In case it doesn’t come across clearly enough on this blog, I’m a complete geek about branding, particularly the idea that a brand can come to “own” a single word. One of Nader Tavassoli’s exercises in presentations is asking everyone in the room to say the single word they think of when they hear the word “Volvo” and the single brand they think of when they hear the word “magical”. I’ve seen that a couple of times now, and watching people chant safe and Disney in perfect unison has yet to lose its charm.
Noah Brier has made Brand Tags (via swissmiss), an entire site based on this principle. You can input what a brand makes you think of, look at how other people have tagged the brands and - brilliantly - guess the brand from the tag cloud.
There’s loads in this; I’ve only really given it a cursory look so far. Some brands a known mostly for a product, others get adjectives (for better or worse). The degree of consensus is interesting as well; Nike seems to have done brilliantly well at being known as a brand rather than a set of products, whereas Gap’s tag cloud doesn’t really have a clear winner.
Finally, the tag cloud for GE is interesting, because clearly more than one person has 30 Rock as the first thing they think of when they see the GE logo. Whilst very funny, 30 Rock was hardly laudatory about GE, and it would be interesting to know what the second word would be for everyone who chose “30 Rock” as their first…
Categories: branding · marketing
Tags: brand, branding, corporation, marketing, social
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The hallmarks of the start up - fearless audacity, challenging thinking and world beating creativity - have been rare qualities in the UK’s young agencies. This has to change if London is to restore its fortunes as a centre of advertising excellence.
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Ask first:
* How could you change the world to live with this problem?
(This creates your first set of solutions)
and then:
* How could you change the world so the problem goes away?
(This creates a second set of solutions).
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Just as important, Mr. Wentz set the pattern for Fueled by Ramen’s marketing strategy: blog often, tour hard and keep expenses down. When Mr. Janick signs bands, he tells them how hard they will work, not how rich they will become.
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Rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try […] the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in
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The only time that animation within a slide is useful is when the animation itself provides information that static images could not, such as when you are trying to explain how various complex parts of a process come together. Animation for its own sake i
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Presenting the abstract pointillist powerpoint toolkit. 20 slides that can be used for any presentation. Cut, paste, copy, crop the slides to create an abstract of your ideas that you can then talk to and through.
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Last night, I went to see a talk by Stephen Butscher of Simon Kutcher & Partners talk about loyalty schemes. I’ve been interested in this since the adliterate post on the basis of loyalty (little love lost for loyalty schemes, there) and wanted to see if anything would change my mind.
Simon made a point halfway through the presentation, which I think formed the centre of the talk for me; he spoke about exclusivity inflation. You used to be in a scheme where you started at “bronze” status, then moved up to “gold” via silver. Now, you start at “silver” status and work up to “platinum” via “gold”, and there’s every reason to believe that the next logical progression is going to be “gold”, “platinum” then “black”.
This was made as an almost offhand comment, but it matters to the point of the whole talk and, I think, to adliterate’s point - that so often, all these schemes offer is an illusion of exclusivity without any tangible benefits to either the customer or the company. The example of a loyalty scheme that actually does offer benefits is Porsche’s. As well as the usual raft of semi-benefits, semi-irritations (newsletter, I’m looking at you) they also offer a “Park and Wash” service with Avis. If you need to park your Porsche at an airport, you don’t need to worry about getting a parking space, or the general public getting their mucky paws on it, or seagull faeces eroding it while you’re away; you park in Avis space, and they wash it for you before you get back.
There’s obviously a lot that Porsche can do that other brands can’t. But there’s also a lot to learn from this example in more abstract terms. Firstly, it’s a benefit that’s totally based in the product - you need a car, to need airport parking. But it also solves a problem that is not really solved by the original product; sure, the car gets you to the airport, but what happens once it’s there?
I always want to see more marketing that solves problems, and liked the idea that a loyalty scheme could solve more problems than the fake “I have to pay for ten out of ten coffees rather than nine out of ten” kind of problem. I certainly don’t believe that every product introduces a problem that can be solved by further marketing; but Monday’s talk was a good introduction to how these problems can be solved at all.
Categories: marketing · product
Tags: consumer, loyaltyscheme, marketing, product
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Through a special promotion, Motorola (MOT) enabled loved ones to “Say Goodbye” via photos and messages sent from their phones to digital billboards in the departure area. The photos appeared there inside the image of a giant Motorola mobile phone.
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sellers who listed their homes more precisely—say $494,500 as opposed to $500,000—consistently got closer to their asking price. Put another way, buyers were less likely to negotiate the price down as far when they encountered a precise asking price.
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media is actually a triathlon, it ’s three different events. People like to consume, but they also like to produce, and they like to share.
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It would be great if people did create more, and especially felt empowered to create, change, edit, curate, but we can’t expect them to do that without consumption and reflection.
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Outdoor posters were turned into large interactive push puzzles that consumers could solve in order to “sort your head”. This was done to promote McDonald’s Large Coffee for only 1 Euro.
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in too many cases, the language used by executives in one company is completely interchangeable with the language used by another; and hollow and meaningless in every place it used. […] she called this “Jargon monoxide.”
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I’m as sure that ordering an army of consumers to use a packshot, logo and tagline as stipulated by Armani when user-generating, wasn’t approaching what Gibson or Jenkins had in mind when they described a future vision of participatory culture and collect
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Packard, like Ellison, made the Top Ten list for richest Americans. But they differed greatly in their view of who helped them get there, and what they owe their fellow citizens, employees, and community.
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