My ears always perk up when I hear English on French TV. But this time a hackle was quickly raised. About 28 seconds into the spot the woman says: “I always imagined you to be much more…” at which point George cuts her off and says: “taller?

“I always imagined you to be much more taller” (my emphasis). Ouch.

But recently a new 30-second version has begun airing. And lo and behold, the problem is gone.

I wonder what happened? Did someone spot the mistake and have it fixed? Or was it inadvertently nixed when they trimmed the spot down to 30 seconds?

I have a theory. According to a press release, the ad was scheduled first to run in 13 European countries (none of them English speaking) followed by Australia and Israel. Could it be that the phrase went unnoticed in the first batch of countries, but when it finally made its way down under someone noticed the verbal slip-up and had it edited out?

Whatever the case, the original version is still on the Nespresso Youtube channel. I wonder when they’ll get around to fixing it?

Ok, there, I’ve said it.

Let me explain. I spend a lot of my time with one foot in branding and one foot in content.

One thing I’ve come to realize is that most brand people couldn’t care less about content. Well, that’s not exactly true. They love content. They love hilarious ad campaigns and hip ambient media. They gush over sublime design and yearn for killer web sites.

But they couldn’t care less about a strategy for content, because what they’re thinking about is a strategy for the brand. In their view, the job of content is to express the brand. They leave content up to the creatives, who are more than happy to be left alone.

By the book

If you don’t believe me, open any corporate brand book or brand guidelines or brand standards manual or whatever they’ve decided to call their branding bible.

Take a look at the table of contents. Strip out everything that has to do with the logo, colors, white space, typography, illustration, merchandising, stationery and photos. What’s left? There might be a page or two on the brand’s vision, mission, values and positioning. Maybe a section about copywriting and tone of voice.

And that’s about it. I doubt you’ll find much on content. Which isn’t surprising. Most branding is an exercise in image (hence all the space set aside for logos and colors). Most branding professionals think that if a brand isn’t doing well, it needs a new image.

But image is only part of the equation. Image is superficial – quite literally, what’s on the surface. That’s why brand messaging guidelines often include gutless suggestions like “be impactful”, “be human”, “be benefit-driven”. As if any self-respecting writer would think of creating content that was dreary, inhuman and disadvantage-driven.

Is this seat taken?

This post is a call for a better balance between image and content in branding. If the future of branding is going to be driven by buzzwords like engagement, SoLoMo, thought leadership and conversation, then it’s time that content was given more space at the branding table.

I’d even go so far as to say that perhaps the job of the brand is to express the content, rather than the content expressing the brand. This may be heresy for most branding professionals, but hear me out. Think about your favorite brands. I’d wager that one of main reasons you connect with them (besides the perceived quality and value of the product or service) is their content. In other words, if a brand doesn’t have quality, relevant content it won’t be on your list.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Content is what gives brands relief – and here I mean relief like a relief map. Like the texture of a fabric, the strokes of a paintbrush, the swales and knolls of a terrain. Content imbues brands with contrast, nuance, dimensions, granularity, height and depth. Image may attract us, but content is what we touch, what we interact with. Content plays a huge role in shaping that oh-so-important perception of quality or value that branding is supposed to deliver.

Write a new chapter

So it’s time that brand guidelines included a chapter about content. I’m not talking about a style guide. I’m talking about guidelines for creatives that explain how content should be used to create meaningful experiences for customers and other stakeholders (ugh). A chapter that acknowledges the critical role that content plays in building the brand.

I’m not suggesting that content is more important than image. I’m just saying that a brand book that only talks about image and says nothing about content is a one-legged ladder.

Enshrining content in brand guidelines would indicate to the members of an organization just how important good content is. It would be a sign of organizational maturity. It would help protect content from arbitrary budget cuts, turf wars and “cut and paste” content creation. It would be an important step towards treating content as something fundamentally strategic.

Nice sales funnel, I thought. Not too pushy. The email arrived a couple seconds after I hung up.

The plan is called Performance Pro pour iPhone. The last line caught my eye.

The plan comes with a SAV Echange Flash which promises to replace my phone in under four hours in the Paris region (if lost or stolen, I’m assuming).

What made me laugh was the phrase in parentheses at the end of the line:

That’s right, the Performance Pro plan for iPhone comes with a replacement program that doesn’t cover iPhones. Nice.

Further proof, in case any was needed, that content is made to be read. So before publishing content, make sure it makes sense.

I dare any non-French speaker to figure what the English means. Bonus: where did I see it?

I was backtracking my way up a pink line painted on the floor, which I’d walked along a few hours earlier on my way to the elevator. The very visible pink went well with the clean walls, bright lights and indoor plants. It was a very nice garage, as garages go.

Someone from the shopping center above ground had obviously put a lot of thought into the brand image. They wanted to extend the brand into the entrails of the garage.

Ahead of me stood a group of three people looking around in all directions. They were talking among themselves. Every now and then their gaze would tilt upwards to a sign hanging from the ceiling.

“Excuse me, can you tell me where the elevator is?” one of the asked.

I aimed them down the pink line, explaining that the elevators were hidden in a small alcove, behind the plants.

As they left one of them muttered to the two others, “they could have at least put up a sign.”

In fact, there was a sign. Here it is.

It was hanging over us the whole time. The group had studied it half a dozen times at least, to no avail.

Cute isn’t innovation

I’d spotted the elevator when I’d driven in, so I hadn’t paid any attention to the sign. The group had apparently come in through another entrance and hadn’t seen the alcove. They’d latched on to the sign for guidance, but it didn’t tell them what they needed to know.

Not surprising. It wasn’t the internationally recognized symbol that we see in just about every public place on the planet.

No, no, the owners of this garage were smarter than the average bear. They had decided that they needed a symbol more in line with their brand image. Something friendly and fun.

Problem is: these folks weren’t in the mood for branding. They were lost and needed help.  And this sign looked like some kind of Prozac-induced purse snatching warning.

Extending color schemes to the garage isn’t the same as providing a consistent brand experience from the parking space to the retail space. And inventing a new version of the elevator symbol creates a new and unnecessary learning curve that hurts the overall brand experience.

Jersey

What did you think of?

A U.S. state? A sports shirt? A Channel Island? A dairy cow? A knit fabric?

Honey, you smell like Jersey

Well, the luxury brand Chanel is hoping for the latter. It recently released a new limited-edition perfume called Chanel Jersey.

Now, I “get” the reference, but only because I’m married to a French woman with an uncanny knowledge of fabrics and who was raised on the national myth that is Coco Chanel.  The defunct fashion designer apparently caused outrage when she began using jersey to make outerwear (it had traditionally been use to make underwear, according to Wikipedia).

The other fragrances in the collection all have evocative names, ranging from the mappish 31 Rue Cambon to the czarist Cuir de Russie (Russian Leather). I imagine that they all refer to different chapters in the Chanel narrative. And it is true that in France the English word jersey is closely associated with Chanel, at least among the fashion-minded bourgeoisie.

But to to try to stretch French signification of an English word into markets where English is the mother tongue, I’m not so sure. The word already means something in English. It isn’t a blank slate. How much money will Chanel have to spend to overcome the preconceived notions already associated with the word? I wonder how many Americans are going to buy the perfume simply as a joke for their friends from Jersey, the butt-of-all-jokes state. I wonder how long before Jon Stewart gets ahold of it. Will people think it smells like a cow or a locker room? Is it for men or women? Is this, in the end, going to be good for the brand?

Maybe I’m wrong. Knit fabric is the first definition of jersey in the dictionary, after all. Maybe because I’m a guy I don’t immediately think of the fabric (just like when women say “fawn” I think of an animal and not a color). And maybe Chanel aficionados are the market for the product, and they are in the know. I’m just glad that I don’t have to do the storytelling on this one.

But do Federal Regulations permit the use of added hormones in neighboring countries?

How much can a malapropism weigh?

Lightweight=briquet. Huh?

Briquet is French for a lighter, as in cigarette lighter. Oh, and no need for the hyphen between très and mince. In fact, no need for mince. Why not just ultra fin et ultra léger.

How French

As amusing and/or grating as this can be on the ears of English speakers, and overlooking for a moment the way it gives some folks an overinflated sense of their command of English, few people think much about what happens when the borrowed words shift context.

Let me explain.

One of France’s leading telecos is a company named Free. It has equipped millions of homes with WiFi broadband routers. These routers are configured to let other Free subscribers connect wirelessly to the Internet. Imagine you have a laptop and Free broadband at home. If you take your laptop on vacation and find yourself within range of someone’s Free router, you can connect to the Net…for free.

Not a bad idea. Now imagine you are a foreign tourist desperately seeking to connect to the Internet. Your computer/smartphone tells you that there is FreeWiFi near you. There’s no padlock, so you connect, but it doesn’t work.

Wouldn't you click on it?

This happens daily throughout France. Now, the other telcos have similar systems, but their SSIDs are clearer.

You’d be surprised just how often FreeWiFi comes up in discussion. In one way or another, everyone says: “FreeWiFi, WTF?” And it’s not limited for foreigners. Even some French people don’t make the connection between the network name and the teleco.

I’ll bet thousands of people leave France every day, puzzled and a bit miffed. They go home saying “Nice city, but FreeWiFi in Paris is a scam.”

Here’s a suggestion to the people at Free: clarify your SSID, slap a padlock on it, or at least put a message in English on your log-in screen.

I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I’d receive an invitation, click or tap the accept button (depending on the device), and then discover it wasn’t in my calendar. It was driving me crazy. Clients would call me to ask why I had declined their invitations. I was sure there was a software bug. I scoured the iCal knowledge base, but to no avail. Maybe it was the fault of those pesky Outlook users. It must be Microsoft’s fault, I thought.

Then the other day I found the problem. Here’s what the bottom of an invitation looks like in iCal.

iCal (Lion) invitation

Here it is on an iPad.

iPad invitation

And on an iPhone.

iPhone invitation

See the problem? The buttons aren’t in the same order. Every time I accepted an invitation on the iPhone I would automatically tap the button on the far right. It was force of habit, and since I was usually using the iPhone while on the go, I didn’t pay much attention to the interface. I was trusting a pattern. Like the one that says that the windshield wiper controls are on the righthand stalk. Doh.

I assumed that since all three applications were from the same company that the interface would be the same. I could understand the buttons having one pattern in iOS and another in MacOS, but oddly enough, it’s the two iOS applications that are different. Go figure.

It reminded me that as our digital ecosystems get larger and larger, spanning multiple platforms and devices, we need to be more careful than ever with ensuring a consistent experience across the board and at all levels.

Now if someone would just go and fix this, please.