Apr 19, 2013 | Branding, Marketing, Strategy
Ever noticed that people who seem to “really have it all together” are able to poke fun at themselves, take negative feedback as an opportunity to learn and improve, and surprise with their capacity to be absolutely, selflessly, honest?
It is often the same with brands, another example of the similarity of people and brands, of how brands take on human characteristics.
However, it is a revelation to see this astonishingly honest ad by Coke.
Is this the beginning of a trend, a measure of maturity of the Coca Cola brand that it is able to spend resources advertising the downside of consumption of the product, or just a mistake, like the appalling blunder with “New Coke” in 1985. Perhaps, my cynical side asks, it is because they make more money out of their other beverage products, and want to switch consumption?
It seems to me that despite all, it really is just a measure of the security that Coke management feels in the strength of their brand. It is a recognition that if they do not talk about the cause and effect between sugar beverage consumption and obesity, and all its problems, others will, and they better have a credibility and a stake in the conversation.
Apr 18, 2013 | Branding, Communication
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In a world of homogenisation, being different is both dangerous and necessary.
Standing for something of value is absolutely essential, ambiguity is death.
Apr 16, 2013 | Branding, Communication, Social Media
Former CEO of Scandanavian Airlines, Jan Carlzon write a book in the eighties called “Moments of Truth” which reflected the journey of SAS from its commercial deathbed to being the most admired airline in the world. It was a best seller, articulating the then revolutionary idea that each interaction an enterprise had with a customer was a “Moment of Truth” a point at which the consumers experience would shape their attitude and future relationships with a brand.
It occurs to me that it has changed now, and the moment of truth that now matters as much, if not more, is now the point at which a consumer posts, tweets, or other wise publicly records the interaction and their experience with it for others to see, hear, and feed into their memory banks for reference.
The 21st Century has opened up a number of opportunities to interact with consumers Carlzon never anticipated, the referral power of the devices we now routinely use has changed Carlzons Moment of Truth to just the first of many crucial moments.
Apr 12, 2013 | Branding, Marketing
Like is too easy, no emotional investment has been made, to do anything useful, you need to move to want. As noted in a previous post, social media wombats, those clicking a “like” button on your site in the hope that you will “like” them back, are breeding at exponential rates.
Nobody ever engaged with a proposition, or bought anything, because they “like” it. People become engaged with an idea, a brand, make a purchase decision, because they want to.
Nobody ever got marries because the “like” their potential partner, they do it for much deeper reasons, they “want” to.
Apr 9, 2013 | Branding, Marketing
It seems that there are a lot of hashtags appearing on ads in traditional media, and I wonder at their value.
Some conversations are simply not worth having, and so inviting one by using a twitter hashtag is absorbing some of your hard earned brand credibility, for no return.
Building a brand is still a difficult, long term, brick by brick effort, and wasting some of that effort by following the lastest fad pushed by a 20 year old with a beanie seems futile.
Even in the “old days” when you could block the few broadcast channels with advertising, it was still consumer by consumer, it is just that we could not see the process, as advertising, particularly mass adverting is a one way, non accountable activity. However, consumer by consumer, user by user, you still had to touch them in some way to motivate a modification to their behavior over time. If successful, your consumer built a relationship with your brand, if not, well, the failure on an individual consumer level was largely invisible. Apart from a very few individual cases, such as market research, a complaint, return, or conversation at point of purchase, the possibility of individual contact was very limited.
No longer. Now, we have the potential to see the whole process unfold from initial display of interest, to purchase, and post purchase behavior, if we are smart enough, and game enough, to put in the tracking mechanisms. These mechanisms make marketing investments accountable! Imagine, the end of the waffle!
Just putting a hashtag on the end of an ad, and hoping for the beginning of a worthwhile relationship is likely to be completely unsuccessful, and probably counter-productive, consumers are way too smart, and advertising savvy to be herded like the sheep of old.
Apr 7, 2013 | Branding, Communication
Interesting verb, “to brand”.
On one hand, it can mean sticking a mark on something you own to indelibly claim ownership.
On the other, it implies a process of building a relationship with something that provides you with some sort of satisfaction and gratification that you value.
These two things are at opposite ends of the same stick. No sensible marketer believes any longer that they “own” a customer, although that argument is pretty common amongst corporations that have several divisions all servicing the same client.
An then you get something like this terrific Somerset Cider ‘Apple” advertising, It is a parody, it trades off the engagement people have with “Apple”, and I wonder if it adds to the Apple brand, rather than just taking an opportunistic, and parasitic position.
I suspect, it adds to the mystic of the “Apple” brand, as it is entertaining, interesting, feeds into the Apple target market and psychology, and holds Apple up as a “gold standard”, so Apple should be thanking the Somerset cider people.
However, I bet the litigious bunch in Cupertino are tearing their hair out, and my guess is that we have not heard the last of it.
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