WOULD YOU SURVIVE A MARKETING SQUID GAME?

It’s never been harder to beat the competition and walk away with the giant piggy bank at the end - and there have been plenty of brands killed along the way. So do you have what it takes to navigate the perilous game ahead? We look at three lessons you can take from Squid Game to ensure you’ll be ordering a bottle of red hair dye in no time.

1. New isn’t better

One of the most striking things about Squid Game is that we’ve seen it all before. A game of death offering redemption and riches to the victor. From Lord of Flies in 1954, to Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1987s The Running Man, before that cult classic Battle Royale defined the formula and gave it greater artistic merit in 2000. Clearly this it’s an idea that works as it now lays claim to some of the most successful entertainment properties of all time across literature and film with The Hunger Games franchise, gaming via the Fortnite series and now Netflix’s most successful show of all time, Squid Game.

This got me thinking about our industry’s obsession with the new, often prioritising what is cool or on trend over what actually works - and ultimately what consumers actually want from brands. We seem to be losing sight of the simple truth that consumers primarily judge brands through the lens of the product rather than a humanity saving purpose. Increasingly it seems less people even understand the fundamentals that drive effective marketing and brand growth. Resulting in an obsession that leaves us chasing tactics rather than effective creative strategy.

There’s no better example of this than Burger King, industry darling, celebrated and awarded for mouldy burgers, FIFA hacks, augmented reality ad burning, detour apps and hiding Big Macs. But the results are in and they aren’t pretty. Burger King sales are down 5%, and as Mark Ritson pointed out, the less sexy and celebrated but way more effective campaigns by Mcdonald’s have continued to maintain sales through the pandemic. Most concerning of all for the King is that boring old Wendy’s, with hundreds less restaurants in the US, has grown 5% and is now the second biggest burger restaurant in America.

This shouldn’t be a surprise, earlier this year YouGov released data analysing Burger King’s strategy since 2014 with the exit of their storied CMO. The data showed that although Burger King’s brand index score (a measure of overall brand health covering impression, quality, value, satisfaction, likelihood to recommend and reputation) had increased (from -3 to 1.4), it was mostly entirely attributed to customer satisfaction and value scores, not marketing. The increase was also much lower than Mcdonald’s (which rose a whopping - excuse the pun - 11.4 points). To add insult to injury Burger King’s ‘buzz score’ (a measure of talkability, news generation, WOM etc) actually dropped by 33% to 0.8 and was ‘well below’ the category average (suggesting Burger King have been talking to the industry, not consumers) whereas both Mcdonalds (+7.0) and KFC (+4.0) improved their scores. Hardly a challenger brand case study for the ages.

This just goes to show that being new and innovative isn’t always better. Budgets are tighter than ever and marketing efficiency is impacting both client and agency teams. It’s therefore critical that we have a proper strategy in place before rushing into tactics - focusing and sacrificing inorder to most effectively deliver the strategic plan and keeping both teams fully focused on what our audience really wants and needs from the brand.

2. Attention is still king

When was the last time you watched a Korean TV show? So how did Squid Game become nearly twice as successful as Netflix’s second biggest launch, Bridgeton?

Well Squid Game is just a bit weird isn’t it? Squid Game didn’t benefit from a slick PR campaign (initially) or a train station domination media plan (Stranger Things, The Crown etc). Squid Game won the fight for attention on the platform itself with a brilliant? and engaging trailer we could all learn from.

Squid Game looks different, sounds different, feels different, speaks different. Opening on strange yet iconic masked costumes and tracksuits - that stick in the mind and give consistency to every scene, establishing sides. Then quickly and single-mindedly explains the proposition of show - building intrigue. Crazy, bold, colourful and frankly epic set design that looks like nothing we’ve seen before on TV - yet is at once perfectly in tune with modern aesthetic sensibilities. Mysterious and slightly unsettling music - that elicits a visceral emotional response.

Immediately weird. Punch you in the face, what the fuck is that? Weird. That is a really good thing. Although marketing teams run away from weird, consumers leapt towards it. Because ‘weird’ is what made it stand out from everything else on Netflix. Stopped us watching Friends, The Office or Seinfeld again. It grabs your attention, then you become intrigued, then engaged and finally you decide to watch it (or buy it).You know, a funnel.

We call this distinction. One of the key theories floating around meeting rooms over the last 8 years or so since Byron Sharp’s seminal classic How Brands Growth, yet strangely rarely executed. When you look around at the modern marketing landscape it is really defined by ‘me too’. Advertising and design has never looked more alike and it’s true of nearly every category:?

All car ads look the same, fintech brands are a shade of teal, start up brands use the flat, geometric illustrations of? ‘Corporate Memphis’, beauty brands are ‘millennial pink’, lifestyle brands all have the same instagram friendly aesthetic, product layout, colour combinations and packaging, fashion brands the same font, the list goes on and on. Think you’re different? I urge you to pull together a moodboard of your comms and your competitors' comms and you might be in for a nasty surprise.

One of the most worrying stats that I have seen recently was that 84% of adverts aren’t remembered (Ritson).?

It’s crazy when you think about it. Just let that sink in. 84% of marketing budget down the drain. And I think it’s safe to say that for most brands 100% of their advertising isn’t remembered.?

I mean the literal definition of branding is “an identifying symbol, mark, logo, name, word, or sentence companies use to distinguish their products from others”. Surely two of the primary concerns of marketing teams must be 1) be noticed 2) be remembered.?

So why are we making it so hard for consumers by looking the same as everyone else??

Simply put if your brand looks like the rest of your category, you are failing at the first step of brand management. Be more Squid Game and commit to looking genuinely distinct to everyone else and you’ll reap the rewards. Look at Klarna, which this summer became Europe’s most valuable startup, a brand that looks, sounds, feels and behaves like no other fintech or financial brand in the world.?

3. Embrace the dark side of life

Squid Game might be a beautiful visual spectacle but it is also a dark, brutal, gruesome and violent nightmare. But it is substance not style that made Squid Game the viral success it became.?

At its heart Squid Game is an allegory for the dark side of capitalism, capturing the rampant inequality of globalisation, a secret billionaire class who are above the law and exploit the vulnerable, the non-stop competition to rise above the other ‘players’ (colleagues) at all cost, with the promise of a piece of the pie and the underpinning of a surveillance culture maintaining control of the system for the elite.?

This leaves Squid Game contestants helpless, burnt out and disconnected from society - a feeling all to familiar and relatable to the millions viewers watching at home taking their first steps (hopefully) out of a global pandemic, hot on the heels of the financial crisis, stagnating wages, increased cost of living, Facebook (sorry Meta) scandals and the fault line right through the middle of society defined by attacking the enemy rather than building together through consensus.??

For all the money spent on trend analysis, research, and the use of terms like authenticity and purpose, marketing exists in a deluded bubble, divorced from the realities of life. In the face of what is happening in the real world, brands continue to relentlessly push a positive and happy vision of life onto consumers. In fact, in many respects, marketing has reverted to the early 50’s with models, influencers and celebrity grinning inanely whilst holding the product or slapping a logo on something cool - as if Bernach and mountain of marketing effectiveness evidence didn’t exist. It’s little wonder people hate advertising.

The truth is happiness is boring. If you went to the cinema this week and the entire film was one long happy ending you’d walk out well before the actual climax. Humans are drawn to struggle, reality, against the odds stories that enable us to learn something about ourselves and each other.?

When brands are brave enough to step out of the wallpaper of smiling chumps to reflect on or god forbid have an opinion on the actual experiences and worries of consumers they win.

Have you ever moved house. It’s fucking awful isn’t is? According to research it is the most stressful thing in life outside of family death. Yet the entire category was all smiles and happy people in removal vans until Habito came out and said what we were all thinking, it’s hell!. The results: 3.5x customer volumes and 75% lower acquisition costs.

Tampons used to make you most excellent at volleyball and skydiving until Libresse/Body Form tackled the truth about how women were feeling with the excellent Blood Normal campaign (and subsequent executions). The results: 3x growth in a declining category.

Car ads are all terrible. I particularly hate the new Audi work, ‘Celebrating Progress’. Another celebrity wank-fest interjected with shots of the car driving around a city. But Audi Clowns. A car ad with an actual idea, focused on the negative side of driving, other drivers. The clowns. Placing Audi firmly on the side of the audience and taking a point of view we can all agree with. Just showing me the button or screen in the car doesn’t quite capture it in the same way doesn't it? The result: an IPA Effectiveness Award for Audi (not just for Clowns).

The lesson: people, real people, don’t care about your brand like you care about your brand. So embrace the interesting parts of their life rather than being just another brand telling them you’ll make them happy (it won’t, even if they love your brand), explore the dark shades because that is how you can truly drive the all important emotional connection - but it also has another truth of marketing effectiveness baked in, distinction vs the sea of fake happiness that is marketing today.