Can awesomeness be a brand differentiator?

Let’s first discuss etymology. According to the built-in dictionary widget on my MacBook and contrary to the popular belief that the term was coined solely for Chuck Norris, awesome made its debut sometime in the late 16th century to describe something awe inspiring. Makes sense. Flash forward a few hundred years, sometime around the filming of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and the word is now a part of the pop culture vernacular. See also excellent, killer, rad, wicked and way cool.

Awesomeness, then, is something that exhibits the qualities of being awesome. At Red Square Agency, we believe that awesomeness, while ethereal and certainly intangible, is a very real brand differentiator.

A couple of weeks ago, over at the Harvard Business blog, Umair Haque posted The Awesomeness Manifesto. Fascinating stuff.

What is awesomeness? Awesomeness happens when thick — real, meaningful — value is created by people who love what they do, added to insanely great stuff, and multiplied by communities who are delighted and inspired because they are authentically better off. That’s a better kind of innovation, built for 21st century economics.

Beancounters feel challenged and threatened by it, because it feels fuzzy and imprecise. Yet, it’s anything but. Gen M knows “awesomeness” when we see it — that’s why it’s part of our vernacular. It’s a precise concept, with meaning, depth, and resonance.

Whether you think Haque has only jumbled around some conventional wisdom on brand authenticity and given birth to some new buzzwords or not, the bigger point is this: people know awesomeness when they see it. And they love it.

Awesomeness is hard to fake. Passion is palpable. Your stuff is either great or it isn’t.

This again brings us to the rare air a brand finds when it gains fans rather than “customers.” Think about your brand in this context. Re-read Haque’s definition of awesomeness and ask yourself, seriously, “is this us?”

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The latest addition to the Red Square library is Naive: Modernism and Folklore in Contemporary Graphic Design. It explores the current resurgence of Classic Modernism in graphic design and showcases a wide variety of work–everything from illustration to poster art to editorial and book cover design. I am a big fan of The Heads of State, whose work is prominently featured.

Sadly our library isn’t public, so you’re gonna have to get your own copy.

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I’ve been reading Behance’s site The 99 Percent recently, and I really like it. Some smart thinking going on over there. Anyway, I flagged one article in particular from my weekend studying and have read it over a few times. It’s called “Avoid the Trap of Business Narcissism.”

It’s about human nature and our reaction to challenges, specifically thinking “there’s never been anything like this before” or “these are extraordinary times.”

Scott Belsky writes:

From all the times I have heard, “This is the most unusual X, the greatest period of Y, the new era of Z,” I was starting to think that, had I not been born in the last thirty years, I would have missed the most interesting years of business since the Big Bang.

He continues:

“Business Narcissism” is rampant. It is the leader’s default thinking that they are the exception to the rule. “Business Narcissism” is the tendency of all leaders and teams, across industries, to think that they are always encountering a special case.

The real unique opportunity is for leaders to internalize a grounding realization: not much is new and yes, you can adequately learn from the past. Saying “this is the time of opportunity” is narcissistic. Instead, take some perspective. Today never feels like it will be history, but it will. And more likely than not, we will look back and realize that we should have known.

Very interesting. I agree that we have a tendency to think like this. Everyone does. But I don’t necessarily find it narcissistic to view now as time of opportunity. I truly believe now is a great opportunity. We’ve got a chance to do really amazing things, to bring a little unconventional wisdom to the table, to rewrite some of the rules and to pull the country out of this mess.

True, it’s foolish to think there have never been times like these. But every challenge is an opportunity to do something awesome.

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Here at the agency, we do category-defying, intelligent, zig-when-everybody-else-zags type work. But we can’t blow minds and make advertising you talk about without a tightly defined strategy. No strategy means run-away, irrelevant creative. And that’s about as cool as jean shorts.

Our new campaign for Van Kampen Investments and the Alabama State Treasury Department provides a good example as to how we work. First, our task: create a campaign for the 529 college savings plan product that increases enrollment. After conducting research, studying previous efforts and competitive/peer/aspirant work, many internal strategic meetings and client meetings, we arrived at our strategy–the CollegeCounts 529 Fund is a smart gift.

That’s it. Seems really simple, right?

All solid strategies are simple, but as you know, simple takes some doing. Simple requires eliminating, distilling, the stripping away of anything unnecessary. We could’ve arrived at the “invest in your child’s future” strategy, or some other been-done-a-thousand-times thought. Instead, we looked at what kids tend to get when they are young, and most of it winds up in the trash. Or stuck up their nose. Or breaking in five minutes. This isn’t about not giving your grandchild a big wheel. (We’ve got no beef with the big wheel.)  It’s about giving him or her something a little smarter than that.

So the campaign, in a nutshell, uses humor to position the college savings plan as a smart gift by juxtaposing it against unwise gifts given to children. Exaggeration is key to pulling off the humor. Why humor? We liked going with that tonality for several reasons. Not a lot of financial brands are using it right now, people like and remember funny advertising and humor communicates confidence. In this economy, confidence is everything.

Here’s the first spot, called “Knives.” In it, a couple explains to their child’s grandfather that giving to his education would be smarter than giving him a knife-throwing set. We’re betting most will agree.

And here’s the second spot, “Nuclear,” in which a father is reminded of what happened when he ordered plutonium off the Internet for his son’s science kit.

The production itself was beautifully and smoothly executed. We were lucky to work with Sam Crawford and MOM Worldwide, Melissa Larson, Technicolor, editor Adam Svatek at Beast, LA and several other incredibly talented people. Here are some great behind-the-scenes production photos.

Many thanks to all of the hard-working and brilliant people at Red Square. From media planning, negotiation and placement to the strategic development, to public relations (which is now working in overdrive), this is a great collective effort.

We hope you enjoy our gift to investment advertising. It’s been and continues to be fun.

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Who doesn’t enjoy a little love from the award shows? We aren’t going to lie, we like being recognized for our work–and most of the time it’s for work on behalf of our incredibly cool clients. This time, however, we’ve won an award for (drumroll…) our own brand.

Say whaaa?

That’s right. The kids at Red Square Agency have just been notified that the Web Marketing Association has bestowed a prestigious WebAward for “Best Advertising Site” upon our little ol’ web site. Awesome. And even awesomer is this comment from one of the judges:

KABANG – FINALLY AN AGENCY THAT GETS IT! You smoked the Boston agency and the NYC agency I judged. I bookmarked your site. If I was not in Asheville I’d be knocking. Excellent work. And I wouldn’t mind a shirt.

On behalf of the team that pulled this massive project together, I’d like to thank the academy. Or something like that.

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