'Have you ever heard of the 39 Steps?
'No. What's that, a pub?’

‘The 39 Steps’ is a classic 1935 British thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock, loosely based on a novel by John Buchan.

Robert Donat stars as Richard Hannay, a Canadian visitor to London who becomes a murder suspect, goes on the run and endeavours to prevent a spy ring from stealing British military secrets. It’s gripping stuff.

A gun goes off in a music hall and an alluring secret agent seeks sanctuary in Hannay’s flat on Portland Place.

‘There’s a dangerous conspiracy against this island and we’re the only ones who can stop it.’

But the mysterious woman dies with a knife in her back, clutching a map of the Highlands. Hannay escapes disguised as a milkman, hides away on the Flying Scotsman and kisses a fellow passenger to evade arrest. He jumps off at the Forth Bridge, stays the night with a crofter and is chased across the moors by a police gyrocopter.

'I've been guilty of leading you down the garden path. Or should it be up? I never can remember.'
'It seems to be the wrong garden, all right.’

Next Hannay is shot by an aristocratic villain with a finger missing – but the bullet is stopped by a hymnbook. He is interviewed by an unreliable sheriff and seized by police who may not be police. And he spends the night at a country inn handcuffed to a beautiful blonde who doesn’t quite trust him.

'There are 20 million women in this island and I've got to be chained to you.'

‘The 39 Steps’ takes us on a breathless chase across the Highlands, along roads blocked by flocks of sheep, through a patrician country house party and a crowded political meeting. We are desperate for our hero to escape his pursuers and foil the villains’ scheme. But, in truth, we are not that concerned about exactly what that scheme is.

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This is a classic early use by Hitchcock of a plot technique he called a MacGuffin: a device that drives the narrative and motivates the characters, but is itself unimportant.

'The MacGuffin is the thing that the spies are after, but the audience don't care.’
Alfred Hitchcock

We learn that the 39 Steps refer to a foreign spy organisation that has been scheming to smuggle the design for a silent aircraft engine out of the country. Although we the audience appreciate that silent aircraft engines are hugely important to the key protagonists in the movie - that they are prompting them to risk their lives – silent aircraft engines don’t really matter too much to us, or to our enjoyment of the drama.

Hitchcock was fond of MacGuffins. ‘Foreign Correspondent’, for example, was propelled by a clause in a secret peace treaty; ‘Notorious’ by radioactive uranium; ‘North by Northwest’ by confidential microfilm.

Indeed you’ll find MacGuffins in many movies, particularly thrillers. There’s the small statuette in 'The Maltese Falcon,’ the stolen transit letters in ‘Casablanca,' the briefcase in ‘Pulp Fiction,' the rug in 'The Big Lebowski.'

I found myself wondering about Brand MacGuffins: particular characteristics that drive a brand narrative, that sustain its core benefits – but that are not of themselves that important to consumers.

Back in the day Cadbury Dairy Milk contained ‘a glass and a half of full-cream milk’; Dove soap was ‘one quarter cleansing cream’; and Boost was ‘slightly rippled with a flat under-side.’ KFC had an ‘Original Recipe of 11 herbs and spices’; Coors was ‘brewed with pure Rocky Mountain spring water’; and Flora margarine had ‘polywassernames’…

Wanting to draw attention to the breadth of his brand’s range, in 1896 Henry J Heinz introduced the slogan ‘57 pickle Varieties.’ In fact he was selling more than 57 varieties, but he just thought the numbers 5 and 7 were lucky.

The 39 Steps (1935) Alfred Hitchcock (second right) directing the handcuffed Madeleine Carroll and Robert Donat on the first day of filming

Brand MacGuffins – Reasons to Believe or Substantiators as we called them back then - were vitally important to the businesses that claimed them. They established difference, explained superiority and justified premium. They were often shrouded in secrecy and guarded with alacrity. As consumers we were glad they existed, but didn’t really care too much about their specifics.

Of course, nowadays Brand MacGuffins are rather thin on the ground. Product differentiators are easy to copy and difficult to extend across sectors. And if you research them, people just shrug their shoulders. Modern brands prefer emotional differentiators and Big Ideas – they’re more pliable, comprehensible, universal.

It’s a shame. Brand MacGuffins conferred texture, character and credibility. They enabled more engaging, distinctive brand dialogue. They were fun.

Perhaps now, after all this time, it may be pertinent to ask: could your brand benefit from a MacGuffin?

At the end of ‘The 39 Steps’ Hannay realises that the plotters have not actually stolen any secret papers. Rather they intend to smuggle the details of the silent aircraft engine out of the country using the extraordinary recollective powers of a theatre performer.

We make our way to the London Palladium. Mr Memory, who has been an unwitting accomplice in the scheme, is shot on stage as he reveals the plans. He seems relieved finally to be liberated from his secrets.

‘The first feature of the new engine is its greatly increased ratio of compression represented by R minus over to the power of gamma where R represents the ratio of compression and gamma... Seen in end elevation, the axis of the two lines of cylinders...Angle of degrees… Dimensions of cylinders as follows...This device renders the engine completely silent.’
‘Am I right, sir?’
‘Quite right, old chap.’
‘Thank you, sir. Thank you. I'm glad it's off my mind. Glad.’

'I got an X-ray camera hidden in your house
To see what I could see.
That man you was kissing last night
Definitely wasn't me.
And I spy for the FBI.’

Jamo Thomas ‘I Spy (for the FBI)’ (R Wylie / H Kelley)

No. 324