Karan Chadda

Global digital marketing and communications leader

Always Coca-Cola

We’re only half way through January and the biggest communications event in 2013 may already have happened. This week, Coca-Cola released its first ever anti-obesity advert.

Under the theme of ‘Coming Together’ the two-minute segment is narrated with a tone not dissimilar to a public service announcement. The message it carries is hardly surprising: personal responsibility.

This is the standard argument used by all industries facing campaigns that say their products present a danger to the public. Without in any way implying a similar order of magnitude, the personal responsibility argument is also used by tobacco companies and the U.S. gun lobby. It is used for the simple reason that it is the only viable argument available.

In the case of tobacco, the argument is doing little but marginally delaying the inevitable decline of the industry. Coca-Cola, however, is playing a stronger hand and playing it well. They’re using their entire portfolio to deflect attention from their ubiquitous, sugary, calorific core product.

The advert speaks of average calorie reductions across all its drinks brands and the fact that 180 of its 650 U.S. beverage products contain either low- or no-calories. It speaks of the availability of smaller portions and, usefully, manages to squeeze in a big Coca-Cola logo every few seconds. What the advert resolutely does not do is refer to the sales volumes, calorie and sugar content of its biggest selling product.

Coke has spent many years developing a wide range of products and, particularly in recent years, this has included plain bottled waters and drinks that are supposedly healthy such as its Vitaminwater brand. These products are now being used by the parent company to protect its most valuable asset. In a sense, they’re coming together to protect Coke from ruinous legislation and regulatory burdens in the same way that Coca-Cola want us to come together to fight obesity.

From a communications point of view, the other notable aspect of Coke’s advert is that it’s really a lobbying campaign dressed up as a public service message. It delivers the personal responsibility message to millions of people. No doubt it will be coupled with digital campaigns, media outreach, lobbying in Washington and at an individual state level, community action groups and more. It is an excellent example of communications doing two things that it always should: being properly integrated; and delivering a clear business objective.

Who would I back to be the first to really win a public health debate using the personal responsibility argument? Coke is it.

This article originally appeared here on the Huffington Post.

For whom the skeuomorphic keystroke clicks

Skeuomorphism is a hot topic in design at the moment and most of the words directed at it aren’t kind.  Do the pages of eBooks need to mimic the folding pages of paper books? Do your purchased iBooks really need to sit on a shelf when they’re really just files in a folder? Some say it lacks originality, others that it limits creativity. My issue with it is far, far more prosaic. It involves tiny clicking noises.

Commuting. Many of us do it. We sit, stand and contort our bodies on buses, tubes and trains. Some read papers, increasing numbers while away the time texting, tweeting and bidding on eBay. Most of us do so silently, but everyone once in a while it happens. Click, click, clickety, click. It’s low and irregular but constant. Click, click, clickety, click. Someone hasn’t turned of the artificial keystroke noises on their phone. Gah! Now, I know it’s a minor irritant. In fact, to even call it an irritant is probably overstating it.

Why though do these clicks exist? More importantly, why one earth is the default setting for the clicks to be on? There’s no shortage of behavioural economics papers that demonstrate that people are lazy – if you make them opt out of the click, click, clickety, click, they simply will not do it. So if you made them opt in, then the incidence rate would drop dramatically.

It would be petty to start some sort of campaign to switch the default setting, but it seemed reasonable to ask some folk on Twitter why the default is set to Click, click, clickety, click. So that’s what I did.

The first idea pitched focused on accuracy. Perhaps, speculated the tweeter, the clicks make typing more accurate. There is some merit to this argument, you certainly know you’ve clicked on a key. However, keys also change colour – another skeuomorphic touch to give the effect of depression, so you see that you hit a ‘enter’ or ‘post’. Moreover, a click merely confirms that you’ve hit a key, not that you’ve hit the right key. As such it might aid speed but I’m uncertain it helps accuracy per se.

https://twitter.com/DrPizza/status/289493713321852929

The next contribution can be classified as the Audio Slave theory. In the same way that digital cameras make a fake shutter noise, perhaps the click, click, clickety, click is just reassurance for those who need their technology to be mimic times gone by.

Someone else suggested that it was a way of demonstrating features. Perhaps the marketing whizzes at phone manufacturers believe new phone owners power up their device and, on hearing the first click, think, “Ooh, it’s got speakers.” I hope no marketer thinks that.

The final idea was transition. Perhaps phone manufacturers are just providing some familiar noises to ease people into new technology. This argument falls down because back when phones had actual physical keys, they still added artificial noises.

https://twitter.com/adityabhaskar/status/289512352930467840

I can only conclude that the click, click, clickety, click is with us today because it was with us yesterday and the day before and the day before that. It’s because keystrokes are such a small detail, no one has ever stopped to say, “Can it be better?”

It can and it should, but it’s not a big deal.

FT survey of economists: UK house prices

The FT has published a survey of 94 economists on a range of issues. Unsurprisingly, the majority believe house prices in the UK are still too high. Leaving aside the abstract discussions of whether the concept of prices being ‘too high’ is valid, I thought it would be interesting to see if there was a simple way of extracting some findings from the results. Helpfully, the FT has published a full transcript of answers.

The obvious way to simple insights seemed to be creating a word cloud (see below). A cursory glance shows that words high, London and supply seem to be the central themes. So, an interesting survey, but nothing new.

UK house prices - word cloud

Source: FT.com

Lomo – uncut

I’ve written a fair bit about light recently. It’s been fun learning more about what’s possible just by adjusting some settings or taking a snap from a different angle. Then I printed out some photos and it struck me that there was some fun to be had working with film. Since I’m not able to develop images from film myself, I would literally get what I take, no adjustments, no cropping, no quick fixes. Then I thought, if I’m going to lose some control over the end result, I might as well lose some more. So I decided to give Lomography a try.

Now, I’m aware that Lomography is a bit divisive – is it really photography or is it hipster-ism gone mad? Well, I think it’s really photography. Some of the marketing blurb is a bit far-fetched but ultimately you’ve got a camera, you know its limitations and its strengths, and you take the best snaps you can. I got a Diana F+, bought some 120 film, then started snapping away.

Below is my first attempt at capturing some of the Lomo fun. I could have cropped and re-sized the images. I could have adjusted the contrast. That’s not the point though. It’s not about capturing a perfect moment, or even about capturing a real moment, it’s about enjoying moments and having fun taking snaps.

Imperfectly wound
Double exposure
Light leakage
More light leakage
Double take

A note of caution

If you decide to try out Lomo, there are a few things that it’s useful to be aware of:

– If you get a camera that takes 120 film, it’s hard to source somewhere that will develop it, and it won’t be cheap. Two rolls cost me £36 from Snappy Snaps in Kingston. They’re a very friendly bunch in there, but it’s the price of a decent SD card for 20-odd snaps and a CD. Processing 35mm film is much easier and cheaper.

– Light will leak in, sometimes the spool won’t wind properly, you’ll forget to remove the lens cap (repeatedly) and you’ll feel a bit of a wally walking around with a plastic camera with an over-sized flash.

– Storing film in your fridge makes you feel unbelievably cool.

– Nothing will prepare you for the excitement of waiting to view snaps that you took a week ago. It can be unbearable.

Light doesn’t travel in straight lines

I popped over to a party by Brick Lane this evening. The warren of streets between Spitalfields and Brick Lane is wonderful. Cleaned up, brick built, tightly packed little buildings crammed into small, dimly lit lanes. It can uniquely be described as gentrified Dickensian.

The scene made a wonderful setting for an experiment with light. It wasn’t a very successful experiment. Partly because I had limited time and partly because I’m not the most gifted snapper. The only photo I am able to share is below. The building should be in sharper focus, but it is not far off. The light waves brilliantly. The photo is unedited.

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