‘The real work starts now’: British Gas on embedding a new distinctive brand asset
British Gas introduced brand characters, the Things, in its latest campaign, which its marketing boss says is a fluent device it wants to use “forever”.
Distinctive brand assets, or fluent devices are an invaluable tool in any brand’s kits.
Some marketers are gifted with brand assets that last decades or even centuries, think Johnnie Walker’s striding man (which first appeared in cartoon form in 1908) or Coca-Cola’s contoured bottle (created in 1915).
Other brands opt to dip back into their archive to retrieve forgotten jewels. For example, PG Tips recently brought back its Monkey mascot, and Asda reintroduced its Rollback price pledge and famous pocket tap.
Maintaining a famous brand asset is a never-ending job, and resurrecting an old device can be even harder, but the biggest challenge is probably creating and embedding a new distinctive asset in the first place.
This is exactly what British Gas has set out to do, as it launches its new family of fluffy brand mascots ‘the Things’ in a campaign last week.
