Branding Blog

Low Rent Strategy

We're always telling our clients that rent money and advertising dollars are interchangeable. Our partners down under offer proof!

3 months ago, a local NSW coastal business owner made a decision to relocate his surf clothing store after staring down the barrel of a 34% increase in rent.  The original location was on the esplanade of a high tourist area… lots of restaurants, lots of shops, lots of apartments, lots of feet.  The move took him just one street away... just one street… but thousands of feet from his original location because nobody wanders behind the resorts on the Esplanade.

What happened next?  Sales plummeted by $115,000… and are still going down.

YIKES! Have you calculated your ad budget lately?

Customer Satisfaction Month at Fast Company, Part 1

It's Customer Satisfaction Month at Fast Company and they've put up a wealth of news and awards for companies who have been singled out for excellent Customer Service and satisfaction.

Of note around here is that Cabela's has fallen off the list (they were on it last year). It's particularly troubling to me because I live in their headquarters town.

Art as a Marketing Tool

Sonja Howle has been studying art as a strategic tool for marketing for over a year now and has been busy posting her observations and case studies on her American Visionaries blog. Our Wizardly Customer Experience partner, Mike Dandridge picked up on her latest story about The Palm restaurant in NYC.

By sheer coincidence a book landed in my lap 2 nights ago that chronicles the story of an iconic Austin restaurant called Fonda San Miguel. The restaurant is owned by a native of my little hometown in Nebraska, so I'm familiar with it and I've dined there. It was great, but my focus wasn't on the experience as much as it had been if I had "discovered" it myself.

Now the book has allowed me to re-discover what the owners have been able to create over the past 30 years and how they have woven authentic Mexican cuisine (not the enchilada plate #2) along with art and architecture into a truly experiential dinner.

I sent this link to Sonja and suggested that a group of us head to Fonda San Miguel next week when we're back in Austin. It will be good to catch up with Tom Gilliland and take a look at the place with a different eye.

I did not Die of Laughter Today...

It's been a while since I've taken a university to task for an idiotic slogan, and by sharing these two stories from the Independent Florida Alligator, I don't have to. They do a fabulous job of skewering their school for some first-class lameness in branding.

First, an editorial from Thursday:

After paying a firm $85,000 to come up with the motto "an unparalleled university experience that lasts a lifetime," administrators chose to scrap it all and replace it with "the foundation for The Gator Nation."

We couldn't make something like this up. It sounds like a line from a "Sesame Street" song.

We thought college was about education. Apparently, UF officials would rather market us as Disney World. It's no mistake that our vice president of University Relations is a former Disney employee.

The next day, Matt Sanchez piled on with this column. Rock on Matt.

After only a six-month run, "An unparalleled university experience that lasts a lifetime" still has some fight left in it - except that everyone now is hip to the fact it doesn't actually mean anything.

Or there's always the old standby "Gator football...you pretty much have to."

...So maybe the old slogans were retired for a reason. It's hard to imagine a revival of the original, from back in the days when UF and FSU were the only choices: "UF: Because you don't want to go to the all-girls school, do you?"

...Maybe we should try being honest - play to our strengths while not turning people off by sugarcoating things.

In that vein, my personal recommendation is "UF: Cheap and good. Plus you get to beat on the 'Noles."

After all, that's pretty much the answer the average UF student would give for why they came here anyway.

Incidentally, I don't see a single slogan on the school's home page. Go figure.

Marketing to Women Online: Lands End in Kmart?

Holly's written an interesting take on the squabbles inside of Kmart/Sears to start carrying Lands End products in their stores. I agree. It will likely do much harm to the exclusive brand name that Lands End has spent decades building.

On the positive side, it opens the door for the growth of the next Lands End. Any takers?

Link: Marketing to Women Online: Lands End in Kmart?.

GM's Bob Lutz on Blogging

I got a chance to spend about an hour with GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz Thursday afternoon at the Denver Auto Show. He was doing a walk through of the GM display with members of the Rocky Mountain Automotive Press.

In between all the car talk, I got a chance to ask him about blogging. To him, the best part of blogging is that he can get his messages out without having to rely on editors and the traditional media gatekeepers.

His post Wednesday on the GM Fastlane Blog is a good example of the power of the blog (even to the most powerful of executives). He gets to set the record straight as he sees it. The comments following the post show that not everyone may agree with him, but he does get to say his piece.

By Bob Lutz
GM Vice Chairman

The media coverage on the auto industry of late has done much to paint an ugly portrait of General Motors. This happens when a company's financial results are not meeting projections and so I can understand and respect the increased scrutiny.

But I must draw a line between legitimate coverage and manipulating facts to create "news." Which is what happened when remarks I made in answer to a question at an analyst conference in New York last week were taken out of context and twisted just enough to cause panic among a lot of good people.

Many of you probably read something to the effect that....

[continue reading at FastLane]

"Alexander Slept Here"

Branding Turkey. What a great story for the day after Thanksgiving. Oh wait. It's the country, not the bird.

I think the suggestion to use Turkey's history to craft a brand image is a good one.

However, you've also got to deal with past images of things like Midnight Express and the usual fears and worries of traveling to the middle east.

Make me feel safe and I'll think about coming to Turkey and reliving your history.

(by the way, when did they start spelling whiz with two z's?)

Link: ZAMAN DAILY NEWSPAPER (2004112614182).

Branding Through History

John Grant, one of the co-founders of St. Lukes, Great Britain's advertising agency of the year, said that if Turkey wants to become a brand, it should use its history to achieve this.

Accepted as the "whizz kid" of the advertisement industry, Grant pointed out Turkey's great history dating back to ancient times and said: "You have a very young population. If Turkey promotes itself on international platforms using its history, it will achieve its desire to become a brand."

Happy Birthday is trademarked.

This reminds me of the guy who tried to patent the wheel. Apparently this Chinese company is getting away with it.

Chinese company registers "Happy Birthday" brand: [World News]: Hefei (China), Oct 17 : The phrase 'Happy Birthday' can no longer be used to brand a range of products in about 25 countries across the world as a Chinese company has registered it as a trade mark.

The countries that the company Fufeng with about 70 products including toys, dresses, shoes and hats, acquired a right over the phrase include the US, Japan and the European Union members, Xinhua reports.

Faced by the increasingly fierce competition in the world toy market, the company realised the importance of branding its products and registered the "well-known and pleasant phrase", according to a company official who didn't give his name.

Fufeng is a major toy manufacturer with more than $5 million annual export turnover.

--Indo-Asian News Service Chinese company registers "Happy Birthday" brand

The Three Dimensions of Behavioral Targeting

I've been slowly doing a bit of blog housekeeping lately and found a post that I inadvertantly swept under the couch last September. The link still works, so here is is.

Blogging note: If you use Typepad and save posts as "draft", sometimes you might want to filter your posts and see if you've got any drafts lying around that should have been posted.

Great branding story today (ok, not from today) from ClickZ. I love the term Brandwashing.

The Branding Dimension: Brandwashing
"Brandwashing" is my dysphemism for branding. Don't get me wrong, I mean this in a positive way. Similar to its ominous counterpart, brainwashing, brandwashing is conditioning consumers' perception of a brand and the consequent increase of its awareness, recall, and equity over time.

As more brands turn to the Internet as a viable advertising vehicle, the channel will only become more congested. This trend is already validated by ever-decreasing CTRs for almost all standard banners, year after year, as consumers are bombarded with ad units and messaging. If the current challenge is to break through the clutter to get in front of the target audience, behavioral targeting has the ability to ensure timely delivery of the right messaging, in the right context, to the right people. 

In a recent discussion with interactive colleagues at WPNI/Newsweek, I learned Shell and Exxon have included online as a major component in their respective marketing mixes. One might wonder why petroleum giants are doing online advertising. I have a few guesses and will confidently say branding is one of their objectives. If branding is about achieving strategic ubiquity online, then behavioral targeting can certainly be a solution.

The Three Dimensions of Behavioral Targeting

The Globe and Mail

There's no by-line, but I have to assume that Mathew Ingram wrote the business column in The Globe and Mail that contained this gem.

EURIPEDES CLOTHES OFF: Sex sells. Sure, you've heard that before, but new research suggests it's even older than you think. A paper on branding in ancient times, by business professors Karl Moore of McGill and Susan Reid of Bishop's, reveals the oldest use of brand imagery, dating from around 2000 BC, was an Indian seal of what is believed to be the fertility god Shiva. By the sixth century BC, potters in ancient Greece were branding vases with standard slogans such as "Exekias painted and made me." One potter, Euthymides, went further, boasting that his vases were of "high quality as never (were those of) Euphronios." But one creative potter promised sexual returns with the inscription "Nestor had a most drink-worthy cup, but whoever drinks of mine will straightaway be smitten with desire of fair-crowned Aphrodite." So not that much has changed. Sex clearly still sells in modern Greece, judging from the Olympic beach volleyball cheerleaders.

The Globe and Mail