A Better Course

• FT.com / Companies / Consumer industries – Apple apologises to iPhone users
  IPhone owners, some of whom queued for days to buy the handset before it went on sale on June 29, had by Thursday besieged Apple with complaints that they had been taken advantage of and overcharged.
  (tags: apple iphone pr publicrelations marketing technology ft)
• Apple Averts a ‘Fanboy Rebellion’ | Business Week
  “Give Apple credit for acting quickly to put down any budding Apple fanboy rebellion,” wrote Eric Savitz on Tech Trader Daily. “But let’s also say that it now seems clear that Apple’s master planners maybe didn’t have all the pieces nailed down when it de
  (tags: apple businessweek marketing publicrelations iphone pr)
• IPhone Owners Crying Foul Over Price Cut – New York Times
  Mr. Jobs defended the price cut as the right thing to do and lectured his readers about the risks and rewards of buying into a fast-changing and volatile market for consumer technology products. “This is life in the technology lane,” he wrote.
  (tags: nytimes iphone apple marketing pr publicrelations technology)
• We’re Not Finnished With You Yet | Business Week
  Some finnish companies have done an about-face on retirement policies. Nordea, which spent a decade restructuring and pushing older workers to retire early, reversed course starting in 2003. It has launched training, mentoring, and health-care initiatives
  (tags: finland business agingworkforce businessweek)
• New York’s cultural economy | Art and the city | Economist.com
  New York depends on art and culture not only for the quality of life but also for jobs. Culture ranks only slightly behind the securities industry in its share of the workforce.
  (tags: newyork theeconomist publicimage culture art business employment)
• Consumer electronics | And in the Blu corner… | Economist.com
  It is difficult to draw conclusions from sales figures so far, which allow both sides to claim leadership. Blu-ray discs outsell HD DVD discs by two to one in America, but the ratio is reversed when it comes to standalone players.
  (tags: bluray hddvd technology theeconomist publicrelations)
• A Brand Tries to Invite Thought – New York Times
  Hyundai will introduce on Monday a $150 million campaign meant to improve substantially the image of the Hyundai brand. The campaign, which carries the theme “Think about it,” is the first work for Hyundai from its new agency, the hot San Francisco s
  (tags: advertising marketing brand brandingcampaign nytimes hyundai)

I’ve been thinking recently about confidence as a brand value; what it means to have a confident brand, whether that’s always desirable, whether cute always has to rule out confident. Innocent, in particular, always walk the line between being unconventional and thoroughly affected, but it’s their confidence in their brand and product (“our drinks: It’s what we do best”) that keeps them on the right side of that.

By contrast, I’ve never liked Carlsberg’s “Probably the best lager in the world” slogan. It positioned the brand as a lazy choice; something that you’d drink if you couldn’t be bothered to look for anything else. Especially given the usual beer advertising, which relatively rarely refers to the actual quality of the product advertised (with the possible exception of American lagers) – it seemed to indicate that one of these other companies (you know, the ones with the funny adverts) actually made the best lager in the world if only you could find it. As a result, I love the way they’ve made the “Probably” work for them in the current (long-running) campaign, which is as confident as anyone could hope for :

Pub team:

Flatmates:

Instant confidence, without having to rebrand or break continuity with their old advert; it’s an excellent piece of branding.

• The Bottled Water Mirage | Jackson Blog: Jackson Library: Stanford GSB
  FDA standards for bottled water are less stringent than the EPA’s for public water, “bottled water can sometimes have more impurities” than tap.
  (tags: marketing jacksonblog bottledwater)

• How To Make A Microserf Smile
  “Rather than promoting an HR professional or looking outside, he turned to perhaps the most unlikely candidate on his staff, a veteran product manager named Lisa Brummel.” Business Week article on HR as strategy at Microsoft.
  (tags: business microsoft hr strategy businessweek)