Introducing John Hollows Superior Alcoholic Ginger Beer

Last year our good friends at Fentimans came to us with the idea of launching an alcoholic ginger beer. They are the masters of the genuine ginger beer, and were pretty unimpressed by the fake, wine-based or flavoured lager ginger beers that were on the market. They knew that they could make a proper alcoholic ginger beer, the traditional way, slow-brewed with ginger from scratch.

 An original Hollows & Fentimans Grey Hen

They asked us to help them bring it to life. We were all quite wary about calling it Fentimans, because they didn't want to cause any confusion between an alcoholic brand and non-alcoholic. So we set about making a new brand for this new drink.

 One of the famous blue stoppers as used in the Hollows Grey hens

Fentimans have a great history of making ginger beer, so us and the Fentimans gang delved deep into it. We found the story of John Hollows. John was a son-in-law of Thomas Fentiman, the company founder. He was given his own ginger beer factory to run, and produced the drink under the name Hollows and Fentimans. We also found out that they used to sell their ginger beers in the famous grey hens (stout stone jars) but with a signature blue stopper.

So, after a few months of researching, writing, and designing on our part - and brewing, tasting, more brewing, and quite a lot more tasting by Fentimans, we're proud to introduce John Hollows Superior Alcoholic Ginger Beer. Or Hollows for short.


We designed these blue caps for the Hollows bottles as a nod to the old blue stoppers used in the grey hens. We made Beware Of Imitations our Hollows call to arms, an old-school line warning drinkers of the fake gingers that pretend to be the real thing.

In our research, we came across all kinds of interesting old touches. Established in a perfect factory in the north of England was imprinted into one of the old jars, we thought it was worth resurrecting for the seal of quality on the Hollows bottle.


Our Hollows branding and bottle in all it's glory. We wanted to give the label a detailed quality like the original jars often had, they contained lots of information and description. At the same time, to compete in the modern world, the name on the bottle needs to stand out on the shelf, or in the pub fridge.


We wanted to do something interesting with the process on the label to reflect the superior quality of the drink. We devised this starburst device that is produced by leaving the metallic label to 'show through' the ink. We used an increasing dot-screen to fade it in.


To promote Hollows in pubs, we came up with the Genuine Ginger? beermat. An old-fashioned long beermat with a pen and ink illustration of a face with a moustache, by US illustrator Steve Noble. The card is notched so you can hold it up to your face and see what you'd look like with a ginger 'tache.


We wanted to make the launch advertising simple and challenging. For Hollows to go out into the world proclaiming its place as the genuine ginger, challenging the fakes. We used letter-pressed woodblock type, set in simple blocks, and bold headlines.


It's been an interesting project so far, building a brand from scratch. Hollows is now on sale, keep your eye out for it in a shop or pub near you.

To see more of our work for Fentimans click here
Click here to see more Sell! Sell! work

Marketing and communication in 2011. How to cut through the crap. #8

SO HERE WE ARE IN 2011. Never has there been a more competitive time to be in the business of marketing. There have never been more ways of spending budgets. There has never been more pressure on budgets. Or, come to that, more theories about what you should and shouldn’t be doing. What is clear is that whilst many are waffling on about this trend and that development, some are simply getting on with doing things that get results. We are some of those people. And this is some of how we do it.

PART 8: BE WARY OF THOSE PROFESSING ABOUT "THE FUTURE OF ADVERTISING"

You could probably power a small republic with the valuable energy that is wasted every week in the industry by people theorising about what may or may not happen next year, in five years, or in ten years time.

Whole conferences pontificate about it.

Whole forests of trees are felled to provide for people writing about it.

But, without wanting to go all Yoda-like, you will never be marketing in the future, you will always be marketing right now.

The things that you are doing right now are the things that are most important to your business.

Focus your energy on doing the most valuable things that you can be doing for your brand right now.

The best ways of reaching your prospects right now.

The best ways of interesting them, exciting and converting them right now.

In ten years time, focus on the most valuable things to be doing then.

Value is created by doing things, not theorising.


PART 1: CREATIVITY & CRAFT ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER
PART 2: THE BEST COMMUNICATION IS STILL ABOUT PEOPLE 
PART 3: FOCUS YOUR COMMUNICATION ON CHANGING BEHAVIOUR, NOT JUST CHANGING ATTITUDE.
PART 4: BE DIFFERENT IN THE CATEGORY
PART 5: DON'T SPEND ALL YOUR TIME & MONEY TALKING TO FANS OF YOUR BRAND
PART 6: BE IMPATIENT & AMBITIOUS WITH YOUR TARGETS
PART 7: REPETITION. REPETITION. REPETITION.

Sell! Sell! In Print

Our Sell! Sell! house design and promotional stuff can now be found in print. Thanks to Liz Farrelly and publishers Laurence King who asked us to be part of Designers' Identities.

Books of Food




Penguin have combined my two favourite things in their latest themed series - books and food. The all new 'Great Food' series, due to release this April will feature around 20 books, which cover 'the funniest, most delicious food literature from the past 400 years'. 

All the books are designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith. (Boy has she got some great work on her site!) Each cover features a ceramic-style design relevant to the period in which the book was written. Here's a sneaky peek at the first three in the series.

These lovely covers were spotted over on the CR Blog.

Marketing and communication in 2011. How to cut through the crap. #7

SO HERE WE ARE IN 2011. Never has there been a more competitive time to be in the business of marketing. There have never been more ways of spending budgets. There has never been more pressure on budgets. Or, come to that, more theories about what you should and shouldn’t be doing. What is clear is that whilst many are waffling on about this trend and that development, some are simply getting on with doing things that get results. We are some of those people. And this is some of how we do it.

PART 7: REPETITION. REPETITION. REPETITION. 

Come back, we’re not advocating some 1950’s style bludgeoning of the public with banal messages.

However, have you noticed how few brands stick with an idea or theme for very long these days?

Marketing departments, boardrooms and advertising agencies tend to get bored with things long before people in the real world ever do.

Strong brands find a strong, long-term communication idea and stick with it.

NOTE. You do need to keep things interesting. It’s no good just repeating exactly the same thing over and over and expecting great things, you have to keep people surprised and interested (for how to do this, see Creativity & Craft).


PART 1: CREATIVITY & CRAFT ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER
PART 2: THE BEST COMMUNICATION IS STILL ABOUT PEOPLE 
PART 3: FOCUS YOUR COMMUNICATION ON CHANGING BEHAVIOUR, NOT JUST CHANGING ATTITUDE.
PART 4: BE DIFFERENT IN THE CATEGORY
PART 5: DON'T SPEND ALL YOUR TIME & MONEY TALKING TO FANS OF YOUR BRAND
PART 6: BE IMPATIENT & AMBITIOUS WITH YOUR TARGETS

Marketing and communication in 2011. How to cut through the crap. #6

SO HERE WE ARE IN 2011. Never has there been a more competitive time to be in the business of marketing. There have never been more ways of spending budgets. There has never been more pressure on budgets. Or, come to that, more theories about what you should and shouldn’t be doing. What is clear is that whilst many are waffling on about this trend and that development, some are simply getting on with doing things that get results. We are some of those people. And this is some of how we do it.

PART 6: BE IMPATIENT & AMBITIOUS WITH YOUR TARGETS

No one ever blew the world away by aiming low.

Ambition is infectious.

If you’re in a hurry to achieve things quickly, and ambitious with your targets, your agencies will be too.

Nothing gets talented people excited like a real need to accomplish something through their work.

You’ll find that agencies and creative people tend to do their best work on the most ambitious accounts.

If you want to get the best out of the people you work with, make sure to let them know that you’re in a hurry to achieve something.


PART 1: CREATIVITY & CRAFT ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER
PART 2: THE BEST COMMUNICATION IS STILL ABOUT PEOPLE 
PART 3: FOCUS YOUR COMMUNICATION ON CHANGING BEHAVIOUR, NOT JUST CHANGING ATTITUDE.
PART 4: BE DIFFERENT IN THE CATEGORY
PART 5: DON'T SPEND ALL YOUR TIME & MONEY TALKING TO FANS OF YOUR BRAND

Match.com Commercial Spoof

Very well done, and funny to boot. To boot?

Marketing and communication in 2011. How to cut through the crap. #5

SO HERE WE ARE IN 2011. Never has there been a more competitive time to be in the business of marketing. There have never been more ways of spending budgets. There has never been more pressure on budgets. Or, come to that, more theories about what you should and shouldn’t be doing. What is clear is that whilst many are waffling on about this trend and that development, some are simply getting on with doing things that get results. We are some of those people. And this is some of how we do it.

PART 5: DON'T SPEND ALL YOUR TIME & MONEY TALKING TO FANS OF YOUR BRAND

It’s very tempting in this ‘conversation age’ to spend valuable energy and marketing budget talking to fans or advocates of your brand.

After all, who doesn’t like to have a chat with people who already like you?

However, the single best way to turn users of your brand into advocates and fans is to always provide them with a product and service that continues to meet and exceed their expectations (also, include a little added value fun into the experience for them now and again).

It is important for brands to have fans and advocates.

But the best way of creating them is to get more people using your product or service.

Marketing budget is very precious, and the focus of it should be on adding value to the business.

The fact is, your biggest fans will choose you anyway.

This means that to make the most of your budget, your activity should be communicating with occasional users, lapsed users, or potential new customers.

Oh, and by the way, all of your communication should also make your current users or fans feel good about choosing your brand.

Which means making communication that’s always charming and interesting (for how to do this, see Creativity and Craft).

PART 1: CREATIVITY & CRAFT ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER
PART 2: THE BEST COMMUNICATION IS STILL ABOUT PEOPLE 
PART 3: FOCUS YOUR COMMUNICATION ON CHANGING BEHAVIOUR, NOT JUST CHANGING ATTITUDE.
PART 4: BE DIFFERENT IN THE CATEGORY

Some Things That Are Fuck All To Do With Valentines Day

Vintage ladies wrestling



Calloway Boogie



Dick Van Dyke Being A Cock-er-nee

Guess the Star of World Football From Their Classic Football Sricker

Would you like to see your Friday afternoon disappear into a vortex of memory searching, googleizing and laughing at haircuts? If the answer is yes, and you're a football fan of a certain age, you might enjoy this test of football knowledge from Three Match Ban.

Drink Coca Cola On A Saturday Night

I clocked this on Saturday evening in between Harry Hill's TV Burp [well, my kids were watching it.  I was reading Proust whilst playing the harp].



And while I was searching for it on good old YouTube I found this.



Besides the fact that both of these ads aren't exactly "best of breed" examples of what we do for a living, a few things occurred to me.

First things first, it's clear that people were having a much better time on Saturday nights in 1978 than they are now. Open top cars! Motorbikes! Pinball! Telephone Boxes! Cinema! Disco dancing!

Contrast that with 2011. Eating some pizza! In front of the telly!

Secondly, putting aside the point that the same heavy-handed strategy was being used 33 years later, it was a bit depressing to witness a Coke ad so poorly executed in this day and age. Where's the engagement? Where's the reward for the viewer? Where's the entertainment? Where's the bastard creative idea?

It actually made me think it wasn't actually an ad that I had just seen. More of a lecture from a giant corporation telling me what to think and do.

In fact, because it mentioned ITV1 in the ad, when I first saw it I actually thought it was part of the normal low calibre sponsorship idents guff that frequently pollutes our screens And then I remembered that Phones 4U were actually sponsoring the programme so it couldn't be that.

I bet Coke paid a hefty sum for the privilege of mentioning the channel in which their "advertising" sits. Is this fair game or a cheeky bending of the rules by ITV and Coke?

I don't really know.

But, thirdly, I do know that the existence of this spot makes an absolute mockery of Coca Cola's unwavering commitment to a "company discipline called Content Excellence" as espoused in last week's Campaign magazine.

Fourthly, I was taken aback by the ridiculous overkill of packshots and logos [in both ads, actually]. Maybe they thought that these commercials were so unmemorable that they better fill every frame with industrial quantities of their liquid in case the hard of thinking failed to spot who was paying for the advertising.

Now, as you know, here at Sell! Sell! we're all for featuring the product in the advertising but this is "client taking every opportunity to put the product in every shot" gone crazy.

If you can be arsed, take another look. At both ads. It beggars belief.

As does the fact that Coke aren't treating their audience with the intelligence and respect they deserve.

Marketing and communication in 2011. How to cut through the crap. #4

SO HERE WE ARE IN 2011. Never has there been a more competitive time to be in the business of marketing. There have never been more ways of spending budgets. There has never been more pressure on budgets. Or, come to that, more theories about what you should and shouldn’t be doing. What is clear is that whilst many are waffling on about this trend and that development, some are simply getting on with doing things that get results. We are some of those people. And this is some of how we do it.

PART 4: BE DIFFERENT IN THE CATEGORY

This sounds like a huge generalisation.
It is.
But it’s a generalisation that is generally very true.

Isn’t it odd, given that marketing and advertising is such a dynamic branch of business, that in almost every category, brands act and communicate very similarly to each other?

It’s not that surprising really. People see the most successful brand in the category and think “let’s do that”. And over time it just becomes the standard way of communicating.

But the power of simply acting differently in your category is immense.

Suddenly, everything you do stands out.

Suddenly, everyone else in your category looks like ‘everyone else’.

You become the interesting one.

The one people want to be with.

Think of some of the brands who have dared to be different in their category, (Apple, Virgin, Cadbury, Innocent or Fentimans, for example) it reads like a who’s who of successful brands.

This is not simply coincidence.

And the best thing about being different in the category is that it’s FREE.

It doesn’t cost any more than not being different in the category.

In fact it can make it seem like your budget is going a lot further.


PART 1: CREATIVITY & CRAFT ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER
PART 2: THE BEST COMMUNICATION IS STILL ABOUT PEOPLE 
PART 3: FOCUS YOUR COMMUNICATION ON CHANGING BEHAVIOUR, NOT JUST CHANGING ATTITUDE.

Gravity and the Web

A must-read piece by Bob The Ad Contrarian Hoffman about the reality of the web as an advertising medium. Read it here.

Marketing and communication in 2011. How to cut through the crap. #3

SO HERE WE ARE IN 2011. Never has there been a more competitive time to be in the business of marketing. There have never been more ways of spending budgets. There has never been more pressure on budgets. Or, come to that, more theories about what you should and shouldn’t be doing. What is clear is that whilst many are waffling on about this trend and that development, some are simply getting on with doing things that get results. We are some of those people. And this is some of how we do it.

PART 3: FOCUS YOUR COMMUNICATION ON CHANGING BEHAVIOUR, NOT JUST CHANGING ATTITUDE.

A lot of communication today has as its goal small shifts in perception or attitude.

Ultimately, the hope is that this will influence people’s decision-making when it comes to selecting a brand or choosing a product.

But attitude change is a relatively small ambition when it comes to communication.

Incremental shifts in perception that may or may not pay off in the long run might be fine if you are a market leader, established for generations, or willing to wait ten years for payback.

But for most companies, to copy this behaviour is to drastically under exploit the potential of communication.

Communication which has the aim of actually getting people to do something, or change the way they do something, is a more robust way to build a brand.

And there’s no reason why this kind of communication can’t also leave people with the same positive feelings towards a brand as communication that only attempts to generate positive feelings. (For how to do this, see PART 1, CREATIVITY & CRAFT.)

PART 1: CREATIVITY & CRAFT ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER
PART 2: THE BEST COMMUNICATION IS STILL ABOUT PEOPLE

WITH A DOFF OF THE CAP TO BOB.

Not Another Superbowl Ad Post

Sorry. Yes it is. Please accept my humblest apologies. I like this. Quite a lot actually. I'm not normally a fan of these big, set-piece types of nonsense. But this ad from Chrysler feels challenging and genuine. GM is dying on its arse, Americans appear from a distance to have fallen out of love with their own cars and manufacturers. The makers themselves aren't keeping up with the standards of the best far east and European manufacturers. So as an ad-man, what do you do? Give people another reason to choose. Or reason to reconsider. I think this piece achieves the power that it's clearly aiming for, and manages to imbue the brand with the attitude of a city. It paints a picture of a city with attitude, and stance of a fighter on the ropes, not willing to go down. Defiant. And it challenges the problem head on. I like that. And I like the fact that it feels like a message, not just another pleasant piece of advertising fluff. Maybe our kind US readers can tell me whether it stands up in the States?



The car's a bit ropey though. Damn.

A Tribute To Gary Neville

Gary Neville's career has been likened to a simpleton passenger on a bus full of money, occasionally gurning out of the window, shouting 'look at my money bus' at passers-by. However, he retired from being next to football pitches yesterday, so we thought we would pay tribute by remembering some of his finest moments...

Team photo, the early years

Gary makes the first team

Gary watches David Beckham play football

Gary watches Christiano Ronaldo play football

Apparently, Gary is going on to be next to football pitches in an official capacity. All the best Gary!

Classics

Some classic UK commercials. For no other reason than we feel like it.









100 Best First Lines from Novels

There's a great compendium of some of the most pithy and engaging words ever written on American Book Review: the 100 best first lines from novels. I love the art of the great first line - there's a lot to be learned from these for us ad hacks. Especially in terms of writing good headlines. How to make something compelling enough for you to need to read on, yet not give so much away that you feel you don't have to. Or, how to demand attention between a capital and a full-stop. Have a look at the full list here.

Some of my favourites:

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
—George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash.
—J. G. Ballard, Crash (1973)

It was the day my grandmother exploded.
—Iain M. Banks, The Crow Road (1992)

This is the saddest story I have ever heard.
—Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1915)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
—Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

Some good ones nominated by our well read readers:

Marley was dead, to begin with.
—Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843)
(ta John W)


Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure.
—Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942)
(thanks John A)

It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.
—Paul Auster, City of Glass (1985)
(ta Vue)

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
—Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1875)
(ta Milos)

The stripped-down jeep rattled, hopped and bumped its way across the rocky sands of the Koh-e-Sufaid.
—Ben Kay, Instinct (2010)
(from George)

Any more for any more?

VIA  @brainpicker