The hard job of brand reappraisal

I’ve just seen the new work for Argos from CHI. Bravo. Seriously.

Brand reappraisal is bloody hard. You often have to start from a seriously negative place and shift opinions that have been ingrained for years, possibly decades. Yellow Pages, Shell, Nokia, RyanAir …the list goes on. It doesn’t matter what they say, said, do or did in their reappraisal campaigns - they just can’t quite shift the prejudices because they’ve been there too long. I’m still convinced that for all the lauded work that Skoda have done over the last decade they never quite managed to do much, perception-wise, apart from replace Datsun as the preferred motor of the minicab driver.

So it’s hard work. But I think these new ads from Argos are a really good first step.

I’m not sure if you’ve seen the work but it’s pretty cool stuff. That was the first surprise. Something cool – from ARGOS. Those people who brought you Arguuuss, pole-vaulting fellas in branded suits and Blue Aliens. One ad won’t do the job for them, but this is a good start.



For starters it (smartly) strategically aligns the Argos brand with brands like Beats, Dualit and Dyson. Tonally, it feels new and executionally it feels a million miles from the retail war crime that was Argos Truro on Christmas Eve as a kid.

Now, I have to confess here that Argos was the first account I ever worked on as a planner back in the last century (literally). They were a bit of a nightmare if I’m honest. It was a world of Melinda Messenger voiceovers and a billion retail ads a year. I also had one of the worst nights of my career at an Ogilvy/Argos ‘fun night’ at the Milton Keynes Megabowl. So I wasn’t exactly ready to love the work when I saw it.

I also tried the ad out on Mrs Chesters. Now, she is a seriously tough audience. Advertising has deprived her over the years of many dinners, weekends, cinema visits and the like. So she properly HATES all advertising and she’s ready to rip into anything ad-related at a moments notice. Believe me.

I asked her to watch this spot the other night, and asked her to guess who it was for. Her first guess after 2 seconds was Gap (good start). She watched a bit more, and then said Ebay (also pretty good). Finally she guessed at Amazon. Now I reckon Argos would be pretty happy with that list. A set of modern brands that don’t live in the world of big fat catalogues, stolen pencils and Green Shield stamps.

This work is fresh and interesting. Importantly, it makes me think that there will now be a new experience from the brand when I go in-store. So, now the real challenge starts: Remember KFC ‘Soul Food’ and the reality of your Zinger meal in the Whitgift Centre in Croydon? Exactly. Expectation has now been raised for a new level of proof that this ad promises. It doesn’t matter how slick the ads are if the experience doesn’t match it. An old colleague always summed up the Argos challenge as the ‘muddy cardboard problem’ – due to the horrible in-store experience she had as a girl when they used to break up cardboard boxes for people to walk on in the foyer in winter.

The hard work starts here. I now expect a modern, simple, slick and convenient experience - something akin to Amazon - when I go into the Argos on a busy Saturday afternoon. Will I get it? Not sure. I hope so, because this work deserves it.

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