It doesn't pay to cut corners...2

Another day, another advert to get me all hot and bothered for almost exactly the same reason as the Keroche ad did yesterday.

I have had the pleasure of visiting Migaa, and it is a very beautiful place. One gets a good feel about the people behind the project from the fact that the only thing that's complete (as of about three months ago) is the 18th hole of the golf course, but I digress...

What is of more relevance to this 'essay' is the fact that Migaa is a very well designed brand. The identity is distinct and memorable, it has a coherent visual language and all it's communication materials demonstrate a consistently high level of quality, or at least they did until quite recently.

This is not the first Migaa advert to catch my eye over the last month or so, it is the second. Unfortunately in both cases the thing catching my professional-ish eye is the fact that the brand's standards are slipping.

If I were the brand's 'custodian' I would be very worried about this. Based largely upon the power of good design, Migaa catapulted itself at launch straight into the premier league of East African real estate developments. It maintained this position for a good period of time, but now it is beginning to look a bit more like Buffalo Hills Thika and a lot less like the Knightsbridge of Kiambu-shire.

There is no more fundamentally important rule of advertising than that all advertising must be consistent with the brand's position. If your brand's 'accent', for lack of a better way of putting it, is 'up-town', then it must always be up-town. It cannot be up-town on Monday, Jamaican on Tuesday, Kinyarwandan on Wednesday and 9ja on Thursday... with accent being dependent upon the mood, inclination and preferences of the particular creative who happens to be working on the communication. It is for this reason that all serious brand's follow such strict brand guidelines - for it is a basic human truism that we instinctively and inherently distrust inconsistency.

N.B. the only ever reason to change a brand's 'accent' is as a result of a business-driven decision to re-position the brand in the market. Rule of consistency with regard to the new accent still applies.

I cannot let this ad go without breaking it down further. The bird is (very) badly photoshopped. The bird also looks like a robin, which is just weird. The fairway in the background is flanked by palm trees that look suspiciously Carribean - the shot is clearly straight off shutterstock. What really gets me about this ad is that it's basically lazy. The idea isn't all that bad - your noisiest neighbors will be the birds - but the execution is poor, and it is rendered yet poorer by the fact that a mere 30 minute drive and a semi-decent digital camera would have produced a wealth of beautiful shots for the ad, birds and all (the place is teeming with them).

And once again, just like yesterday's Keroche ad, 600,000 shillings are spent on media but corners are cut on the production leading to a significant devaluation of potential the return on marketing investment and a further erosion of the brand's equity. Tut tut tut...