Brand Spanking, New: Hospitable Hilton?
Thursday, June 7, 2007
This won’t be nice, or gentle. It’s not meant to be. This is a brand spanking, and it is much overdue and greatly deserved. Pants down. Right now. In public.
Tag: branding
Davis Thinking
The Democrats' Ailing Propaganda Machine
Friday, August 21, 2009
Regardless of one's political affiliation, one thing is clear. Both sides of the aisle and their respective mouthpieces, as well as special interest groups, are leveraging public relations and other tools of persuasion to the best of their abilities in order to advance their sides of the health care story. However, as usual, the Republicans are winning the word war.
Mainstreet Brands
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
The branding of cities may be popular. But fading corporate approaches don’t work when it is time to capture the true character and competitive value of a place.
At Issue } essential reading
Everything Old Is New Again
Sep 2, 2010
For years, people built brands (really their businesses, we didn't know about brands then) by learning how to deliver a consistent experience across everything they did. The product, their service, everything was teed into their business and they're profitability. They got instant feedback from the people who were their customers and word spread, both good & bad, based on the experience that was delivered. If you think about it, it was really all viral and social marketing back then, we just didn't have the technology at we talk about today.
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What Physics Taught Me About Marketing
Aug 27, 2010
Physics and marketing don't seem to have much in common, but Dan Cobley is passionate about both. He brings these unlikely bedfellows together using Newton's second law, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, the scientific method and the second law of thermodynamics to explain the fundamental theories of branding.
A Design Campaign for Bananas
Aug 26, 2010
If you’ve ever wondered why it seems impossible to fill a grocery cart without adding at least one item whose packaging has been redesigned, the answer to your question is the fact that you’ve asked it. “New look! Same great taste!” openly confesses the blatant goal of catching your eye for no substantial reason. Humans have always noticed novelty, but it’s harder to get our attention in the multicolored and abundant context of a megamart, where one heap of bananas looks much like another. This makes it all the more impressive that Chiquita has received so much notice by being creative with the little blue stickers that adorn its flagship fruit.
Endangered Species Watch: Experts
Aug 19, 2010
With such highly fragmented consumer behavior, how can we have domain-specific experts setting our strategies? As the Nielsen study shows, it simply isn't sufficient to have mastery over one area. The new media strategist will have to acquire knowledge across multiple disciplines, so as to be able to have a unified strategy across a TV commercial, its online teaser, the mobile call to action, and the messaging elements that will spark the next big thing on Facebook. This multi-disciplinary approach is also good for creativity. In a recent article in The New York Times, Thomas Friedman quoted Marc Tucker, the president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, as saying: "One thing we know about creativity is that it typically occurs when people who have mastered two or more quite different fields use the framework in one to think afresh about the other."
Passive Aggressive Branding
Aug 2, 2010
With reports that the oil gusher in the Gulf is nearly kaput, BP's new CEO announced Friday that the company would scale back its cleanup efforts in areas where there is no more oil. Makes sense. Still bad for the brand, though. There are two problems with which BP must contend, one situational and the other conceptual.
Corporations Need a Reason for Being
Jul 26, 2010
In Adweek July 18th- Warren Berger wrote an interesting piece about the potential mid-life crisis of the ad biz. "There are lots of tough questions companies must confront in dealing with a consumer who's more engaged, more informed and more concerned with social issues than ever before. Among those questions: What does the company stand for? What does it believe? How does it make its products and treat its employees? Is it being straight with us in its ads? All of these points are part of the larger conversation people are now having about brands." This isn't a crisis inflicting advertising, it comes from somewhere, it's a corporate identity crisis- could corporations have lost track of their reason for being? You sell stuff, we know that, but it's not enough. What's your reason for being? What do you want to do when you get to work in the morning? Does you brand have a cause?
Now What?
Jul 19, 2010
Old Spice has made history, dominating YouTube last week with 8 of the 11 most-watched videos on Friday and racking up tens of millions of views. Its "Smell Like a Man" campaign, in which its spokesmodel quickly shot mostly unscripted and hilariously funny replies to nearly 200 online inquiries (including some from famous people). It prompted numerous copycat videos and got covered by just about every news outlet in America. Now what?
The Eternal Truths Behind The Best New Branding Commercials
Jul 8, 2010
The top advertising spots--actually the best whole branding campaigns--have always begun with a flash of brilliant insight about a category and its primary audience, something meaningful that no one noticed before. Call it an observation of the obvious, a point of view that captures a profound and different truth about a product that no one else has seen.
How Branding Can Lead To Healthier Architecture
Jun 30, 2010
PSFK sat down with Anna Klingmann for a conversation covering trends in architecture as they pertain to sustainability and health. Her agency, Klingmann, specializes in a niche area where architecture meets branding. Although not all applications of branding will bring about improved communities and healthier living/working spaces, Klingmann’s work clearly demonstrates the importance of branding in nurturing a sense of belonging.
The NCAA Knows The Power Of Money, And Branding
Jun 25, 2010
For better or worse, the NCAA has been shuffling around schools and conferences for the past couple weeks, but the conference names have gone largely untouched. The Big Ten, which formerly had eleven teams after the addition of Penn State in 1990, now has twelve schools. The Big Twelve is now down to ten. Neither of the two conferences executive committees are coming close to changing the names.
Can Social Media Really Be Used for Branding?
Jun 1, 2010
Can social media be used for branding? Or to state the question in an even clearer and more tangible way, "Can a marketer abandon conventional broadcast methods and use social media to build reach and drive brand awareness?" First, let's define the terms "branding" and "social media." Through careless overuse, these fundamental advertising concepts have been deprived of their essential essence.
Marketing To Hearts And Minds: Balance Brand And Retail
May 24, 2010
Media and production budgets continue to shrink while expectation of results does not. We are challenged daily to figure out how to make more happen with less, and this is never truer than when trying to determine how to both brand and sell our clients' product. Gone are the days where most advertisers can afford both the big, broad anthemic brand campaign as well as the more "hard sell," retail version. We've morphed into a space where ads are expected to both brand and sell, but cracking the code on how to accomplish both effectively has proven challenging for many.
Unconscious Branding: Who Needs Facts?
May 24, 2010
Few doubt that branding messages can be powerful, but new research shows that even when consumers don’t recall the specific message, their preferences can be shaped to the point where they reject new information that conflicts with their stored brand association. Melanie Dempsey (Ryerson University) and Andrew A. Mitchell (University of Toronto) set out to test the power of branding messages by conditioning consumers to like or dislike fictitious brand names. They exposed consumers to hundreds of images which included 20 pairing a fictitious brand with positive words or images. 20 other images paired another brand with negative sentiments. At the end of the process, the subjects were unable to recall which brands had been associated with positive or negative messages, but DID express a preference for the positively-matched brand. The researchers called this an, ‘I like it, but I don’t know why’ effect.
ICFF: The Best Branding Behind the Brands
May 19, 2010
It's fair to say that 99 percent of people on the planet would see ICFF as 145,000 square feet of "unnecessary." However, for the remaining one percent of us who love design, it is an annual bazaar of the new and notable from the commercial and domestic landscapes that is not to be missed. The booths are beautiful, the products are beautiful and the people are beautiful. But, all of this can be utterly exhausting so I found it helpful to attend the fair on a mission.
Branding South Africa: May The Best Team Win
May 17, 2010
With less than a month to go to the kick-off of the 2010 FIFA World Cup games, entries for a new marketing campaign contest for South Africa are pouring in. The Get Wildly Creative About South Africa online ad contest, organized by South Africa Airways, South Africa Tourism and the CMO Council, has attracted more than 400 entries from around the world so far, says Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council, and it expects to receive more in the next week; more than 10,000 aspiring ad professionals have already viewed the briefs and entry procedures.
The New Normal: Your Customer Is In The Driver's Seat
Apr 28, 2010
Today's consumers are more diverse, more inter-connected and more demanding than ever. Their expectations are rising while their propensity to be loyal to companies is declining, so (let's face it) they are in the driver's seat. The questions for companies today are then: Are companies orchestrating where consumers go, and are they making the trip pleasant?
Game Day Beer Brand Naming at 7-Eleven
Apr 26, 2010
I'm not going to make much of the new 7-Eleven "Game Day" beer name. Instead, I'm going to focus on what it means that 7-Eleven has a private label beer at all. Simply put, this is a watershed moment in private label branding - which 7-Eleven excels at - and in branding in general. There can be no doubt that private label branding has reached a tipping point when 7-Eleven, of all places, has its own beer brand.
AmEx Helps Small Businesses Brand
Apr 9, 2010
American Express Open is launching Project Revive, a program pairing branding experts with small business owners to document the process of developing a new brand identity. Starting this week, each business and agency will begin monthly in-person consultation sessions. Each business owner's story, including branding tips and insights, will be shared on AmEx Open's small business networking Web site Open Forum at the conclusion of the makeover in August. American Express Open is the small business division of the financial services company.
You've Got To Be Kidding
Apr 1, 2010
The markets tumbled, retirement savings dissolved, and home values evaporated as every principle and presumption about individual investing was called at least into question, and more likely to account. Now financial services firm Vanguard is promoting the answer: stop investing, and start Vanguarding. It bought a four-page magazine spread to reveal this crucially useful insight (I saw mine in the latest issue of The New Yorker), and the story unfolds as follows
Yellow Pages Sends Old Logo Walking, Embraces New Logo, Branding
Mar 24, 2010
One of the classic taglines in marketing today is "Let your fingers do the walking," with the recognizable Yellow Pages 'walking fingers' logo. This is all changing in Canada as the Yellow Pages enter the digital age. There will be "More Yellow, Less Pages" and the new logo will not include an open book. The former Yellow Pages logo is pictured at right, as the new one is unavailable.
Facebook’s Ad Platform: The Mainstreamification Of Online Advertising?
Mar 15, 2010
A recent post by Jan Chipcase got us thinking about the implications of Facebook’s ad platform on the future of online advertising. Jan makes a strong point that making the creation of a targeted digital ad accessible to a mass audience will ultimately make advertising more simple and effective by educating a large audience on how targeting, measurement and costing of an online ad works. The increased transparency of the process exposes the value models of advertisers and media platforms to an audience that may have previously only been on the receiving end of advertising. Given its increasingly vast penetration, Facebook is arguably one of the best media platforms to mainstream online advertising.
A Brand Too Far?
Mar 11, 2010
Mr. Clean is a car wash in Texas. Gerber sells baby life insurance. Caterpillar makes flashlights. I think the brand extension business is just a little crazy. I get why it should work, and I certainly know why businesses want it to. Any survey or focus group will tell you that consumers associate brands with purposes. GM makes cars. Apple makes computers. They also attach emotions to them, however unfairly and unevenly. GM cars aren't any good, while Apple's computers are cool. Comcast is a service nightmare. These internal states of brand awareness have value that should be transferrable to other products and services, especially if they keep within the constraints of that knowledge. Gillette should be able to sell men's grooming products because its brand is already all about razors. Microsoft sells computer hardware because it’s already in the software business. Such "extending" isn't a reach because the new products are easier to embrace and buy due to the power of the brands. Selling them that way is cheaper than trying to invent awareness from scratch. Is it really that easy?
Time to Rewrite the Brand Playbook for Digital
Mar 4, 2010
There's a struggle with defining "branding" in digital. Some people claim that brands should be about utility, others that we need to build brand platforms and yet others think that brands should entertain us and give us something to talk about. Yet overall, surprisingly little has changed in the actual branding strategies in the industry. Something is wrong here.
6 Trend Videos
Mar 2, 2010
Instead of our usual text-based Trend Briefings, we bring you a light-hearted yet insight-heavy video edition this month, featuring consumers from all over the world speaking their minds on a variety of trend topics. After all, one consumer video sometimes says more than a 20-page Trend Briefing ;-) Enjoy!
Is Walmart Killing Branding And Naming?
Feb 17, 2010
This year may mark a milestone in branding and naming, one that has as much resonance as Marlboro Friday. Walmart is unceremoniously clearing brands off the shelves that do not sell well and replacing them with their own private label versions. This seems to be a backlash against "product overload" - a phenomenon where there is just too much choice for cash strapped consumers looking for deals. This is great for private label brands, but not great news for already struggling brand names.
Marketers: Go For Gold-Medal Branding
Feb 14, 2010
The Super Bowl is all over but the shouting--about the advertising, that is--and the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver are about to begin. Marketing critics, reboot your engines. And when you do, here's something to think about: As many of us saw during the Super Bowl, branding that's incrementally innovative won't move the meter, just as tried and true efforts executed without flair will fall flat.
Tiger Woods Naming And Branding Still Tops, Even If He Quits Golf
Feb 10, 2010
It may be that Tiger Woods's name has not suffered as much as we might have thought it would only a month or so ago. This week Forbes reports that his name still holds the top spot among athletes with a value of $82 million. This is still more than the following huge sports names make combined, reports The Street, "David Beckham ($20 million), tennis player Roger Federer ($16 million), NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. ($14 million) and NBA stars LeBron James ($13 million) and Kobe Bryant ($12 million)."
Google's Branding Problem
Feb 8, 2010
As Google becomes the most well known and most used digital technology brand in the world, their company motto - and probably the closest thing they've got to a brand positioning statement - "Don't be evil" is no longer specific enough to give people a sense of what Google's brand means in their life.
Heinz Dips And Squeezes Its Naming And Branding On User Friendly Packets
Feb 8, 2010
Ketchup packets have announced their first revamp in 42 years with the new Heinz "Dip and Squeeze." They are engineered to allow users to either squeeze out three times more ketchup on their fries, or else dip them. One blog points out that when Heinz put out the first ketchup packet in 1968, the "hate began immediately," with people kvetching that "You need like seven of them just to get something done" and "They're a pain to open. They're hard to open and they squirt everywhere."
Asleep At The Wheel
Feb 1, 2010
Toyota has announced a shockingly comprehensive response to relatively limited reports of a sticky gas pedal: it has suspended production and sales of nine models and recalled millions to replace the potentially offending part. Comparisons have been made to Johnson & Johnson's famous and much lauded reaction to its Tylenol product tampering crisis in the early 90s. I don't think anybody is going to write a textbook entry on Toyota's actions, however. And it's too bad: as the President's chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel said last year, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. This event is likely Toyota's biggest branding moment in recent memory, and what is it telling customers, renters, dealers, vendors, and employees? Nothing, or not much as far as I can tell.
Should You Be Trying To Create Demand Or Desire?
Jan 26, 2010
What's more important for your business right now -- creating demand or the desire to demand? If you listen to the social media ROI folks, you'll hear them beat that demand drum all day and often well into the night. And while I agree with them -- ROI is important and you do have to measure it and ideally drive it, I wonder if this fanatical focus on ROI and more importantly trackable ROI, isn't a little bit of cart in front of the horse thinking. I'm not sure you can have demand before desire.
Optimism Vs. Pragmatism In Brand Campaigns
Jan 25, 2010
A recent article by Stuart Elliott in the New York Times suggests that brands are taking a more realistic approach with the tone conveyed in their communications strategies in the new year – a contrast to the more “don’t worry, be happy” attitude conveyed in past, economically happier times. The article suggests a more accepting yet resolute approach, at best. And a cantankerous, critical (of competing brands) tone, at worst. But does this tell the full story – or are many brands still embracing optimism to drive long-term engagement?
Branding is a Dangerous Concept
Jan 21, 2010
2010 is the beginning of a new era for business. We've mastered quality. Squeezed every drop out of efficiency. Saturated the marketplace with innovation. And we're using advanced information and communication technologies to reshape the very fabric of our marketplace concepts and relations. So what's next? Certainly not "branding;" at least not in the conventional sense. The notion that a marketplace offering is a static, transactional thing that needs the right injection of cosmetics and communication to bring it to life is flawed thinking in today's environment.
The Somebody Else Economy
Jan 21, 2010
For all of the immediacy and connectedness of online experience, I’d argue consumers feel a gnawing distance from one another and the marketplace. Pay retail? That's for somebody else. Wait in line? There's a way around it. Get better service? There's a special number to call. Terms of agreement? There are always exceptions. Information is ubiquitous and it's brand heresy to fail to present it in a unified and consistent manner, yet every consumer is looking for an exception. The same phenomenon infects our politics: someone else, or the proverbial "they," are either not paying enough taxes or trying to make you pay more than your fair share. The Internet lets me see what's being offered to others, so I want something different. Is it possible that each of us is an exception?
The Cost Of NOT Branding
Jan 21, 2010
It's a simple formula: Recession requires more tactical spending. This year's budget = + online spend + social activity + lead generation campaigns - brand investment. When the dollars get tight, spend shifts to more tangible, less expensive marketing programs with the promise of shorter-term returns (or at least lower costs). Not that there's anything wrong with saving a few bucks wherever you can get the job done more efficiently. But when saving money becomes the goal instead of a guideline, something big always suffers -- and it's usually the brand.
Stop Trying To Be Better Than The Competition
Jan 12, 2010
So many business owners or would be start-ups sit around this time of year trying to figure out how they can be better than the competition – better product, better service, better features, and, the real killer, better price. Heck, some even strive to be “best” in class. What they should be doing is figuring out how they can simply be different than the competition.
Opinion: Why AT&T's Attitude Is Hurting Its Brand
Jan 6, 2010
As we all rub our eyes from the social-media explosion of 2009, you might think that brand marketers have all (forgive the pun) gotten the message: Ignore Web chatter at your peril. Domino’s got it—publicly, infamously—back in April, when a gross-out vid popped up on YouTube showing employees placing various mucosal toppings on the pizzas. The company took a glacial 24 hours to respond—23 hours after the damage had already been done. And who can forget Dell’s own Road to Damascus back in 2005 when Jeff Jarvis’ “Dell Hell” blog undid millions in “Dude” advertising goodwill?
Brand Advocate Kane
Dec 30, 2009
A friend of mine attended a City University of New York reading recently from a new anthology of Central and Eastern European plays from the 1980s. Three of the playwrights in attendance that Monday night -- a Slovenian, a Hungarian, and a Romanian -- shared their views. All had written as dissidents and subversives until communism fell. They said that behind the Iron Curtain, one knew one's enemies and those commanding one's life. But, as my friend recounted, their opinion was that now, in the West, "Do you know any longer who's in charge?"
Will There Be A Branding Bullshit Reaction?
Dec 2, 2009
One of the most memorable things that happened to me when I first came to the US as a snot nosed student, many, many years ago, was wangling an interview with David Ogilvy. Back then, in the early sixties, he was already a legend on Madison Avenue, and deservedly so. At the end of the interview, he offered me this final piece of advice… “Never forget, advertising is about selling.” I next met him twenty five years later, when I was freelancing at Ogilvy. He entered a conference room late one evening where a bunch of us hired guns were drinking warm beer, eating cold pizza and talking shit. After asking us what we were up to, he banged on the table and shouted (he was quite deaf by then) “Never forget, advertising is about selling.”
Businesses Move Forward With Purpose
Nov 19, 2009
Two powerful forces are combining to push businesses to catch up with Peter Drucker's ideas about them serving a higher purpose--just in time for his 100th birthday (which would have been today). Drucker was a strong proponent of businesses going beyond maximizing quarterly profits for shareholder benefit. Why? In his words (from this HBR tribute): "Most people need to feel that they are here for a purpose, and unless an organization can connect to this need to leave something behind that makes this a better world, or at least a different one, it won’t be successful over time.”
The Great At Doing Good
Nov 18, 2009
The concept of brands and branding has spread far beyond its origins in consumer products. Politicians, towns, celebrities, events, and governments all recognize that their brand - what they stand for and the sum of all perceptions - is a critical component to achieving long-term success, regardless of how they define it. With good cheer, seasonal requests for donations, and sad stories about the needy already emerging for Thanksgiving and Christmas, I got to thinking about the connection between brands and charity. The importance of brand has also extended to organizations dedicated to doing good or helping segments of the population
You Get More From Almost Great Ideas
Nov 9, 2009
Home runs are fun to watch, but the nearly great plays are more illustrative and instructive. We marketers tend to focus on successes, holding them up as proof of what’s possible, whether in conference presentations or new business pitches. "Show me an example" is the litmus test of ideas that deserve to get shared and mimicked; go-forward plans are based on what we learn from standouts and exceptions. This has been true since brands ran their first newspaper and radio ads. The most glorious social media campaigns of 2009 will yield a bevy of flattering copies in 2010.
Micro-Pulse: How Small Touches Impact the Heartbeat of Your Brand
Nov 6, 2009
Think about all the brands you interacted with today. Nearly everything you have done so far today involved a brand, was enabled by a brand or was accompanied by a brand. These interactions are just one of many touchpoints with a specific brand. Touchpoints, or touches for short, work in a way similar to that of how blood flows through our bodies. Your heart pumps blood through your body, providing it with the oxygen and nutrients it needs, but the heart alone isn’t solely responsible for enabling a steady, healthy heartbeat. Every vein, artery and vessel has an impact on your heartbeat. No matter how small a constricted vein may be, it has an impact on the flow of blood.
Forget About Harley and Apple
Nov 5, 2009
Have you noticed that most conversations about branding inevitably include references to Harley-Davidson and Apple? Sprinkle in mentions of Coke, Facebook, and Zappos, and you get the context of every agency pitch for more spending on brand engagement, loyalty, or whatever else these examples might suggest. I suggest you ban these references from your next conversation. Forget about them altogether.
Subtractive Thinking
Nov 4, 2009
Few would argue with the statements: “Less is more” (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, architect), “Do more with less” (Buckminster Fuller, structural engineer), or “Less but better” (Dieter Rams, industrial designer). The list goes on. Each of these minimalists built through subtraction. You too can benefit from a minimalist approach. Most brands and businesses focus on adding value by adding functions. Yet, subtraction is more than just a way of reducing costs. Subtractive thinking can add real value, both by cutting cost and increasing usability.
Kodak Shoots for YouTube Consumer Connection
Nov 4, 2009
Many consumers may still think of Kodak as mainly an enabler of still images. But the company is becoming deeply involved in the Web's most popular site for moving pictures: YouTube. Kodak has launched a branded YouTube channel, ForMom, featuring user-generated testimonials from real moms on topics ranging from parenting and cooking to health, beauty and exercise. "It's a Web site that has a lot of different content for mothers," says Mike Mayfield, Kodak's marketing manager for branding and content. "We've created some videos for that Web site, sort of like mommy how-to videos. This is just another way we're reaching deep into YouTube to explore different parts of the brand."
Bridge the Gap Between User Experience and Brand Value
Nov 2, 2009
If you run a business or are in charge of marketing one, you know that your Web site is often the first interaction a potential customer has with your brand. For many of today's businesses, particularly those in the digital media and technology space, Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) have become the primary point of customer interaction. With online experiences contributing so heavily to how people feel about brands, an effective union of user experience design and brand strategy has become critical to sustaining business success.
Accidental Purchases: Blame Package Design
Oct 29, 2009
Poor package design is costing marketers more than $2 billion in U.S. sales as consumers are accidentally reaching for copycat house brands that are meant to look like the well-known branded products. According to a new study by strategy and design agency The Brand Union, 70% of consumers said they had purchased the wrong product in a supermarket in the past year. Some 60% said they had trouble differentiating products on a store shelf due to the packaging. The most confusing categories: canned goods; cold and allergy products and hair care items. (Of the 23% of consumers who said they were confused by the canned goods category, 42% said they ended up purchasing the wrong product.)
Today’s Private Label is a Lesson in Branding
Oct 28, 2009
Private label is at something of a crossroads. Rising out of the shadows of its humble, “no-name” generic past, private label today has blossomed into a $100 billion industry. While the media and analysts are fixated on sales numbers and growth expectations another story frequently gets little air play: Private label has the freedom (and not the baggage) to seize opportunities to leapfrog name brands in such critical areas as ingredients, flavors, preparations and even packaging. Looking through the lens of contemporary consumers and shoppers, we see that the rapidly changing private label landscape is far too complicated to be adequately explained by aggregate sales or customer transaction sales data alone. Our Private Label 2010: Redefining Meaning of Brand report moves beyond simplified discussions of sales data to present a holistic consumer and shopper perspective on private label that accounts for the role of the economy, new meaning of value, distinctions in retail formats, product categories, name brands and, of course, private label brands.
You Can Pry Coke, Tide and Kraft From Consumers' Cold, Dead Hands
Oct 28, 2009
Fascinating, counterintuitive data coming out of a year-long consumer behavior study finds that Kraft, Coca-Cola and Tide are the three brands least likely to be traded for store brands. The study should worry name brand owners, since "only 37% of consumers say name brands are more reliable, and 39% believe name brands are better quality products." The data are edifying. Age breakdowns show consumers growing less brand loyal (and more price-conscious) as they get older. The huge numbers who are turning to private labels find Wal-Mart, Kroger, and Target to be the stores with the best selections.
Branding Through Paid Search?
Oct 28, 2009
Some advertisers, including some of our clients, have started to reallocate branding funds from offline marketing efforts to paid search. Why search?
The Stories Brands Can Tell in Social Media
Oct 27, 2009
Since its invention towards the end of the 20th century, the Internet has changed a great many things. And one of the things that is has done time after time is dismantle business models that had seemed, until its arrival, absolutely rock solid. From music to publishing to TV, the Internet has swept away seeming certainties and replaced them with doubt and uncertainty. Whilst this fact can not be argued with, the common perception that the reason these media models have been so badly damaged is due to the rise of UGC is, like so many ‘commonly held facts’, actually untrue.
Neuroscience and Brand Connections
Oct 23, 2009
As neuroscience opens the brain to marketers' scrutiny, the electrical flashes that arise in response to stimuli make it increasingly apparent that what drives purchase decision making is actually a primal mechanism of the mind -- attachment. This signal of a potent emotional attachment is the foundation for brand success. It's a form of primal brand magic, built on a near-mythical brand story that unconsciously transports one from the mundane to the imaginational, transforming our inner world and inspiring us to buy.
Why Weak Package Design Is Becoming a Costlier Problem
Oct 22, 2009
Have you ever returned home from the grocery store to find that you mistakenly purchased the wrong product because it looked similar to the one you actually wanted or needed? Do certain grocery categories tend to confuse or mislead you? These are some of the questions that inspired a research study by The Brand Union examining the cost of confusion in the grocery aisle. If you've mistakenly purchased a product, you're not alone. And, if you're a CMO, it is likely that your customers, or former customers, have purchased a competitor's product by accident. In fact, about 70% of Americans have accidentally purchased a product in the last year, and many have made a mistaken purchase more than once. So, if most people have purchased a grocery product by mistake, which brands are suffering and which are benefiting? And, how much money is being lost or gained as a result of confusing, lackluster package design?
Brand is Not a Four-Letter Word
Oct 21, 2009
A few weeks ago, I had lunch with a friend prior to an evening speech. After some small talk about life, the universe and everything, our conversation naturally turned to the abysmal U.S. economy. “Things are really tough right now,” she explained. “I’ve tried to get everyone to understand the importance of branding in this very difficult environment, but I don’t think they get it. In fact,” she added. “Our customers hate that word.” “What word?” I asked. “Brand?” “Yea. The non-profits we work with have a real aversion to the whole notion of branding. I guess they don’t really understand the concept and how it applies to them.” They’re not the only ones.
Online Ads Not Working for You? Blame the Creative
Oct 20, 2009
It's bad creative that makes online advertising ineffective, so stop obsessing over targeting and placements, according to a study from online-ad-research group Dynamic Logic. After analyzing the highest and lowest performers from its database of more than 170,000 online ads, the Millward Brown company determined that creative factors such as persistent branding, strong calls to action and even human faces -- and not super-targeted or high-profile ad placements -- make for better ad recall, brand awareness and purchase intent.
A CMO's Dream Team
Oct 19, 2009
Chief marketing officers, like coaches and other leaders, who seek dream teams must assemble remarkable individuals to generate remarkable results. In the past, CMOs knew who they needed on their team – some smart brand managers and some functional experts in research and media. But the marketing landscape has changed dramatically and the skill sets and experiences needed on a CMO’s marketing bench have changed just as dramatically. New media, market fragmentation, and brand proliferation have given birth to new ways to go to market and new challenges in doing so. Today CMOs need to rethink the types of marketing expertise they need on the team.
Brand Guarding: McDonald's Fights To Preserve Its 'McRights Overseas
Oct 16, 2009
This David vs. Goliath scenario has played out in jurisdictions around the world, as McDonald's seeks to squelch perceived impostors that trade on is famous name. Thanks to globalization and the sprawling reach of the Internet, more consumers in far-flung corners of the world are familiar with the McDonald's brand, and the fast-food giant has an easier time finding out about businesses that use the "Mc" prefix. Companies have the right to pick and choose when they want to enforce their trademarks, but if they turn a blind eye too many times, they face risks. "If you're too discriminatory, you will get the argument that you haven't enforced your trademark, and therefore abandoned it," says Kim Landesman, a litigation partner at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler. "The Internet makes it much easier for the people you're going against to find out about the people you haven't gone against."
Do States Need to Act More Like Brands?
Oct 15, 2009
Do you appreciate your state? Feel like you get a decent return on your tax dollar? Would you recommend your state to friends as a place to live or, conversely, as a place to avoid? Is your state ascending or descending as a brand? States are already "branded" by their histories, economies and populations. California has great weather, beautiful scenery and tons of diversity. It's the land of the Gold Rush, Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Minnesota has icy winters, beautiful lakes and an educated work force. Florida and Arizona are havens for retirees, vacationers and snowbirds. You can look at a map and fill out the brands.
Marketers Can Learn From Rio's Olympic Victory
Oct 14, 2009
I happen to think that the folks who were in charge of the Olympics branding strategy in Rio de Janeiro did a phenomenal job of differentiating Rio's promise from the other cities in contention, and then clearly establishing its relevance to the IOC. In other words, the "Brand Rio" team followed a couple of the basic rules of smart brand management and came out the category leader as a result. There is almost no brand category that isn't awash in choices. Whether cars or cosmetics, beverages or baby carriages, there is a lot of stuff out there and most of it is pretty similar. The competition for consumer attention is fierce and it can't be won on table stakes. The only way a decent brand can ever hope of becoming the chosen brand is to make a promise that's completely different from any its competitors' and ensure that this difference is meaningful to its target audience. In an ever-expanding global marketplace, this is getting harder and harder to do.
Stuff That Matters
Oct 13, 2009
This is a continuation of the debrief from the Brand Managecamp conference. In my last post, I relayed insights about Innovation from the “elite conference on branding” that I attended in Las Vegas last week. Today I’m covering the 2 remaining themes that arose – both fall under the category of “stuff that matters”: Substance (meaning, mission, authenticity, integrity) and Results (ROI, accountability, behavior, reality).
Your Room Isn't Ready Yet
Oct 8, 2009
Sheraton is giving away free nights in dozens of its locations as part of a campaign to promote the $6 billion it has spent on renovations. It's a missed opportunity to do more for its brand and business. Staying at a Sheraton has always been a hit-or-miss proposition. I don't know if the differences in facilities are due to uneven franchisees and/or poor central management, but I can attest from personal experience that some Sheratons have been shockingly terrible, and others have qualified as just stunningly OK. An overhaul has been long overdue, and it's a really good thing. But the project is incomplete; less than half of the hotel's locations have been updated.
Ford Taps Web-Savvy Hipsters To Hype Fiesta
Oct 8, 2009
Hilary McHone, 35, speaks directly into a camera as she lolls in bed, describing her day shooting an internal video for Ford. "What was neat was that I got to be ‘talent'," McHone says, using her fingers to put virtual parentheses around the word. The video is one of hundreds on a Ford site created to market its upcoming Fiesta subcompact. McHone is among of 100 "agents" that Ford has enlisted to drum up enthusiasm for the Ford Fiesta, which it's unveiling in the U.S. before it goes on sale in June. McHone's videos and others featured on the marketing site, fiestamovement.com, are supposed to help to generate early buzz for the brand, which will be aimed at 14- to 30-year-olds. Ford isn't paying the agents, but it did loan each of them a car for six months.
Do Something, Get Something
Oct 6, 2009
Disney will give free admission to its parks to 1 million people who complete a day of volunteer work. It's an amazingly smart marketing tactic, and it has strategic implications for every business should consider. In many ways, Disney is a unique case. Babies are born with the brand identity pre-programmed in their brains, which means that every human being walking the planet is likely to be aware of the brand and, unless they're active evildoers or otherwise twisted, associate it with at least the appearance of wholesome goodness. Disney has branding problems like the Earth has issues with rotation. The challenge is to get people to do something with all that awareness.
Brands vs. Branding
Oct 5, 2009
Branding Is Dead! Long Live Brands?! Many pundits have declared the death of branding and it would be difficult to argue to continue typical branding activities. Creating an image to serve as the “face” of a company, refreshing a logo or tagline in an attempt to reinvigorate the business, developing advertising campaigns to “get our name out there” – the business value of these efforts can indeed be questioned. Today’s savvy consumers are likely to see through a brand façade. They can easily find out if the business practices, products, and people behind a brand are what their ads say they are. And they’re more likely to trust their own experience or the recommendation of a friend or even an online reviewer than a company’s own chest-thumping. In fact, one could argue that the historical role which brands played – that is, serving as symbols to guarantee a certain of level of quality – is no longer relevant or useful today. But that is not to say that brands themselves are no longer valuable.
10 Branding and Marketing Trends for 2010
Oct 1, 2009
Niels Bohr once noted that "prediction is very difficult, especially about the future," but then he didn't have access to predictive loyalty metrics. Happily, we do. And, as they measure the direction and velocity of consumer values 12 to 18 months in advance of the marketplace and consumer articulations of category needs and expectations, they identify future trends with uncanny accuracy. Having examined these measures, we offer 10 trends for marketers for 2010 that will have direct consequences to the success - or failure – of next year's branding and marketing efforts.
Brand Measurement: Analytics & Metrics for Branding Campaigns
Sep 29, 2009
One of the ultimate excuses for not measuring impact of Marketing campaigns is: “Oh, that’s just a branding campaign.” Admit it, you’ve heard it. I suspect you’ve even used it liberally!! : ) Before we go any further I must clarify that I love branding campaigns just as much as the next guy.
The Emerging Trends in Branding and Corporate Responsibility
Sep 20, 2009
We are now in a “New World” where many rules have changed. We have loss of credibility of the corporations and institutions that speak to us, as well as an increased skepticism in messaging that speaks to an employee, consumer, or customer. We no longer trust an ambiguous graphic treatment or brand claim made by a product or service; instead we now turn to “word of mouth” opinion. Social media channels such as Twitter have redefined and accelerated the way brands and companies are perceived.
Social Responsibility Is Dead
Sep 18, 2009
Corporate social responsibility is a hybrid PR/branding program that attempts to convert compliance into goodwill. Often CSR lives outside the marketing function, somewhere deep in the bowels of legal or operations. Once a year, the company's varied social achievements are collected by the investor relations department for the now-compulsory CSR addendum to the annual report. CSR attempts to align corporate needs (profits, revenue, growth) with social needs (people, community, planet). Themes such as "we're being less bad" or "we're trying to give back" dominate the subtext and water down the potential marketing value of the exercise. In the end, CSR is a compulsory exercise designed to limit liability, boost morale and add to the branding story of the company. From 2003 to 2008, CSR grew along with other nice-to-haves such as corporate meetings, green buildings and skunkworks programs. When the recession slammed the economy last fall, only the profit center programs survived. As a movement, CSR is either dead or on life support.
Does Branding Pay Off for Colleges? Harvard Thinks So.
Sep 18, 2009
It has taken a while for branding to seep into the world of higher education. Traditionally universities and colleges have not been staffed by professional marketers. There has been a revulsion toward the concept of Customers, in favor of Students. Education has been the mission; it was never about the Bottom Line. But due to increasing competition for private and state funding and the proliferation of school choices including for-profit and online learning options, colleges have been turning to branding and marketing as a tool to compete more effectively and drive enrollment and donations. In the higher education arena, college branding efforts began to emerge and proliferate around 2000. Many of these programs involved hundreds of thousands of dollars, multi-faceted "stakeholder" market research, new names, logos and taglines. Note that most institutional branding efforts still focus mainly on the external aspects of branding and not on organizational change and the holistic college experience.
This Five-Letter Word Is Key to Marketing Success: B-R-A-N-D
Sep 17, 2009
While the concept of personal branding has taken off corporate branding seems to go in and out of favor. Economic cycles may have a lot to do with that. With the growth of the Internet and social technology tools, personal branding activity and opportunities have exploded. On the other hand, in some ways, the arc of Web 1.0 to 2.0+ (not to mention this current economy) has seduced many marketers into being focused on tactics at the expense of strategy including branding. Hot media tactics often substitute for the "strategy." If you are skeptical that brands still matter in the age of 1-1, millennials and social media, or if you are trying to run a business and make numbers and don't have the patience for brand consultant-speak or theories, here is a quick, simple refresher on good old fashioned branding that works today, that can help you frame your marketing and other operational tactics...to drive business results.
Branding Your... Skin: Brand Name Tattoos
Sep 16, 2009
Would you tattoo a brand name to your skin? A new company does just that. MyBrandz.com is a new start up that offered free tattoos of brands on September 7th ("Free Tattoo Day") to people who really want to "live the brand." One of the founders says: We'd like to let the people do what they want with the brands, enjoy the life of the brands and not only buy them and let the brand owners tell them what to with them. The real attraction here is that consumers get more control over the brand names they love, rather than simply becoming walking billboards for them.
A New Sustainable Language for Business
Sep 15, 2009
Every so often the vocabulary of business adopts new words that filter into the mainstream business psyche. For example, the language of brands and branding is now commonly used and understood across a range of sectors— from universities to social enterprises to small businesses. Over the past year or two, the new vocabulary has brought in “sustainability,” whether it is to talk about the environment or general business operations, about communities or the future. Google the term and you’ll see that “sustainability” has 28 million definitions—only a few million short of the 34 million entries for “branding." Words that become common business parlance can shift in meaning and, in doing so, become open to a multitude of interpretations.
As The Brand Turns
Sep 15, 2009
When I spoke to a group of advertisers last Wednesday, there were a few stalwarts who wouldn't have anything to do with my premise that the traditional model of branding is broken. The next day, P&G's CEO Robert McDonald weighed in on my side of the debate. Well, not on purpose, but the steps he outlined that P&G is taking to salvage its brands clearly evidence a response to the fact that all is not right in the world of branding. Sales are down for its storied, premium brands, as consumers skip buying products like Tide that can cost almost twice the price of comparable store versions. McDonald's strategy is to cut prices, up promotional spending (i.e.cut prices temporarily), and sell new, cheaper products.
Simply Different: A Brand Advantage
Sep 11, 2009
Simply Better is the title of the marketing book that won the 2005 Berry-AMA Book Prize. Customers rarely buy a product or service because it offers something unique, say authors Patrick Barwise and Sean Meehan. Consumers want products that are simply better in terms of quality, reliability and value. Not true. Too many companies focus on trying to make better products when the real advantage is making different products. The current videogame dogfight between Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo illustrates this point.
Forest Through The Trees
Sep 11, 2009
Some of the major causes of death in the 18th Century were consumption, dropsy, and ague. Thanks to stronger and more precise diagnostic technology, we can see that TB, heart diseases, and assorted bacterial infections were the detailed causes underlying these conditions. Scientists developed the theories to model the reams of new data revealed to them, which enabled doctors to focus on treating the diseases, not the symptoms (as their predecessors had done). I'm playing with how this might parallel today’s social media experience. I really don't know where, or how far it goes.
How Enterprise Plans to Rebrand, Fight Recession
Sep 10, 2009
When Jack Taylor founded Enterprise Rent-A-Car in St. Louis back in 1957, he started out with a fleet of only seven cars. Now, withmore than 1 million cars and revenue in the neighborhood of $13 million, Enterprise is one of the largest car-rental companies in the U.S. Two years ago the company purchased Vanguard Car Rental, the parent company of National and Alamo. "For the first time in our history we had become an operator of multiple brands within the same category," said Patrick Farrell, VP-marketing and communications for Enterprise. And with that came a search for a new company name.
The First Social Media Car
Sep 10, 2009
Fiat is going to build and promote its 2010 Mio concept car based on ideas of consumers submitted via social media. The company's website asks "In the future we're building, what should a car have that makes it mine, while still working for others?" It has prompted 1,700 ideas and more than 40,000 comments, mostly about things like putting bamboo on seats, or providing an outlet to charge laptops. The company plans to ask for branding and marketing ideas next. Fiat has yet to decide whether it will ever build or sell the thing for real. Phew. At best, it's a stupid marketing stunt.
Jameson Adds Some Blarney to the Facts
Sep 10, 2009
Another liquor brand is arriving on television, bearing barrels filled with Irish whiskey — and Irish blarney. Jameson, sold by Pernod Ricard, will join a lengthening list of distilled spirits to use television as an advertising medium in the United States. Since 1996, when networks and stations began changing decades-old policies against accepting liquor commercials, big brands like Bacardi, Jack Daniel’s and Smirnoff have added video to their marketing tactics along with ads in print, online, outdoors and in stores. Now, smaller brands like Jameson are going on TV, too. One reason is that more television outlets have started to take liquor spots, among them local stations owned by CBS and NBC.
Vanguard's Branding Strikeout
Sep 7, 2009
I recently decided to move my company profit-sharing plan from Vanguard, primarily because it did everything it could to make me do it. It started with a letter in March telling me that it had decided, quite for its own benefit, to stop offering the type of retirement savings plan that I'd had with Vanguard for a few years. There were other options for me, all of which would require additional documents as per a new government regulation called EGTRRA (the meaning of which is meaningless). This communication was branding strike #1: don't use a rare exchange with a happy customer to give them bad news.
Naming and Branding v. Category Domination
Sep 4, 2009
The Branding Strategy Insider has me thinking about the relationship between brand naming and category domination. They think that dominating a category is more important than extending your brand - no matter how well regarded your brand name is, it simply cannot grow if the category is dying or overly crowded. Kodak is the prime example here: we all know the brand name, but few of us use film anymore and their crossover into digital photography has been rocky. The advice here is to start a new brand in a new category, aka Starbucks, Red Bull and BlackBerry. The idea is to have a narrow focus, get in first and grab deep recognition and reach. Clorox = bleach. Tabasco = hot sauce. That's nice work, if you can get it.
Why You Should Pay Attention to Your Employer Brand
Sep 1, 2009
Here is a tale of two businesses. There is good news and there is bad news. Let's try and stay positive. Good news first. Hiscox, the insurance company, announced some impressive results last week - a 30 per cent increase in pre-tax profits in the first half of the year. The company has outperformed most of its rivals at a difficult time. Something is going seriously right. I trawled through my paperwork and found the notes from a conversation I'd had with Bronek Masojada, Hiscox's chief executive, some time ago. The topic for that conversation had been the rather abstract concept of the "employer brand". You might not feel that an employer brand would have a great deal to do with your decision to pick company X over company Y to insure the contents of your house. Indeed, you might feel that the term is a typical example of business's unfailing ability to invent grand-sounding but ultimately flaky jargon. Secretly, you might not really know what an employer brand is at all.
Can Catchy Product Naming Save Crocs from Extinction?
Aug 30, 2009
If you haven't heard, the Crocs brand is in deep trouble. This is a brand that seemed headed for extinction, but like their namesake, have proven that with the help of a little strategic naming they are a brand that can endure the toughest of times. Recent "business improvements" have given Crocs a chance to actually pull itself into the black by 2010.
Swiss Secrets – How Switzerland Builds Brands
Aug 30, 2009
Those pesky Swiss are at it again. In a tongue-in cheek June post, I ranted a bit about how I was mad at Switzerland for being so much better than my country Canada at building global brands. Well now my favourite brand strategy blog in the world brandchannel.com has taken up the cause with this piece. So here are 5 Swiss secrets that I’ll distill for you.
Is Customer Loyalty Dead?
Aug 29, 2009
Are you more loyal to brands than you were 10 years ago? Are there any businesses that provide such a great product or service that you would never price-shop, and you'll declare your brand loyalty across your social networks? My guess is that you and your customers are much less loyal than you were in the '90s.
Marketing and Mathematics
Aug 29, 2009
March Madness lasts only three weeks, but Metric Madness goes on all year long. What is Metric Madness? It's the notion you can run anything by the numbers, and it's become the hottest concept in business today.
Sony Out to Create New Ad Icon With Latest PS3 Spots
Aug 28, 2009
Is Kevin Butler the new Mac guy? Actually, Jerry Lambert, the actor who plays Kevin Butler in Sony PlayStation 3 ads breaking this weekend, smacks more of John Hodgman's frumpy PC character than Justin Long's Mac daddy. With bland, cubicled offices as his backdrop, Mr. Lambert, garbed in a Dunder Mifflin-ready shirt and tie, walks and wisecracks as he answers questions one-on-one with fictitious consumers. The new ads from agency Deutsch, Los Angeles, are designed to elicit the same serial attraction that makes consumers anticipate fresh Mac vs. PC ads.
Branding No-Brand Brands
Aug 28, 2009
Street fashion designer Rick Klotz has announced that he's going to forsake any brand logos or names on his Freshjive products next year. Is it an anti-branding move, or something more? I say something more.
Sneaker Marketing Tries a Smaller Size
Aug 27, 2009
Some sneaker makers are giving national advertising campaigns the boot. To get more traction, they are increasingly turning to a tactic known as hyper-local marketing.
Why InterContinental Chose to Relaunch Holiday Inn
Aug 27, 2009
InterContinental Hotels Group earlier this summer announced the opening of its 1,000th relaunched Holiday Inn hotel: the Holiday Inn Express New York Times Square. The opening was part of an overall $1 billion relaunch of more than 3,200 Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express hotels worldwide, as well as the opening of another 1,050 hotels featuring the new branding over the next few years, with the completion of the global relaunch set for 2010.
Heartless Ice Cream
Aug 27, 2009
Summer may be winding down but the Good Humor truck is here to stay. The popular ice cream maker you might remember from such frozen hits as Strawberry Shortcake, Toasted Almond and Chocolate Eclair launched a rebrand earlier this year. It will adorn snack cart umbrellas, swimming pool menus and packages in the freezer aisle. But where’s the heart?
'Green' Consumers Out to Save Money
Aug 27, 2009
Green consumers are more concerned about saving money than saving the planet, according to new research from advertising agency the Shelton Group. The study found that while 59 percent of green consumers identify the economy as their top concern in making purchases, a mere 8 percent consider the environment.
20 Seconds To Live Or Die
Aug 27, 2009
When consumers make purchase decisions, they're spending anywhere from 10 to 20 seconds - according to surveys and research conducted by consumer behavior experts. Studies show that consumers ignore up to two-thirds of category products when they shop. That kind of statistic points to just how difficult it is to successfully package products. And clearly demonstrates why so many products fail at retail.
HP and Amazon Tap Into Crowdsourcing for Ads
Aug 27, 2009
HP and Amazon's latest ad campaigns may use crowdsourcing to generate advertisements, but the concept is far from new. Dorito's "Crash the Super Bowl" contest, launched in 2006, has been one of the more successful campaigns of this type.
Coconut Water Bubbles
Aug 27, 2009
As the once-hot bottled water business loses steam, drink makers are starting to pour money into marketing campaigns for what they hope will be the next sector to come to a boil: coconut water.
Using Milk-Carton Ads to Build Strong Brands
Aug 27, 2009
Hoping to reach children at school and shoppers at the store, a growing number of national brands are turning to an old medium: milk cartons. The ads on the smallest cartons, the half-pints that are distributed through school lunch programs, are aimed at children. Larger containers, like gallon jugs, are intended to reach the adults who do the shopping for their households — the people who decide whether to pick up a box of brownie mix or try a new cereal.
Auto Makers Rethink Luxury Lines
Aug 27, 2009
Sales of luxury cars, once considered resistant to recessions, fell almost 21% last year -- double the decline in overall car sales -- and continue to slide this year. That raises a disturbing question for auto makers: Is it merely a reaction to the downturn, or a long-term change in consumer behavior?
Abercrombie & Fitch: Worst Recession Brand?
Aug 27, 2009
In this recession, there are struggling apparel retailers all across the country. Then there's Abercrombie & Fitch. The upscale teen retailer has suffered 10 straight months of double-digit same-store-sales declines. In the second quarter of 2009 alone, sales were down an eye-popping 30% across the company's three name outlets.
No, What Does Your Brand Do?
Aug 26, 2009
The marketing media was buzzing last week with news that CBS will promote its fall program lineup via a teeny-weeny video player inserted in an issue of Entertainment Weekly magazine. I know the ad industry is in dire need of some good news, but doesn't anybody else think this is utterly stupid?
Beijing Loves IKEA -- But Not For Shopping
Aug 26, 2009
Customers hop into display beds and nap, pose for snapshots with the decor and enjoy the air conditioning and free soda refills. They just don't buy much.
Viral Brand Crisis and Strategy
Aug 25, 2009
On the morning of April 15, 2009, everything looked bright for Domino’s Pizza. The company’s share price had risen overnight, the group’s expansion plan was on track, and the brand was as strong as ever. But at 3:32 pm that very afternoon, the first text messages began beeping their arrival on the CEO’s mobile phone. They kept coming – one after the next, after the next. The phone’s inbox maxed out. The voicemail message light was blinking in overdrive, and soon filled to capacity.
Can Microsoft's Bing, or Anyone, Seriously Challenge Google?
Aug 25, 2009
Every year, the market-research firm Millward Brown conducts a survey to determine the economic worth of the world's brands — in other words, to put a dollar value on the many corporate logos that dominate our lives. Lately the firm's results have been stuck on repeat: Google has claimed the top spot for the past three years. The most recent report values Google's brand — those six happy letters that herald so many of our jaunts down the Web's rabbit hole — at more than $100 billion. What's astonishing about this stat is how effortlessly Google seems to have earned the public's affection. Other companies — Microsoft, Coke, IBM, McDonald's — spend enormous sums to stay in the consciousness. Google, which makes most of its money from ads, rarely advertises itself. Telling the world how well it does what it does just isn't Google's way.
Keeping a Premium Brand Premium During Recession
Aug 25, 2009
After nearly 20 years with California Pizza Kitchen, CMO Sarah Grover knows exactly what the company's co-CEOs are looking for. Lawyers Rick Rosenfield and Larry Flax established California Pizza Kitchen in Beverly Hills in 1985, eyeing celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck's phenomenal success as he codified California cuisine. The pair developed a casual-dining version of Spago, creating gourmet pizzas with then-surprising toppings such as barbecue chicken. CPK has built a cult following through the years with powerful word-of-mouth marketing.
A Terrifying TV Commercial
Aug 25, 2009
A Swedish cosmetics commercial has moved almost 110,000 people to join an "I'm scared of it" group on Facebook, and prompted lots of debate on news sites, like this one. Is this an advertising success?
Brands Flock to Niche Video Networks
Aug 25, 2009
Erik Beck, a 27-year-old Californian, has some 3 million fans who tune in monthly to his Web-based show, IndyMogul. The special effects video guide teaches aspiring film makers how to create car crash scenes without actually destroying their vehicles. The longtime amateur video maker has become the go-to guy for the 18- to 34 year-old crowd and, more recently, the marketers trying to woo them.
Five Reasons Companies Should be Integrating Social Media with Facebook Connect
Aug 24, 2009
Quick explanation for those not familiar with Facebook Connect. It is a service developed by Facebook that lets Facebook users login into partner sites using their Facebook account and share information with Facebook friends. Basically, a single sign-on authentication solution that websites can use instead of relying on building it for themselves.
You Had Me At 100
Aug 24, 2009
Chevy worked overtime to produce a lot of buzz for the estimated 230 miles/gallon for its Volt EREV, and I'm not sure anybody cared. It wasn't as auspicious coming out party for the "new" GM. It's too bad, because the Volt EREV (for Extended-Range Electric Vehicle) deserves the attention...and GM should get the credit.
Media, Marketers, Madison Ave Just Mad for Apple IPhone
Aug 24, 2009
If you've wondered why the marketing world is obsessed with creating apps for the iPhone, take a stroll down the hallways of Kraft Foods, Gannett and German publisher Axel Springer. There you'll see a sea of iPhones as the brand makes incursions on RIM's BlackBerry, once acknowledged as the smartphone of choice for corporate America. In a recent conference call, Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook said about 20% of Fortune 100 companies have purchased a total of 10,000 or more iPhones since the handset's release in 2007, and scores of government agencies and businesses have each purchased more than 25,000 iPhones for their organizations.
The Return of Levi's 501 Brand
Aug 24, 2009
My wife looked at me. 'I don't know why you have a long face,' she said. 'Do some kind of analysis or something.' With that she was back inside the changing room and I was left on my own again in fashion purgatory. Bitter experience had taught me that, had I wandered off, it would have been at the precise moment that I was summoned to provide an opinion or a different size. So I stood and sulked. Then I saw him. The epitome of teenage angst. Pierced, pointy and filled with the unmissable insolence that only erupts in the final stage of adolescence. As he passed I noticed, with an odd flash of recognition, what he was about to try on. As unmistakable as they were unlikely, my youthful friend was carrying a pair of Levi's 501s.
Market The Company, Not The Product
Aug 22, 2009
It goes without fail, whenever a new product is released from a Gen Y "it" company, my phone rings off the hook. So why are people calling a financial guy when a new product is released? Because these "it" companies market so well that the consumer wants to be an owner ... of the company.
Companies Seek A Fresh Start With New Names
Aug 22, 2009
Beleaguered insurer AIG is renaming its property-casualty and general insurance business "Chartis," which it derived from the Greek word for map. It is giving Chartis a compass logo, which AIG, which began the rebranding effort last month, hopes will represent the franchise's approach to "navigating changing marketplaces and complex risks worldwide."
The Social Media Rules Are A-Changin'
Aug 21, 2009
Following a recent study, "Fortune 100 CEOs Are Slackers," social media pundits have entered a heated, one-sided debate on the subject. In today's culture, current expectations are that CEOs who opt to utilize social media must essentially agree to an ongoing and continuous dialogue with anyone interested while managing their other duties. While social media has attracted tremendous attention, it has made few agencies - and only a small handful of people - any money. Why? Because the current rules of social engagement are completely unrealistic for corporate America.
Shopping Cart Psychology
Aug 21, 2009
Not long ago ConAgra Foods assembled a group of 20 marketers and outside agency folks to figure out why sales of Orville Redenbacher's popcorn had gone stale. They spent nine months studying popcorn eaters, observing families in their homes and instructing them to keep weekly diaries of how they felt about various snacks. "That's when we uncovered the insight," recalls Stan E. Jacot, a ConAgra vice president. It seems that the essence of popcorn is that it is a "facilitator of interaction."
Is There a Better Name Than ‘Zi8’? Then Tell Kodak
Aug 21, 2009
In a review in last Thursday’s Globe, I praised the Zi8 pocket video camera from Eastman Kodak Co. as a strong challenger to the popular Flip MinoHD, but described the new camera’s name as “dreadful’’ and “lame.’’ Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought so.
Twitter’s Effect in the Marketplace
Aug 21, 2009
According to a recent eMarketer report, Twitter - so far - isn’t all it’s cracked up to be for the marketing industry. Only 8% of those in the advertising world feel that Twitter is effective for marketing to their audiences - partially because of the lack of knowledge and awareness that the general consumer has around Twitter. Research from LinkedIn showed that while over 80% of advertisers knew Twitter, only 30% of consumers on the Web were familiar with the micro-blogging tool.
What Promises Can Your Consumer Experience Make?
Aug 21, 2009
"I promise." It's a simple statement. One uttered by children trying to convince their parents that they will be good, by husband and wife on their wedding day (and every week on trash day). A promise builds a strong emotional connection between two people. They are simple words, but when spoken from the heart (and delivered on), they form the foundation for meaningful relationships--and consumer experiences.
Key to Marketing in Complex Times: Simplicity
Aug 20, 2009
In an era when marketing strategies seem more complicated than ever before, author Jonathan Cahill is selling simplicity. And he backs it up with 115 case studies. Prior to opening his own London firm, Spring Marketing Innovation and Research, Cahill spent 30 years as an ad man with major agencies in the UK and Italy. His recently published book is entitled "Igniting the Brand: Strategies That Have Shot Brands to Success." And one of his conclusions is that marketers and their agencies are trying so hard to devise strategies that they often look right past simple truths.
Marketers Break Into Homes By Sponsoring Parties
Aug 20, 2009
One evening earlier this week 14 guests arrived at Diana Burroughs' condo in Manhattan's West Village; seven of them were dogs. After sniffing one another and joining in a dog-and-owner look-alike contest, the pooches happily feasted on filet-mignon- and potato-flavored kibbles from Chef Michael's Canine Creations. Nestle Purina in recent weeks has spent $150,000 sponsoring 1,000 home gatherings like this three-hour party to market its newest line of dog food.
Hardee's, Carl's Hope to Steer Angus Eaters
Aug 20, 2009
The burger wars are heating up, with the Hardee's and Carl's Jr. chains taking aim at McDonald's Corp. with a taste challenge and an attack on Big Mac. In September, Hardee's and Carl's Jr. restaurants will offer mail-in refunds to customers who claim to like a McDonald's Angus burger better than a Carl's Jr. Six Dollar Angus Burger (which actually costs $3.99) or a $3.49 Hardee's Angus Thickburger.
Whole Foods Devotees Lash Out at CEO
Aug 20, 2009
Whole Foods aficionados who assumed the company's management was as crunchy as the brand are feeling betrayed. They have stormed Twitter, Facebook and the blogosphere to vent their rage at John Mackey, the chief executive. In an op-ed column in the Wall Street Journal last week, he argued for health-care savings accounts and declared that health care is not an intrinsic right-- ideas with a conservative bent, which made Whole Foods' liberal customer base go ballistic.
In Tough Times, Big Ideas Become Even Bigger
Aug 20, 2009
With market uncertainty, rampant budget cutting and corporate retrenching, it's safe to say most businesses are content to lay low, stick with the status quo, and go with what they know works. Bold initiatives? Let's save 'em for when the going's really good. Once things turn around, we'll turn our brains back on. Till then, automatic pilot is just fine, thank you very much. Once our balance sheets return to black, that's when we'll once again let our freak flag fly. In other words, most companies are going to be content to focus on tactics aimed at defending market share. Nonsense. Now is the THE perfect time for big ideas.
How To Become A Social Brand
Aug 20, 2009
Giving your brand a social life on the web takes more than a username and an avatar. It takes a lot of time, and a surprising amount of planning and attention. Here are 5 key steps and 3 key continuous activities that brands need to go through in order to successfully participate in online conversations and forge meaningful connections with people who care about their product.
Google Caffeine: Some Big Brands Will Gain, Some Will Lose
Aug 20, 2009
Last week Google informally gave a heads-up that we should all be expecting a change in its main Web search results, based on a new update to search technology that mostly affects its indexing process. Dubbed Google Caffeine, it is a "secret project" considered to be next-generation architecture for Google Web search. And in addition to shaking up the results a bit, it may also pave new roads toward the goal of real-time search results.
Nokia Rocks the World: The Phone King's Plan to Redefine Its Business
Aug 20, 2009
Nokia already owns the global cell-phone market. Now Tero Ojanperä is launching the world's biggest delivery system for services, apps, and entertainment.
Building Consumer Experience Value Using the Power of Metaphors
Aug 19, 2009
We were wrapping up a meeting with a client who was developing a new neighborhood. Through a combination of field research, trend studies and historical analysis we defined a story and collection of artifacts and experiences that would make this place meaningful to potential residents as well as the neighboring community. After the meeting our client said, "I finally understand what you guys do. You orchestrate the obvious."
A Brand is Not a Separate Thing
Aug 19, 2009
“If I am I because you are you. And you are you because I am I. Then I am not I and you are not you.” ⎯ Unknown Rabbi. It may sound like double-talk, but the wise Rabbi’s message is a profoundly important one for those trying to navigate today’s complex and rapidly evolving marketplace. And it’s this: We are not separate. We define each other. We are fronts and backs of each other⎯producer/consumers; government/citizens; manufacturer/suppliers; consultant/clients; management/talent; and, especially, brand/customers. In fact, a brand only knows what it is in terms of its customers. Unfortunately, we tell ourselves a very different story.
Transformation Interrupted
Aug 19, 2009
According to market research firm Hartman Group, consumer loyalty is shifting -- from products and brands, to the experiences offered by retailers -- in a radical transformation that started before the recession. I think the change is much bigger than that. Hartman is onto something because it specializes in enthnographic market research (among other tools), which is an attempt to understand consumers in the context of their lives, both in terms of their knowledge and beliefs, and through their behaviors. I believe the firm is saying that capturing consumers' attention with creative and/or compelling marketing communications no longer carries the water in our busy, confused, noisy lives; experiences are what stick, bring differences into sharp focus, and compel purchases.
Build a Marketing Platform Like a Celebrity
Aug 19, 2009
Historically, marketing has been departmentalized in corporations and positioned as a college major. With the advent of social media and our current economic situation, marketing has become a topic that everyone should—and can—care about and have expertise in. Now anyone with an Internet connection and some ambition can develop their own marketing platform, which can be harnessed for both career and financial success.
Study: Online Advertising Drives 9% Sales Gain For CPG Brands
Aug 19, 2009
A new study indicates that online advertising boosts retail sales of consumer packaged goods brands by 9% on average -- comparable with the lift from TV ad campaigns. The findings come from comScore and marketing consultancy dunnhumbyUSA based on research involving online campaigns run over three months for a variety unnamed CPG brands.
How to Hit the Spread in Online Video
Aug 19, 2009
Spreading a branded video message on the internet isn't alchemy; it's common sense. Trust me, I've seen hundreds -- both good and bad. Here are five things that we're seeing work today to "hit to spread."
Four Opportunities to Strengthen a Brand Community
Aug 19, 2009
Community marketing strategies are now common. Years of research have demonstrated that transforming customers into community members yields higher repeat purchase, greater loyalty and stronger brand advocacy. This, in turn, creates a virtuous cycle of greater brand authenticity, increased marketing efficiency and the ability to reinvest marketing dollars in building the community.
Holistic Marketing Explored
Aug 18, 2009
Holism is the concept that the whole has a reality independent and greater than the sum of its parts. Marketing people should pay more attention to this concept. Take Tiger Woods' endorsement of Buick. On the surface, this might seem like a good idea. A young, charismatic, world-class athlete drives a Buick. How could this not improve the perception of the brand?
Scarcity as a Benefit
Aug 18, 2009
Knob Creek bourbon has announced that it may run out of stock yet this summer, and that thirsty customers will have to wait until the next batch arrives on store shelves in November. I think this is brilliant, old-school marketing. One of the most important brand attributes of successful products and services is success; consumers want to know that other consumers want stuff, and sales is a qualifier that goes far beyond conversation as proof of that interest.
100 Web-Savvy Drivers Review Ford Fiesta
Aug 18, 2009
The buzz for the arrival of the 2010 Ford Fiesta subcompact car in the United States is building. That's no small task, given that Ford hasn't sold a car called the Fiesta in the United States since the period from 1978 to 1980.
Sony Relies on Humor to Counter a Grim Mood
Aug 18, 2009
Ah, the great comedy teams of history: Laurel and Hardy ... Burns and Allen ... Abbott and Costello ... Manning and Timberlake. Manning and Timberlake? As in the football star Peyton Manning and the singer Justin Timberlake? Yes, according to a humorous campaign for electronics products sold by Sony.
How to Create Experiences to Bring a Brand's Story to Life
Aug 18, 2009
Sohrab Vossoughi believes in love -- the love marketers must create when trying to connect with consumers. Mr. Vossoughi, the founder and principal of Ziba Design, in Portland, Ore., said his job is to help clients create experiences for their customers, because the "experience is what brings them back for more." He launched Ziba, a product-development firm, in 1984 and directs projects for marketers including McDonald's, FedEx, Hyundai, Whirlpool, Xerox, Black & Decker, Samsung, Microsoft, Nike, Pioneer, Sanyo and Coleman. "We design experiences in multiple platforms -- object, communications, environment interaction/interface and the combination of all of those," he said.
Soft Drinks Get Softer: New Niche Aims to Quench Stress
Aug 17, 2009
Every action must have an equal and opposite reaction, or so the laws of physics say. Push and pull. Proton and electron. Gravity and levity. And now, Red Bull and Drank. Drank falls in an emerging category of "relaxation beverages," concocted to soothe the overextended, overbooked and overworked masses that have been hopped up on energy drinks for the past decade. Drank's slogan? "Slow your roll."
Farmwashing: Big Food’s Branding Woes... Again
Aug 17, 2009
A local dairy farmer walks up and down the line, offering cups of fresh Snowville Creamery milk (“only a day old”) to moviegoers waiting to enter the sold-out screening of Food, Inc., the latest anti-big-food documentary that takes aim at the industrialized food system, especially giant food processing brands like Tyson and Perdue.
Why Bounty Is a Hit With U.S. Hispanics
Aug 17, 2009
Consumers are cutting back on just about everything right now, but some items—paper towels and diapers, for instance—will always be musts. That said, recession-conscious shoppers won’t part with their money unless there’s a promise of value. It’s a dynamic that David Miller Gomez-Giron, Procter & Gamble’s associate marketing director, sees in action every day. Gomez-Giron—who oversees multicultural marketing for Bounty, Charmin and Pampers—has his sights trained on the Hispanic shopper. And for good reason. Not only is the demo huge (46.9 million), but it also responds especially well to quality/value messages.
Four New Marketing Realities To Live By
Aug 17, 2009
When it comes to this recession, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says it best: "Maybe we should think of today as normal ... as opposed [to] today as the tough times, and yesterday as normal." The pre-2007 economy is gone for years, and some elements might be gone for good. And that means that marketers must adapt to four new, here-to-stay realities.
Best Promotion of Social Media Efforts by a Big Brand: And the Winner Is…
Aug 17, 2009
I've spent a few columns this week looking at innovative usages of social media by big brands. Along the way, I've noticed many companies fail to fully capitalize on these efforts--they are not promoting their Facebook, Twitter, iPhone apps and other alternative platforms to their loyal customers as much as they could.
Rebranding Branding
Aug 17, 2009
An old yet dominant definition of branding is emotion-driven storytelling in which the brand works to attract and guide us by projecting a desired lifestyle. An established yet fringe definition of branding is storytelling inspired by the tangible qualities of the objects or systems the brand supports. This later definition and approach to branding reverses out of transcendent, emotion-based brand experiences and gives more responsibility to the customer's intelligence to create the experience and meaning. What would our branded world look like if this approach was widely adopted?
'New' GM Leaner and Meaner, but Not by Much
Aug 17, 2009
General Motors Co. doesn't appear to be learning from its mistakes: The trimmed-down, "new" GM still looks a lot like the old one, with too many vehicle brands and too many overlapping U.S. models.
What's in a New Logo?
Aug 15, 2009
It can invigorate a company's image or squander its brand equity. To see which gambles paid off, Fortune turned to a few experts to judge some of the most dramatic transformations.
Despite Sales Success, Campbell Puts an End to Soup Wars
Aug 15, 2009
Campbell Soup Co. is dropping its hotly contested comparative ad campaign against arch-rival Progresso -- even though the ads worked really well. When the marketer launched its initial push for Select Harvest soup, it began with a taste-test ad in which a blindfolded woman tastes Campbell's brand and names farm-fresh ingredients, then names chemicals after tasting Progresso.
The Promise of Private-label Media
Aug 15, 2009
Just about every company has a Web site. But today, many marketers are going further. They are transforming their digital presence into powerful media channels, direct to consumers. The practice is prevalent enough that, as the research firm Outsell Inc. reported in July 2008, about 62 percent of marketers’ online advertising and marketing budgets are spent on their own digital media, up from 58 percent in 2007. These marketers recognize that with the right mix of content, utility, community, and product, they can create compelling premium experiences for consumers. And they see that these efforts deliver powerful benefits in branding, relationship building, and lead generation.
25 Meaningless Tag Lines
Aug 14, 2009
We’ve compiled a list of the 25 worst acronyms, and yesterday we showed you that tag lines need to help people. We’ve also covered more municipal tag lines and other local examples. But now, here’s a list of 25 useless tag lines from brands that should know better.
After Early Errors, Wal-Mart Thinks Locally to Act Globally
Aug 14, 2009
Having powered its way to the top in U.S. retailing, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has struggled to extend its dominance across the globe. But the world's largest retailer is learning in Brazil and elsewhere that the most successful ideas don't necessarily flow from its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. That has it tailoring inventories and stores to local tastes -- and exporting ideas and products pioneered outside the U.S.
Only P&G, Reckitt Convey Value of Marketing in Annual Reports
Aug 14, 2009
Only two companies, Procter & Gamble and Reckitt Benckiser, have figured out how to communicate the importance of brand to the bottom line in their annual reports, according to a survey of these documents from major marketers. The lesson: If marketers want to win the battle for company resources, they must work harder to promote their contribution to the bottom line in annual reports, according to a new global survey by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising in the U.K.
Why a Chinese Multinational Brand Is Still Years Away
Aug 14, 2009
Can Chinese companies capitalize on the global recession to better establish and develop their brands overseas? Many Chinese companies will likely invest in American companies (or brands) given the massive decline in asset values in the United States and Europe. But what do we mean when we say "better establish and develop" brands? We are asking whether Chinese corporations have intentions to promote their own brands in foreign markets. And whether any are in a position to compete at a price premium directly against established brands in Europe, America and Japan.
As Media Brands Build Their Own Communities, They Must Evolve Their Business Model
Aug 14, 2009
Media companies know that they’re not the only voices in the auditorium –the audience now talks back. They create media, content, and share it directly with each other on social sites —now brands, like Warner seek to embrace them closer. Rather than allow this inevitable social interaction on social networks like MySpace, they want to take it back by launching their own social features.
The Waning Days of 'Mere' Music Licensing
Aug 13, 2009
From the early strains of "Revolution" by Nike, marketing has increasingly co-opted the soundtracks of popular culture to create emotional resonance. And, boy, has the dance between marketers and music changed. No longer are brands and agencies willing to "crutch-up" their advertising with simply a popular song. In fact, the practice of slapping a song in at the last minute is moving into the Ice Age. What continues to thaw and thrive is the shared-values model, that fertile area where what the brands want us to experience and what the bands want us to experience is the same place.
Covering Many Bases for a Brand of Blue Jeans
Aug 13, 2009
The British say “Mind the gap,” but in this country it has been a while since shoppers minded what Gap was selling. The Gap division of Gap Inc. was struggling even before the recession, which has persuaded consumers to cut back significantly on clothing purchases.
Why Starbucks Is the Top Brand on Facebook
Aug 13, 2009
Starbucks has been racking up accolades in the digital and social media space. As of July 23, the coffee chain surpassed Coca-Cola as the most popular brand on Facebook, with more than 3.6 million fans, per InsideFacebook.com, an independent blog that tracks the social networking site’s developments. It was also named the No. 1 “most engaged brand” in a report published by Altimeter Group last month. These recent feats are the result of Starbucks’ aggressive digital and social media strategy, said Starbucks digital strategy director Alexandra Wheeler in an interview with Brandweek. That's because Starbucks has moved from “experimenting” to actively incorporating and utilizing social media channels, such as Twitter and Facebook, in its brand marketing plans.
If You're Part of the 'Pleasurati,' There's a Condom for You
Aug 12, 2009
The folks at condom marketer Durex had an identity problem. Brand leader Trojan was known as the brand men grew up with, the "boy scout" of condoms, if you will, for its preparedness in the wallet. No. 3 LifeStyles brand is associated with the partying lounge lizard. So what's the niche for the No. 2 seller, Durex? Somewhere in between.
Korean Comeback
Aug 12, 2009
As U.S. auto manufacturers whither, Hyundai--which once struggled to overcome a reputation for cheesy, entry-level cars--is on a roll. The Korean automaker spent the last decade preaching a necessary, if not boring, message of quality. Today it's taking bold moves with its marketing. Hyundai's U.S. arm, representing nearly one-fifth of total sales, is trying to convince shoppers that, recession be damned, they shouldn't be afraid to buy a Hyundai.
A Tale of Two Rebrands: Syfy and Starbucks
Aug 12, 2009
To marketers in despair, a rebrand may be like a knight in shining armor. How better to re-awaken the passion for a brand than to create a new name and image?! Despite the promise of a fairy tale ending, more rebrands fail than succeed. Executing a rebrand is fraught with challenges and requires some rather subjective decision-making. The stories of two high profile rebranding efforts currently underway – the Sci-Fi Channel and Starbucks — prove this point.
The Value of Real-Time Customer Care
Aug 12, 2009
One of the best parts of vacationing in a small town is visiting the local video store, where the proprietor--a scruffy guy who loves everything related to movies--will recommend films that he thinks you'll love. There's no scientific algorithm to his suggestions, no data analysis or statistical assessment. The owner makes his recommendations based on bits and pieces of casual conversation with customers. I was thinking about that video store as I read about the contest hosted by Netflix, which offered a $1 million prize to anyone who could significantly improve its recommendation system and ended in July. While digital technology has made our lives more convenient in many ways, especially in the way it helps people make buying decisions, smart companies realize that there are some things even the most sophisticated digital applications can't do. Above all, they can't replace the personal touch that often helps consumers distinguish one brand from another.
BMW Pumps Diesel
Aug 11, 2009
For many Americans who came of age in the ‘70s, diesel is a dirty word. BMW, however, is looking to change consumers' perceptions by prepping a new campaign designed to sell drivers on a cleaner-burning, eco-friendly fuel that doesn’t get in the way of performance. As part of its “EfficientDynamics” initiative, the automaker this month will launch a multi-platform effort promoting the 335d sedan and X5 xDrive35d crossover.
GM Confesses to Being Behind Mysterious '230' Website
Aug 11, 2009
Fritz Henderson, CEO of General Motors Co., admitted this morning in a live webcast that the automaker was indeed behind the mysterious, unbranded website whatis230.com, as first reported here last week. The number's significance, Mr. Henderson said, is that the Chevrolet Volt plug-in car due later this year is expected to get city fuel economy of at least 230 miles per gallon, or 25 kilowatt hours per 100 miles.
The Top Ten Worst Green Brand Names
Aug 11, 2009
We've finally moved beyond the eco____, green____, nature's ____, and over a decade later, we've finally stopped giggling like third graders every time we say "Prius" (which is a Latin word meaning "to precede" but sounds like, um, well, never mind). But with the coming of the Nissan Leaf, announced last week, we were befuddled. Really? Leaves are supposed to be what your sleek new fuel-efficient vehicle kicks up as you zip more responsibly through the streets. Right?
Marketing Meddling Sparks Brain Drain at Chaotic Pepsi
Aug 11, 2009
It all started with Pedro the Dog. Early in 2008, Pepsi marketers were still figuring out their new top executive, Massimo d'Amore, recently named head of PepsiCo Americas Beverages. But they quickly got a taste of what was to come as Mr. d'Amore did an end run around the brand's marketing team and then-Gatorade agency Element 79 by working with Peter Arnell to create a Super Bowl ad. The spot, which consisted of little more than a big, black dog lapping Gatorade from a bowl, was widely criticized. Since then, an exodus of key marketing and brand executives has plagued a company once known for incubating top talent.
A Tower Of Babel
Aug 11, 2009
Macrovision changed its name and brand positioning last month, and is now to be known as Rovi Corporation. The CEO's press release explaining the move is a veritable Tower of Babel of ambiguity, confusion, and doublespeak, so it's a good case history example of what you don't want to do when you do the branding thing.
Experts Critique Business Logos
Aug 11, 2009
Logos can bring a business glory (Nike) or shame (Tropicana). That's why, before attempting to design a logo for your company or product, you need a clear understanding of exactly what the logo should convey. What is your story? Your selling point, brand attitude, competitive edge, and place in your industry? Do you want to fit in with the market, or do you want to set yourself apart?
Don't Be A Player Platform Hater
Aug 10, 2009
I've been meaning to post a long-ish rant on the importance of celebrities taking control of their own platforms, but never gotten to it, in part because I'm not that enamored with the incessant selling of celebrity that occurs in our culture. Yeah, I sound like a grumpy old man, but I can't help myself. It bums me out - not because I don't like celebrities, but because the current approach strikes me as driven by short term thinking.
What G Isn't Is a Sales Success
Aug 10, 2009
Gatorade maintains that "What is G?" is right on track, despite plummeting sales, consumer confusion and reports that creative is back on the drawing board. PepsiCo restaged its iconic Gatorade brand earlier this year. According to Beverage Digest, Gatorade's volume plummeted 18% in the first half of 2009, when the effort, from TBWA/Chiat/Day, Los Angeles, asked and then answered "What is G?"
Starbucks: Howard Schultz vs. Howard Schultz
Aug 10, 2009
Starbucks' iconoclastic founder has gone through a reeducation in the rigors of running a more typical company. That doesn't mean he has to like it.
How Sports Brands Create Brand Fanatics
Aug 10, 2009
A key reason sports brands are so successful is the relationship they have with each of their consumers, or fans. Being a sports fan—and loving a team brand—transcends a person’s job, family or social status. “Fans experience pleasure and satisfaction with successful teams,” writes Baylor University marketing professor Kirk L. Wakefield in his book, Team Sports Marketing, “but, they also experience feelings of delight or excitement that deeply resonates within the identity of the individual fan, such that the effects are likely to be long-term. … Sports teams develop a faithful fanatical following primarily due to high levels of identification…”
Zippo Reignites Brand With Social Media, New Products
Aug 10, 2009
Paragon of Rust Belt manufacturing and an icon since World War II, Zippo wears its American-ness on its sleeve. So does its VP-sales and marketing, Mark Paup, who has spent his entire 15-year career at Zippo and now leads all sales, marketing, design and product development for the Bradford, Pa.-based company. A smoker who rides a Soft Tail Nightrain Harley, you could say Mr. Paup, 44, fits the psychographic of the Zippo consumer.
Who Spreads Your Word?
Aug 10, 2009
In order for an idea to spread, someone has to do the spreading. In the dark ages (ten years ago), the only way to spread your idea on a large scale was to do it yourself. Lots and lots of ads. Today, marketers get all sweaty thinking about how this happens magically, virally, for free. If it were only that easy.
Building a Brand vs. Building a Business
Aug 10, 2009
Are you building a business? Or are you building a brand? Silly questions, you might be thinking. Naturally, you are trying to do both. But that might be a mistake. What's good for the business is not necessarily good for the brand. And vice versa.
Your Innovations Aren't Immortal
Aug 7, 2009
Take a deep breath, and repeat after me: "My [business model, product, business unit, brand, offering] has a finite life. I'm going to make that life as happy and productive as possible, but I also have to think about what's next."
How Powerade Defeated Gatorade in Court
Aug 7, 2009
Yesterday's verdict in favor of Coca-Cola's Powerade had a lot to do with endurance -- Gatorade Endurance, court documents revealed. On April 13, Gatorade's parent company, the PepsiCo-owned Stokley Van Camp, filed suit against Coca-Cola's Powerade ION4 product. It alleged false advertising, trademark dilution as well as other claims.
How Britannica Defied the Odds
Aug 7, 2009
Conventional wisdom would have us believe that in a world where Wikipedia is the first port of call for millions of people, an encyclopaedia, such as Britannica, should no longer exist: There is nothing "Blue Ocean" about leather bound books. As far as its competitive position is concerned, it could not be worse: why pay for information when the same information is available for free?
America's Most Resilient Brands
Aug 7, 2009
To survive during multiple economic downturns, America's most resilient brands have diverse portfolios, lean organizational structures and inexpensive products.
Active Listening on the Social Web; It’s Overrated
Aug 7, 2009
Wikipedia tells us that active listening is an intent to “listen for meaning”. Others suggest that active listening should “focus on who you are listening to, whether in a group or one-on-one, in order to understand what he or she is saying.” These are excellent definitions. But as it relates to customer interactions on the social web, active listening is only one half of the equation.
Navel Gazing
Aug 7, 2009
Providence, RI now has a new slogan -- "Creative Capital" -- and a logo, thanks to a $100,000 gig with a branding firm that specializes in helping communities respond to the drastic downturn in employment, investment, and solvent home mortgages with image marketing. If I find out that any Stimulus funds are getting spent on this nonsense, count me in as a parade leader when we march on Washington.
Ford Highlights Connectivity As Selling Point
Aug 7, 2009
Ford is making safety, infotainment and drivetrain technology important keys to driving consumer interest and sales. But Jim Buczkowski, the automaker's director of global electrical and electronic systems, says it isn't enough to load gadgets onto the dashboard. On-board technology, he argues, must be easy to use, functional and affordable -- because ultimately, he says, one's car is as important a living space as one's living room.
A Separate Social Community Is Not The Answer To Everything
Aug 7, 2009
How big is the obese fashion consumer marketplace? Huge. Greater than 86% of Americans will be overweight or obese by 2030, according to the journal Obesity. That makes skinny fashion the new niche, and plus-size apparel mainstream. Yet Lane Bryant, the biggest name in large-sized women's clothing retailing, has set up "Inside Curve," a social networking community "just" for the plus-sized gal. In an attempt to freshen up the brand image, the company is promising an interactive experience on the site for its members, with greater engagement based on fashion appeal versus its long-standing position: large sizes.
Toward a Participatory Model for Marketing
Aug 6, 2009
Southern Comfort just moved its entire $8m media budget online. Whole Foods was the first brand with 1m followers on Twitter. Coca-Cola pioneered brand generosity on Facebook. Underlying all of this is the fact that social media is the great equalizer. Not just between brands and the consumers of these brands, but between dominant brands and their challengers.
Building an Army of Hyper-Local, Mobile-Connected Advocates
Aug 6, 2009
No, this isn't "the year for location" in mobile. That phrase has become industry cliche by now. But it's hard to ignore the hype that one location-based service called Foursquare is getting in some circles -- and no advertiser should. The NYC-based startup has built a sticky platform, an avid fan base and, quite possibly, the next-generation platform for proximity marketing.
New Marketing in Action: Netflix
Aug 6, 2009
I’m guessing that most of you have already seen this deck that made its way around the Interwebs yesterday but if not, it’s definitely worth a read. It’s another example of why Netflix is so successful – because they haven’t left culture to chance. Additionally it’s also a great example of a favourite theme of mine – operations as marketing. This presentation is catnip for investors because it points to an extremely well run company and a management team who are focused on the right things.
Brands Are Part Of Their Identity (Except When They're Not)
Aug 6, 2009
At Pangea Media, we regularly gauge the attitudes of tweens and teens who make up the bulk of visitors to our site, Quibblo.com. Recently, we conducted two surveys which asked them to tell us how they interact with brands and, specifically, which brands they think are "cooler." True to the demographic, some of the 2,000-plus results were in line with what we expected them to say ... others were not.
Celebrate the Primacy of the Creative Marketing Heart
Aug 6, 2009
I got a recommendation from someone to read Martin Lindstrom's book, "Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy." It describes the new neuromarketing sciences exploring how the brain's physical reaction to our thoughts, sensory stimulation or even rituals can evoke brand loyalty or apathy. According to Lindstrom, this new understanding of the biology behind our unconscious mind's ability to make "decisions" faster than our conscious mind represents a "historic meeting between science and marketing. A union of apparent opposites."
Turn Digital Chaos Into Brand Equity
Aug 6, 2009
The explosion in new media channels, and the increasing ease with which consumers can react to, create content about, and generally discuss brands is challenging even the best marketers. How do you manage your brand in such a chaotic consumer empowered world and ensure that consumers understand your brand equity?
Tide Turns 'Basic' for P&G in Slump
Aug 6, 2009
Procter & Gamble Co., under assault by penny-pinching consumers, has quietly rolled out a version of Tide detergent that the company freely admits isn't "new and improved." The product, Tide Basic, is currently for sale in about 100 stores throughout the South. It lacks some of the cleaning capabilities of the iconic brand -- and costs about 20% less. Its very existence is one of the most telling signs to date of how the sour U.S. economy is forcing mass marketers to shift course.
Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi, Revised Edition
Aug 6, 2009
In the last couple of weeks, a JPG has been making the internet rounds and, in the process, has gathered more than 6,500 Diggs (not that that is any measure of successful success, but still…) and has been mentioned in dozens of design and culture blogs, including many which I frequent and respect. The problem is that the JPG is wrong and disingenuous. It comparatively illustrates the evolution of the Pepsi and Coca-Cola logos from their beginnings in the late nineteenth century to their current state at the end of the 2000s. The comparison chart mocks the ever-changing personality of the Pepsi logo in contrast to Coca-Cola’s stoic script logo, unaffected by the effects of time.
The Luxury-Brand Effect: Should BMW Sell Ketchup?
Aug 5, 2009
Things can't get much worse for many of the world's top luxury brands. This week Coach, the high-end handbag seller, announced that profits slumped 32% for the quarter. Same-store sales at Saks were down 23.2% in the first five months of this fiscal year. BMW's U.S. sales are off 28.9%. Bain & Company, the consulting firm, is forecasting a record 10% drop in the overall U.S. luxury market this year. According to Bain, luxury won't fully recover until 2012. What can these brands do to battle this malaise? Maybe BMW should try selling ketchup or mayonnaise.
How To Catch A Man
Aug 5, 2009
Experts predict a surge in the men's grooming market -- just as they've been doing for the past decade. The men's grooming market is only about one-fifth the size of the women's market, according to Euromonitor. But if the men's market is so dramatically underdeveloped, why has the oft- predicted explosion failed to materialize? Why is it so hard for men's grooming brands to catch a man?
RadioShack CMO: We're Not (Really) Changing Our Name
Aug 5, 2009
Yes, RadioShack has seen the criticism of its new branding. No, it's not worried. Earlier this week, RadioShack unveiled its new branding, which includes the nickname "The Shack." Immediately Twitter users and a host of bloggers were sharing their thoughts -- many of them unflattering. Tech blogs zeroed in on the fact that the company appears to be embarking on a pricey (and misguided) marketing effort rather than addressing any number of core issues.
Barclaycard App Becomes Top Free, Branded iPhone Game Ever
Aug 5, 2009
Not many branded iPhone games have broken through, but a new one from U.K.-based Barclaycard has quickly become the most popular free, branded game in the history of the iTunes App Store.
What Brands Can Learn From Luke and Leia
Aug 5, 2009
Star Wars, an idea that is now thirty years old, gives brands much to learn in how they consider their future in a digital, conversation driven world. Star Wars is a platform. A story told over 25 years, six movies, a cartoon series, innumerable video games, plastic toys, and a sea of licensed novels.
NFL Teams With Procter & Gamble In a Play for New Kinds of Sponsors
Aug 5, 2009
The National Football League has an official drink and an official wireless headset. Now, in a sign of how far sports leagues will go to find revenue in the recession, it has official toiletries. The NFL, the biggest U.S. sports league by revenue, on Wednesday will announce a sponsorship deal with Procter & Gamble Co., maker of everyday household items such as soaps and shampoos. The multi-year pact, which P&G says is the costliest in its history, lets it slap a newly designed "Official Locker Room Product of the NFL" label on products including Old Spice deodorant and Head & Shoulders dandruff shampoo.
Kodak's Celebrity CMO
Aug 5, 2009
Eastman Kodak is being restructured for the second time since 2003. It just posted its fourth consecutive quarterly sales decline, down 29% to $1.77 billion in the second quarter, and a net loss of $189 million. Even so, its CMO is becoming something of a celebrity through his tweets about behind the scenes tours of Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show and his prime-time TV appearances of NBC's The Apprentice. What is he doing for Kodak's brand, and how can social media help the company?
Don't Ignore Brand Assets in a Bad Economy
Aug 5, 2009
The dollar just isn't what it used to be. But that doesn't mean you can let your competitors and online "entrepreneurs" debase the value of your company's most priceless assets. When the chips are down, brand owners must shore up the foundation of what connects them most with consumers -- the brand -- and not let it crash and crumble in hopes of future -- and costly -- repair.
How Successful Brands Live Their Difference
Aug 5, 2009
We live in a conversation driven world. Even if your brand is not an active user of social media, your customers and potential customers are. This is revolutionizing the way brands have to think about themselves and how they choose to compete. In a conversation driven world, the real threat is not conversation itself, but commoditization. Unless customers have reason to talk, they won't. And a brand that generates little or no conversation will be killed by one that does.
Sampling Inspires Repeat Purchases
Aug 4, 2009
It's no secret that sampling programs can get people to try and occasionally purchase products. However, new research suggests that such giveaways can also help drive long-term sales and increase purchases of other items from the product line.
Latest Starbucks Buzzword: 'Lean' Japanese Techniques
Aug 4, 2009
Starbucks Corp. built its business as the anti-fast-food joint. Now, the recession and growing competition are forcing the coffeehouse giant to see the virtues of behaving more like its streamlined competitors. Under a new initiative being put into practice at its more than 11,000 U.S. stores, there will be no more bending over to scoop coffee from below the counter, no more idle moments waiting for expired coffee to drain and no more dillydallying at the pastry case.
Stop Saying Sorry, Start Getting Really Social
Aug 4, 2009
With the recent spate of companies such as United Airways, Domino’s Pizza and Habitat UK, being hit by negative publicity online, one could be forgiven for thinking that social media can be used as a cure-all for such issues. But in fact, social media will only ever be a band-aid for such problems, unless it’s tied into fundamental changes in the way such companies operate.
Dawn Eyes Facebook for Cause Marketing
Aug 4, 2009
Procter & Gamble’s Dawn brand is cozying up to social media to drive awareness of wildlife conservation and cultivate an online community of followers. The dish care brand has been linked to wildlife rescue and animal rehabilitation care throughout its 36-year history, but, in a first for the brand, Dawn is actually running limited edition store packaging that asks consumers to help by purchasing a bottle of Dawn.
To Live in Interesting Times
Aug 4, 2009
Consider for a moment that the humble Amazon product review can nullify millions of dollars of ad spend, that a search for "best razor" on Google can route around all of Gillette's best efforts to communicate the "best a man can get," and that a "hate Comcast" group on Facebook has the power to drive a consumer straight into the arms of DirectTV.
The Anti-laws of Luxury Marketing #1
Aug 4, 2009
Forget about ‘positioning’, luxury is not comparative. In consumer marketing, at the heart of every brand strategy you will find the concept of positioning, of the ‘unique selling proposition’ (USP), and ‘unique and convincing competitive advantage’ (UCCA). Every classic brand has to specify its positioning, and then convey it through its products, its services, its price, its distribution and its communication. Positioning is the difference that creates the preference for a given brand over the one that it has decided to target as a source of new business and whose clients it is going to try to win over.
How to Defeat McDonald’s
Aug 3, 2009
Quick-serves fight in a hypercompetitive environment. Brands duke it out with surprising new products which seem like punches coming out of nowhere and low blows of heavy discounts or free giveaways—not to mention the pot shots lobbed between dueling sassy advertising campaigns.
Starbucks' 15th Avenue. Starbucks' TED?
Aug 3, 2009
Remember how crazy, desperate United and Delta got when JetBlue started making cheap flights cool? With those nutty flight attendants' ad libs, TV in the seats and interesting snacks? They thought they couldn't compete with that tonality, so they created two new sub-brands; Song even got Kate Spade to design the uniforms. Starbuck's 15th Avenue may be the Starbucks' version of TED and Song.
The Latest Branding Opp? The Profile Picture
Aug 3, 2009
Twitter may be free of advertising, but that hasn't stopped brands from trying to get in front of users glued to the fast-growing service. They've made their presence felt in subtler ways, such as holding quizzes and donating to charities in the hopes visitors will tweet about a brand. One of the more recent efforts involves brands looking for a persistent presence in the Twitter stream through users' profile pictures.
Why Packaging Matters More Than Ever
Aug 3, 2009
Marketing researchers of note, Forrester Research and McKinsey & Company, recently conducted studies on the nature of consumerism today. Their results are important because they point to a shift away from the classic “consumer purchasing funnel.”
Why Now?
Jul 31, 2009
A number of dim bulbers emailed me this week to complain that it was dumb for spokesceleb Mike Rowe to add the phrase "why not?" to the end of Ford's tagline "why Ford, why now" in a new TV commercial. I actually don't like the "why now" part.
Does Brand Differentiation Matter with No Competitors?
Jul 31, 2009
When it comes building a strong brand that matters to consumers, differentiation is a key in separating your offerings from competitors. But what if you don’t have any competitors? Does brand differentiation matter then?
The Problem of Promoting You, Your Cause, Your Business with Social Media
Jul 31, 2009
If your company wants to know the philosophical basis of social media, many resources indicate it rests in the notion that consumers grew tired of advertising and marketing messages all day, every day. They turned to the Internet in the late 1990s and early 2000s when the access and technology barriers to entry conveniently dropped. There, they found like-minded others to share recommendations and information with.
P&G Tries Augmented Reality
Jul 31, 2009
Procter & Gamble is testing the waters for “augmented reality,” a form of digital technology that's driving a new campaign for Always Infinity. The packaged goods giant hopes to give consumers ways to interact with its ads like never before.
Break Through the Bottleneck
Jul 31, 2009
After months in development, the new product is ready for worldwide launch. The product manager tells the creative team to use a picture of a globe. "But our brand is about what we do for people. Our brand guidelines specify images of humanity," the designer pleads. "I don't care. Use the globe," the product manager demands. Unfortunately, there's always the need to balance business objectives with branding goals. Says the VP of Global Branding for a major commercial information data base company, "It's not that product managers ignore branding. They don't understand how to leverage it."
House-Brand Menswear That Aims to Be a Cut Above
Jul 31, 2009
Passersby along New York’s Fifth Avenue will soon see a change at Saks Fifth Avenue: Rather than a designer collection, a corner window will announce the department store’s own new line of menswear. While the store doesn’t go so far as using the term “house brand,” which sounds too lowbrow, it is emphasizing value with its new venture.
Chinese Marketers Tackle Global Expansion
Jul 30, 2009
The global recession has turned cash-hungry Western companies into takeover targets for Chinese marketers, and foreign countries into tempting new markets for Chinese brands and retail stores. Chinese companies haven't been hit to the same extent by the economic crisis as those in the U.S. and other major countries.
Managing an Online Reputation
Jul 30, 2009
Your customers are talking about you — and the whole world is listening. Local review sites are reshaping the world of small business by becoming the new Yellow Pages, one-stop platforms where customers can find a business — and also see independent critiques of its performance. How do you manage your reputation when everybody is a critic?
Measuring Personal Influence
Jul 30, 2009
A popular blogger can create as much impact as a 30-second spot. Should personal influence be the next CPM? Marketers seem to have realized only recently that people can be brands. Madonna constantly reinvents herself. Martha Stewart is now a redeemed domestic diva. But personal branding has been around for as long as mass media. In the heyday of the silver screen, studios managed their stars like brands in a portfolio. They carefully positioned, packaged and presented each one. Stars could launch a look or a way of walking and could influence millions of consumers.
Why Should GM Give Marketing Any Respect?
Jul 30, 2009
My ex-partner Al Ries and I rarely disagree, but we do part company on his column titled "GM's Lutz Appointment Shows No Respect for Marketing." In my estimation this move supports what Dave Packard of Hewlett-Packard once said: "Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing people."
Reason vs. Emotion in Branding
Jul 30, 2009
On Monday, Roger Dooley posted a short piece on his Neuromarketing blog titled, "Emotional Ads Work Best." Citing an analysis of data regarding successful ad campaigns referenced in the book Brand Immortality by Pringle and Field, Dooley states the following: "Campaigns with purely emotional content performed about twice as well (31% vs. 16%) with only rational content, and those that were purely emotional did a little better (31% vs 26%) those that mixed emotional and rational content."
College Branding: Taglines
Jul 30, 2009
One of the great things about social media is that a conversation can be extended quickly between sites and even continents. Such was my experience with my College Branding post. The first extension of the conversation was by Lou Caravella of Vital Communications, who wrote a blog post citing mine as inspiration but identifying a fascinating resource I hadn’t seen before and providing his own take.
The Goal of Twitter’s New Homepage? Be the World’s Water Cooler
Jul 29, 2009
Twitter now has a brand spankin’ new homepage. Of course, if you’re a regular Twitter user, you’re rarely going to see it because you’re already logged in. But for the 5 billion+ people Twitter has yet to convert, it provides the company’s big chance to get them to sign up and stay on their website.
Why the Starbucks "15th Ave" Store Is Doomed to Fail
Jul 29, 2009
Late last week, Starbucks opened a new coffeehouse. Considering they have around 15,000 outlets, this might not seem like news. But there's a wrinkle: the new coffeehouse is called 15th Ave. Coffee & Tea, and is an attempt by SBUX to create a distinct, bespoke, of-the-neighborhood coffeehouse.
Big Spenders Get the Most Buzz
Jul 29, 2009
Spend and you will get buzz. That seems to be one takeaway from YouGov's BrandIndex, which compiled daily feedback from thousands of consumers for the first half of the year in order to find out which brands consumers are buzzing about and which brands they're not.
Targeting Tots: How Brands Connect with Children
Jul 28, 2009
Kim Bremer, Earth’s Best’s Director of Infant Feeding, says parents and families should recognize the influence of characters like Elmo and the affect of Sesame Street’s brand on youngsters. “Kids know Elmo because they watch Sesame Street from the time they are one, and brand recognition is something they see, watch and recognize,” says Bremer. “We take the toddler audience very seriously.”
Selling Gum With Health Claims
Jul 28, 2009
The slogan for Trident in the 1970s — “four out of five dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gums for their patients who chew gum” — typified how sugarless gum was marketed for decades after Trident, now a division of Cadbury North America, first introduced a saccharine-sweetened gum in 1964. Those much-cited dentists were saying not that sugar-free was good, of course, as much as preferable to regular gum. Today, however, sugarless brands claim not that they do less harm but untold good.
Staples Buttons Up
Jul 27, 2009
This could very well be the most complicated era in the history of buttons—you can hit the panic button, press the pause button, use the reset or fast-forward button, push somebody’s buttons or start a war with the touch of a button. Weren’t buttons supposed to make the world a simpler place? Staples thinks so. That’s why the office supplies retailer is proud to celebrate the fifth anniversary of its “Easy Button” branding strategy.
Private Equity Loves Orphan Brands
Jul 25, 2009
Private equity players and corporate buyers are betting they can breathe new life into old brands. In recent months dealmakers have been scooping up once-mighty companies and business units. On July 16 private equity firm Golden Gate Capital Partners paid $286 million for defunct retailer Eddie Bauer.
Advertisers Need to Make Some Noise
Jul 25, 2009
Sound in advertising is hot once again. Take the recent VW television commercial making light of a hybrid car's sound or General Motors admitting that the Volt has "the feel of a sports car" but its sound needs to be refined. Or Starbucks' approach to reinvigorating its brand by rejuvenating the coffee experience so that customers can hear the "whir of the grinders."
Why Fashion Brands Need Facebook
Jul 25, 2009
Teens create their identities by defining and redefining who they are -- a constant creative and collaborative process by seeking friends' input and, ultimately, their endorsements. Fashion is one of the key outlets teens have for self expression as well as assimilation. How teens dress signifies many things, from what peer group they associate with to how they want the world to perceive them.
Innovative Brand Engagement
Jul 24, 2009
Two of my favorite brands recently introduced innovations that brought me such delight, I was prompted to think about what was so remarkable about them. What was it about them that not only delivered a great experience, but also grew my esteem of their respective brands??
The Mac Versus PC Debate Has Never Been Clearer
Jul 24, 2009
“Our goal is not to build the most computers. It’s to build the best.” That was Apple COO Tim Cook two days ago during Apple’s quarterly earnings call. Sure, it may sound like spin from an executive who doesn’t have a better answer as to why Apple isn’t competing in the low-end of the market, and thus, gaining market share. But it’s not.
Creating Competitive Advantage Through Sustainability
Jul 23, 2009
I just published a post on Triple Pundit that fleshes out the market-facing aspects of a model I’ve been working on with The FairRidge Group. Called the Sustainability Management Maturity Model (SM3), it’s a tool to help businesses assess their readiness to address business sustainability challenges and opportunities. The internal management components were outlined last month on Triple Pundit – Strategy, Organization, Process, Measurement and People – which all relate to an inside-out perspective of the business.
Is Customer Service a Media Channel? Ask Zappos
Jul 23, 2009
Is customer service a media channel? It's a great time to ask that question, as it comes right smack in the wake of Amazon purchasing Zappos for nearly a billion dollars. That's a big number for an online shoe company.
The Downsides of Branding
Jul 23, 2009
Recent efforts to put a brand on Nigeria to attract tourists remind me of how easy it is slap a label on something and hope that its uglier characteristics will go away. Long before the phrase "lipstick on a pig" became an election issue, I had warned of the dangers of putting "lipstick on a bulldog" - that is, making superficial cosmetic change in organizations rather than looking at the real underlying problems. The problem with putting lipstick on a bulldog is that it is hard to wrestle the bulldog to the ground long enough to do it and then doesn't change the nature of the beast.
Possible Brand Naming Union Between VW and Porsche has Interesting Consequences
Jul 23, 2009
I have been watching the recent power struggle between Porsche and VW with great interest, because if this possible merger takes place, it has extremely interesting ramifications for both brand names.
Customer Experience Defining Value In Retail
Jul 23, 2009
A friend in the restaurant business confided over a bottle of wine that he could always tell when a restaurant was in trouble. Deftly peeling back the linen of the breadbasket, he pointed out that the rustic bread had gone missing, replaced by a de rigueur white rolls. Such little things lead like breadcrumbs to the same old story: a retailer fighting for its life not by dialing up a customer's pleasure, but by diminishing it, ingredient by ingredient, value by value, service by service.
10 Ways to Invent Winning Products
Jul 23, 2009
Apple, Louis Vuitton, and SAP represent three very different sectors. But all share one thing in common: Their brands and products were shaped in part by designer and innovation strategist Hartmut Esslinger.
Go Above and Beyond
Jul 23, 2009
Brands have a unique opportunity to understand how they can matter more to consumers by delivering beyond the product and value proposition and contributing to an individual's experience. Too often, sponsorships and promotions are viewed as secondary efforts to a brand's above-the-line efforts. In flush times, they are nice to have. In bad times, they are easy cuts. And, with the digital channel serving as a direct conduit to a brand's consumers, it is even easier to dismiss live efforts as expensive and hard to measure.
Five Essential E's Are Key To Success
Jul 23, 2009
As everyone knows, reassessed advertising, media, and promotion budgets have become the norm in today's economic climate. Still, smart marketers remain under tremendous pressure to continue to grow market share while improving bottom-line results and quantitative building of their brands.
For Those Who Want Their Cereal Extra Manly
Jul 23, 2009
Wheaties, invented accidentally when a health clinician in Minneapolis who was simmering bran gruel for intestinally distressed patients spilled it onto a hot stove and it dried into flakes, was introduced by the Washburn Crosby Company (now General Mills) in 1924. The brand adopted the “Breakfast of Champions” slogan in 1933, and in 1934 the Wheaties box featured its first athlete, Lou Gehrig. It is a formula — slogan, athletes (from Bruce Jenner to Mary Lou Retton to Tiger Woods), block letters on orange box — that has kept Wheaties in the game for more than eight decades. But that formula does not seem to be winning new fans.
Staples and OXO: Poor Timing or Strategic Boon?
Jul 23, 2009
How's this for bad timing? Staples (SPLS) just introduced 25 co-branded office products from OXO Good Grips that cost up to five times more than Staples' own brand. The retailer's customers are in no mood to spend, however. Staples' same-store sales dropped 8% in North America in its most recent quarter. As Ronald L. Sargent, its chairman and chief executive officer noted recently, the chain is "in a very tough sales environment." But the Staples-OXO partnership is something more: It shows how companies can collaborate for mutual benefit and how to do that cheaply and quickly. As the recession forces businesses to reevaluate their priorities and spending, the development of the office products line could become a model for others.
Starbucks Credits McD's, Cost Savings for Sales Improvement
Jul 22, 2009
Starbucks Coffee Co. appears to be coming out of freefall -- thanks, in part, to marketing by McDonald's. In a third-quarter-earnings call this afternoon, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz credited margin improvements, cost savings and attention brought to the category by its rival's big-budget McCafe launch with helping to improve Starbucks' same-store sales. The chain's same-store sales fell 6% during its fiscal third quarter in the U.S., but that still bests the prior quarter, when same-store sales were down 8%.
Turning Consumers Into Shoppers
Jul 22, 2009
Brand managers are facing a huge shift in power from brands to retailers. So it makes sense that they are pondering the questions: What is the difference between consumer and shopper marketing? When should we use one or the other? Are separate agencies even necessary?
Conde Nast Says Goodbye to Men.Style.com, Hello to GQ.com, Details.com
Jul 22, 2009
Conde Nast will shut down one of its web-only brands, Men.Style.com, when it gives two of its titles, GQ and Details, their own websites in October. The move marks a partial dismantling of Conde Nast's strategy of creating web-only brands to house magazine content, such as Style.com, Epicurious.com and Concierge.com, and the realization that in many cases the best brand for the web is the one that's been successful in print.
And We Go Pre, Pre
Jul 21, 2009
The latest TV spot for Palm's Pre smartphone resurrects a song from the early 1980s, and uses it as background for some pale wisp of an actress to spout off zen nonsense about traffic lights turning green. It seems to build on an earlier spot featuring the same android-like androgynous woman surrounded by hundreds of monks in orange gowns dancing Busby Berkeley patterns as she chants about her life. Though it's all quite atrocious, at least it's consistent.
Entrepreneurs Strive to Turn Buzz Into Loyalty
Jul 21, 2009
Some small companies win instant fans, often because their products or services strike a nerve or generate buzz. But turning those followers into loyal customers can be a challenge.
Motel 6 Has Designs on Your Business
Jul 21, 2009
Motel 6 hardly has a reputation for good design. At its best, the 47 year-old chain has been heralded for simple, no-frills efficiency. At its worst, it has been the punch line of jokes about dangerous roadside love-ins.
Brand Reinvention
Jul 21, 2009
Balancing the need to please brand loyalists with enticing new customers, brands often update flavors, colors, logos and packaging. Unsuccessful attempts can be jarring (consider Coca-Cola's New Coke and Tropicana's packaging flop this year), while successful efforts are lucrative.
A Brand is Not a Separate Thing
Jul 21, 2009
A wise Rabbi once said, "If I am I because you are you. And you are you because I am I. Then I am not I and you are not you." We are not separate. We define each other. We are fronts and backs of each other." In order to describe a particular brand -- what it is -- you must describe its behavior -- what it does. And to describe what it does, you must describe it in relationship to its audience and its audience's behavior (customers, fans, members, et al). Which means that a brand is one, interdependent system of behavior, and not a separate thing.
Rebranding: Looking Beyond Logos in India
Jul 21, 2009
Mainstream brands such as Godrej, Shoppers Stop, India Post and CEAT Tyres have undertaken rebranding initiatives to shed their old corporate images and position themselves in a new, more modern light. Some have simply upgraded their logos, while others dug much deeper. Which leads branding enthusiasts to wonder, just what is the difference between an identity refresher and a true rebranding—and when is one, and not the other, needed?
The Most Engaged Brands On The Web
Jul 20, 2009
What big brands do the best job with social media? A new study by analyst Charlene Li of the Altimeter Group and Wetpaint ranks the top 100 brands by social media engagement.
College Branding
Jul 20, 2009
It was pure serendipity that I read Brand Immortality by Pringle and Field on my way to a conference where I was to speak about branding to a group of enrollment executives from colleges and universities. It wasn’t a giant “Aha!” moment, but I realized that institutions of higher education represent the longest-lasting brands in our relatively young country.
The Power of the Brand as Verb
Jul 20, 2009
Perhaps nothing better illustrates how far behind Microsoft is in the search engine wars than a recent comment by the company’s chief executive, Steve Ballmer, about why he liked the name Bing for Microsoft’s new competitor to Google.
The Chambermaid Wears Prada
Jul 20, 2009
There are elegant, streamlined clothes that began life on the sketchpad of designer Michael Kors. Then there are short, gymslip-style black jersey dresses by Gwen Stefani, the frontwoman of the punk-ska band No Doubt and creator of the clothing line L.A.M.B. So far, so fashion. But neither Kors’ nor Stefani’s designs are on the catwalk or in a shoot; rather, they are uniforms for staff of the trendy W Hotels chain. This summer, what you see while lounging around a resort could be as chic as anything you see in a store.
The Pros and Cons of Co-Branding
Jul 17, 2009
It can enhance both partners—or put a dent in one. Make sure you pick a partner that's a good fit with your company's products, values, and image.
Starbucks Tests New Names For Stores
Jul 17, 2009
When is a Starbucks not a Starbucks? When it's a 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea. The ubiquitous coffee-shop giant is dropping the household name from its 15th Avenue East store on Capitol Hill, a shop that was slated to close at one point last year but is being remodeled in Starbucks' new rustic, eco-friendly style.
Reverb: The Real Secret to Marketing With Social Media
Jul 17, 2009
A reverb (or reverberation) is typically used to describe sound--or more specifically the instance where a sound continues despite the original source of the sound being removed. If you apply the same idea to social media, a reverb describes the unique fact that every action in social media is not just done, but is also broadcast across a particular individual's social graph online.
Behold The Digital Tribe
Jul 17, 2009
There is no centralized location in the digital world. Increasingly, digital content spans platforms and devices seamlessly, connecting users with information and with each other. In doing so, it democratizes and levels the traditional playing field for the persistently connected audience, becoming a global platform capable of providing ubiquitous access to content and experiences. For brands, it represents a new priority, influencing the digital tribe.
Once-Trendy Crocs Could Be on Their Last Legs
Jul 16, 2009
Crocs were born of the economic boom. The colorful foam clogs appeared in 2002, just as the country was recovering from a recession. Brash and bright, they were a cheap investment (about $30) that felt good and promised to last forever. Then the boom times went bust, and Crocs went to the back of the closet.
Should YouTube Charge a Fee to Upload Video?
Jul 16, 2009
Gene Munster, the analyst with Piper Jaffray, put a report out Thursday looking at the finances of YouTube, and he makes a suggestion that I haven’t seen before: Google should charge a “nominal fee” to people to upload videos to YouTube if the video isn’t appropriate for advertising.
How to Grow Your Business When Everything Else Is Shrinking
Jul 16, 2009
Budgets continue to be slashed. Brands are disappearing. Media is getting more fragmented. The only thing getting bigger is our federal deficit. So as a marketer, how do you capitalize on a world that is getting smaller in so many respects?
Dos Equis' 'Most Interesting Man' Is an Even Greater Beer Salesman
Jul 16, 2009
"He lives vicariously through himself." "The police often question him just because they find him interesting." And he can drive an expensive imported beer brand to double-digit sales gains during a recession that's forced many of its competitors into steep declines.
In Argentina, Pepsi Becomes 'Pecsi'
Jul 16, 2009
When speaking Spanish, especially with an Argentine accent, people tend to say "Pecsi" instead of Pepsi. They have said it like this for years, and Pepsi has responded by launching a campaign changing the second P to a C, believed to be the first such change for the venerable brand.
Do Brand Names and Logos Matter?
Jul 16, 2009
The question is not whether a name or logo is important. The important question to ask -- about any and all aspects of your brand -- is: is it appropriate for the feelings that I want people to conjure up and the subsequent decisions which they'll ultimately make?
Marketing, Memory and the Mind
Jul 16, 2009
Marketing people, and the minds of the people they are trying to influence, are often in conflict. Unfortunately, these arguments are being presented to minds that really aren’t up to dealing with all that glorious information. Our perceptions are selective. And our memory is highly selective. We are cursed with the physiological limitation of not being able to process an infinite amount of stimuli. This means that in a crowded category, your difference might not be enough unless it is a dramatic difference.
Looking for Financial Relief in Tough Times? Try Brand Licensing
Jul 15, 2009
In these difficult economic times, chief marketing officers seeking to help their companies grow revenue and remain viable in an unstable market need to pull out all the stops. One often overlooked and underused yet highly effective tool is brand licensing. Brand licensing can help provide some real financial relief during tough times and help marketers replenish and energize their brands, positioning them for even greater success when the economic engine starts whirring again and we start using the word "upturn" instead of "downturn."
Brand Thinking Keeps You Tuned-In
Jul 15, 2009
Things are changing at a pill-popping rate in today's marketplace. Marketing messages are mushrooming (try saying that three times fast) and people's preferences are changing rapidly, which turns today's peacock into tomorrow's feather duster. And that's really why branding is today's most powerful business concept.
Responsible Consumerism and The Challenge of Real World Brand Building
Jul 15, 2009
In an economy as whacked out as this one is globally, the tired "customer is king" adage is actually a wicked understatement. Consumers have seemingly infinite choices from good brands--many of them desperate to move the merchandise to generate cash and survive. In an unforgiving marketplace like the one we are enduring, brands better build products and services around real, differentiated and defensible insights. "Here's what I hope you want to buy" is a merchandising strategy for failure.
Auto News: Lutz Promises Drastic Changes in GM Marketing
Jul 14, 2009
General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz says one of the first things he plans to do as the new head of marketing is make "drastic" changes in the "tone and content" of all of GM's advertising, according to Automotive News.
How LendingTree Plans to Rebrand in Tough Environment for Financial Cos.
Jul 14, 2009
Online lending pioneer LendingTree has weathered a tough couple of years in the mortgage and real-estate industry. But now the business, whose parent Tree.com spun off from IAC last year, is gearing up for a rebrand and a renewed marketing effort.
Bing Delivers Credibility to Microsoft
Jul 14, 2009
In late May, Microsoft unveiled Bing, its new Internet search engine, in front of an audience of skeptics: technology executives and other digerati who had gathered near San Diego for an industry conference. To that crowd, Microsoft’s efforts to take on Google and Yahoo in the search business had become something of a laughingstock, and for good reason.
Branding and the Corporation: From Tone-Deaf to Pitch-Perfect
Jul 14, 2009
There are two kinds of brand: national and niche. National brands are their own planets. They have the incumbent's advantage, channel control, big reputations, deep pockets, and, if they're lucky, consumer loyalty.
Loss of Focus and Line Extension
Jul 14, 2009
Loss of focus is really all about line extension. And no issue in marketing is so controversial. Companies look at the brands from an economic point of view. To gain cost efficiencies and trade acceptance, they are quite willing to turn a highly focused brand, and one that stands for a certain type of product or idea, into an unfocused brand that represents two or more types of products or ideas.
Lost in Branding-Land
Jul 13, 2009
Now that GM is 'out' of bankruptcy (whatever that means), it's still spending approximately $50 million per month to run its "Reinvention" spots. If the recent emergence took 9 months to accomplish, the branding campaign presumes to close the door on 100 years of history in 30 seconds.
Get Ready As Corporate Sites and Social Networks Start To Connect
Jul 13, 2009
To Increase Engagement, Brands to Allow Users To Login With Facebook, MySpace, Twitter In a recent report titled the “Future of the Social Web” we found that we are entering the era of social colonization, every webpage and experience will be social–even if brands choose not to participate.
What's Your Brand's Social Score?
Jul 13, 2009
For many marketers, the Net Promoter Score has been an easy-to-understand, simple-to-measure metric of business health, used in everything from customer service to investor calls. Now, some wonder, can it be replicated in social media?
Differentiation Takes Place in the Mind
Jul 13, 2009
While the mind may still be a mystery, we know one thing about it that is for certain—it’s under attack. Most Western societies have become totally ‘‘overcommunicated.’’ The explosion of media forms, and the ensuing increase in the volume of communications, has dramatically affected the way people either take in or ignore the information offered to them.
Would You Nickel-And-Dime A Friend?
Jul 10, 2009
Your neighborhood video store. Your cell phone carrier. Your credit card company. The airline you flew last week. What do all these companies have in common? Two things, really. One is that these categories generally score quite low on customer satisfaction surveys. The other is that companies in these categories have become notorious for nickel-and-diming customers.
The Power of the Specialist Brand
Jul 9, 2009
When you study the marketing wars, the well-differentiated specialist tends to be the winner. Here are some thoughts on why the specialist brand appears to make an impression on the mind. First, the specialist can focus on one product, one benefit, and one message. This focus enables the marketer to put a sharp point on the message that quickly drives it into the mind.
Everywhere You Go, a Duane Reade Ad
Jul 9, 2009
Macy's, F. A. O. Schwarz and Saks Fifth Avenue are not the only retail landmarks of New York City: there is also the Duane Reade drugstore chain. With 253 stores in and around New York, Duane Reade is a near-ubiquitous presence in the city, as its former slogan, “Everywhere you go, Duane Reade,” put it.
Building Brand Runways
Jul 9, 2009
Marketers focus on their brands and customers as the family jewels--and they are. But there is another kind of marketing asset that I call "runways" and if you don't have them, you will miss huge opportunities. In this ADD world of rapid-fire Twitter streams, long-tail options, and media multi-tasking, you must be in the right place at the right time or the moment is lost. Runways are relationships your company can create with trading partners and consumers that make your brands accessible, and give YOU access to markets and marketing options you otherwise would not have. Let me illustrate.
It Must Be Difficult to Grasp
Jul 9, 2009
I was once asked by an executive, with regards to branding, value, expectations, etc.: "So let me get this straight. People are exposed to my business -- my brand -- by experiencing something or someone. And then they think about what it is they’ve sensed and decide if what I offer -- our unique value proposition -- is something that interests them?"
Does Being Free Cheapen Google’s Brand?
Jul 8, 2009
Is Google undercutting the value of its own brand by giving away everything free? That’s an interesting implication raised by the statement that the Yankee Group just sent out about the announcement of a Google operating system for PCs.
J. C. Penney Plays Up Its Manhattan Opening
Jul 8, 2009
J. C. Penney, a retailer with middle-American roots, intends to make a grand entrance with its first store in Manhattan, a place at the heart of retailing.
American Design, California Style
Jul 7, 2009
As a concept, American design is very tangible. It's unapologetic. It's a roll-up-your-sleeves and get your hands dirty, "show me" sort of design. American designers, engineers, entrepreneurs and inventors alike feast off an American license to create what's next. It's the boldness of a Corvette or Mustang plus their afterlife hot rod modifications. It's Jobs' confidence to create Apple's Mac, iPhone & iPod. It's Jack O'Neill making his first wet suit so he could surf in cold NorCal waters. It's the Yahoo! or Google boys living on air in college and then creating empires from their hard work.
Wagnerian? Vaudevillian? No, Hardwarian.
Jul 6, 2009
Marketers have always been fond of coining words, the better to stand out amid the cacophony and clutter. There are myriad made-up names for products, like Kodak, Xerox and Q-Tip, not to mention advertising slogans proclaiming that Cocoa Krispies cereal is “cocolossal,” Mr. Salty pretzels are “crisplier” and 7Up is the “uncola.”
Own Your Story Again
Jul 6, 2009
Customer service is the new marketing because it is grounded in competency, people, and contact - all things that can help you with innovation and relationships and that cannot easily be outsourced. They in turn create the experience your customers have that contributes to your story - that of your company and your brand.
What You Would Do to Fix Yahoo
Jul 6, 2009
When a brand needs a fix, everyone's a doctor, and Ad Age readers are no exception. Now that Yahoo is taking its branding assignment to Landor Associates and tapping former Y&R managing director Penny Baldwin as senior VP-global integrated marketing and brand management, Ad Age decided to ask readers for a few ideas to remake the still-popular portal. (Branding problem or not, Yahoo still managed to grow 6% to 151.3 million unique U.S. visitors in May, per ComScore.) Readers' suggestions ranged from personalization and an emphasis on fun to a debate on whether to keep the brand's signature purple. Are you listening, Carol Bartz?
Continuity in Brand Packaging: When is it Important?
Jul 6, 2009
The recent debates about the redesigned Tropicana orange juice packages that made a brief appearance on the market and disappeared after an outpouring of customer complaints brought to light again the need for caution when changing the packages of major brands.
Simplicity: A Powerful Brand Strategy
Jul 6, 2009
The basic concept of some products predicts failure. Not because they don’t work, but because they don’t make sense. Consider Mennen’s vitamin E deodorant. That’s right, you sprayed a vitamin under your arm. It doesn’t make sense unless you want the healthiest, best-fed armpits in the nation. It quickly failed.
Brands Show Off Niche Side
Jul 2, 2009
When Mars, the maker of M&Ms, Skittles and Twix, embarked this year on its first new confectionery brand launch in 20 years, it turned to women for inspiration. Fling, a chocolate bar on sale in California and online at www.flingchocolate.com, is quite clear about who its target market is: the slim fingers of shimmering chocolate are packaged in a bright pink wrapper with the slogan “Naughty, but not that naughty” while claiming to contain less than “85 calories per finger”.
Right Place, Right Time - Free
Jul 2, 2009
One of the things that you probably learned by hanging out with me here at Conversation Agent is that I tend to bring together a lot of ideas in a short space, show you how those ideas are connected, and why you need to care. But, here's the thing, you care only if I catch you in the right frame of mind, if when you're reading this post you wrestle with the very same thoughts.
Compassion Drives Brand Fans
Jul 2, 2009
One topic that I have written about extensively in this blog is consumer relationships with brands and, in special cases, Brands Worthy of a Weekend (BWOW). When I started writing about BWOW, it was still a relatively lofty bar - a brand for which you care so deeply that you would spend a weekend away from your family to connect with other people who feel the same way about this brand, learn more about the “inside” of the business, meet the people who make the magic happen, etc. With the seismic shift in the blogosphere, however, brand “weekends” have become more and more common, but with a major difference - they are largely designed for influential voices versus passionate fans.
As Brands Continue to ‘Pollinate’ the Social Web, Expect Corporate Websites to Aggregate
Jul 1, 2009
Brands are pollinating the social web with easy-to-share features like Sharethis. As conversations splinter across the web, brands must prepare to aggregate those same conversations on their corporate website. As a result, the trusted conversations will centralize back on product pages.
Establishing An Iconic Brand
Jul 1, 2009
An iconic brand is a powerful asset. These brands become part of our lives and stand the test of time. Think what our culture would be like without brands such as Apple, Coca-Cola, and Target. The Nike "swoosh" remains a powerful symbol today, more than 37 years after its creation.
The Yahoos At Yahoo
Jun 30, 2009
Word has it that Yahoo is going to debut new branding in the fall, courtesy of a newly-hired CMO who has a newly hired coterie of her favorite branding gurus. There's nothing surprising about this news: one of the first things new top marketers usually do is hire new vendors to reinvigorate or change the brand. It's what they do.
Six Rules for Brand Revitalization
Jun 30, 2009
Brands do not die natural deaths. However, brands can be murdered through mismanagement. Some brands are beyond hope -- but others can be revitalized.
Slew of Mobile PCs Giving Marketers Branding Headaches
Jun 29, 2009
Living wirelessly has contributed to a branding mess. Notebooks, netbooks, smartphones and (coming soon) smartbooks are on a collision course as each adopts some of the others' design elements and features, becoming more homogeneous and harder to differentiate: Lighter, thinner notebooks are starting to look like larger-screen netbooks. And small netbooks running on mobile platforms are starting to feel a lot like large-screen app-driven smartphones.
What Now for the Money Brands?
Jun 29, 2009
A March 2009 survey conducted by Interbrand found that “trust and confidence” was second only to “convenience and location” in consumers’ selection of a bank. In the same survey, one-third of the respondents were considering changing banks because of a loss of confidence.
In Today's Climate, All Financial Firms Are Challenger Brands
Jun 29, 2009
Industries worldwide are transforming as the economic upheaval takes its toll. It's affecting both leading brands and challengers in nearly every category.
How Sharpie Is Staying Loyal to Print While Getting Into Social Media
Jun 26, 2009
Talk to Sally Grimes and you'll quickly realize that to her, the Sharpie is more than just another marker. "It's about self-expression," she says, it's about art, creativity. And she is hoping the brand's new campaign gets that point across.
Why Google & Virgin America's Online Scavenger Hunt Campaign Rocked
Jun 25, 2009
Google Apps partnered with Virgin America to launch a unique campaign where they invited people taking Virgin America flights all day, as well as those sitting on computers at home or work to participate in an online scavenger hunt for clues to answer questions they would pose at you on a website called "Day In The Clouds." The scavenger hunt offered questions requiring you to use many different Google apps and online tools to find the answers, and integrated with Virgin America both for some questions as well as by offering free WiFi to any passenger on one of their flights today.
Pizza Hut Adopts an Alias to Market Diversified Menu
Jun 25, 2009
Another surprising victim of the recession: delivery pizza. Improved frozen fare, more grocery-made pies and a profusion of high-quality mom-and-pop shops have led the billion-dollar pizza chains to expand their menus to include wings, pasta and sandwiches. But the larger selection seems to have created a bit of an identity crisis for industry leader Pizza Hut, which will begin calling itself "The Hut" in some of its marketing efforts.
Building Brands Online in the Post-Sales Market
Jun 25, 2009
Customers will talk about your company, its products and services, whether you want them to or not. And online there are a multitude of places to do so. The question is, do you as a brand facilitate or participate? I will argue that you should do both, and tell you why.
How Social Media Could Have Saved FlyClear
Jun 24, 2009
This is the sad story of a company that died. Actually, it's more of a question of how it could have been saved. I'm talking about the now defunct FlyClear service run by a company called Verified Identity Pass that launched in nearly 20 airports across the country with a paid service that promised a way to avoid the travel lines at security with a dedicated "VIP" line. The reasons for their demise are relatively easy to understand ... as the number of travellers has reduced, the lines too have reduced and fewer people are seeing the value of paying $99 or more per year to access these special lanes.
The Trouble With Brands
Jun 24, 2009
What can consumer companies do to make sure that their brands aren’t among the losers? Our research revealed that the most successful brands today — including Adidas and iPhone and Pixar and Wikipedia — resonate with consumers in a special way: They communicate excitement, dynamism, and creativity in ways that the vast majority of brands do not. We call this quality “energized differentiation,” and we have identified, out of dozens of brand attributes in our consumer-research database, the metrics that capture this quality. By focusing on these attributes, marketers can keep their brands constantly moving and gaining value. In a world of excess capacity and diminishing trust, creating these kinds of energy-infused brands can help companies reinvigorate their brand management practices.
5 Reasons Gillette Is The Best A Brand Can Get
Jun 23, 2009
Times are tough for marketers right now. So let me take you away to an oasis of consumer loyalty where huge margins and a ridiculously dominant market share are the norm. Where private label is non-existent and your biggest competitor is your second string product. No, it’s not a fantasy. It’s the alternative marketing universe occupied by Gillette.
Design Determines Results
Jun 23, 2009
I’m sure you’ve heard the definition of madness: Doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. But have you heard of the "First Rule of Holes?” When you’re in one, stop digging! I see it all the time. Organizations are lost, but they’re making really good time. Ask yourself, and really think about it: Is my organization producing the growth in customers, members, revenues, donations, profits, etc. that it is designed to produce? Like it or not your answer has to be “yes,” because the design determines the results.
The New Rules of Brand Competition
Jun 22, 2009
The old branding model is past its "sell by" date. It is a product-centered model that comes from packaged goods in the '70s and '80s; offer differentiated benefits that a particular consumer segment is thought to care about. "My peas are picked at the peak of sweetness"...that kind of thing. This model is breaking down as people try store brands and find they are "fit for purpose" at a better price. Now what?
Why I Hate Social Media
Jun 18, 2009
At the risk of being branded a heretic or perhaps just being shown the door by my agency HR director, I have to say it: I hate social media. Why? Because it's just media. And since when was media ever interesting?
Bad Investments
Jun 15, 2009
GMAC has changed its name to "Ally," AIG has become "AIU," and we're supposed to think there's a difference. The new branding comes on the heels of some very aggressive communications from many of the survivors of the financial meltdown, most of which delivers a variation on a theme that could broadly be expressed as "we've been in business forever, and we care about you, so trust us." So was the breakdown of investment ratings, actual returns, and the implicit (and sometimes explicit) promises of suitability and reliability just a blip?
Department Stores' Downfall: A Branding Crisis
Jun 9, 2009
In the midst of one of the steepest retail slumps in memory, it's easy to think the weak economy explains everything. And while it's true that at the moment, luxury stores are languishing while bargain stores are booming, there's more to it than that, argues Kendra Wehmeyer, client director of Landor Associates. To her, it's all about branding -- something many retailers have lost sight of entirely.
Too Good To Be True
Jun 8, 2009
You've probably seen TV commercials for magicJack, which promises free phone calls via a gizzinta for your computer’s USB port. It's a VOIP deal, much like the telephony that your local cable offers you in one or more of its bundles, only magicJack’s novel approach 1) lets you use your regular phone, 2) embeds its software in the USB gizzinta (hence the "jack" of its magic), and 3) never gets into any explanation of Internet packet transmission, etc.
Sound: Differentiating Brand Builder
Jun 8, 2009
Some time ago, I was flicking through a copy of ‘People’ magazine, when I beheld something on its pages that caused me to just about fall off my chair. An ad promoting a TV series about Elvis, which was to run on CBS, was the source of my surprise. “The King is Hear…”, proclaimed, typographically, what turned out to be the first part of this innovative notice. On turning to the next page of the magazine, sure enough, I did hear the King. Elvis was singing from the pages and a voiceover was promoting the series. If you managed to see this copy of the magazine, I’m quite sure you’d have found the advertisement as unforgettable as I did.
Variable Pricing Is Ultimate Brand-Destruction Machine
Jun 8, 2009
A former New York Times editor recently wrote a full-page article for Forbes magazine advocating "variable pricing" for art museums.
Coconut Water: A Hard Nut To Crack
Jun 5, 2009
At the end of the rubber chicken relay, the human chariot races and the jump rope jam session, contestants of Brooklyn's recent inaugural "Punk Rope Olympics," quenched their thirsts with a drink from their sponsor, Vita Coco. The New York company is the largest maker of a drink that is all the rage in the beverage industry: coconut water.
And the Secret of a Successful Brand Is...
Jun 4, 2009
Gesamtkunstwerk. You're welcome. While on a search for something else entirely, I came across this speech given by Giep Franzen from way back in 2001 to promote his then new book: Strategic Management of Brands.
The Importance of Brand Heritage
Jun 4, 2009
I'm calling out British marketers today. They have a lot to learn about the importance of provenance, heritage and history.
Out of Bounds
Jun 4, 2009
Sometimes people push back on posts of mine they don't like by telling me I'm out of bounds. Somehow, they say, I've crossed the boundary of what I'm allowed to write about. They are angry that I'm now writing about something outside my defined area.
The 5 Worst (and Best) Ad Songs of All Time
Jun 3, 2009
The right song can help a product shine -- but the wrong one can hit an off note. Billboard consulted with a six-person panel of experts in advertising and branding to determine our list of the best five songs in commercials -- and five that made viewers reach for their remotes.
Unilever’s Attitude Towards Mothers & Daughters Compared And Contrasted
Jun 3, 2009
On one hand Unilever see mothers as mentors of their daughters - as we see here in this snap from a Dove soap website. On the other hand Unilever see mothers as sexual collaborators with their daughters and their boyfriends - as we see here in this ad from the guys at Axe.
ConAgra Foods Exec on That New Smiley-Face Logo
Jun 3, 2009
ConAgra Foods has unveiled a new logo, following in the footsteps of food giant Kraft, which also underwent a logo change earlier this year. ConAgra, however, faces a different challenge.
Branding Lesson Found In GM's Rubble
Jun 3, 2009
GM's financial quagmire and bizarre labor and bureaucratic practices notwithstanding, branding (or lack thereof) was a big part of their problem.
Name That Tune
Jun 3, 2009
You know you're old when songs you listened to when you were a kid are being used to brand old fogey cars. It's common for musicians of all ages to sell their music to advertisers. Beck and the Who have done it, as have Feist and the Rolling Stones. It's not just a crass sellout anymore, but rather crass marketing strategy: ads get heard more often than songs on radio stations, so getting into a commercial is just one of a menu of options that include inclusion in the soundtrack of a movie, or appearing in a teen drama on TV.
SeaWorld’s Whale of a Social Media Campaign
Jun 2, 2009
Recently, we’ve covered a variety of social media campaigns that utilize Facebook Pages as their primary marketing vehicle. However, Buddy Media continues to push what they call app-vertisements – essentially applications for Facebook that let users interact around a given brand.
The '20% Insight' Factor That Drives Coors Marketing
Jun 2, 2009
Coors Light has enjoyed fourteen consecutive quarters of sales growth but back in 2003 that brand was tanking. What turned it around so dramatically? On the surface it appeared to be a simple new marketing strategy focused on the refreshing nature of cold beer. But what really drove the success was a disciplined approach to the management of creative ideas and insights inside the company.
Why People Talk About Products … And Why They Don’t
Jun 1, 2009
As the influx of big brands into the social media space continues, we’re starting to see more and more marketing managers and executives become less, not more, comfortable with social media. The main reason is they expect instant returns and needle-moving. But most of social media is about building relationships, which takes time.
Universities Finally Espousing Branding
Jun 1, 2009
Facing budget cuts and smaller endowments, many colleges and universities are realizing that they can't rest on their laurels if they expect to attract the best and brightest. From the University of California at Los Angeles to the University of Maryland to Cornell, they are finding new ways to market to prospective students and raise their profiles for potential philanthropy and research funding.
A Suicide Note
May 28, 2009
With once-great newspapers becoming extinct or, worse, going online in markets across the U.S., we've been given an interesting twist from a long-suffering paper in London: in The Evening Standard has spent the last month telling its readers that it's sorry. I assume this will be followed by an announcement that it as emptied its last ink well, or broken the final printing press, or whatever. The branding campaign all but amounts to a very public suicide note.
Restaurant Product Naming and Branding Goes Bananas During the Recession
May 28, 2009
Restaurants are facing challenging times and are reacting by offering more for less, which results in a spin off effect on naming and branding.
Toyota Launches 'Rock The Space' For Musicians
May 27, 2009
Toyota, which last fall signed on as one of three inaugural sponsors of MySpace Music -- the News Corp. property's independent label -- is activating the partnership with "Rock the Space," a competition encouraging unsigned bands or solo artists.
We Read Too Many Business Books
May 27, 2009
That's the sentiment expressed by Eduardo Castro-Wright, vice chairman of Wal-Mart Stores, in an interview in The New York Times this past weekend. Despite that fact that I write business books, I happen to strongly agree with him.
Local Brand Dominance
May 27, 2009
In today's globalized world where global brands quickly adopt to local demands in order to gain customer acceptance, being a local brand seems like waging a losing battle. But one Asian brand has proved this wrong by beating a global giant flat.
Branding: The Next Generation
May 26, 2009
The concept of branding is already undergoing dramatic changes. New technologies have allowed us to go beyond mass production to mass customize brands. Currently brand manufacturers own their brands. This is changing. In the future brands will increasingly be owned by the consumer. The first signs of this shift appeared in the late 1990s. I documented this phenomenon in my book BRANDchild and named it MSP -- Me Selling Proposition.
The Fatwa On My Head
May 25, 2009
You probably haven't caught wind of it, but some brand traditionalists have issued a fatwa on me. It's quite a compliment, really, and kind of comforting that I don't rate the scrutiny of a Salman Rushdie. But they're still pissed off, and they wish me dead. Why? Because I question our beliefs in the power of branding. I'm not so sure we can manipulate what people believe in any concerted or sustainable way, and I don't think it would matter if we could.
Branding According To Trump
May 22, 2009
Lies. Exaggerations. Facts and figures thrown around based on popularity and something called "mental math" Welcome to Branding 101, courtesy of Professor Donald Trump.
What’s Left?
May 21, 2009
I read last week that Sprint is in talks to outsource its network, and it kind of got me wondering what would be left if it did. A company name. A logo. A marketing budget. Everything else would get done by someone, or some thing else.
Why You Need Satan on Your Marketing Team
May 19, 2009
If you want to make sure that your marketing plans are top-notch, look past your agency and expert counsel and get Satan on your team.
Corporate Campaigns Hint at Brand-Advertising Revival
May 18, 2009
If you page through The Wall Street Journal or New York Times, you might discover a few surprises. FedEx, General Electric and IBM have recently launched corporate branding campaigns, and tech power SAP made a splash just last week with a global push from Ogilvy themed "Time for a clear new world."
My Application for GM's Board
May 15, 2009
I hear that executive search firm Spencer Stuart is looking for recruits to repopulate GM's board of directors. Here is my application for their consideration: Dear Selection Committee, You need me. Well, not necessarily me, personally, but certainly you need someone like me.
Stop Posting Billboards on the Way to the Fair
May 11, 2009
There’s been a lot of talk lately about monetizing social networks. MySpace has swapped out much of its senior leadership with talent more experienced in marketing. Facebook is floating plans to launch an ad network someday. Both services already put ads on their sites, sell sponsorships, etc. Most, if not all, of these kinds of efforts focus on using social networks as glorified channels for branding. Companies hope to sell things by paying to put their brands in front of consumers as they’re on their way to, doing things at, and planning to leave their networked communities. How is this any different than putting up billboards on the way to the fair? Is it possible that the true value of social networks could be derived from seeing them as places?
The Impact of Culture on Branding
May 8, 2009
Culture is the cumulative concept that encompasses knowledge, belief, customs, practices and any other habits acquired by people as members of society. A culture operates primarily by setting loose boundaries for individual behavior. Culture, in effect, provides the framework within which individuals and households function. A major consequence of culture is its impact on consumption patterns of individuals and institutions. Depending on the underlying cultural philosophy consumers tend to follow certain consumption patterns. Successful brands have been able to adopt their branding strategies in line with this dominant cultural philosophy and weave their brands into the cultural fiber.
No Contest: Twitter And Facebook Can Both Play A Role In Branding
May 7, 2009
I think Twitter and Facebook can both play a role in a branding strategy. Having said this, I also think that just as users think about Twitter and Facebook differently, so too should companies as they go about their branding efforts.
The Cloud Shall Part
May 6, 2009
The way that "cloud computing" is marketed makes me expect a pitch for a deed to a bridge in New Jersey will come next. In a sentence, cloud computing is when data, services, and apps that run on one of your computing devices are available on all of your devices because they run somewhere else. That somewhere is called the cloud because it makes your stuff available everywhere. The problem is that it kinda feels like nowhere, doesn't it?
This Mall Has...Stores!
May 1, 2009
Woodfield Mall, a shopping monolith to the west of Chicago, has launched a new branding campaign via its web site and print ads (I saw mine in the Chicago Tribune's Sunday magazine), to tell would-be shoppers something unique and motivational: The mall has stores! Yup. I know it's big, and the strategy probably took lots of work, and cost loads of moolah. You don't just fall out of bed with this kind of idea, you know. The campaign is centered on six imaginary shoppers, each named and artistically rendered in funky drawings, who come with their own backstories, and lists of stores they like to visit.
Mexico's Branding Nightmare
Apr 29, 2009
Salmonella. Drug violence. Now swine flu. You think Mexico's development and tourism marketers are having a few sleepless nights? Only this nightmare is real.
Google The Publisher
Apr 28, 2009
Over and over I've predicted that Google will be forced to act like a publisher, because there's only so much demand that can be harvested, and sooner or later, Google's core revenue-generating customers - that'd be marketers - will demand some help creating supply. Supply means branding, and branding happens in the magical world of publishing. Here are two additional Google initiatives that point the company toward that world:
Pepsi's Brilliant Branding
Apr 24, 2009
No, not its inane brand image campaign and logo nonsense. I'm talking about its announced intention to spend $6 billion to take control of its bottling and distribution operations. I think it is the smartest branding move the company has made in recent memory.
Brand Inspiration
Apr 24, 2009
This post was inspired by a recent tweet from Gabriel Rossi, a “branding strategist” (as he calls himself) based in Sao Paulo — I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Gabriel through my blog and Twitter (one of the great things about social media is connecting with new folks like him). Recently he twittered a question, “What brands inspire you?” and that got me thinking about what differentiates a brand that inspires from one that doesn’t.
An Inevitable Evolution?
Apr 17, 2009
It's sad to watch the newspaper dinosaurs thrash in the marketplace's tar pits, but the Boston Globe's latest branding campaign is destined to become fossilized before the gunk dries.
Made in Japan: The Culture Behind the Brand
Apr 13, 2009
Historically, in a simpler time before the jet age, Japan was geographically isolated, surrounded by treacherous seas and formidable fault lines. Mountains cover three-quarters of Japan. Earthquakes and challenging terrain are constant reminders of nature’s strength and have contributed to the importance Japanese people place on having a dependable, manageable social system. Japanese people value the group over the individual, and the society consequently possesses an enviable system of organization and an ethos that gave rise to innovative brands and services. The branding world has taken notice.
Marketing implications of the Kindle 2
Apr 8, 2009
This is the first full episode 100% dedicated to content itself. Last week was a context setter. In this episode, I test drive the Kindle 2 from a marketing/branding perspective.
Tina Fey on Amy Poehler on Branding Now
Apr 7, 2009
Tina Fey has this to say about Amy Poehler: Amy is funny because she doesn't care what you think, but she does want to make you laugh. It's a complicated and important combination.
The CEO Must Drive The Brand
Apr 7, 2009
In the next five years, we will see a rapidly changing landscape across the globe, where the opportunities for businesses to benefit from corporate and product branding efforts will be larger than ever before. The growing emphasis on branding will move up the boardroom agenda and I strongly believe that branding will become one of the most prominent drivers of value across the globe in the next two decades.
Even Before The Ink Dries
Mar 31, 2009
Kodak has just announced its new "Print and Prosper" marketing campaign, and I think it's utterly brilliant branding. The premise is simple: Kodak printers use cheaper ink without sacrificing quality, so they cost less to use. As most everyone knows, at least viscerally, cartridges are the not-so-secret whammy that lets HP, Lexmark, Brother, and the other manufacturers push down the hardware cost..and then recoup everything, and more, through ink usage over time.
Market Research Must Get Real, Not Ideal, Social Scientists Say
Mar 31, 2009
Research is useless. Some of it, anyway -- if it does not reflect real behavior rather than theoretical models.
Pinkberry's Secret Recipe to Overnight Branding Success
Mar 30, 2009
With a personality every bit as sweet as a serving of pomegranate frozen yogurt topped with Fruity Pebbles, Pinkberry creative director Yolanda Santosa charmed the audience at the Y Conference with her secret recipe to branding the great small business phenomenon of our time.
A One-Sided Debate
Mar 30, 2009
One of the two major political parties in America has opted-out of participating in government. It's a slash-and-burn strategy, and it makes perfect sense from a branding perspective. Circa about 1950, that is.
Time for a Brand Stimulus Package
Mar 16, 2009
Today’s brand leaders would be wise to consider and follow these 7Ps of Branding as a guide for the recession and beyond
Intention or Sneeze?
Mar 12, 2009
For those of you mapping your next branding campaign based on the insights of fMRI imaging, you better make sure that the flashes you're seeing aren't the symptoms of hay fever. Only you can't.
Finding the Right “Brand Voice” on Twitter
Mar 10, 2009
When businesses open an account on Twitter, they must consider the right “Brand Voice.” One that is appropriate for what they want to say, and who they want to reach. This is a different sort of voice than the one companies have been familiar with in their traditional print and broadcast media channels, as it’s a more open and authentic form of communication.
Social Media: Effective Branding Tool, If Monitored
Mar 9, 2009
Carat CEO Sarah Fay said marketing efforts that employ social-media sites are more effective when used as part of a wider campaign and not as a solo initiative.
Multilingual Suitability
Mar 6, 2009
Estee Lauder was set to export its Country Mist makeup when country managers there pointed out that “mist” is slang for “manure.” Oops. The product was re-branded Country Moist in Germany. A sports utility vehicle from Mitsubishi was called the Montero in the U.S. and Latin America, and marketed as the Shogun in Europe. But named the Pajero in Asian countries, this SUV certainly amused Spanish-speaking travelers. How does a smart marketer avoid such embarrassing pratfalls with its good name?
Twitter Marketing Successes
Mar 6, 2009
Countless brands are doing great things with Twitter, but most fall into one of two categories with their approach. I'll call them "organic" and "deliberate." Both can work wonderfully well, depending on your overall marketing strategy and where Twitter fits into it. Here are two companies, each with a fiercely loyal customer base, that take a vastly different approach to using Twitter to promote their brands.
Coke Goes Back to Brand Basics
Mar 5, 2009
After years of cool marketing campaigns revolving around football, music and latterly computer gaming, the world’s most famous brand is going back to basics. Coca-Cola has been communicating about its product, what’s in it ("Nothing artificial. Never had been, never will be") and the product heritage, dating back to 1886 when John Pemberton created his secret formula.
Professor Likens Brand-Building To Movie Making
Mar 5, 2009
Speaking at the Brite (Branding, Innovation Technology) conference on marketing at the Columbia Business School Center on Global Brand Leadership Wednesday, Sanjay Sood, faculty director of the University of California-L.A. Entertainment and Media Management Institute, suggested that movie launches are like brand marketing on fast-forward.
Copping a Better Slogan
Feb 26, 2009
The Minneapolis Police Department has painted its squad cars new colors, hatched new slogans and tag lines, and otherwise embraced the full monty of branding. A firm called Kazoo Branding stepped up to the challenge of helping the force burnish its reputation within minority communities. It seems the cops have a history of brutality complaints, and suffered a racial-discrimination complaint by five high-ranking officers in 2007. The big idea was to recruit more minority officers. So they went to a branding firm?
Don't Turn a Deaf Ear to Music Branding
Feb 18, 2009
Music. Records to some, jingles to others, a theme, a tune, a few bars or a beat -- it's music, yes, but it's more: It's branding, music branding, and the sound is music to corporate ears.
KFC Campaign Stresses Freshness, New Dinner Deal
Jan 30, 2009
Kentucky Fried Chicken has launched a new campaign that promotes both the chain's continuing practice of cooking Original Recipe chicken on premises and a new "Unbeatable Feast" dinner deal.
Is This Greenwashing or a New Trend?
Jan 23, 2009
As part of its commitment to the environment, Coca-Cola recently announced that its landmark Times Square billboard is going green along with 29 neighboring billboards. On face value, it is difficult to think of the bright Times Square lights and multi-national Coca-Cola coming together for a meaningful green conservation initiative. Is this a turning point for major consumer marketers or another case of greenwashing?
Recession May Move Mobile Away From Branding
Jan 6, 2009
Click-through rates, calls to action important amid woeful economy.
The Illogic of Sales
Dec 26, 2008
Isn't sale pricing the antithesis of branding? Now that stores are in full-swing with after-holidays markdowns, discounts, red-liners, or whatever else they call them, they're really telling consumers the same, basic thing: What we charged you before wasn’t what our stuff was really worth.
Survey: Just One Product Was Memorable--Wii Fit
Nov 20, 2008
This was a terrible year for brand building. A full 69% of survey respondents could not remember a single new product launched this year.
Got Controversy? Why Your Brand Needs One Today
Nov 18, 2008
Here are a few reasons why having a brand controversy may be your company's best hope to reinvent itself and start to embrace social media tools that initially seem new and scary.
