So good they wrote it twice – or was that three times?

Just last Friday, a good friend pointed me in the direction of what can only be described as a thrilling piece of copywriting.

The quality of the writing and craftsmanship is jaw-dropping. No word of a lie.

And here it is.

But a quick scroll through the comments on YouTube tells another story, one of perceived mistrust and deception. So much so that Penguin published their own blog post to defuse the story and acknowledge their inspiration, even going so far as to include links to two particular videos where this same approach has been used in the past, here and here.

Who knows the true story in terms of how events unfolded? Whether Penguin were transparent from the start or even knew that the video had been posted, or if it was those ever-watchful, web 2.0 vigilantes who caught them out with their own brand of cyber sleuth.

Whatever the case, you can be absolutely sure of one thing.

Jason LaMotte, the chap who wrote the script for the video, is a great writer.

And most certainly a far greater writer than the vapid vultures whose comments have so quickly picked to bits what is otherwise an inspired piece of language and communication.

Right or wrong, inspiration or imitation, I know whose words I'd rather read.

365 and counting

This latest post began life as a brief rant by one of my colleagues at work.

Something to do with the fact that Yakult – like so many other brands – are now positioning themselves as every day.

And just in case that phrase is simply too hard for us poor consumers to grasp, they've kindly gone to the trouble of placing their product next to other products that you might also expect to consume every day. In much the same way that orange juice brands like to put a picture of oranges on the front of the pack just in case you weren't sure what a product described as orange juice might contain.

And that was pretty much where my colleague's rant ended. Just another Friday afternoon in the agency.

But it started me thinking about how everything is now becoming marketed as everyday.

We're spruiked everyday low prices. Where everyday matters are the key to everyday living. And we're told to get our everyday money with everyday banking. Because every day is an adventure. Especially if we want to get everyday rewards. Or, even better, be an everyday hero. That's when we can enjoy everyday luxury. In fact, when you think about it, we're just part of everyday.

It's everywhere.

Which is ironic given that we're also being constantly reminded by our marketing masters exactly how time-poor we all are.

So what's going to be? Everyday, or just whenever we can.

A marketing miracle

Only last week, I wrote here about a wine brand called Wallaby Creek.

At a mere $5.99 a bottle, it's a cellar dweller in every sense of the term, and a striking example of yet another wine following yet another marketing cliché. I can only imagine that it would take a marketing miracle to turn it into a brand of any real substance or interest, and after reading this article in the weekend's Sydney Morning Herald, it seems that I'm not all that far off that mark.

Here's what I mean. With many cleanskins now selling at Dan Murphy's for a paltry $1.99 a bottle, many winemakers are most likely praying for a miracle of their own.

If only they could turn wine into water.

Because even plain old water sells for more than $1.99 a bottle – and all you need to do is filter it.

But of course, even the smallest marketing miracles require a little imagination – something in much shorter supply than the surplus of 100 million cases of wine.

Up wallaby creek without a paddle

I've always found honesty a particularly admirable quality.

And the other day, I was looking in my local bottle shop for an honest bottle of wine when I stumbled across this brand, Wallaby Creek.

But what really caught my attention was a note from the winemaker on the back label.

I appreciate how you saw the stereotypical Australian label and didn't dismiss Wallaby Creek as another "me, too!" wine. We have three generations of experience and we think we make fantastic wine. Once you try a bottle we know you will see the difference. – signed, Rex D'Aquino.

I can't say I know Rex, but I'll certainly be on the lookout for more of his honest marketing truths next time I'm in the aisle – fancy reading such a brutal critique of a brand's packaging when looking to make purchase. Maybe it's an over-reaction to the time in 2007 when his company was fined for selling fake Scottish whisky, but I can't help but wonder if it's actually a question of not understanding the value of branding, even in a market as competitive as wine. That said, the wine industry is one of the most conservative, least innovative categories in retail. Ever.

Following clichés and category conventions doesn't do anything to distinguish a brand, leaving the product to become nothing more than wallpaper for the shelves. And Rex knows it. But Rex is a honest bloke and, at a paltry $5.99 a bottle, at least the price is fair.

One-name-fits-all

Naming anything is one of the hardest things you can do in life. And naming a business is no different.

It's especially hard because everyone is looking for a degree of differentiation. Not simply from a market perspective, but also from a legal one. And it's the latter that's the really tough part, because the vast majority of names have already been taken. In fact, according to a CNN report that I quoted as part of this article I wrote for B&T as long ago as 2003, 98% of the words in a typical dictionary have already been registered by one company or another.

As I outlined in the article, there's a whole range of pitfalls when it comes to naming, but here I want to focus on the question of differentiation.

In particular, I want to focus on a curious example of an entire industry where differentiation is almost absent when it comes to the name.

British pubs.

From the King's Head to the Queen's Arms. The Red Lion to the White Horse. There's an endless list of pubs with either exactly the same name, or at the very least ones that are very similar.

Maybe it's a quirk and the rules don't apply here. Maybe it's a problem, and that's why dozens of pubs are closing each and every month.

If we were to believe one of my favourite authors, George Orwell, then the name doesn't really matter so much. That is, just so long as it's called "The Moon Under Water" – the name he gave his ideal pub in a 1946 article he wrote for The Evening Standard. He may well have been right, and given that he was labelled "perhaps the 20th century's best chronicler of English culture" by none other than The Economist (and as recently as 2008), it seems only fitting that the final word should go to Orwell.

"And if anyone knows of a pub that has draught stout, open fires, cheap meals, a garden, motherly barmaids and no radio, I should be glad to hear of it, even though its name were something as prosaic as the Red Lion or the Railway Arms."

Incest is wrong, right?

It goes without saying that incest is ill-suited to the human race.

I don't just mean legally, morally or ethically, but more so on physical or biological grounds. The make-up of our DNA demands diversity, although this is also tempered by natural selection: successful characteristics become more popular over successive generations – a fine-tuning effect, if you like.

But diversity is key.

And in the words of those towering pillars of pop philosophy, Groove Armada, "If everybody looked the same, we'd get tired looking at each other".

So forgive me the slight exaggeration, but then why do so many brands look as though they've been designed by one of the inbred hillbillies from the 1972 film Deliverance? Why do they seem so intent of denying themselves the necessary advantages of diversity, opting instead to settle for more of the same?

In their book Funky Business, published in 1999, Kjell Nordström and Jonas Ridderstråle wrote about what they termed the surplus society. In their words, "The surplus society has a surplus of similar companies, employing similar people, with similar educational backgrounds, coming up with similar ideas, producing similar things, with similar prices and similar quality".

Sounds like the commercial version of inbreeding if you ask me. People who are so scared of being different that their anxious conservatism tries to eradicate our fundamental need for diversity.

In business as in life, it is the drive for similarity that is unnatural. And our need for diversity is no less a necessity for brands.

But in spite of this, a brisk stroll down a supermarket aisle quickly becomes a blur of swooshes and swirls as brands seemingly decide it's easier to copy than compete. In the profile piece that appeared in B&T a couple of weeks ago, I wrote that most of the Australian packaging industry think "it's acceptable to regurgitate the same old boring ideas, year in year out. Even the smart people I know...can't seem to help themselves". As unfortunate as that might be – and assuming the inevitable standouts – that statement's true. The same goes for a catalogue of corporate brands, from law firms to the world of finance.

We all know that incest is wrong. Don't let diversity die.

From the boat to the boardroom

At 5.30am, the river is pretty still.

The light is dull, the breeze is faint and all is quiet. All except for the whispered strokes of oars as they nudge the hull with a delicate force. Pools spin about the boat as the blades dip in and out of the inky water.

Rowing is a particularly English sport. And I found myself as a cox in my first few years at a particularly English university, Oxford. In the breaks between curiously-named terms – Michaelmas, Hilary and Trinity – boat crews would descend upon the rowing havens of Wallingford, Henley and Abingdon to train on the river in the early hours. Not much was ever said as people shuffled about the bank outside the boathouse and then gently floated the boat into the water. As cox, it was always up to me to break the eerie silence. After a couple of quick feathers at the bow to line up the boat, I'd call for oars to come square and away we'd go, off into the misty morning.

The warm-up was always my favourite time on the water. No pressure, just a few looseners, and certainly no traffic to make me too conscious of the stream. Now and then, I'd feel a cold splash on the hand, a brief reminder that I was floating on water not gliding on ice. Otherwise, this was a time simply to collect your thoughts.

As we would reach the final bend in the river before the first of several locks, we'd glide to a halt, blades tapping along the water's surface. A gentle turn as one side applied pressure over the other, and the boat would gracefully come to a rest in the shallows near the opposite bank. At which point we all knew that the next hour or so wasn't going to be quite so easy.

Up and down, we would row relentlessly at a range of speeds and tempos and styles. Quick hands, fast at the catch, driving through the water, clean finish. All the while, I would be calling the strokes, watching for technique, and steering a smooth course as the blades swum through the water.

One morning, I remember we were practising in short bursts. We had been rowing a little unevenly, and I found myself calling "Come on!" on more than one occasion. Nothing I said seemed to make much difference, and eventually we finished the session and headed back to the boathouse.

Once on the bank, one of the more experienced crew members let me have right between the eyes – and with both barrels. You can imagine the scene in your own mind: a bulky, 6"5' rower in the peak of fitness laying down the law to a slightly scrawny, 5"6" cox. The point he was trying to make – in between various expletives and vigorous gestures – was that calling "Come on!" in a boat ever again was (1) very likely to land me in the water, and (2) a complete waste of breath as it didn't mean anything or bear any relation to what was happening in the boat at the time.

Which brings me to my point.

Too many businesses rely on meaningless calls to action – "sell more", or "churn less" – without actually understanding what is happening in the business at the time. And more often than not, marketing is guilty of the same generic battle cry, without actually being able to tie the promise that the brand makes to the reality the business delivers.

Coffee that relies upon the cliches of the category – aroma, coffee beans and a good old mug.

Universities that trade off pictures of smiling students on campus as their stock in trade.

And, professional services companies who fill their brochures with thirtysomethings in suits, shaking hands, walking up stairs, and generally looking serious but savvy – and all with the benefit of a soft focus.

Not only are all these examples tired, boring and lazy, but they do nothing to promote what is exciting or unique about the brand in question. They simply gloss over the details, yell "Come on!" at anyone who will listen, and hope someone equally myopic will give them a go. No wonder people often remark on how marketing is "hardly rocket science" – at this level, it's not even basic arithmetic.

I was lucky, I learned my lesson, and I managed to stay dry through my brief career as a cox.

However, many marketers don't have the benefit of strong and experienced leaders to pull them aside when needed. As a result, many find themselves struggling to steer the ship – in fact, they're too busy fighting the battle to sink or swim.