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Advertising Age reports the launch today of Consumr, a new social media ratings site. It’s meant to be Yelp-meets-Foursquare to rate consumer packaged goods like Cheerios and Tide. This is a service without a need. Consumr is working with publisher Rodale to import Yelp-style product reviews for some 50,000 products you can find on grocery …
Marketing Daily has a great article on brand security. Once brands were built on great products with well-communicated features and benefits. That’s no longer enough: “now security, transparency and privacy are required ingredients for great brands.” During the Wikileaks crisis, brands like Mastercard, Visa and Paypal were threatened by “hacktivists.” We pointed out the massive …
Are the SEALs the best? They sure have the best brand–especially after the bin Laden raid. Disney is just the latest company to try to trademark a SEAL brand, reserving “SEAL Team 6,” for entertainment uses, toys (including snow globes!) and clothing. The other Tier One counter-terrorism unit, Delta Force, has not attained the same …
Disney Trademarks SEAL Team 6, But Not DEVGRU or Delta Force Read More »
Behavioral archetypes can help companies that struggle with what to say to potential customers and consumers. Too often, they fall back on a recitation of facts and claims: We are the leading… For over 40 years, we have been… Drawing on deep industry expertise, we… Headquartered in New York City, we are the… Messages like …
Talking to Your Customer: Leo Burnett’s Behavioral Archetypes Read More »
Brand creation, creating global Chinese brands, has been the official policy of the Communist Party Central Committee of China since 2004. The Ministry of Commerce launched China’s Brands Promotion Committee in a ceremony in Beijing on June 11 of that year. The goal of the committee was to help companies build internationally valued brands. Global …
Official Chinese Communist Party Policy: Create Global Chinese Brands Read More »
Mintel, a global market intelligence company, recently released a study touting growing consumer acceptance of generic brands, private label, and retailer brands. Yet what people say does not always affect what people do. The Mintel headline claims “Private label gets a quality reputation, causing consumers to change their buying habits.” The truth is that behavior …
How much of the Apple brand value is Steve Jobs? Is the brand at risk with Jobs’ new medical leave? When a major brand is closely tied to a single person (think of Yves St. Laurent, Oprah Winfrey, Donald Trump), brand value can rise and fall on the fortunes and failures of that person. Steve …
This blog has railed against the dishonesty behind doublespeak and the long-term damage such “cleverness” can do to the integrity of your brand (i.e. Toyota renaming a “recall” as a “special service campaign”). Using gobbledegook in your brand communications is less sinister, but it still inhibits clear, compelling communication and it definitely can bore your …
Gobbledegook: Brand Doublespeak’s Extremely Boring Cousin Read More »
Burson-Marsteller released a study that claims 76% of blogs were off message. The brand message gap was found in more than 150 messages sent out by companies listed in the Financial Times Global 100 and discovered a large gap between the official brand messages and how they were reflected on blogs, in tweets, and on …
A good brand reputation is not a service you can buy and can’t be gained by a clever stratagem. Still, reputation managers at companies trying to do damage control or damage prevention always seem to be on the look-out for shortcuts that can shut down any negative conversation about brand. Preventing Negative Conversation Is Impossible …
You Can’t Buy a Good Brand Reputation-Negative Conversation Read More »