Will Allen-Mersh - Planner Portfolio

Standing out has long been consid-ered the way to brand and business success. Call it what you want - differentiation, USP, blue ocean - but it's all about standing out somehow. Early businesses stood out by prom-ising functional benefits like higher quality; in the second half of the 20th century, emotions became the new competitive currency, with brands claiming their offering would help you stand out.

This was a convincing proposition in a big brand world, where it was hard forpeople to stand out when they could

only collate together their identity out of the same few big brands in the same grocery stores, the same Top 40 music on the same radio stations, the same clothes from the same malls. It was hard to stand out, so it was rewarding.

Sheer difference won't sell anymore. This new breed of consumer is sharp-er and more sceptical; less satisfied despite being better off than ever before. Brands need to work harder to win her over. She needs the why behind the what: to know not just that a brand is different, but that it

is making a difference. A difference that it fundamentally believes in and drives its every decision.

Don't just stand out. Stand up.

Stand out,Stand up.

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Will Allen-Mersh

Nikon.

Client brief Find the blind spots and createa purpose-driven brand

Stand out Imagery providers old and new are focused on the idea of covering, completely ignoring discovering.Stand up Keep on looking.

The duopoly between Nikon and rival Canon was recently disrupted by two unlikely upstarts from outside of the traditional camera category: Instagram and GoPro. Interestingly, while some research talking through photos taken by users of these differ-ent brands at first showed them to be polar opposites - Instagram is reactive, encouraging people to whip their phone out for a snap when something interesting happens; GoPro is pro-active, motivating users wearing the device to go out and make interesting things happen - the two are actually united by a common trait.

Both are essentially about covering, whether this is literally covering photos with filters (Instagram) or covering events or occasions (Go-Pro). Canon, focusing on creativity for professionals, also plays in this 'covering' arena.

This opens up an interesting space for Nikon to occupy: discovering. Instagram has democratised - even commoditised - creation to the point where all it takes is a click to make 'art'. But in conversations with photographers we learnt something interesting: photography is more

about finding than creating, espe-cially in this Photoshop-sceptical era. Art is out there; it just takes the right eye to find it and do it justice.

Nikon's purpose is therefore to encourage currently 'blindfolded' adventurous amateurs to keep on looking; to help give them 'the professional's eye', inspiring them to proactively hunt down their own art and their own inspiration.

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"Only the right eye can find,What the others left behind."

Partnerships in Care.

Client brief Make a compelling case for value to price-obsessed health system buyers

Stand out The struggle to adjust to new surroundings is one of the biggest causes of relapse.Stand up There until the very beginning.

Partnerships in Care (PiC) is a UK care provider for people with mental illnesses ranging from mild asperger's to schizophrenia. With budgets dwin-dling and GPs consolidating, buyers are forcing suppliers into a price war.

PiC doesn't offer a particularly cheap service, making this new competitive environment difficult. That's where we come in. How can we convince cost-conscious customers that our pricier service is worth it?

There's only one way to find out: in person. Given the nature of this busi

ness, that didn't mean the usual supermarket shop-along. It meant me spending three days in a high se-curity mental asylum. It meant me being pushed into a panic room by my bodyguard to narrowly avoid assault! All in the name of research.

Fortunately, it led to a category truth: that relapse is what spikes costs for healthcare systems, and that it's most likely to happen during reloca-tion. PiC cannot distinguish itself on points of parity - quality of care, etc. - so it should compete on a point of difference: breadth of offer. No other

brand provides uninterrupted care in one location all the way from high-se-cure facilities down to assisted living. Saved costs from a lower relapse rate and fewer appraisals let us talk about value rather than price.

It also let us talk about an underrated aspect of care: dedication and perse-verence . We recognise that there's no easy, one-size-fits-all approach, but the possibility of starting a new life makes it worthwhile. Our role doesn't stop until their new role in the community starts. We're there until the very beginning.

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Coca-Cola.

Client brief Make 'Open Happiness' relevant to a new generation of drinkers

Stand out Why use communications to try and make a difference when your biggest resource is sheer distributional presence?Stand up Coke on strike: Open happiness for all.

People love Coke, and always have. They love it in a way that water - its new nemesis - can't be loved. But re-cently that love has become shame-ful, illicit… compromised. Coke was censored from lunch boxes by guilty parents, and now millennials are the first generation not to be reared on this dark amber nectar. The risk of doing nothing is often underestimat-ed: Coke will become obsolete by 2050 if it is not made relevant once more.

The problem here is that society's disapproval has got in between

people and Coke. It has prevented people from loving what they love. The 'Open Happiness' campaign tries to address this, but its shiny, picture-perfect visuals fall flat on a struggling Gen Y who resonate more with gritty reality (see the success of HBO's 'Girls'). The brand comes across as all talk and no walk.

Coke has recently shown that it's will-ing to make large monetary sacrifices to further its mission of open hap-piness, donating its 2014 marketing spend to Typhoon Haiyan. But Coke's biggest influencing power is its

sheer distributional presence, not its communications budgets. What issue is especially relevant to the millennials of today's America, and centres on the problem of society's disapproval preventing people from loving what they love? Gay marriage. The idea, therefore, is to withdraw Classic Coke completely from the US, reinstating it with a splash state-by-state when each legalises gay marriage. This is no longer Coke vaguely talking about Open Happiness: it's Coke taking concrete, decisive action to imple-ment Open Happiness For All.

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Summer’s Eve.

Client brief Move Summer's Eve away froma problem/solution category

Stand out You can’t tell women to clean themselves, as all of the competition does,without implying that they’re dirty.Stand up Vaginate: give your 'best friend' a pep talk.

Offering a solution inherently implies that a problem exists. The competi-tion all sell cleanliness and freshness, suggesting that those who use their products are somehow dirty. They make money by making women feel ashamed. No wonder that in a small-scale ethnographic study we observed euphemistically-named 'feminine care' products being hidden away on the top shelf and at the bot-tom of the shopping cart.

This isn't how Summer's Eve wants to talk to people. Not only because we were raised better than that, but also

because it doesn't make business sense.

Relegating our products to being solutions shrinks potential usage oc-casions dramatically: some women will never feel dirty, and even those who do won't feel dirty all the time.

It's like medicine. You wouldn't drink cough syrup unless you had a cough, would you? (Okay, maybe don't answer that…). But lots of people take vitamins regularly; especially millennials looking to be on top of their game every day, who are the

women we're talking to. Solutions don't sell nearly as well as preventions do, especially in this hypochondri-ac-filled, paranoia-fuelled age.

So the idea? Don't clean: VAGINATE. Just show your V a little regular TLC! Give it the liquid equivalent of a pep talk - the kind you give your closest friends every week (and what's a closer friend than your vagina?) - and then you'll be free to take care of the second most important issue: BE-COMING BEYONCÉ! Only joking. But, you know, being a woman who isn't ashamed of her 'best friend' anymore.

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Resumé.Work.Brand Strategist, PassionbrandNov 2011 - Jan 2014

Intern, JWT LondonJan 2011

Marketing Manager, Cult BeautyJun 2010 - Aug 2010

Pricing Manager, easyJetJul 2009 - Oct 2009

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School.Planning Diploma, Miami Ad School (Derek Parkin Award)Jan 2014 - Apr 2014

MSc Marketing, Bath University (Scholarship)Sep 2011 - Sep 2012

BSc Economics & Management (1st in latter), Oxford UniversityOct 2007 - June 2010

Play.SwimmerMultiple University and County record holder, British Universi-ties & Colleges Championships champion, 2009 World Champi-onship Trials qualifier, 11th in UK

Avid investorPortfolio up 91% in 2013

Freelance logo designer

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