Editor’s Note: Some mornings you wake up at the crossroads. The draft of this particular post has sat in my site since February this year (don’t ask me why since there is no decent explanation). Today, I decided I needed to either publish it or delete it, so I clicked “publish”. I hope you enjoy it.
When it comes to the US Super Bowl, the action off the pitch is as exciting as the clashes on it. The halftime entertainment at Super Bowl XLIV featured The Who, while advertisers forked out more than $3m for a 30 second slot. No wonder the ads are so good.
Interbrand’s List of 2010 World’s Best Brands. Coca-Cola retains its top spot as the number one ranked brand on the list.
A number of prominent brands faced extraordinary crisis in 2010 resulting in stalled growth, value loss and in the case of BP, failure to make the ranking this year. BP’s environmental disaster and inability to make good on its brand promise of “Beyond Petroleum” led to it falling off of the list and helped competitor Shell emerge as an industry leader.
Although the Toyota (#11) recall caused the brand to lose -16% of its brand value, its long-standing reputation for reliability, efficiency and innovation helped it weather the crisis better than expected.
Goldman Sachs (#37) was once the envy of Wall Street, but now faces the dichotomy of strong economic results and an angry public that will continue to lash out until the company begins to demonstrate that it is making sincere efforts to better align its ethics with its brand. Continue Reading
Here is NOT definitive list of really DUMB things you can do to kill your VIRAL campaign before it even goes viral but feel free to add to the list through the comments.
1. Get caught flogging.
A flog is a fake blog.
You know, the sort where your company (or your agency) buys the domain name, trots it out there into cyberspace where they pretend not to be you but someone else entirely while, at the same time, ramming your brand (err, I mean doing nice strategic product placement whilst espousing lots of positive brand messages) down everybody’s throat.
WHY IT’S STUPID.
Because any halfwit with an Internet connection can check ownership details at Whois. Continue Reading
FAIRFAX Media should axe its Melbourne and Sydney daily print editions and focus on e-readers and online to boost earnings, a report in The Australian says.
Instead, says an analysis from Macquarie, Fairfax should deliver its content via e-readers such as Apple’s iPad which could boost earnings from the two papers to $55m — $5m more than the bank’s 2010 forecast.
Some of the figures were revised lower by Macquarie after the initial report, including the amount by which earnings could be boosted. The original estimate was $103m, which was lowered to $55m.
Well, gotta say, it’s hard work to produce good quality content so I don’t have a problem with them charging for their hard work.
Check out what that old fox (and content king) Rupert Murdoch has to say about on the subject.
General Motors Co. is pressing ahead with plans to shut down Saab, but will continue to hear bids for the Swedish car brand, according to reports.
GM is eliminating Saab along with Pontiac, Hummer, and Saturn as part of a restructuring plan that will leave it with four core brands: Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC, and Buick.
It will continue to focus on its European Vauxhall and Opel operations.
The Saab motor company was given a late reprieve when General Motors agreed to extend the deadline for a potential suitor to raise the funds needed to buy the loss-making Swedish brand.
GM had originally demanded that Spyker Cars conclude a deal by 12 o’clock 31 December but has now decided that the Dutch sports car company can have another week.
The future of the 60-year-old Swedish marque and the 3,400 jobs in that country hang in the balance, though Spyker continues to speak confidently of its ability to reach some kind of deal with GM. Continue Reading
That’s a tough lesson for brand Tiger Woods, rename Cheetah Woods, to learn the hard way.
Hot on the heels of Accenture, Gillette and others, AT&T has joined the crowd, severing its ties with the golfing pro, joining a growing list of marketers distancing themselves from the golfer amid the public furor surrounding allegations of his infidelities.
“We are ending our sponsorship agreement with Tiger Woods and wish him well in the future,” said a spokesman for AT&T on Thursday.
AT&T’s relationship with Mr. Woods began more than five years ago when the telecommunications company started sponsoring Tiger Jam, an annual star-studded concert that is the biggest fund-raiser for the Tiger Woods Foundation.
That contract gave AT&T the right to have Mr. Woods conduct golf clinics for its customers, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The phone giant further expanded its relationship with the golfer in February to include having its corporate logo—a blue and white sphere—appear on Mr. Woods’s golf bag. Continue Reading
The cheeky little train and his friends live in a world blighted by a “conservative political ideology” and a rigid class system that stifles self-expression, according to startling new Canadian academic research.
Professor Shauna Wilton also found that women are under-represented in the stories and what few female characters there are tend to have “secondary” roles or be bossy.
What’s more, she has warned that such negative messages about society subconsciously gleaned from the show may drive its young fans off the rails in later life.
Professor Wilton concluded that the themes are not “constructive” after analysing the characters and plots of 23 different episodes of the television show.
Reminds me of what happened a few years back when Australian media of various persuasions actually gave airtime to people condemning Bob the Builder for unsafe work practices by hanging out of a tractor.
From authenticity through to larrikin, it seems our branding experts have a range of branding options that might enable one of Australia’s most colourful characters in politics to ascend to the holy throne of Australian Prime Ministership.
“What he stands for is a kind of authenticity. There is so much spin and weasel words in politics, but he comes across as the guy who is prepared to run things up the flagpole,” says one.
“Abbott’s often criticised ability to speak his mind regardless of the consequences might prove to be the element that sets him apart,” says another.
In actual fact, Tony Abbott is a marketers dream.
But to get to that conclusion, we need to first revisit some basics in marketing strategy.
Let’s first be clear about challenger brands and what a challenger brand strategy is. Challenger brands attack. They do not defend.
Defense is the job of the market leader and in the case of the political arena, the market leader is the elected Government of the day. Continue Reading
