Marketing 2.0

Most Influential Brands in 2005

Interbrand has selected its most influential brands in 2005. At the top of the list is Google, closely followed by Apple. They also unveil regional results for Europe, Asia and the Americas.

Link: brandchannel.com | brandchannel Readers Choice Awards 2005 | Brands Rankings, Research, Lists | branding and marketing portal | brand | brands | branding .

Brand Revival

Here's some advice from Fast Company on how to revive a brand that's fallen out of favor with consumers. You might the key is great advertising or a new logo or packaging. In most cases it comes down to old-fashioned hard work - getting out in front of your customers, reconnecting with those who care about your brand and repositioning it with their input.

Link: Fast Talk: Brand Revivers.

Brand Scents

What's the next frontier in differentiating your brand? Do you smell like a winner? That's right, marketeers, creating a unique fragrance for your brand experience.

Fast Company offers this interesting article on using a signature scent as a brand identifier. While we can all visualize using scent in a high-fashion retail environment, would you believe that Samsung and Sony are using it to sell electronics?

"We wanted to add one extra dimension to differentiate our store from the rest," says Christine Belich, executive creative director of the SonyStyle stores, noting that the company is particularly interested in attracting female shoppers to its 16 mall locations.

Here's my favorite quote from an 11-year-old shopper, "I love the smell of technology," he said. "It smells stimulating."

Link: Smells Like Brand Spirit.

The Brand Called Me

Do you use your name as your brand? You might enjoy this article from Fast Company on personal brands. They interview 5 people behind the brands, including Tony Hawk, Nigella Lawson and Todd Oldham to talk about retaining control and staying true to your principles. Some good advice here, although it would have been great to get feedback from the queen of personal branding — Martha Stewart.

Link: Fast Talk: The Brand Called Me.

The Brand Harmony Quiz

Steve Yastrow has developed a short survey to assess your organization's branding strategy. Based on your score, you might be in need of a brand transplant. Take the survey and see where you rank.

Link: Yastrow Marketing - Article - The Brand Harmony Quiz.

Brands We Love

Want to inspire passionate loyalty for your brand? Take some advice from marketers at Guinness, ESPN and Harley-Davidson in this article from Fast Company.

Fast Company | Fast Talk: Brands We Love

Divergence, Convergence, and Other Marketing Strategies

The latest Wharton newsletter has a good article on branding. The article summarizes many of the key points raised in the book "The Origin of Brands: Discover the Natural Laws of Product Innovation and Business Survival", by Al and Laura Ries.

"The Rieses contend that Darwin’s concept of divergence can be applied to the process of introducing new brands and to maintaining the continued profitability of existing companies. McDonald’s and Starbucks are classic examples of new brand divergence. Diners and coffee shops were a fixture of the American scene, but McDonald’s, with its limited menu based on the hamburger, and Starbucks, with its emphasis on European-style gourmet coffees, separated their brands from the competition and created a category for themselves which they could dominate."

Divergence, Convergence, and Other Marketing Strategies - Knowledge@Wharton

How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Plot the Graph.

As marketers, we all want to ignite passion for our brands. One challenge is to convince CEO's and finance managers that spending a lot of money to build an "emotional relationship" with customers is the way to go. While it may sound okay in principle, the pesky CFO is likely to ask, "how do we quantify our success?"

Fear no more faithful marketers. There is a new tool jointly developed by global ad giant Saatchi & Saatchi and British firm QIQ International. It measures the emotional power of a brand, specifically respect and love. Measuring love? Apparently the computer-based survey measures sensuality and intimacy among other factors.

Via Fast Company - a good article with some nice examples of building emotional brands that resonate with consumers.

Fast Company | How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Plot the Graph.

Coke tops 2004 brand league; iPod boosts Apple

What's your brand worth? The latest Interbrand rankings of brand equity are out and the tech companies are moving up. I'm not sure how they arrive at these figures but their formula is said to be both complex and comprehensive.

One finding that caught my attention — companies that built "cult brands" or communities around their products and services moved way up on the list.

Coke tops 2004 brand league; iPod boosts Apple - Jul. 23, 2004

The Tyranny of the Tagline

Michael Beirut provides an engaging rant about corporate taglines. His primary example of taglines gone crazy is the new brand effort for the YWCA, in which the tagline "eliminating racism, empowering women" becomes the new brand identity for the organization, superseding the name itself.

There are effective taglines that resonate and endure - "Just do it", "Think different" and "See the USA in a Chevrolet" come to mind. For every good one, there seems to be a baker's dozen of corny or just plain obtuse slogans.

I must admit that I love creating taglines for products and organizations. Like any other communications strategy, there are good and bad examples. Without giving it too much thought here's a quick list of clunkers that don't work for me:

"Where do you want to go today?" (hint: not down to the software store for the 47th iteration of a word processing program). "Get the feeling" (Toyota builds great cars but they are efficient appliances, not objects of desire. They got it right with their Lexus division, though, by using "The relentless pursuit of perfection"). "I'm loving it" (McDonalds might be a good choice when you are traveling or really pressed for time but I can't recall anyone saying they loved the food).

What are your favorite hits and misses for corporate taglines?

Design Observer: writings about design & culture: The Tyranny of the Tagline