As we know all too well at Sandberg Trygg, global campaigns are rarely easy. You have to find a message and a way to express it that resonates across all your markets – without being bland. But what works on one audience, may confuse (or even offend) another. As Volkswagen discovered in 1998, when the company revived its classic Beetle.

In the US, the original ‘bug’ became hugely popular with the hippie counter-culture of the sixties and seventies, providing mobility and, in the case of the VW bus, an instant crash pad. So, what could be easier – or more obvious – than to re-launch the brand to a fanfare of hippie nostalgia. Unfortunately for VW, the campaign didn’t travel too well. Europeans didn’t see the Beetle through a haze of marijuana fumes, free love and draft dodging. On this side of the Atlantic, it was perceived as a functional and fuel-efficient car – neither more nor less. Of course, it’s also widely known in Europe that the driving force behind the Beetle was Adolf Hitler, a man with poor hippie credentials.

For the launch of the next version of the Beetle, Volkswagen has dispensed with flower power and concentrated on performance. Whether or not that will convince a new generation of buyers remains to be seen. If you want to know more about cross-cultural communication, there’s no better person to talk to than Barbara Walton, whose job it is to ensure ideas make sense – and ultimately money – all over the world. You can reach her at

Almost all B2B sales are built upon a personal dialog. But up until now most sales people have used static material such as brochures and product leaflets. And many PowerPoint presentations have been nothing more than a modern form of overhead leaflet. However, new technology is opening up completely new possibilities for meaningful conversations with customers.

Imagine that you want to produce a brochure that a salesperson can take to a customer meeting. Would you include a long and informative text or a short text that stimulates interest? The answer always is: It depends.  Some people love to read a long technical spec while others want the bottom line delivered within a couple seconds. And it’s highly likely that these individuals work for the same company but within different roles.

Now there are gadgets that turn this argument on it’s head and thus it becomes rather irrelevant: tablet computers.

Many salespeople already have an iPad or something similar. If not then it’s a purchase that many are considering. A tablet computer can be activated in a split second and is even suitable for using as a presentation tool during a working lunch. Who wants to lose those valuable minutes in today’s hectic world?

Indeed the tablet computer is a brilliant tool for producing brochures that are suitable for a wide variety of customers. When a salesperson holds the tablet in a horizontal position he or she can choose to show interesting offers which quickly illustrate customer benefits. Then all that is needed is to turn the tablet to a vertical position for a more in depth explanation in the form of longer text, technical data, links to animations etc.

With new technology salespeople together with their customers can take a unique journey together and strengthen their relationship in the process. And the customer can continue that journey long after the meeting is over. Maybe with some of those colleagues which are involved in the decision-making process. At the same time it’s worth being a little cautious. These gadgets are themselves quite magical but for customers the magic itself still lies within what you say and how you say it.

But that is what is commonly referred to as a ‘luxury problem’ wouldn’t you say?

I remember the first time I saw it – some 20 or so years ago – in a book on classic ads. My reaction was instantaneous and visceral. This was advertising the way it should be done – giving the audience credit for intelligence and discernment. It was an approach that opened up fantastic opportunities for marketers. Opportunities that remain almost wholly unexplored to this day. Even now, I feel affectionate towards Avis for having the vision, guts and integrity to run this ad before I was even born. Who says old adverts don’t work?

If you want to read about the legendary Avis campaign – including the story behind this particular advertisement – I warmly recommend ‘A book about the classic Avis advertising campaign of the 60s.’ In my next entry, we’ll look at what can happen when you go beyond the happy narrative that typifies communication. The result was a watershed in communication, and perhaps the most revolutionary campaign of the last 40 years.

My Sunday morning started with an awful feeling that I had forgotten something. After a few minutes I realised what it was – and it was a load of things: (1) filling in a nursery schedule for my daughter, (2) filling in an application for parental allowance for the new baby soon to be born and (3) filling in my income tax return.

No point in procrastinating  – just get started.  First the nursery schedule. A few years ago this would have involved reams of paperwork. Now you just have to log in to the local council’s website, fill in the details and click on “send”. That took five minutes, unlike earlier when it would have taken at least an hour.

The next challenge was the National Insurance office and our parental allowance. No doubt there’s some logic to the system but I just couldn’t find it  (despite 5 years at university studying a great deal of maths). But still must give them some praise. All the necessary information, including calculators and info about previous payments and other “good to know” facts were there on their website. After half an hour everything was filled in. Wonder how long it would have taken before the Internet …

And last of all – my income tax return. I remember when I was a kid how my parents used to tear out their hair every time they did their tax returns. All I had to do was log in to the Tax Office’s website, check that all the figures were correct and sign the form. What previously would have taken me days, took only quarter of an hour.

There’s a book called ”Flyt – förbättringar i Sverige sedan 1970-talet” (Flow – Improvements in Sweden since the 1970s). The book is about everything that has got better in the past few decades – things that we perhaps don’t always think of. A good book tip.

Digital is wonderful, and not just privately, at work too.

Today we send emails (maybe a few too many). Letters used to be sent by the internal post system or by fax. Today we click on a few keys to change a text in a layout program, before you had to cut and paste texts. Today we can keep in touch with colleagues and business associates all over the world using LinkedIn or Plaxo for example, before it used to be business cards.

So the question is what do we still do that is time-consuming and out of date. It’s a good question. Especially as we live in an age when time is considered a scarcer commodity than ever before. Herein lie the business opportunities of the future!

Recently, we published a short piece on the folly of using generic business pictures in communication. So it’s only fair to say something about typical business words.

As a writer, I admit to having used them on more than one occasion – often against my better judgement. I think you know sort of the words I mean: Proactive, sustainable, holistic, commitment, downstream, challenge, reliability, flexibility and the ubiquitous unique, to list just a few. These (and other) tired words are often complemented by an arsenal of equally trite expressions: carbon footprint, gold standard, front-end, hearts and minds (even Pentagon-speak seems to have entered the corporate vernacular) and, of course, one of the all-time favourites – paradigm shift. Like wallpaper visuals, these clichés communicate nothing but sameness. Just as using the word differentiation doesn’t actually differentiate, someone screaming at the top their voice that they’re interesting doesn’t make them so.  The remedy is as easy as it is hard. The easy bit is thinking deeply about your offer and your audience and trying to find distinctive (and relevant) ways to communicate. The hard part is persuading your colleagues that something needs to be done – and then doing it. But if you know deep down that your communication is riddled with shopworn words and expressions, I can only recommend you start the process as soon as possible.

PS. A word of warning, if your communication is even remotely like this the time for action is long overdue. If not, you can amuse yourself by typing your competitors’ names into the box and see what happens.

Why does the majority of B2B advertising look so dull? Why don’t more brands dare to let go, build on emotions and be different? Martin Lindström, author of the best-seller Buyology, puts it down to pre-conceived ideas about business people. They don’t have any feelings, are not affected by brands and are generally boring and conservative. The big question is whether there’s any truth in it?

Watch an interview with Martin here.

Anyone who’s walked past a building site in Stockholm has seen them. Bright orange and usually filled with rubble, they’re everywhere. Heck, even I’ve seen them, and I’m pretty good at filtering out anything to do with hard physical labour. That said, I take my hat off to Big Bag. As far as I’m concerned, these bags are sheer marketing wizardry.

I can think of few other products that also double as well crafted adverts. All the information you need to place your order – should you suddenly feel an urge to own a huge orange bag – is there: product name (simple, alliterative and descriptive), web address and phone number. But what lifts Big Bag to genius level is that the company’s customers actually pay for the advertising space. Think about it, every time somebody buys and uses a Big Bag, thousands of people get the message. You can’t beat that for a savvy media strategy! I’ll probably never buy one, but I’m still a Big Fan.

Advertising is a constant battle for attention. In spite of that, the majority of ads only engage one of our senses – sight. Hearing is equally powerful, but is not equally exploited as a ”means of persuasion”.

But, you probably say, we are surrounded by sounds from commercials. Anyone can testify to an endless stream of jingles and songs that get under our skin making us either happy or really annoyed.  And sure that’s true. But the kind of sounds that most effectively trigger emotions and make us prone to buy, are everyday natural sounds – and they are not as common in advertising.

Which sounds create the strongest emotional responses has been examined by Martin Lindstrom, marketing consultant and author of the bestseller Buyology: Truth and Lies about Why We Buy. To get an uncensored image of our emotional responses he has used an MRI to monitor the brain activity of people listening to various sounds. Not what we think we feel but how we actually feel.  And in terms of creating positive feelings one sound stands out, the sound of a happy baby. So, if you want to sell, do it to the soundtrack of a baby giggling.

That particular sound might not be very useful in all communication. But there are definitely other sounds that can enhance the positive experience of your products and services. Just think primitive responses; feelings and associations that are hardwired in your brain. Sounds that your body already knows the meaning of.  An image of a cold beer accompanied by the sound of pouring liquid makes you more prone to buy than the same beer image with music. And more car buffs get chills down their spine when they see a sports car and hear the perfect purring of an engine, than when they see the same car to the sound of rollicking rock’n’roll.

Sophisticated brain scanning and other medical imaging technologies teach us more about what works in advertising, but so far we’re only at the beginning of what is called neural marketing. And anyone who wants to explore the soundscape has plenty of virgin territory to cover.  Not to mention the possibilities of brand building with our remaining senses: touch, smell and taste.

Natural life is cyclical. Just as spring gives way to summer and night to day, human behaviour follows recurring patterns. I’ve long believed that when a certain type of conduct has become sufficiently pervasive for our collective consciousness to accept it as the norm, it has probably reached the top of its cycle and is about to head into retreat. The challenge is to identify these cyclical peaks as they occur.

I’m going to stick my neck out, and point to one that is long overdue for a downward trajectory: the brazen dishonesty of our elected leaders – regardless of their affiliations. We readily recall Bill Clinton’s many peccadilloes, all of which he vehemently denied despite the overwhelming evidence against him. Or his successor’s determination to rid the world of a tyrant’s weapons of mass of destruction, when it turned out those weapons were, in fact, ‘discovered’ for the sole purpose of manufacturing consent. Does this mendacity lead to public disgrace, immediate resignation or impeachment? Heck no, we shrug and accept it as the norm. But if my instincts are correct, perhaps we won’t for much longer.

What, you may wonder, has this got to do with communication? A lot, as it happens. In a world where ‘spin’ and dissembling are commonplace, honesty, integrity and respect for the audience stand out like roses in a thicket of brambles. As legendary adman Bill Bernbach once put it, “I’ve a discovered a great new gimmick – just tell the truth.”

More and more people are turning to social media to find relevant business information. Research studies on how we use social media professionally are now also starting to turn up.

One such study is the 2009 B2B Social Media Benchmarking Study, at business.com. This study was carried out among 2393 North American professionals within B2B. This is to date the largest study of its kind.

Among the participants 69.1 per cent prefer to attend webinars or listen to podcasts. 62.2 per cent visits sites and forums that feature user ratings and reviews for business products. Almost as many, 62.1 per cent, visit company or product profile pages on social media sites.

Many also choose to visit company blogs (55.1 per cent), conduct searches on social media sites (54.5 per cent) and participate in online business communities or forums (51.1 per cent).