The largest-single global event, the 2010 World Cup, is now two weeks in and we're on to the knock-out round of 16. The U.S. team advanced today in a riveting last-minute win over Algeria. One (last) second, they were about to be eliminated and sent packing...the next, they scored, won Group C and will move on.
The magnitude, importance and excitement of the World Cup has been captured in these five commercials. Even if you're not a "futbol" fan, these ads can't help but demonstrate the rich experience of this global tournament.
Nike, Puma, Pepsi, Carlsberg and Coke Have the Most-Viewed Online Spots so Far. Click on the link below to view...
http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=144375
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Friday, June 4, 2010
IMC Gathering at BMA Conference
Just returned from IMC event (Northwestern IMC graduate program) as part of national BMA 2010 "Engage" conference at Swissotel Chicago. Re-connected with old classmates, met other IMC alums, shared my wisdom with some current students and heard fantastic presentations from digital age networking guru Sima Dahl and Jeffrey Hayzlett, former EVP and CMO of Kodak, who is single-handedly leading them back to relevance, and also star of Celebrity Apprentice and digital/social media rock star the world over. A very good day!
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Ten Big Marketing Risks That Paid Off for Brands
It's been awhile since my last blog post. Sorry for that. I look forward to hearing from any of you followers with any of your thoughts or interesting articles to share among the community...
Marketing, like many things in life, requires you take a risk now and then to make a big impact that otherwise you may not attain. Here are ten, as described by Bob Liodice of Ad Age, that we may all not fully realize the risk that they were at the time.
by Bob Liodice Published: May 17, 2010
Marketers consistently push the envelope, hoping that novel ideas will yield stellar results for their brands. Companies attempt to break through boundaries previously set by competitors or, sometimes, themselves. Risk-taking, of course, is both exciting and scary. Deciding which lines to cross is never an exact science. Every decision demands that marketers weigh risks and rewards, but ultimately, without the risks, brands never achieve the best rewards. Below are 10 brands that took risks in their marketing practices and campaigns and proudly lived to tell about them.
-->EVEREADY POWERS PROGRAMMING HOURS
Ads and brand mentions during radio programming appeared in the very early stages of the medium. Programs were often interrupted to allow for station identification and to give proper billing to advertisers. New ways for companies to advertise on the radio appeared in the mid-1920s when the National Carbon Company's "The Eveready Hour" became the first broadcast series to be entirely sponsored. The idea came when George Furness heard a book being read on-air and imagined the possibilities of continuous radio programming, and how advertising could fit into that vision. He went on to become the producer and supervisor of "The Eveready Hour," a show created to showcase American culture.
-->AMERICAN TOBACCO SPENDS MILLIONS TO ADVERTISE LUCKY STRIKE
Lucky Strike sought a motive for the female market to smoke. In doing so, the American Tobacco Co. took on an unlikely competitor: candy. The brand's campaign encouraged women to "Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet." The National Confectioners Association launched anti-smoking literature in response. The industry rivalries led the FTC to investigate. To fight back, American Tobacco allocated $12.3 million for advertising, an unprecedented amount in 1929, equal to more than $155 million today. Despite great effort, the FTC banned the idea of marketing cigarettes as a weight-loss aid and Lucky Strike amended its campaign to the more innocuous, "Reach for a Lucky instead."
-->ANHEUSER-BUSCH KICKS OFF STADIUM SPONSORSHIPS
In 1953, the famous brewery attempted to buy the naming rights to Sportsman's Park, occupied by the St. Louis Cardinals, and to identify it as "Budweiser Stadium." Commissioner of Baseball Ford Frick rejected this first suggestion but eventually accepted the second proposed title, "Busch Stadium." Named for one of Anheuser-Busch's founders, Adolphus Busch, this was the origin of stadium sponsorships in the United States. After the name was approved, Anheuser-Busch released a product called Busch Bavarian Beer, now Busch beer, to complement the stadium's moniker. Its success paved the way for the stadium sponsorships we know today.
-->THE VW BEETLE BEGINS THE CREATIVE REVOLUTION
The Volkswagen Beetle was a small, economic vehicle, with comfort and power. While most advertisers in the 1960s used information-heavy text or fantastical ads to sell products, DDB went against the norm to advertise this unique car. VW appealed to consumers' sensibilities, using emotion and product benefits in clear, concise ways that had never been attempted before. Single words and short phrases such as "Think small" accompanied simple product imagery. The distinctive format of the advertisements and DDB's new agency model, where creative departments and copywriters worked side by side, were the start of what is now known as the creative revolution.
-->THE PEPSI GENERATION JUMP-STARTS THE COLA WARS
According to the Los Angeles Times, "the groundbreaking 'Pepsi Generation' advertisements launched in 1963 profoundly changed the direction of marketing. It focused on the attributes of people who buy Pepsi, rather than attributes of the product." The brand targeted baby boomers, showcasing energetic, young consumers enjoying Pepsi as they went about their athletic, fun-filled lifestyles. Coca-Cola and Pepsi had already been competitors, and for the next 30 years the two would fiercely battle on the advertising stage. The "Cola Wars" defined the soft-drink category for decades.
AVIS USES HONESTY TO WIN
In the early 1960s, Avis had spent 13 years in the red and in second place in the rental-car industry. Robert C. Townsend, Avis' new president, hired DDB to right its business model. Bill Bernbach told the brand to first revamp customer service and improve its product. During the initial collaborative efforts, a gem of an answer was given in response to the question, "Why does anybody ever rent a car from you?" The answer: "We try harder because we have to." This, and acknowledgment of its No. 2 status, became the tagline for Avis. "We're No. 2. We try harder," was risky as a campaign, but the brand's honest, fresh approach used frank facts about the company's business philosophy.
REESE'S PIECES PICKS UP WHERE M&MS LEFT OFF
When Mars Inc. was approached by the producers of a new movie who wished to use M&M's in their film, it declined to participate. The movie integration fell into the hands of the candy most similar to it, Reese's Pieces. Hershey Foods Corp. VP Jack Dowd gauged the opportunity, made sure that it was not a "monster film," and approved the use of the product as the means to lure an alien creature into a boy's home. This became one of the first, most well-known and successful examples of product integration within a movie. In the few weeks following the release of the blockbuster, "E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial," sales of Reese's Pieces grew by 65%.
-->THE INUNDATION OF AOL CD-ROMS
Before the days of Facebook and Twitter, AOL dominated the internet world. AOL's onslaught of mailing CD-ROMs and disks to homes and businesses in the late 1990s and early 2000s is still one of the most well-known marketing pushes and led AOL to become the No. 1 internet company. Collecting the disks became a hobby for some, while others rallied against the practice. With the disks and CDs flooding mailboxes, protest groups formed. In 2007 the CDs were given the undesirable top spot on PCWorld's list of most annoying tech products. Despite this, the AOL CDs were deemed a huge success for the company, as AOL soon took the reins as the biggest internet service provider in the world.
-->DORITOS CEDES SUPER BOWL CONTROL
With social media on the rise, brands find themselves relinquishing more control to consumers. Nobody has done that in a bigger way than Doritos. In 2007, the brand launched a contest inviting consumers to "Crash the Super Bowl." It solicited consumer-generated ads for Doritos, asked the world to vote and planned to crown a winner whose 30-second ad would air during Super Bowl XLI. The 2009 contest came with a bonus of $1 million for the winner if the video took the top spot in the post-game advertising polls. For the 2010 Super Bowl, the contest morphed into a 60-second music-video contest featuring a band chosen by visitors to CrashtheSuperBowl.com.
THE SUBSERVIENT CHICKEN CHANGES EVERYTHING
When Burger King looked to promote its TenderCrisp sandwich in a way that supported its "Have It Your Way" tagline, the fast feeder turned to Crispin Porter & Bogusky for help. The agency brought in The Barbarian Group to create a viral-marketing website that risked Burger King's brand image, then quickly rewarded the marketer with a loyal group of young followers. There were upwards of 300 commands to which the Subservient Chicken would respond, and consumers flocked to the site to test them out. Since it debuted in 2004, almost half a billion consumers have interacted with the Subservient Chicken.
http://adage.com/print?article_id=143873
Marketing, like many things in life, requires you take a risk now and then to make a big impact that otherwise you may not attain. Here are ten, as described by Bob Liodice of Ad Age, that we may all not fully realize the risk that they were at the time.
by Bob Liodice Published: May 17, 2010
Marketers consistently push the envelope, hoping that novel ideas will yield stellar results for their brands. Companies attempt to break through boundaries previously set by competitors or, sometimes, themselves. Risk-taking, of course, is both exciting and scary. Deciding which lines to cross is never an exact science. Every decision demands that marketers weigh risks and rewards, but ultimately, without the risks, brands never achieve the best rewards. Below are 10 brands that took risks in their marketing practices and campaigns and proudly lived to tell about them.
-->EVEREADY POWERS PROGRAMMING HOURS
Ads and brand mentions during radio programming appeared in the very early stages of the medium. Programs were often interrupted to allow for station identification and to give proper billing to advertisers. New ways for companies to advertise on the radio appeared in the mid-1920s when the National Carbon Company's "The Eveready Hour" became the first broadcast series to be entirely sponsored. The idea came when George Furness heard a book being read on-air and imagined the possibilities of continuous radio programming, and how advertising could fit into that vision. He went on to become the producer and supervisor of "The Eveready Hour," a show created to showcase American culture.
-->AMERICAN TOBACCO SPENDS MILLIONS TO ADVERTISE LUCKY STRIKE
Lucky Strike sought a motive for the female market to smoke. In doing so, the American Tobacco Co. took on an unlikely competitor: candy. The brand's campaign encouraged women to "Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet." The National Confectioners Association launched anti-smoking literature in response. The industry rivalries led the FTC to investigate. To fight back, American Tobacco allocated $12.3 million for advertising, an unprecedented amount in 1929, equal to more than $155 million today. Despite great effort, the FTC banned the idea of marketing cigarettes as a weight-loss aid and Lucky Strike amended its campaign to the more innocuous, "Reach for a Lucky instead."
-->ANHEUSER-BUSCH KICKS OFF STADIUM SPONSORSHIPS
In 1953, the famous brewery attempted to buy the naming rights to Sportsman's Park, occupied by the St. Louis Cardinals, and to identify it as "Budweiser Stadium." Commissioner of Baseball Ford Frick rejected this first suggestion but eventually accepted the second proposed title, "Busch Stadium." Named for one of Anheuser-Busch's founders, Adolphus Busch, this was the origin of stadium sponsorships in the United States. After the name was approved, Anheuser-Busch released a product called Busch Bavarian Beer, now Busch beer, to complement the stadium's moniker. Its success paved the way for the stadium sponsorships we know today.
-->THE VW BEETLE BEGINS THE CREATIVE REVOLUTION
The Volkswagen Beetle was a small, economic vehicle, with comfort and power. While most advertisers in the 1960s used information-heavy text or fantastical ads to sell products, DDB went against the norm to advertise this unique car. VW appealed to consumers' sensibilities, using emotion and product benefits in clear, concise ways that had never been attempted before. Single words and short phrases such as "Think small" accompanied simple product imagery. The distinctive format of the advertisements and DDB's new agency model, where creative departments and copywriters worked side by side, were the start of what is now known as the creative revolution.
-->THE PEPSI GENERATION JUMP-STARTS THE COLA WARS
According to the Los Angeles Times, "the groundbreaking 'Pepsi Generation' advertisements launched in 1963 profoundly changed the direction of marketing. It focused on the attributes of people who buy Pepsi, rather than attributes of the product." The brand targeted baby boomers, showcasing energetic, young consumers enjoying Pepsi as they went about their athletic, fun-filled lifestyles. Coca-Cola and Pepsi had already been competitors, and for the next 30 years the two would fiercely battle on the advertising stage. The "Cola Wars" defined the soft-drink category for decades.
AVIS USES HONESTY TO WIN
In the early 1960s, Avis had spent 13 years in the red and in second place in the rental-car industry. Robert C. Townsend, Avis' new president, hired DDB to right its business model. Bill Bernbach told the brand to first revamp customer service and improve its product. During the initial collaborative efforts, a gem of an answer was given in response to the question, "Why does anybody ever rent a car from you?" The answer: "We try harder because we have to." This, and acknowledgment of its No. 2 status, became the tagline for Avis. "We're No. 2. We try harder," was risky as a campaign, but the brand's honest, fresh approach used frank facts about the company's business philosophy.
REESE'S PIECES PICKS UP WHERE M&MS LEFT OFF
When Mars Inc. was approached by the producers of a new movie who wished to use M&M's in their film, it declined to participate. The movie integration fell into the hands of the candy most similar to it, Reese's Pieces. Hershey Foods Corp. VP Jack Dowd gauged the opportunity, made sure that it was not a "monster film," and approved the use of the product as the means to lure an alien creature into a boy's home. This became one of the first, most well-known and successful examples of product integration within a movie. In the few weeks following the release of the blockbuster, "E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial," sales of Reese's Pieces grew by 65%.
-->THE INUNDATION OF AOL CD-ROMS
Before the days of Facebook and Twitter, AOL dominated the internet world. AOL's onslaught of mailing CD-ROMs and disks to homes and businesses in the late 1990s and early 2000s is still one of the most well-known marketing pushes and led AOL to become the No. 1 internet company. Collecting the disks became a hobby for some, while others rallied against the practice. With the disks and CDs flooding mailboxes, protest groups formed. In 2007 the CDs were given the undesirable top spot on PCWorld's list of most annoying tech products. Despite this, the AOL CDs were deemed a huge success for the company, as AOL soon took the reins as the biggest internet service provider in the world.
-->DORITOS CEDES SUPER BOWL CONTROL
With social media on the rise, brands find themselves relinquishing more control to consumers. Nobody has done that in a bigger way than Doritos. In 2007, the brand launched a contest inviting consumers to "Crash the Super Bowl." It solicited consumer-generated ads for Doritos, asked the world to vote and planned to crown a winner whose 30-second ad would air during Super Bowl XLI. The 2009 contest came with a bonus of $1 million for the winner if the video took the top spot in the post-game advertising polls. For the 2010 Super Bowl, the contest morphed into a 60-second music-video contest featuring a band chosen by visitors to CrashtheSuperBowl.com.
THE SUBSERVIENT CHICKEN CHANGES EVERYTHING
When Burger King looked to promote its TenderCrisp sandwich in a way that supported its "Have It Your Way" tagline, the fast feeder turned to Crispin Porter & Bogusky for help. The agency brought in The Barbarian Group to create a viral-marketing website that risked Burger King's brand image, then quickly rewarded the marketer with a loyal group of young followers. There were upwards of 300 commands to which the Subservient Chicken would respond, and consumers flocked to the site to test them out. Since it debuted in 2004, almost half a billion consumers have interacted with the Subservient Chicken.
http://adage.com/print?article_id=143873
Monday, April 19, 2010
When Good Brands Go Bad - Look for the warning signs before your brand does a Toyota.
Here is a good article from Forbes about Toyota and its brand that reinforces how important it is to always listen to your customers before it's too late...
http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/07/toyota-general-motors-branding-cmo-network-mike-linton.html?partner=cmonetwork_newsletter
http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/07/toyota-general-motors-branding-cmo-network-mike-linton.html?partner=cmonetwork_newsletter
Sunday, February 21, 2010
A Look Back at 10 Ideas That Changed the Marketing World
So, do you have any comments on these ten below or any new or different ones to add??
From the Absolut Bottle to the Nike Swoosh, the Inspiring Stories Behind Some of the Industry's Greatest Innovations
Looking back at some of the greatest innovations in marketing and advertising over the past 100 years, the creative brilliance of these ideas is obvious. Yet the stories behind these examples involve bold thinking, the passion to champion new ideas and a high dose of risk. Our industry's visionaries often countered research results, drove themselves beyond the great idea and defied bosses and boards to push through their plans.
Let these stories inspire today's marketers, who have so many new tools at their disposal, to set aside conventional thinking and become the marketing innovators of the next 100 years.
-->L'EGGS' PACKAGING HATCHES A NEW LOOK In 1969, designer Roger Ferriter of Herb Lubalin Associates wouldn't settle. Feeling the work wasn't creative enough, the morning he was presenting new marketing and packaging ideas to Hanes for a low-cost pantyhose launch, he sought to showcase the product in a new way. While squeezing the pantyhose in his fist to see how compact they could be, it struck him that the package could be an egg. Immediately, he also realized that egg rhymes with leg. Adding a French flair, he named the product L'eggs, prepared sketches for that afternoon, and hatched one of the most successful product launches in history.
-->ABSOLUT VODKA'S BOTTLE SPEAKS FOR THE BRANDLars Lindmark, CEO of Sweden's Wines and Spirits, teamed with Gunnar Broman, a Stockholm ad man, to create a liquor-export product. Bowman borrowed the name Absolut Pure Vodka from an inexpensive Swedish vodka and took inspiration from 19th century apothecary bottles for the unusual package. Ignoring opposition from art directors, liquor executives and focus groups, Lindmark began shipping. When he coupled the bottle design with the Absolut (something) campaign from TBWA, the bottle itself became its own marketing engine. Launched in 1979, Absolut became the No. 1-selling imported vodka by 1985.
-->WOODBURY SOAP DARES TO USE SEX APPEALIn 1911, the ad industry was dominated by males, and the advertising they produced was predominantly product-centric. It took a woman, Helen Lansdowne, who headed the newly formed women's editorial department of J. Walter Thompson, to challenge the norms of the day. She refocused Woodbury's advertising on product users with ads that featured elegant young ladies enjoying the attention of dashing young gentlemen. The campaign she directed, "Skin You Love to Touch," is considered by several advertising historians to be the first modern ad campaign to use sex appeal.
-->APPLE COMPUTER: ONE MENTION, ONE AIRINGThe "1984" commercial introduced the Macintosh PC to the world for the first time. Airing nationally just once, during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII in 1984, the Ridley Scott-directed spot by Chiat Day represented the Macintosh as a means of saving humanity from "conformity." It mentioned Apple Computer only once. The board of directors hated the spot after viewing it for the first time when Steve Jobs and John Sculley asked for permission to run it. Steve Wozniak volunteered to personally fund half the cost of airing the ad, but luckily there was no need for that, as the board gave in and approved it.
-->AVIS TRIES HONESTYThe "We're No. 2. We Try Harder" campaign broke all of the rules. It admitted Avis was losing money, was short of customers and was second to Hertz. Test results from agency Doyle Dane Bernbach were so poor, no one today would allow it to run. But Bob Townsend of Avis believed in the tagline and knew it expressed Avis's management desires to be different, effective and outstanding. Almost 40 years later it is more than a catchy slogan -- it has become the essence of Avis.
-->BURMA-SHAVE LINES THE HIGHWAYSIn the early years of the automobile, Clinton Odell developed a brushless shaving cream. It was a great product with no marketing plan until his son, Allan, pitched him an idea in 1925: consecutive signs with simple verses, posted at the edge of highways. Clinton, not crazy about the idea, gave Allan $200 for a trial near Minneapolis. The signs delighted motorists, sales soared, and the iconic campaign eventually spawned 600 verses on 7,000 signs, many submitted by the public through an annual contest. Within a decade, Burma-Shave became the second-most-popular shaving cream in America.
-->BENETTON BRINGS PEOPLE TOGETHERIn 1965, four brothers in Treviso, Italy, started the now well-known international fashion empire Benetton. In 1984, advertising only in Italy and France, they hit upon an idea. Focusing on the global appeal for racial harmony and peace, Benetton launched its "All the Colors of the World" campaign. In 1989, an intense collaboration between Luciano Benetton and photographer Oliviero Toscani produced a bold and startlingly different campaign. Removing the merchandise from its ads, "The United Colors of Benetton" featured symbolic multicultural photographs. Benetton's commitment to ethnic diversity remains the staple of its advertising today.
-->VOLKSWAGEN TELLS IT LIKE IT IS What do you do if you are Doyle Dane Bernbach and the small, ugly, foreign car you are promoting is competing with over-the-top, macho, American superhero cars? You advocate the negative truths about your car: It isn't big, beautiful or fast. Then sneak in the positives: It doesn't eat gas, oil or tires and doesn't require a big parking spot or high insurance premiums. By turning negatives into witty positives, DDB created an influential ad campaign that made the VW Beetle the best-selling imported car in America and proved that it pays to "Think Small!"
-->BURGER KING'S 'SUBSERVIENT CHICKEN' DOMINATESThe brand promise, "Have it your way," took on a whole new meaning in 2004 with the "Subservient Chicken" campaign. Launching a new TenderCrisp Chicken Sandwich for the company and targeting young adults, VP-Marketing Impact Brian Gies wanted to launch in an unconventional way. Crispin Porter & Bogusky's solution was to launch an interactive website featuring a chicken that could do seemingly any command visitors typed in. The results? A million hits in a day, 20 million the first week, 396 million the first year, an average of a remarkable six to seven minutes spent on the site and a sales increase of 9% per week.
-->NIKE TAKES A $35 LOGO THE DISTANCEOne of the world's most-recognizable logos was derived from truly humble beginnings. In 1971, Carolyn Davidson, a graphic-design student at Portland State University, met University of Oregon track runner and accounting teacher Phil Knight. Phil and his coach, Bill Bowerman, needed a logo for a line of athletic footwear for their new company. They named their product Nike, after the Greek goddess of victory. For $2 an hour, they hired Carolyn as their designer, and, inspired by the wing in the famous statue of Nike, she created the swoosh. Total invoice: $35.
http://adage.com/cmostrategy/article?article_id=142090
From the Absolut Bottle to the Nike Swoosh, the Inspiring Stories Behind Some of the Industry's Greatest Innovations
Looking back at some of the greatest innovations in marketing and advertising over the past 100 years, the creative brilliance of these ideas is obvious. Yet the stories behind these examples involve bold thinking, the passion to champion new ideas and a high dose of risk. Our industry's visionaries often countered research results, drove themselves beyond the great idea and defied bosses and boards to push through their plans.
Let these stories inspire today's marketers, who have so many new tools at their disposal, to set aside conventional thinking and become the marketing innovators of the next 100 years.
-->L'EGGS' PACKAGING HATCHES A NEW LOOK In 1969, designer Roger Ferriter of Herb Lubalin Associates wouldn't settle. Feeling the work wasn't creative enough, the morning he was presenting new marketing and packaging ideas to Hanes for a low-cost pantyhose launch, he sought to showcase the product in a new way. While squeezing the pantyhose in his fist to see how compact they could be, it struck him that the package could be an egg. Immediately, he also realized that egg rhymes with leg. Adding a French flair, he named the product L'eggs, prepared sketches for that afternoon, and hatched one of the most successful product launches in history.
-->ABSOLUT VODKA'S BOTTLE SPEAKS FOR THE BRANDLars Lindmark, CEO of Sweden's Wines and Spirits, teamed with Gunnar Broman, a Stockholm ad man, to create a liquor-export product. Bowman borrowed the name Absolut Pure Vodka from an inexpensive Swedish vodka and took inspiration from 19th century apothecary bottles for the unusual package. Ignoring opposition from art directors, liquor executives and focus groups, Lindmark began shipping. When he coupled the bottle design with the Absolut (something) campaign from TBWA, the bottle itself became its own marketing engine. Launched in 1979, Absolut became the No. 1-selling imported vodka by 1985.
-->WOODBURY SOAP DARES TO USE SEX APPEALIn 1911, the ad industry was dominated by males, and the advertising they produced was predominantly product-centric. It took a woman, Helen Lansdowne, who headed the newly formed women's editorial department of J. Walter Thompson, to challenge the norms of the day. She refocused Woodbury's advertising on product users with ads that featured elegant young ladies enjoying the attention of dashing young gentlemen. The campaign she directed, "Skin You Love to Touch," is considered by several advertising historians to be the first modern ad campaign to use sex appeal.
-->APPLE COMPUTER: ONE MENTION, ONE AIRINGThe "1984" commercial introduced the Macintosh PC to the world for the first time. Airing nationally just once, during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII in 1984, the Ridley Scott-directed spot by Chiat Day represented the Macintosh as a means of saving humanity from "conformity." It mentioned Apple Computer only once. The board of directors hated the spot after viewing it for the first time when Steve Jobs and John Sculley asked for permission to run it. Steve Wozniak volunteered to personally fund half the cost of airing the ad, but luckily there was no need for that, as the board gave in and approved it.
-->AVIS TRIES HONESTYThe "We're No. 2. We Try Harder" campaign broke all of the rules. It admitted Avis was losing money, was short of customers and was second to Hertz. Test results from agency Doyle Dane Bernbach were so poor, no one today would allow it to run. But Bob Townsend of Avis believed in the tagline and knew it expressed Avis's management desires to be different, effective and outstanding. Almost 40 years later it is more than a catchy slogan -- it has become the essence of Avis.
-->BURMA-SHAVE LINES THE HIGHWAYSIn the early years of the automobile, Clinton Odell developed a brushless shaving cream. It was a great product with no marketing plan until his son, Allan, pitched him an idea in 1925: consecutive signs with simple verses, posted at the edge of highways. Clinton, not crazy about the idea, gave Allan $200 for a trial near Minneapolis. The signs delighted motorists, sales soared, and the iconic campaign eventually spawned 600 verses on 7,000 signs, many submitted by the public through an annual contest. Within a decade, Burma-Shave became the second-most-popular shaving cream in America.
-->BENETTON BRINGS PEOPLE TOGETHERIn 1965, four brothers in Treviso, Italy, started the now well-known international fashion empire Benetton. In 1984, advertising only in Italy and France, they hit upon an idea. Focusing on the global appeal for racial harmony and peace, Benetton launched its "All the Colors of the World" campaign. In 1989, an intense collaboration between Luciano Benetton and photographer Oliviero Toscani produced a bold and startlingly different campaign. Removing the merchandise from its ads, "The United Colors of Benetton" featured symbolic multicultural photographs. Benetton's commitment to ethnic diversity remains the staple of its advertising today.
-->VOLKSWAGEN TELLS IT LIKE IT IS What do you do if you are Doyle Dane Bernbach and the small, ugly, foreign car you are promoting is competing with over-the-top, macho, American superhero cars? You advocate the negative truths about your car: It isn't big, beautiful or fast. Then sneak in the positives: It doesn't eat gas, oil or tires and doesn't require a big parking spot or high insurance premiums. By turning negatives into witty positives, DDB created an influential ad campaign that made the VW Beetle the best-selling imported car in America and proved that it pays to "Think Small!"
-->BURGER KING'S 'SUBSERVIENT CHICKEN' DOMINATESThe brand promise, "Have it your way," took on a whole new meaning in 2004 with the "Subservient Chicken" campaign. Launching a new TenderCrisp Chicken Sandwich for the company and targeting young adults, VP-Marketing Impact Brian Gies wanted to launch in an unconventional way. Crispin Porter & Bogusky's solution was to launch an interactive website featuring a chicken that could do seemingly any command visitors typed in. The results? A million hits in a day, 20 million the first week, 396 million the first year, an average of a remarkable six to seven minutes spent on the site and a sales increase of 9% per week.
-->NIKE TAKES A $35 LOGO THE DISTANCEOne of the world's most-recognizable logos was derived from truly humble beginnings. In 1971, Carolyn Davidson, a graphic-design student at Portland State University, met University of Oregon track runner and accounting teacher Phil Knight. Phil and his coach, Bill Bowerman, needed a logo for a line of athletic footwear for their new company. They named their product Nike, after the Greek goddess of victory. For $2 an hour, they hired Carolyn as their designer, and, inspired by the wing in the famous statue of Nike, she created the swoosh. Total invoice: $35.
http://adage.com/cmostrategy/article?article_id=142090
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
A Short (and Personal) History of Social Media
I never realized the actual origins of what we know today as Social Media, until I read this interesting article from AdAge/CMO.com. Who would of thought?
http://adage.com/cmostrategy/article?article_id=141882
http://adage.com/cmostrategy/article?article_id=141882
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Super Bowl Shuffle: Why Marketers Will Shift to 'Platforms'
Interesting article from AdAge.com on where Super Bowl advertising is evolving to. Go Saints!
http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=141790
http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=141790
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Monday, December 28, 2009
Want to Innovate? Then Create a Rich, Holistic Brand Experience
I wanted to share this perspective on the importance of rich brand experiences , by Laurence Knight, posted on Ad Age.com 12/23/09
Want to Innovate? Then Create a Rich, Holistic Brand Experience
Here's How CMOs Can Capitalize on This Emerging Opportunity
Brand experience is rapidly becoming the new frontier for innovation.
Such brand experiences authentically embed the product into deep content or services, stretching the footprint of the brand far beyond where it is used. This type of innovation is becoming a mandate for growth across a number of consumer categories, particularly in package goods.
Not to be confused with the lifestyle marketing approach of Patagonia, North Face, Disney and the like, experience-led innovation is all about serving up rich, differentiated experiences that encourage consumer involvement and collaboration.
As CMOs look to capitalize on this emerging opportunity, they must take several prerequisite steps.
First, CMOs must rally their organizations to create a clear vision for consumer involvement. Brand development, customer service and breakthrough innovation groups should be integrated and aligned around visionary, experience-based insights that drive the involvement.
Identifying these insights unlocks product benefits and services. Gone are the days when marketing and innovation groups can focus on new product benefits to drive growth and when the innovation group fills the funnel before passing on the responsibility for managing the brand development vision to brand managers.
Insight-led research must be broadened beyond usage to examine how a brand can resonate across core consumer experience states, looking at: 1.) "How does a brand educate me?" 2.) "How does it entertain me?" 3.) "On what can it advise me?" 4.) "Is the brand an expression of me?" 5.) "Does the experience connect me to similar consumers?" 6.) "Does the brand give me a sense of purpose?"
As a team, this integrated organization needs to work seamlessly to translate the experience-based insights into an authentic, holistic experience rather than come up with only emotional and functional product benefits.
A brand that has figured this out is Nestlé's Nespresso, which goes way beyond selling packaged coffee on shelves to offer a holistic experience delivering coffee, machines and services. The brand educates, entertains and involves the fan base in the full experience of how the coffee is grown, selected and roasted. This brand understands the insights behind its experience so deeply that it can present the entertaining style of actor George Clooney alongside the educational voice of its supply-chain manager on YouTube and knows to come up with different innovative designs to appeal to the distinct preferences in different countries.
Second, as brand and innovation teams create new experience states, it's critical to define how a brand philosophy serves the fan base. To do so, it's essential to flip one's thinking, embedding the brand in experiences created rather than taking the traditional benefit-driven approach that consumer package goods have followed. For marketers it's no longer good enough to just capture and manage the brand equity as a static snapshot of benefits, essence, reason-to-believe and key differentiator.
For instance, Unilever's Axe young men's grooming brand differentiates itself by creating authentic, consistent experiences built around a "mating game" platform. Unilever involves consumers using traditional media but also draws them into whole experiences, everything from renaming a popular nightclub in New York's Hamptons to the Axe Lounge and saturating it with Axe branding to creating a female Axe Patrol that visits bars and clubs, frisking guys and applying body spray. This platform is clearly linked to the Axe brand, and no other brand could replicate these experiences and still seem authentic.
Third, with the shift toward identifying rich experience states rather than product usage, teams must experiment with new formats for describing concepts that depart from the standard 100-word limit. Now working directly with rich-media production companies, the pioneering marketers in this area are creating deep content from five to 30 minutes that is more entertaining, educational and solution-oriented. Embedded in the rich experience are 15- to 30-second sound bites that can be used in more than just traditional media activation.
Natural beauty brand Bare Escentuals embeds the simple "swirl, tap, buff" foundation-application ritual into every brand experience, both in media and at retail. This not only educates the consumer, but the ritual becomes the essence of the brand reinforced across all experience points and creates a product connection simply through the experience itself.
A key element of Bare Escentuals' marketing is QVC programming featuring CEO Leslie Blodgett, a format that demands demonstrable, experience-driven storytelling. She has created rich stories around the brand, how it's used and where it's from, and she actively recruits her fan base as unpaid advocates to go forth and evangelize. She also drew them in with a documentary-style video shared on YouTube about how the Bare Escentuals' campaign called "Try, Believe, Love" was created. She's living the experience of the brand and showing how it can be lived on so many levels.
Brands such as these that understand, embrace and innovate using experience-based insights have a true advantage in developing breakthrough innovation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laurence Knight is president-founder of Fletcher-Knight, a marketing-innovation consultancy that specializes in translating consumer insights into winning brand ideas and growth strategies.
Want to Innovate? Then Create a Rich, Holistic Brand Experience
Here's How CMOs Can Capitalize on This Emerging Opportunity
Brand experience is rapidly becoming the new frontier for innovation.
Such brand experiences authentically embed the product into deep content or services, stretching the footprint of the brand far beyond where it is used. This type of innovation is becoming a mandate for growth across a number of consumer categories, particularly in package goods.
Not to be confused with the lifestyle marketing approach of Patagonia, North Face, Disney and the like, experience-led innovation is all about serving up rich, differentiated experiences that encourage consumer involvement and collaboration.
As CMOs look to capitalize on this emerging opportunity, they must take several prerequisite steps.
First, CMOs must rally their organizations to create a clear vision for consumer involvement. Brand development, customer service and breakthrough innovation groups should be integrated and aligned around visionary, experience-based insights that drive the involvement.
Identifying these insights unlocks product benefits and services. Gone are the days when marketing and innovation groups can focus on new product benefits to drive growth and when the innovation group fills the funnel before passing on the responsibility for managing the brand development vision to brand managers.
Insight-led research must be broadened beyond usage to examine how a brand can resonate across core consumer experience states, looking at: 1.) "How does a brand educate me?" 2.) "How does it entertain me?" 3.) "On what can it advise me?" 4.) "Is the brand an expression of me?" 5.) "Does the experience connect me to similar consumers?" 6.) "Does the brand give me a sense of purpose?"
As a team, this integrated organization needs to work seamlessly to translate the experience-based insights into an authentic, holistic experience rather than come up with only emotional and functional product benefits.
A brand that has figured this out is Nestlé's Nespresso, which goes way beyond selling packaged coffee on shelves to offer a holistic experience delivering coffee, machines and services. The brand educates, entertains and involves the fan base in the full experience of how the coffee is grown, selected and roasted. This brand understands the insights behind its experience so deeply that it can present the entertaining style of actor George Clooney alongside the educational voice of its supply-chain manager on YouTube and knows to come up with different innovative designs to appeal to the distinct preferences in different countries.
Second, as brand and innovation teams create new experience states, it's critical to define how a brand philosophy serves the fan base. To do so, it's essential to flip one's thinking, embedding the brand in experiences created rather than taking the traditional benefit-driven approach that consumer package goods have followed. For marketers it's no longer good enough to just capture and manage the brand equity as a static snapshot of benefits, essence, reason-to-believe and key differentiator.
For instance, Unilever's Axe young men's grooming brand differentiates itself by creating authentic, consistent experiences built around a "mating game" platform. Unilever involves consumers using traditional media but also draws them into whole experiences, everything from renaming a popular nightclub in New York's Hamptons to the Axe Lounge and saturating it with Axe branding to creating a female Axe Patrol that visits bars and clubs, frisking guys and applying body spray. This platform is clearly linked to the Axe brand, and no other brand could replicate these experiences and still seem authentic.
Third, with the shift toward identifying rich experience states rather than product usage, teams must experiment with new formats for describing concepts that depart from the standard 100-word limit. Now working directly with rich-media production companies, the pioneering marketers in this area are creating deep content from five to 30 minutes that is more entertaining, educational and solution-oriented. Embedded in the rich experience are 15- to 30-second sound bites that can be used in more than just traditional media activation.
Natural beauty brand Bare Escentuals embeds the simple "swirl, tap, buff" foundation-application ritual into every brand experience, both in media and at retail. This not only educates the consumer, but the ritual becomes the essence of the brand reinforced across all experience points and creates a product connection simply through the experience itself.
A key element of Bare Escentuals' marketing is QVC programming featuring CEO Leslie Blodgett, a format that demands demonstrable, experience-driven storytelling. She has created rich stories around the brand, how it's used and where it's from, and she actively recruits her fan base as unpaid advocates to go forth and evangelize. She also drew them in with a documentary-style video shared on YouTube about how the Bare Escentuals' campaign called "Try, Believe, Love" was created. She's living the experience of the brand and showing how it can be lived on so many levels.
Brands such as these that understand, embrace and innovate using experience-based insights have a true advantage in developing breakthrough innovation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laurence Knight is president-founder of Fletcher-Knight, a marketing-innovation consultancy that specializes in translating consumer insights into winning brand ideas and growth strategies.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Social Media's the Little Engine That Can Build Awareness
I wanted to share this interesting perspective from Judy Shapiro, posted on AdAgeDigital 12/16/09
Social Media's the Little Engine That Can Build Awareness
Here Are Six Reasons Why It Will in 2010
Remember the children's story "The Little Engine That Could"? It told of how the big shiny engines were not up to the task of getting up over the hill to deliver the toys to the kids in time for the holidays. Instead, despite the skeptics, it was the little engine in an act of pure will, that kept telling itself, "I think I can, I think I can," who was able to get over the big hill to get the job done.
In some ways, social media is like that little engine (and I use the term social media in its broadest sense to encompass digital and social media). Everyone is playing with social media, but there is a deeply held perception that social media lacks mass audience reach, measurability and depth to get the job done. This perception fuels the debate of whether digital agencies are "ready to lead," which as been a hot topic even within this very forum. Some digital agencies contend that social media is mature enough to be the leading vehicle whereas big agencies stay true to the law of large numbers that traditional media reliably delivers.
But the debate about who should lead seems rather irrelevant, because the key concern should be what will work to get over that "awareness hill" that every advertiser must scale to achieve business results. Is the little social media engine ready to scale the big hill?
"I think it can" and here's why.
When social media exploded on the scene (and I think that's a fair characterization), it garnered attention because it held the promise of microtargeting in combination with a new level of engagement that one-way traditional advertising could never duplicate. No one doubted the value of reaching people in these highly engaged environments, but no one really knew how to do it efficiently en masse. Large agencies operated within the traditional ad model that delivered numbers while digital agencies tended to rely on the "viral" nature of their tactics to deliver large numbers. That approach was too hit-and-miss to satisfy most businesses and rightfully so.
This is why, until now, social media has not captured a larger share of big advertisers' budgets -- it seems oxymoronic that social media's microtargeting capability can ever deliver mass audiences.
But like our little engine, I believe 2010 will be the year where the social media finally says "I think I can" to deliver large audiences because the technology pieces are coming together to create the formula for audience reach, measurability and interactivity that yield intent and business results. There is a new maturity in this space as represented, for example, by marketers who now understand that thousands of Twitter followers has no direct relevance to effectiveness or that Facebook alone can not launch campaigns.
Here's how the social media engine can be used to deliver mass audiences efficiently:
Social Media's the Little Engine That Can Build Awareness
Here Are Six Reasons Why It Will in 2010
Remember the children's story "The Little Engine That Could"? It told of how the big shiny engines were not up to the task of getting up over the hill to deliver the toys to the kids in time for the holidays. Instead, despite the skeptics, it was the little engine in an act of pure will, that kept telling itself, "I think I can, I think I can," who was able to get over the big hill to get the job done.
In some ways, social media is like that little engine (and I use the term social media in its broadest sense to encompass digital and social media). Everyone is playing with social media, but there is a deeply held perception that social media lacks mass audience reach, measurability and depth to get the job done. This perception fuels the debate of whether digital agencies are "ready to lead," which as been a hot topic even within this very forum. Some digital agencies contend that social media is mature enough to be the leading vehicle whereas big agencies stay true to the law of large numbers that traditional media reliably delivers.
But the debate about who should lead seems rather irrelevant, because the key concern should be what will work to get over that "awareness hill" that every advertiser must scale to achieve business results. Is the little social media engine ready to scale the big hill?
"I think it can" and here's why.
When social media exploded on the scene (and I think that's a fair characterization), it garnered attention because it held the promise of microtargeting in combination with a new level of engagement that one-way traditional advertising could never duplicate. No one doubted the value of reaching people in these highly engaged environments, but no one really knew how to do it efficiently en masse. Large agencies operated within the traditional ad model that delivered numbers while digital agencies tended to rely on the "viral" nature of their tactics to deliver large numbers. That approach was too hit-and-miss to satisfy most businesses and rightfully so.
This is why, until now, social media has not captured a larger share of big advertisers' budgets -- it seems oxymoronic that social media's microtargeting capability can ever deliver mass audiences.
But like our little engine, I believe 2010 will be the year where the social media finally says "I think I can" to deliver large audiences because the technology pieces are coming together to create the formula for audience reach, measurability and interactivity that yield intent and business results. There is a new maturity in this space as represented, for example, by marketers who now understand that thousands of Twitter followers has no direct relevance to effectiveness or that Facebook alone can not launch campaigns.
Here's how the social media engine can be used to deliver mass audiences efficiently:
- Think about creating "content campaigns" to drive a focused message using a multichannel approach, e.g video, mobile marketing, social networks and even traditional media. This approach puts the value on content as an audience builder but in a very strategic way. And to help content campaigns along, there are innovative new technology companies, like WebCollage, that offer content syndication and management services to make this task very efficient on a large scale.
- Tap into the power of your customer service organization to be your social-media front-line soldiers. It is one of the most powerful ways to achieve mass reach within current organizational resources. JetBlue is a great example here as they make it a point to respond to every tweet within minutes.
- Create mobile apps to propel new interactions while allowing you to bake in the viral looping element. Gap Style Mixer is a great example; the app gets you in-store discounts while letting you share the discounts with friends.
- Use behaviorally appropriate ad networks as the "carpet layer" of a social-media campaign to deliver large number of impressions similar to the old fashioned GRP (gross rating points) of TV. But to ensure that impressions deliver interactivity, weave in a diversity of behavioral targeting opportunities and retargeting programs from companies like FetchBack or SearchIgnite (this is where you re-present ad an to a target who did not respond the first time).
- Adapt real-world social networks to extend the reach of your social media campaigns. One innovative company in this space is called HouseParty, which allows people to host real world parties for product sampling (think Tupperware parties or Avon Ladies). This company cleverly utilizes social media so they can deliver large scale numbers quickly and efficiently.
- Introduce new tools to measure social media that focus on engagement, interactivity and intent. One great example is a company called Nuconomy, which provides new tools to understand how interactivity drives intent and sales.
As in our story, when the little engine scaled over the hill, it gleefully said "I thought I could, I thought I could." Perhaps 2010 will be the year when the social media is able to say the same.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Judy Shapiro is senior VP at Paltalk and has held senior marketing positions at Comodo, Computer Associates, Lucent Technologies, AT&T and Bell Labs. Her blog, Trench Wars, provides insights on how to create business value on the internet.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
