*supercollider

We’re moving into an age where consumers are demanding more responsibility from their brands. Whether labour practices or your green policy, being a good global citizen is now essential for brands that want to compete.

The next step beyond that is about customers rewarding brands who find clever and effective ways to do good.

Smart brands and agencies know this, and we’re going to see a lot more of alignment with causes big and small, especially in the wake of Dove’s success with the Real Beauty campaign. Recent examples I’ve seen of the trend include Nokia’s association with Pangea Day and Patagonia’s Footprint Chronicles.

However, Influx Insights points us to the strangest example I’ve seen yet, AEG-Electrolux’s noise awareness campaign.

On some level, you have to respect the attempt at differentiating their product through a big association with an issue that no one “owns” yet. The problem for me is not even necessarily with the strategy of aligning against noise pollution, it’s that the execution falls a bit short.

The whole campaign is based around interactive billboards that report decibel levels in high traffic areas. Linking this back to my washing machine is a bit of a stretch. But worse, my overall impression is this is more an advertising campaign with a slightly disingenuous cause tacked on for PR’s sake and to dramatize the product message and make it seem more important than it is.

As a proof point, see AEG Noise Awareness blog. This is purportedly about the larger issue of noise awareness, but over the course of six weeks they’ve managed just two posts: the first is a blatant promo for the billboards, and the second is a more sneaky promo for, well, the billboards. They’ve used social media to create an ad for an advertisement, and there’s still no sign of attempting to do anything about the issue at hand. But hey, did we tell you our washing machine is really quiet?

The microsite? They’ve taken the high-concept domain of www.noiseawareness.co.uk, but the content is much the same. Here’s our billboards. Here’s a token link to Noise Awareness Day that someone else is organizing. And here’s our products.

I would’ve actually been much happier if they’d just done the billboards and left the whole “we’re promoting a big cause out of it”, because it’s seems from what I’ve seen so far that they don’t genuinely care about the issue beyond their immediate product messaging needs. Something that should be a positive thing for the brand instead comes across as disingenuous.

Oh well, it was an interesting idea, and I’m sure we’ll have lots of both good and bad examples of brands attempting to associate with a big issue in the coming days.

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brand, campaign, green, cause marketing, trend, differentiation