“Just the facts, M’am.” Pepsi, who has advertised in every Super Bowl for 23 years, is shifting its entire Super Bowl budget into social media via its charitable crowdsourcing community called The Pepsi Refresh Project. According to a UMass Dartmouth Study released this month, 80% of the Inc 500 use social networking as a marketing [...]
Archive for the ‘Branding’ Category
The latest battle in the war between content and distribution
Posted: January 5, 2010 in Branding, Business, Marketing, MediaTags: Cablevision, content, contract dispute, distribution, Food Network, HGTV, Scripps Network, Time Warner Cable
As the new decade dawned, the war between content creators and distribution channels was heating up on a new front: Television. While Fox loudly beat its chest and threatened to pull its programming off Time Warner Cable, at 12:01 am Jan. 1st, without fanfare or warning shot, Scripps Network actually did pull the Food Network [...]
I see dead people…
Posted: November 16, 2009 in Branding, Business, Marketing, MisleadershipTags: Albert Einstein, Baby Einstein, Brooke Shields, Buick, Calvin Klein jeans, Carl's Jr., Cash4Gold, celebrity endorsement, Chris Farley, David Spade, dead celebrity advertising, Direct TV, Dirt Devil, Dom Perignon, Ed McMahon, Forbes 2009 Top Earning Dead Celebrities List, Ford Mustang, Fred Astaire, Jonathan Faber, Marilyn Monroe, Orson Welles, Paris Hilton, Paul Masson, Steve McQueen, Tiger Woods
I see them everywhere… on my computer, on billboards, in the pages of magazines and on my TV screen… dead celebrities drinking champagne and dancing with vacuum cleaners and driving cars that came out decades after they were rotting in their graves. It’s easy to see why advertisers want dead people to endorse them. Dead [...]
What if Land’s End were an insurance company?
Posted: July 22, 2009 in Branding, CRM, Misleadership, Value for ValueTags: AIG, Blue Cross, brand promises, Business, direct response, insurance, Land's End, recision, US Airways Flight #1549
“Guaranteed. Period.” (R) Land’s End built their direct response business — and helped the industry grow — with their “Money Back, No Questions Asked” guarantee. They engendered trust in an inherently risky proposition, that of buying products you couldn’t pick up and touch. And perhaps, because they needed to live up to that guarantee, they [...]
What color is Havana? Or Gypsy?
Posted: June 23, 2009 in Branding, Business, Directed Advertising, Marketing, MisleadershipTags: Banana Republic, Beluga, Brindle, Campmor, catalog copy, Columbia, direct response, Don Staley, Gypsy, Havana, J. Peterman, Jupiter, Merrell, Model Expo, North Face, The Lion's Share, Tom Daniel, Vasque
Good catalog copy needs to immerse its reader in an experience of a product they can’t touch. It’s a lonely voice in the wilderness, tasked with selling a product in a few words, at a distance, sometimes with the help of a picture. Sure, if you’re selling copier paper or a toner cartridge in an [...]
Dr. Bronner’s and Thorlo: A tale of two brands
Posted: June 18, 2009 in Branding, Business, Marketing, Value for ValueTags: Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap, THOR-LO, Thorlos
Try this experiment. Go hiking on some back country trail one day and ask every backpacker you meet what soap they have in their backpack and what socks they have on their feet. You might be surprised how many of them say Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap and Thorlo socks. It wouldn’t surprise me, though. That’s [...]
How to save the NY Times?
Posted: June 9, 2009 in Branding, Business, CRM, Integrated Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Partnerships, Media, PR and News, Relationship Marketing, Value for ValueTags: Amazon.com, Business, dead trees, Kindle, Marketing, micro-payments, newspapers, NY Times, Old Gray Lady, save the NY Times, technology, value
News outlets make news. But to make money, they wrap that news in advertising. Anybody else see a disconnect? As we all know, advertising revenues are down as advertisers shift their dollars to more attractive media channels. And not every newspaper, least of all the NY Times, will be saved by the influx in erotic [...]
What can iPhone apps teach us about price, perceived value and customer satisfaction?
Posted: June 1, 2009 in Branding, Business, CRM, Marketing, Value for ValueTags: Business, customer satisfaction, Gamasutra, iphone, iPhone app economics, iphone apps, perceived value, value
Hi there, everybody. My name is Jeffrey Lee Simons, and I don’t have an iPhone. You see, my fingers are the wrong temperature or something and touch screens only work for me about 20% of the time. You’ve probably seen me at an ATM, stabbing my useless digits at the screen and cursing a blue [...]
