sampras and now Tiger.

We all spectacularly failed – I wish I still had my hopeless efforts so we could laugh at them – and the search became ever more desperate.

Finally, Messrs Wieden & Kennedy of Nike’s Oregon agency (now a world player and still Nike’s core agency) were sitting in the office of the late and great Rob Strasser, Nike’s original Marketing Director, all 300 lbs of him - many of the early Nike types were nothing like the buff stereotypes you might expect.

Strasser hated whingers and negativity, and he’d had post-it notes printed up to give to staffers whose faith in their ideas wavered or lacked conviction. ‘Just Do It’ said the post-its.

W&K knew that that ethos was the very essence of Nike, and soon recommended it become the rallying call for the brand.

No research, no shillyshallying, no soul-searching and no debate. Pure intuition.

And so perhaps the greatest of all straplines took wing.

A year or so later, David White and I were squeezed into our little cubicle at Arc Advertising on Euston Road. Each of us had an A3 pad in front of us. There was the usual banter and lots of scratching heads. David was doodling his fine art cartoons. (Usually involving square headed men with Hulk-like physiques, Hmm. Not what you’d expect from a Doncaster Boy.)

We’d had the brief to create a new theme for The Sunday Times, now that it was going all multi-faceted like its New York counterpart, with all kinds of sections and supplements. ‘The definitive Sunday read’ might have been the brief, although I’m not sure we actually had one. Arc wasn’t big on planning.

It didn’t take an Olympian creative leap. After the usual empty hours of procrastination, I wrote down ‘The Sunday Times are The Sunday Papers’, and then wondered about the grammar. ‘It’s like it IS The Sunday Papers’ I said. Still the grammar sounded wrong.

But David and I just had this feeling that the ‘is’ version was The One. The Sunday Times is The Sunday Papers. Somehow it just felt right.

We asked the account man in, an urbane fellow called Chris Harrald who was also an award-winning copywriter in his own right. ‘I like it, I’ll take it down to Fortress Wapping’ he said.

He went down to see the Editor, Andrew Neil ('Brillo Pad' of Private Eye fame, and an engaging guy I sat next to at a couple of ST dinners) and Neil loved it.

The rest is history. Unbelievably, the line has been retained through at least 5 changes of agency, maybe more, because Murdoch and his crew are keen on it. It’s become an inherent part of the brand itself. 

Now with those ideas, Nike and Sunday Times, would a sophisticated planning department, and a rigorous process of consumer research, have led to two such single-minded and enduring concepts?

I have my doubts. Reebok have always been far more willing than Nike to embrace traditional FMCG strategy, and – the great belly ad notwithstanding – have rarely got near Nike’s brilliant strategic and creative levels.  Nike and its legendary leader Buck Knight have always been big on intuition.

I’m not against powerful planning – many of the great campaigns of all time result from it – and research of course has a vital place in our understanding of consumers.

But sometimes Intuition rules the day. And long may it last.

(ps: Thanks to Mr Google, I can tell you that 'One instinctively knows when something is right' was Croft Original Sherry!)