Brandishing: Stade Francais

Ugly Beautiful, Non? There are many dimensions to the success of Parisian Rugby Club - Stade Francais - and pink shirts are one of them. Pink shirts, and sometimes pink shorts - stretched like delicate sausage-skins over the mammoth frames of their prop forwards.

In 1992 the radio-station entrepreneur Max Guazzini bought the club, then languishing in the lower orders and playing in front of deux hommes et un petit chien.
Today, with bold branding at the heart of his efforts, Guazzini has a club which regularly commands crowds of 50,000 - at family-friendly fireworks-dazzled games.
The marketing know-how is right out of the 'difference versus indifference' text-book (if / when I get around to writing the book). How better to redefine perceptions of a just-for-blokes sport than to clad the team in shocking / stunning pink kit. And to keep splashing the story with an annual update - Parisians are treated to a new take on bold rugby fashion every twelve months (along with an artful calendar that might make Helmut Newton's lens shake).
And - they're successful: showing that strong brands collect trophies, win euros and attract top talent. Like all good challenger brands, he has grown the category as well as his own share. Paris claimed only 5000 rugby fans when he started, now le ballon-parc figure is more like 80,000.

Vive le difference!

Brandishing: Lurpak

First of all - that name. Lurpak. Lurpak. Lur-pak. Lurp-ak. 
For everyone who frets about the naming of their brand - I give you: Lurpak.
No attempt to add French chef-iness and transform it to L'Urpak. Nope, just Lurpak. 
If the soviet system had paused from their five-year plans, lightbulb manufacture and collective farms long enough to have a stab at naming butter, they might have called it Lurpak.
Ugly name - but now invested with beautiful meaningfulness. 
Just watch their slots on the telly, or great print ads. 

Proud, didactic, confident tone-of-voice, raised just that modicum above the consumer so that it avoids aloofness, yet insists on trust. And the consistent adherence to a strong, simple idea. Simple, but big enough to give consistent use, time and time again. 

No celebrities, just 'real' (blokey) home cooks. Drama in the imagery gives us a strong narrative - home-cooking is self-satisfying performance art. 

Emotion-packed: no features and benefits, just a dart - fired straight to the bullseye of 'this is how you're going to FEEL'. 

Boom. Triumph indeed.

Sure, if you're building your brand from scratch, give the 'naming' a lot of creative thought - in those early stages we often have so few toots to blow on our brand-trumpets, a strong, meaningful name can deliver a fugue for us. 

But if you've stuck with a name that's as unhelpful as a London traffic warden - don't let it stop you from filling your brand with delicious meaning. 

Just whip your ideas into soft peaks and bake at 180 degrees until golden.

Prize: best use of a flowerpot as a hat

Differentiation Corner: and this week - Gardening.

So often in the 'who on earth do I choose?" category of services, here it gets a very deserved branded treatment. Now Dubliners get to decide if they want a generic man-with-van approach, or this eye-catching fella with the terracotta titfer.

JJB - new balls please

My kids wanted a new football. A shiny, blingy, world-cuppy sort-of-a ball. So we walked into town and headed for JJB Sports.

Now, I know JJB isn't a real sports shop. They've got running stuff, and Umbro shirts, and ping-pong bats - but if you're looking for expertise, you don't go JJB. You go to the speciality running shop. Or the indie sports shop in town.

But we just wanted a ball. We would pick it ourselves from a big bargain-basementy bin, and happily exit the shop fifteen-quid lighter as long as no-one stopped us.

But they did. Not the helpfulness-less summer-jobbing teenagers. they're dodging all forms of customer intervention.

No. While we stood in line to buy a football and a mini-basketball, the security-guard guy came and told Hugo, my five-year-old, to stop bouncing the ball.

He wasn't bumping anyone or knocking stuff over. He was bouncing a miniature basketball.

Now, even if you've decided that - although the word 'Sports' appears in your shop name - you're not really about the competitive, cut-and-thrust of Corinthian endeavour - you surely cannot have it in mind that you're the "Just Don't Do It" brand.

We can be pretty sure you're not targetting athletes. My guess is you think you're targetting kids. Fun, entry-level participants. I know some of your offer is sportswear as fashion. But still. You're a sports shop. A pretty cheap one. But still a sports shop.

A ball wants to be bounced. You could have some of those bored looking employees shooting hoops in-store. You'd sell more stuff. I'm certain.

Brands make a promise and live up to it in everything they do.

Unless your promise is "we take the fun away" - you're failing.

Mistake