Posts tagged ‘Jubilee’
firing the first shots for Jubilympic Brand Britain
So last weekend we fired the first shots in 2012’s Jubilympic branding exercise for Great Britain. Yes, the Diamond Jubilee weekend was supposed to be all about celebrating HMQ’s 60 year reign, but there was inevitably a big-up for Team GB, Brand Britain and UK PLC in there too.
I think the Visit Britain campaign proposition was something like ‘Come visit us! We have heritage and culture and a Queen. And we’re FUN too!’ The Jubilee Flotilla obviously didn’t go quite as planned due to inclement weather, unfortunately reminding potential tourists that our Summer can be cold and wet – check out Jon Stewart’s covering-of-CNNs-coverage (which will only work if you’re in the USA I’m afraid).
It was at least dry for the Concert, although The Queen a) probably doesn’t like pop music and b) was probably worrying about Prince Phillip in hospital so didn’t look like she was enjoying herself much, earplugs and all.
pic by adrian johnson on twitter
The weekend also included a Service of Thanksgiving on Tuesday, Beacon Lighting and Jubilee Street Parties and other events (all mostly rather cold and damp).
And for a final hurrah, we showed just how good Britain is at flag waving and being-well-behaved-in-a-crowd when an estimated 1.5M of us crammed in front of Buckingham Palace and filled The Mall for a final balcony appearance from the Queen and a military fly past.
both photos from The Daily Mail, who at the time of writing on Tuesday had no less than 24 royal stories on their homepage…
But the event where the Queen looked like she was enjoying herself most actually took place three weeks ago at the Diamond Jubilee Pageant at the Royal Windsor Horse Show (but screened on ITV last weekend). A friend-of-a-friend was riding in the Pageant and reported that HMQ “looked so happy with her horses”.
As well as celebrating the Jubilee, I suppose it comes down to who the events were supposed to be entertaining – The Queen, the Great British Nation, or Potential Tourists and Overseas Partners? The Windsor Pageant clearly achieved the former, while the concert and river pageant at least seemed to have set out to do both, even if play was rained off a bit.
Let’s just hope it stays dry for the Olympics, or no-one will fly into Heathrow without a brolly ever again.
Olympic misADttribution
The Olympic Marketing Police can do all they like about cracking down on use of Olympic messaging or brand icons by non-sponsors (their ‘statutory marketing rights’ document is 61 pages long), but brands who aren’t on the official roster are still going to be associated with London 2012 by the Great British Public.
As early as January this year non-sponsor Nike was the sports brand most associated with the event (I guess the assumption being that as the biggest and shoutiest sports brand surely they’d have got involved) and as of early May, over the pond ‘non-affiliated marketers’ took 27 of the top 50 spots measuring effective brand activation.
As consumers of marketing messages, we just aren’t wired to carefully shift through looking for official logos and Olympic endorsed endlines. We connect with the campaigns that talk about national pride, and celebrating great endeavours, i.e. what the Olympics are all about.
Everyone is saying nice things at the moment about P&G’s ‘Proud Sponsor of Mums’ official Olympic campaign, but I’m not sure that come flag waving time what we must now refer to as a ‘John Lewis approach’ is going to cut through. I think the winners are going to be brands that talk about pride and celebration – and handily, no-one has slapped a ban on gratuitous use of union jacks yet (so long as they’re not held by an athlete).
non-sponsor Virgin Atlantic and RKCR/Y&R show us all how to do it
In contrast, the Diamond Jubilee logo can be downloaded free off the royal website (complete with brand guidelines) and it seems that so long as you don’t put it on a teapot without asking nicely first or imply HMQ’s direct endorsement then at least individuals and non-profits can do what they like with it. Top marks, ma’am.
get set for a long haul celebratory Summer
I did a project a few months back for a UK retailer looking at all the events planned for Summer 2012 and assessing the likely impact. Without giving away all the insight the client paid for, it’s a little bit worrying.
For a start, it’s going to be a long-haul Summer. From the Diamond Jubilee Pageant at Windsor Castle starting on 10th May until the Paralympic closing ceremony on 9th September, there is Something Big Happening almost continually. The major events are obviously the Jubilee, Olympics & Euro 2012, but there’s also Wimbledon, big music festivals and so on. I really think there’s going to be a bit of Celebration fatigue kicking in at some point.
On the upside, it seems logical that there will be an uplift in National pride – and you can already see brands like M&S taking advantage of this.
But one of the downsides is that I’ve ploughed my way through all the briefing documents and I can only conclude that London is effectively going to come to a standstill in late July and the first half of August. If you’re planning any kind of activity in the London area that requires a vehicle to be in a certain place at a certain time around then, I’d reschedule it now.
