The winner of the inaugural YouTube Ad of the Year was a campaign for Sussex Safer Road called “Embrace Life – always wear your seat belt” and created by Alexander Commercials.

This 90-second PSA is very compelling. Rather than showing the typical images of mangled bodies or other horrific messaging, it takes a caring, gentle approach that is nevertheless just as powerful. Shows that you can send a strong safety message without having to shock people into submission.

The other three shortisted campaigns in the YouTube category were: Old Spice, “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” by Wieden & Kennedy Portland; “O2 Gorillaz” by VCCP and “Good call” for Fosters by Adam & Eve.

Here’s the winning ad:

Over more than two decades in this business, I’ve seen many companies decide that their logo needs to be changed. Typically, it follows the hiring of a new president, CEO, or marketing VP. In an effort to mark his territory, he convinces corporate brass that the old logo is “tired,” and commissions a new one. Out the window flies all the equity invested in the old corporate identity.

There’s a kind of flippant “so what” attitude among many corporate leaders about the logo, as if it’s no more important to the brand than the color of the carpeting in the lobby. Statements are made about how people are “tired” of it, thinking that everyone else sees it as often as they do. Your customers care more than you think, even if they aren’t aware of it. But not because they see it so much. They care because it gives them a sense of comfort and familiarity about the products they buy. They have something invested in your logo, just like you do.

GAP’s decision led to an unusual level of response. In fact, I was surprised by the level of interest, because I didn’t think the brand had that much support. Within 24 hours of introducing the new logo, one blog had 2,000 negative comments and only 30 people who liked it. A third-party website, Crap Logo Yourself, quickly sprang up to let you make your own “Gap-style logo,” like the one shown here.

The company’s explanation for changing the logo was exactly the same kind of thing I’ve heard countless times. Gap’s announcement following the uproar said, “We’ve had the same logo for 20+ years, and this is just one of the things we’re changing.” Asked what the company liked about the logo, VP of corporate communications Bill Chandler said, “We believe this is a more contemporary, modern expression. The only nod to the past is that there’s still a blue box, but it looks forward.” It seems that customers didn’t feel they wanted to move forward quite that way.

How to change a logo

There’s nothing inherently wrong with asking if your logo needs to be refreshed. At times this is necessary to reflect changing cultural realities or changes in the brand’s focus. But complete overhauls are usually unwise.

Logos have equity. The longer a logo has been in circulation, the more power it has. This has nothing to do with whether or not the logo is ugly or beautiful, but with the way it becomes linked to the brand. Consider the value of the Mercedes Benz three-pointed star, or the Apple logo. While they might be updated with slight modifications, they are never “changed.” Making a significant change is essentially throwing out everything people associate with the company and starting over. I’ve never understood how otherwise intelligent corporate leaders can simply go along with those kinds of initiatives.

The Starbucks logo has gone through a couple of updates, which were needed to reflect serious issues that the logo faced. But each change was an intelligent one addressing a particular problem and only that problem. The essence of the symbol didn’t change. The same was true for many other successful overhauls.

Strong logo updates

UPS

Consider the change made by shipping giant UPS a few years ago. In the redesign, they cleverly stayed with the same structure, just bringing the look into modern times with a 3-D effect and some color. While the brown tones are ugly, the company wisely stayed with those colors because that color scheme has been in use for a long time and already has equity. Changing the company’s color scheme would have lost more ground than it would have gained.

AT&T

AT&T is another example of a company that made only the necessary change to reflect the times we live in. The essence of the logo stayed the same. The font was changed slightly, but not so much that it became unrecognizable. Only graphic designers are even likely to notice that the font changed at all.

Pepsi

Pepsi recently overhauled its logo, and again we see only a minor change, tilting the wave to form a grin. Though somewhat controversial for a variety of reasons, most people have accepted this new look. The font has also been updated to look lighter and more modern.

Poor logo update: Seattle’s Best Coffee

Consider, on the other hand, the case of Seattle’s Best Coffee:

This brand has enjoyed consistent growth in the Pacific Northwest, competing against the giant Starbucks brand quite effectively. Their old but classy logo spoke of tradition and the ritual of a hot cup of coffee in the morning, evoking thoughts of coffee traders plying the oceans and jungles of the world to find the richest tasting coffee beans.

In sharp contrast, the new logo has none of those qualities. Indeed, it has no qualities at all! This is an example of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Did they really need a new logo? That’s something I can’t answer. But I’m quite sure that what they came up with is not going to help the brand. This lifeless identity is devoid of any character at all.

Perhaps you feel your logo needs an overhaul. Don’t be so quick. Chances are the only one tired of seeing it is you. You’ve had to look at it all day long, every day of the week, possibly for many years. Your customers are lucky to get a quick glance once every few days. Even the most fanatical fans of your brand probably only see it for a few seconds each day. And they get a sense of comfort from what it means to them. Think long and hard before you make a mistake that can cost you.

I find it wildly entertaining, and feel that overall it does do an admirable job of making you remember the intended message. Take a look and see what you think:

As expected, professionals in the ad world are complaining. They don’t like the fact that it’s obviously not real. They note that there are several edits. There have been arguments that it’s pointless because we know the outcome ahead of time. They complain that the logo is always in view. Do these things invalidate a viral approach? What does make a great viral video?

Does it matter if it’s not ‘Real’?

Personally, I don’t see that it really matters a whole lot if your viral video is completely believable as being “real.” The main point of anything like this is that it’s memorable. If people like it, they’ll share it with their friends. If they don’t, no matter how real you’ve made it, they won’t. It’s as simple as that. On that basis, I think this succeeds, because it’s entertaining and ‘real enough’ to be shareable. This entire setup is clearly preposterous from the start. Anyone who believes that some geek really built this kind of set in their bedroom probably doesn’t have enough friends to be of viral use anyway. But most viral videos aren’t real, or at the very least, have questions hanging over their authenticity. We’re smart enough these days to know that this stuff isn’t real. We watch videos like this because of their entertainment value. Are Evian’s roller-skating babies real (see below)?

Does it matter that the logo is overused?

A lot has been made about the fact that the Samsung logo is constantly in view. I think this would be a valid complaint in a typical case, but here the logo has a reason for being there. It’s part of the product itself. If you shot a viral video of a Coke bottle making a journey across the country, the logo would be in view as well because that’s the product. So this is a pointless argument. If you’re considering a viral video effort, be careful about how the logo is used, but don’t be concerned if the logo is obviously a part of your product and would normally appear. Just don’t force it.

Does it matter that we know the outcome?

We know the outcome of movies, but we still go to watch them. We know the outcome of almost every television show, but we still watch. This argument holds no weight at all.

What makes viral video work?

As far as viral video advertising goes, I find Samsung’s approach more enjoyable than some of those on the Ad Age Top 10 list, like this lame Gymkhana Three music video for DC Shoes, which is just as obviously an ad and not really all that exciting. I can’t handle more than a few seconds of it. Yet it has achieved more than 2.7 million “real” views. Why? Likewise, Buick has an extremely lame effort that’s got no viral qualities at all, but has over a million views. It’s so bad you would think the ad industry is all over even attempting to call it “viral.”

My take on the whole “fake viral video” issue is that companies should just do it and see what happens. Try to make your video as real as possible, and make sure it’s entertaining. Don’t sweat the small details, they won’t matter one way or another. Nobody but your competitors and a few ad critics will take issue with those small points. If people like what they see, they’ll share it. If they do, you win. If they don’t, hopefully you had fun trying.

Another viral campaign that is still climbing rapidly in popularity after many weeks is Evian’s “Live Young” video featuring a group of lively babies skating to a hip hop beat. It’s delightful. Like Samsung’s video, it isn’t real and is also clearly commercial in nature. Yet we don’t care. Because it’s entertaining. It has over 800,000 views and growing.

Editor’s Update:

While the Gymkhana Three music video I mentioned in the article is extremely lame, there’s another Gymkhana viral video (curiously not in the Ad Age Top 10 though it has over 13 million views) which is highly entertaining. In fact, it’s so good, it deserves to be posted here:

Coke had already been in business for decades when the ad on the left above appeared in 1920. We don’t see the famously shaped bottle, which was designed in the shape of a woman’s curves in 1915. Was this omission deliberate? Or did they just not think the shape of the bottle was relevant in advertising?

In the ad from 1936 on the right, we see a reference to how long Coke has been around, probably in response to market pressure from Pepsi and other brands. By tying into the history of the brand, it was the first move towards its positioning as the “real thing,” though that tagline would come some 10 years later. We also see the beginning of the red circle, and the tagline “the pause that refreshes” used in the headline.

Until the late 1920’s, Coke was only thought of as a warm-weather beverage. The company set out to change that image through advertising.

The look of Santa Claus that we’ve grown so familiar with began as Coca Cola ads in the Saturday Evening Post back in 1930. In 1931, a series of illustrations were created for the D’Arcy ad agency by Haddon Sundblom, who was inspired by the famous poem The Night Before Christmas. Sundblom’s images were so successful his work was used for the next 33 years. The timing was right for Coke, as it tied in with the new explosion of commercialism. Perhaps it was the consistency of how Coke continued to portray Santa year after year that caused this style treatment of the Santa image to be so well established around the world. Today, we can’t imagine Santa looking any other way.

In 1941, advertising began to focus on product benefits, but it was still pretty unsophisticated. Notice how the ad on the left touches on multiple themes, from convenience to taste and quality, rather than staying on one message. While the ad is unfocused, it does a good job of communicating the portability of the six-pack.

Five years later, soft drink brands were putting their emphasis on group dynamics, showing people getting together in social settings with the product as the “life of the party,” so to speak.

In 1951, with American society buoyed by the post-war boom, two significant cultural changes seemed to impact the Cola Wars.

Automobile travel was huge. Coke took advantage of this trend by positioning itself as the refreshment for people who loved to drive.

The second change was the growth of full color in print publications. Cheaper printing meant everything was in color, and ads everywhere now exploded in the use of full-page, full-color, full-bleed images.

Meanwhile, 7-Up was floundering, with some seriously flawed soft drink advertising. These examples from 1955 and 1958 show how badly the company managed its advertising image at that time. It’s a wonder people drank 7-Up at all, given ad messages like these!

These ads for Pepsi and Coke from 1964 show the emergence of modern advertising. Everyone wanted to copy the look of the famous “Lemon” ad created by Doyle Dane Bernbach for the Volkswagen Beetle that year. It was the birth of art direction, with emphasis on eye flow and carefully managed font treatment. Notice how carefully these photographs were art directed, in order to move the eye towards the copy.

7-Up continued to struggle with pointless, silly advertising approaches. An example is the ad on the far right, from 1967, part of a lengthy “Wet and Wild” series showing inexplicable photos of glasses covered with carbonation foam. Look at the confusing body copy: “You’ve never seen anything like the taste of 7-Up. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.” What?

Meanwhile, Coke’s simple ad emphasized practicality with a simple message. Note the use of the Helvetica font, which was now taking the world by storm.

In 1963, the Coca Cola company launched Tab, the new diet cola brand. Curiously, given the sophistication of the parent company, their advertising for Tab was a disaster, focusing on an image of upscale, snobbish users that ordinary people simply couldn’t relate to. A slogan in the 1970s touted the brand as “a beautiful drink for beautiful people.” Although there was a clear strategy around the idea of the wealthy being thin, I think the effort fell short of the mark. Who really cares if rich people drink Tab? How would that ever make it hip? Not surprisingly, while Tab enjoyed some success, especially in the 1960’s, it never fulfilled the potential for that market segment, and eventually Diet Coke would fill that niche with much greater impact.

Versus TV trailer

Versus Television ran this nice trailer during the 2010 Tour de France, highlighting the power of sports and competition as a vital element of human life. It makes its point well.

You can see a full length (2:16) version here

Nike World Cup

In a similar vein, Nike ran this outstanding ad just ahead of the 2010 World Cup. The storytelling is superb, and I can only imagine what kind of a budget was behind this effort:

Apple Facetime

Apple created this powerful ad to highlight the new Facetime feature in the iPhone 4. I really like how it feels. It makes me want to use the feature, which is the mark of a great commercial.

Livestrong/Nike “Engine”

Lance Armstrong’s new ad for Livestrong Foundation and Nike does an excellent job of creating emotion with what would normally be just a jumble of background noise. Works beautifully in this context.

Apple Think Different ad

When Steve Jobs regained the helm of Apple, he introduced this new message to remind people of what Apple represented. Great way to apply the emotion of a brand. Not everyone “gets” this message, and that’s the way it should be. Only those who get it will connect with the brand, and they will be loyal.

McDonald’s Larry Bird vs. Michael Jordan

Okay, it doesn’t have quite the same emotional power, and falls short of some of the great McDonald’s commercials from the 80’s, but not a bad effort to help the brand ward off its negative perception as a junk food provider and attempt to relate to the world of athletics.

What I particularly like is how the flow of it, despite being a single column, is organic. The eye keeps being surprised by new touches like a bar chart following a pie chart (as compared to two identical styles), images moving from one side to the other, icons like checkmarks next to bullet points and so on. Engaging enough that you want to read all the way down to the bottom. The colors are coordinated with those of the brand, and are always legible where they need to be.

Overall a good job. Here’s what it looks like:

Advertising has gone through many transitions during the four decades since the ground breaking creative headline of the “Lemon” ad changed marketing communications forever. There were periods when many ads had no headline at all, and times when headlines were so long they took up more space than the rest of the ad. In an effort to move away from what might be seen as ‘too traditional,’ it seems that many copywriters have forgotten the value of the headline.

Research has found that the headline represents 84% of the effectiveness of any communication. 84 out of every 100 people who read an ad, web page or E-mail message will do so only if the headline or subject line does its job. No doubt some people will say, “But what about [insert dramatic exception here]?” Of course there are exceptions. There are no hard rules in advertising. But there are patterns and realities of human behavior. Research is useful for finding out what is most likely to be effective.

I’ve seen many A/B tests where one headline would pull far better than another, when everything else about the message was the same. In one dramatic case, changing a single word in the headline drew four times as many responses. Headlines matter.

So, if the headline is as important as all that, it makes sense that copywriters should spend time on it. Far too many don’t give it enough thought. And far too many clients don’t think they should. In fact, you should actually spend four times as long writing the headline as the rest of the copy!

A great headline is short, concise, and powerful. But it rarely starts that way. It takes time to cut away and edit and painstakingly reshape until you have something that can’t be reduced any further without changing the message.

Carmine Gallo, in his excellent book “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs,” writes that the best headlines need to be short enough to fit into the 140-character limit of a Twitter post (known as a “Tweet”). It’s good advice. Twitter is an excellent tool for copywriters. It forces you to think in short sentences, compelling you to write copy that does the most with the least.

Gallo goes on to illustrate his point with real examples from Apple:

• MacBook Air. The world’s thinnest laptop. (42 characters)
• The iPod. 1,000 songs in your pocket. (37 characters)
• Apple reinvents the phone. (26 characters)
• The industry’s greenest notebooks. (34 characters)
• iPhone 3G. Twice as fast at half the price. (43 characters)

You might think that these apply well to Powerpoint, but won’t prove as creative or effective as the headline of an ad or E-mail message. Not so. Apple actually ran these same headlines in all their communication channels, and even used them in interviews. They appeared on their website as the feature headlines found on the home page, in the subject lines of their E-mail promotions, in press releases and in their magazine ads.

The media found they couldn’t write more effective versions. This meant that editorial coverage on these product announcements ran with exactly the same headlines. When Apple introduced the iPod, the Associated Press ran their story with the headline, “Apple’s new iPod player puts 1,000 songs in your pocket.” When the iPhone was launched, PC World ran the headline that Apple would “Reinvent the Phone,” using language provided by Apple. It doesn’t get any better than that.

In his book, Gallo points out that this rule is equally important in other presentation settings. For example, your pitch about a business concept given to potential investors also needs to meet the “Twitter” rule or it won’t go anywhere. Google pitched its concept using the following headline: “Google provides access to the world’s information in one click.” Gallo mentions that one investor told him, “If you cannot describe what you do in ten words or less, I’m not investing, I’m not buying, I’m not interested. Period.”

If you write copy, create a Twitter account and start using it. You’ll be amazed at how it could improve your headline writing skills.

Since most headlines are short enough to fit within the limits of a Tweet, ask yourself if the headline will actually mean anything if that’s all you saw. When you strip away the graphics and other parts of the message, is it still compelling? How well do your headlines meet the Twitter rule? Will they stand out in the ever-changing stream of a Twitter feed? If not, they won’t stand out in the stream of consciousness that impacts all media.

Alfred Korzybski, who developed the concept of general semantics, explained it this way: Insane people try to make the world of reality fit what is inside their heads.

Someone who thinks he’s Napoleon makes the outside world fit that notion. He filters and interprets the events and signals around him to fit that belief. There’s no room at all for facts.

But the sane person is exactly the opposite. She constantly analyzes the world of reality and adjusts what is in her head to fit the facts. In other words, while the insane person has only opinions, the sane person never has opinions or feelings. She would be totally unaffected by colors, shapes, other people’s viewpoints and so on — using only cold, hard facts to make every decision. She would buy a mustard-colored sports car called the Slug on the same emotionless basis as a bright red Viper because issues of color or semantics have nothing to do with actual performance. What friends think wouldn’t even be an issue. Indeed, a completely sane person would be like a computer, and in many situations would be unable to make any decision at all! If you were truly making your decision on logic alone, you would often be unable to make a decision for lack of sufficient input.

Most people are somewhere in between. You make up your mind about something you like based on input from many sources, including visual appearance and emotion. A lot of it comes from your gut reaction, how you feel about it overall. You might like the color of the red car, causing you to prefer it over the brown one, even if other aspects of the car are less favorable. Once you start to form your opinion, you look for additional pieces of information proving that you are making the right decision, despite the fact that many aspects of your decision are not based on fact. You may even find the nearest expert (or non-expert) and accept his or her opinion. That way you don’t have to bother with too many facts. In the advertising business, that’s called “word of mouth.” So how did the ‘expert’ you went to get his or her opinion? The same ‘unsane’ way you did!

A good marketing or advertising strategy makes use of this psychological process. A good strategy must be simple, fitting easily into the mind of the prospect. It must be memorable. It must provide just enough facts to be believable. And it must strike an emotional chord to satisfy “unsane” people.

So how does this actually work in the real world?

Strategies and brand positioning are used to appeal to the emotional part of our decision-making process. Very rarely, if ever, are these designed to appeal to logic.

When Apple computer said, “Here’s to the crazy ones,” it was talking about all of us. That “think different” campaign was entirely pointed at our emotional response to being seen as leaders and innovators in a world of followers. This claim had nothing directly to do with whether the computer was better than the competition, because those arguments would have had no impact. People don’t want to hear that they made a bad choice. They want to be inspired by their association with one brand because it is cool, or thoughtful, or daring, or whatever.

Here are a few other historical examples of unsane marketing at work:

Pepsi: The Choice of a New Generation

This campaign used emotion to trigger existing feelings of rebellion in young people, giving them an option to drink something different from what their parents were used to. Does this have anything to do with taste? No. But it worked wonders with an unsane audience.

Coke: The Real Thing

This campaign stood on Coca Cola’s position as the “original” soft drink. The factual side of this strategy combined with the implied perception that any product that has been a leader for so long must taste good. Personally, I think it’s a weak campaign (there’s no product definition), but it served the need Coke had to re-establish its position as the “original” cola.

BMW: The Ultimate Driving Machine

Despite the fact that this car doesn’t look anything like a true sports car, this campaign effectively positioned the BMW as a driving enthusiast’s automobile. A certain amount of factual information had to be used to make the statement believable, but I wonder how many people make a sports-car buying decision without ever trying a Porsche.

United: Fly the Friendly Skies

This campaign ran for many years, and was very effective. Yet while it ran, I flew many different airlines and found staff at most of them equally friendly and courteous. This ad campaign worked because people want to believe that there’s a difference. Of course, success with this type of approach means you better be as good or better than others in the area you’re talking about, or you could crash and burn (it won’t be pretty).

Budweiser: King of Beers

Now, Bud may be a great beer, but exactly what makes one beer a “king” compared to another? Nothing, except the image of that bottle cap turned upside down. A brilliant campaign, directly targeted at the “unsane” nature of how and why we make buying decisions. It has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with emotion. Long live the king (of beers)!

Good copy is hard to write.

Who reads copy? I often hear people say they never read copy. Sometimes they’ll say this while holding a newspaper or magazine! They read books, don’t they? You’re reading this. One of the world’s greatest advertising gurus, David Ogilvy, liked to point out that anyone will read an entire page of copy if it matters to them. If your name is Jane Doe and you saw the headline, “This Ad is All About Jane Doe” you would likely read every word.

What matters is not how much copy there is, but how relevant it is to you and how well it’s written.

If you recently bought a car, you probably won’t notice most car ads. But if you’re trying to decide between two models, chances are you can’t find enough information to help you make the final decision. Ogilvy says, “you can’t bore people into buying your product. You can only interest them in buying it.”

So how do you create interesting copy? Here are a few tips.

Present a powerful headline or audio/visual impact

84% of the effectiveness of any ad is that initial two-second impression that keeps people on the page or channel. Remember to mix a bent headline with a straight picture, or a bent picture with a straight headline. Never use both a bent picture and a bent headline together.

Try framing your copy as a story

Some people think this approach is no longer fashionable. Nonsense. People always have and always will respond to stories. There’s something in how we’re built that makes us love storytelling.

Make your ad communicate to one person at a time

The word “you” is so important in advertising. You can’t appeal to a group. People read ads one person at a time. In television or video you can communicate to each individual by showing that you understand their unique feelings about a subject. Write your copy as if you are talking to one person, with nobody else around.

Forget comparisons with other products

Comparing your product or service with something else that the reader or viewer understands is fine, but don’t compare against a competing product. This will only confuse people and may end up elevating the competitor instead of your client. And be very careful with silly metaphors. We’ve grown past that and they rarely work anymore.

Be careful who represents you

Testimonials are great, but they work best if they come from the person next door, not some celebrity. Especially if that celebrity does something unseemly. We’ve all seen plenty of examples of that lately, haven’t we?

Don’t be clever for the sake of being clever

Most attempts to write clever ads are embarrassing failures. Clever or funny ads are very difficult to write in a way that makes them effective.

Try not to make your ad look like an ad

That seems obvious, but way too many people don’t get this. The reason a person is reading a newspaper or magazine or online article is because of the content they paid for (even if they didn’t pay for it). The more your ad fits in with that content the more effective it’s likely to be. And don’t apologize for being an ad, either. If your ad is relevant and meaningful, what’s there to apologize for?