Sermon From the Mount

When I was a young copywriter I had the privilege of working on several Anheuser-Busch beer brands (to be clear, I was one of a small army of young copywriters and art directors sharing that privilege). One of the great parts of that job was attending Beer School, where we learned about the magic of beechwood aging, what several tons of hops and malted barley smell like (delicious), what Clydesdales smell like (also, surprisingly delicious) and the difference between lager and pilsner.

One of the non-great parts of that job, at least to a young copywriter’s  way of looking at the world, was being forced to internalize the sacred mantras of the Anheuser-Busch brands’ “taste copy.”

Whether they tasted "rich and smooth", "smooth and mellow" or "crisp and clean", as a young copywriter, Anheuser-Busch's mandatory taste copy made me nuts. As a not-so-young branding strategist, I find it not only darned smart, but an idea that's well worth stealing.

Each A-B brand had a set of words - mostly adjectives – that were used to describe the particular flavor of that particular brand. Budweiser was always “distinctively crisp and clean.” Michelob was always “smooth and mellow”. Michelob Light was always “rich and smooth.”

Those words were to appear in that order in every piece of communication, whether it was a TV commercial or a coupon ad. And woe betide the high-spirited, creative puppy who took it upon him or herself to “improve” on this situation.

Of course, at the time, being high-spirited, young creative puppies, we rankled under these…rules. Wasn’t it our job to push hard at this boundary? Wasn’t it our duty to rend and sunder rules like these?

In fact, no, it wasn’t.

Especially not if we ever wanted to see our work produced. So, we all grumbled and cracked, dark, cynical jokes and “crisped” and “mellowed” until our fingers grew numb on the dull, gray keys of our beige IBM Selectrics.

Now, flash forward a decade or two and bear witness to this former creative puppy beseeching clients to work together with their researchers, planners and creatives to craft, agree on and enforce the use of “taste copy” for every brand.

Taste copy for every brand of what? Every brand of everything.

As young creatives, all we could see was that the fascistically-dictated taste copy prevented us from stretching our creative wings and describing Michelob as “brisk and refreshing.” What we didn’t see was all the good things the taste copy did:

• It stopped territorial squabbles between client-side brand teams before they could even start. Budweiser owned crisp and clean. Michelob owned smooth and mellow. Period. There was nothing to discuss. Dismissed. Go sell more beer.
• It streamlined the work because nobody at the agency or the client got bogged down reacting to focus groups’ opinions about whether or not Michelob Light really tasted “rich”. It did. It said so in the taste copy.
• And, perhaps best of all, at least from a pure, marketing standpoint, the taste copy enforced consistency of message across all media. And this is where the concept becomes especially relevant today.

Back when I was pecking out the fifteenth variation on Michelob Light for the Winners or This Bu’d For You, “across all media” pretty much meant TV, radio, outdoor and print. Now it means all that plus web, earned, viral, social, guerrilla, buzz and body art. Which is terrific. But since creating content for each of those media can conceivably be handled by a different set of people, enforcing a consistent description of your product, what it does, how it works and what it stands for begins to look a lot less like creative handcuffs and a lot more like common sense.

Please. Use the handcuffs.

The harder trick, of course, is to create the right “copy” - I’m using that term in its loosest sense, to mean the core message that pins a brand in the heart and mind of it’s intended buyer - that not only appeals to the senses, but also to peoples’ need to make emotional connections with the brands they buy. It’s not easy because people are not necessarily willing to admit (in many cases they’re not even aware) that their choice of insurance company, light bulb or analgesic is making a critical emotional connection for them. But finding those connections – or, more specifically, finding where there may be a lack of connection and crafting your brand to make one – is the most important job marketers have in this rip-off-your-features-and-undercut-your-price world.

So, by whatever means possible, discover the emotional connections that your brand can make, craft your “taste copy” accordingly (plug: one real good way to accomplish this is to hire Drumcircle. End of plug), then enforce the use of that copy with draconian ruthlessness. Demand to see it everywhere your brand is written about and to hear it each time your brand is spoken of. Defy anyone to “improve” it.

And if, by chance, somebody does come up with something better, well, buy them a beer.