I spotted an announcement yesterday in Brand Republic about Peugeot signing an actor by the name John Simm to voice over a 30-second TV spot.
The announcement reveals that this is a multi-million pound campaign to “move the Peugeot brand forward”.
At Onalytica we have a new service called BrandObjective, which, among other things, analyse how similar (or dissimilar) brands in or out of category, are perceived.
By looking at how John Simm is spoken about it is easy to see why Euro RSCG (the agency behind the campaign) picked him.
John Simm represents an attractive combination of street-cred, luxury, premiumness and Britishness.
Using a bit of rocket science maths (I am not kidding – Nasa use this method to classify space debris) you can calculate the probability that two brands are perceived similar.
John Simm is most similar to brands such as Pepsi (Street), Hermes (Luxury), Carlsberg (Street), Downton Abbey (British), Rolex (Luxury), Selfridges (Premium), Burberry (Luxury, British), Harrods (Luxury, British), Dyson (British, Premium), PG Tips (British) and – here it really comes – BMW.
While there is a probability of 95% that the brand properties of John Simm are similar to those of Burberry, there is a probability of 78% of similarity with BMW's brand properties.
In contrast there is a probability of 0% of similarity between the brand properties of Jeremy Clarkson and BMW.
Currently there is a 0% chance that the brand properties of John Simm and Peugeot would be considered similar. If they are to become more similar, the way people perceive Peugeot should focus more on adjectives such as “mysterious”, “funny”, “hardy”, “shameless”, “brilliant”, “ruthless”, “charming”, “giving”, “generous”, “fancy”, “intelligent”, “candid”, “considerate”, “imaginative” and “warm”. These are all brand properties the Peugeot brand is missing when compared with John Simm's.
On the other hand, by becoming more like the John Simm brand Peugeot risk losing some brand properties that on the face of it sounds desirable, such as “smart”, “efficient”, “reliable”, “positive”, “responsible”, “independent”, “friendly”, “active”, “capable”, “confident”, “safe” and “proud”.
In time we will know how successful they will be and of course let you know here.