Challenging Brand Thinking

2011: A Techrospective

2012-01-04T11:05:00.001+02:00

Why is woothemes the best kind of business model?

2010-06-03T12:13:00.007+02:00

1. its global (not only because it is a dotcom but because their is universal demand for cool themes)
2. its scalable/demand friendly (throw lots of demand at it and it has the same kind of day as a quiet one)
3. it is run by a small team of talented & passionate people (minimises dilution of vision or start-up 'heat')
4. products are off the shelf/require user tailoring (unlike designing a website for a client from scratch which is a ball ache)
5. innovative new products are coming off the production line regularly
6. the startup cost to revenue ratio is brilliant (mainly knowledge work and no bricks and mortar)

Consumption: How Long Do We Have Left

2010-05-01T14:18:00.000+02:00

Functional is the new emotional

2010-04-19T13:11:00.003+02:00

The branding approach of Silicon Valley companies such as Apple and Google has been the biggest breakthrough in the field of marketing since the invention of TV advertising. Their marketing approach is the absolute primacy of one 'P', ie Product. Once a product development team has met the ambitious brief from a leader like Steve Jobs, most of the marketing has already been done as the famously vocal early tech adopters get ready to mount their soapboxes and sing the praises of the new offering. The major players in technology relentlessly demonstrate the emotional results of functional product breakthroughs and the early adopter of tech knows whether the brand has got it right in terms of raw specs. If the brand delivers they are very vocal in spreading the word to the mainstream and social and mainstream media lights up when a gadget or a piece of software hits the mark.

Most pundits attribute the success of the iPod to the Apple brand and beautiful design and usability. This is merely the packaging that surrounds key breakthroughs in music player portability. The iPod is also a story of how functional attributes results in a very smooth marketing based on weight of demand and the power of the few to influence the many. At the time of the iPod launch no one had managed to deliver true portability. The desired functional drivers that made up the concept of portability, ie battery life, size of device and storage capacity had not yet been nailed. Apple managed to identify and deliver against these category drivers and when the technical work had been done, so had most of the marketing.

Where does this leave the communications agency that is used to polishing an offering that is just middle of the road? Agencies like to see themselves as partners that are key in building brands but the leading brands of our generation are proving that the real brand custodians are the technical minds that satisfy category drivers at a functional level. So beautifully functional that when they are choreographed well (iPod is a case in point) they are the source of an emotional experience. Do you remember the first time you held an Apple product? In this instance the communications agency develops work that is a celebration of genius at work instead of driving the dog and pony show that glorifies a mediocre offering. So-called brand builders need to rethink their place as the TV-industrial complex that was so profitable in the last century is officially on its last legs. The death of 4p or 'polish a turd' marketing communications will be slower one in certain low involvement categories (eg fmcg) and in certain countries (where blind consumerism is still evident) but with the advent of connectivity the days are numbered.

What drives purchase decisions in your category?

2010-04-11T09:47:00.013+02:00

If you do not understand what drives customer decisions in your category it is impossible to develop a potent offering. Your customer will simply find a competitor that does offer something that meets their category needs more ‘head on’.

Price and quality are the broad decision drivers in pretty much all categories of products and services. There are, however, more important category-specific drivers that we need to be aware of as marketers. Let’s use the automotive category as an example. We see measurable/functional drivers like fuel consumption from the Toyota Prius but also more complex/subjective drivers like the ‘tree hug’ factor one gets from choosing that car and the brand equity of the Toyota brand.

Introducing More Potent Drivers in Stagnant Categories

There are many categories where the incumbent brands have met their market drivers at a similar ‘pitch’ for many years, opening up opportunities for new blood. For example in the categories washing machines & vacuum cleaners where the fundamental design principles of these products hadn’t changed markedly for around 100 years (barring the top loader idea in washing machines and greater portability in vacuum cleaners). Two British companies, Dyson and Reason developed products that met key drivers head on and stole significant market share from incumbent players in these categories. In both cases the innovators went deep into the existing customer experience and emerged from their garages with something slicker, more ergonomically intuitive, more effective and more energy efficient. So these were all drivers that were kinda there but had become lost in the stagnancy of incumbent market malaise..

Andrew Reason, Re-invented the washing machine to hit the key drivers sweetspot in the category

Dyson machines comprehensively beat competitors as far as key drivers in the vacuum cleaner category were concerned

What about new categories?

In a new category like electronic tablets life is a bit more complicated as the consumer is still figuring out what would drive them to buy into the category in the first place, let alone figure out the pro’s and cons of any one product offering. Apple has been very smart with their iPad ‘gamble’: despite the debatable long term appeal of the whole category (the not a smartphone, not a laptop issue) they’ve capitalised on purchase drivers that they have a firm grip on, namely the opinion leader appeal of their products (coupled with the mac community) as well as their brand appeal. So when the rest of the category are tinkering with the ‘real’ drivers in the category (and possibly outdoing them on raw specs) Apple have banked 500 000 units in week one just by being Apple.

Vitalism, Francis Krick, 1962

2010-03-30T10:47:00.003+02:00

From A William McDonough Speech:

When our designs support life, then growth is good. When our intention is to grow our children's health or grow ecological recovery or grow socially beneficial prosperity, then we can go way beyond simply tinkering with a design paradigm that is antagonistic to life and begin to redesign our world so that it is in harmony with all of life. To get there we might ask ourselves, "What are the fundamental intentions of our species?"

I think that's the question that the Woods Hole Research Center asks: Are the terrors and the tragedies that we see in the world of our own making? Are they intentional? At this point in our history it's no longer acceptable to say that global warming, for example, is not our intention.

If we say that it's not part of our plan we have to admit it's certainly part of our de facto plan. It's the thing that's going to happen because we apparently have no other plan. And so as a culture we've become strategically tragic. And when any enterprise discovers that it has a strategy of tragedy it's time for a strategy of change.

The Danger of the Global Brand's Incumbency

2010-03-30T10:30:00.002+02:00

The incumbent brand powerhouses such as Nike, Starbucks and Wal-Mart are at work in the next frontier of branded consumption: the developing economies of China, India, Brazil and Russia. The appetite for consumption that has been so rampant and destructive in places like the U.S. and Europe will pale in comparison to the brand-fuelled appetite of these enormous ‘new markets’.

The velocity at which the incumbent global brands can roll out their models of consumption is what we need to be wary of. If we consider that the U.S. model of consumption, a model of 300 million consumers, has been responsible for 30% of climate change to date one can only imagine what havoc 3 billion people will wreak if they follow the U.S. model. All indicators point to the fact that this model of consumption is moving full steam ahead as global brands roll-out their juggernauts of consumption into these territories.

An example of this is the 'Starbucks index' which shows the propensity for a country to adopt branded consumption based on the amount of Starbucks outlets in that country. In China alone Starbucks are planning to open 7000 stores over time.

The Story of Bottled Water

2010-03-30T09:50:00.001+02:00

Delivered in Beta

2010-03-29T08:09:00.000+02:00

Delivered in Beta from KS12 on Vimeo.

The Healthy Brand: Patagonia

2010-03-20T14:19:00.002+02:00

Outdoor apparel brand, Patagonia, is a great example of how to take the first step towards sustainability: fess up. A section on their website, The Footprint Chronicles, allows the consumer to see their supply chain, warts and all. Generally speaking they have made huge strides in reducing their footprint but more importantly they have exposed areas of the supply chain where things are not so rosy. This acknowledgement of guilt is the first step that so many other companies are refusing to take. How can business find sustainable solutions to their footprint issues without first admitting and outlining their issues?

From Belmont’s website: “In late 1950s, Yvon Chouinard and a fellow Yosemite big wall climber began forging climbing tools to protect themselves during ascents without permanent damage to the surface and features of climbing routes. At the time, climbers typically drilled and/or hammered metal “pitons” and other devices into the rock to clip ropes to in order to arrest climber falls. Over time, scars and damage to the rock began to make some routes difficult to climb safely and damaged the rock aesthetically with obvious route scars. What began as an attempt to help preserve a small piece of the environment, Patagonia has expanded into a global force transmitting the founder’s philosophy toward conservation.”

The Healthy Brand: Method

2010-03-20T13:35:00.001+02:00

The healthy brand thinks long term. A case in point is Method: they practice sustainability to a degree that far exceeds the regulatory framework in the U.S. with the view that the environment needs help now. The huge multinationals (P&G, Unilever, Clorox) have subsequently followed suit and Method have effectively changed the mindset of entire categories in which they operate. When they introduced concentrated laundry detergent it wasn’t long before the multinationals and megaretailer, Walmart, had followed suit and were trumpeting the sustainable innovation as their own. So not only does Method have the vision to be more sustainable than is required but they routinely change the behaviour of their largest rivals. Its seems the large FMCG manufacturers need an upstart to show them how its done.

Business Model Generation

2010-03-19T15:10:00.001+02:00

Business Model Generation One Slide

Deep innovation: the hard to copy business model

2010-03-15T14:42:00.006+02:00

Check out these businesses below if you’re looking for innovation at a business model level. They all changed the way business was done in their particular market and have profited from deep business model disruption. Its about direct distribution, unique experiences through advanced IT/CRM infrastructure (See Dell, Amazon, Kulula, FirstDirect, Outsurance), intense focus on customer experience (Jet Blue, Wagamama), radical HR policies (see Banyan Tree, FirstDirect) and real time logistics (see Zara, Dell and Threadless).

Banking – firstdirect (first successful direct to customer bank in the UK, against the grain of banking has to be painful)

Insurance – outsurance (first successful direct to customer insurer in SA, against the grain of the ‘full of hot air’ middle man)

Restaurant chains/fast food – wagamama, naked pizza, pret n mager (all have deep experiential difference through interesting processes and fresh, local sustainable ingredients policies – against the grain of the ‘fast food has to be junk food’ mindset)

Hotels – banyan tree (unique HR policy empowers staff to tailor the guests experience, against the grain of the grumpy and poorly paid hotel staff)

Airlines – kulula, jet blue (jet blue speak of bringing humanity back to air travel and kulula were the first successful no frills airline in SA, breaking out of the stuffy model that the national carrier hung onto)

Hardware – dell (first successful direct to customer, bespoke hardware sales model, against the grain of the ‘what you see on the retail floor is what you get’ model of hardware that you might find at your local IT retailer)

Software – salesforce.com (innovation in cloud computing, leased software services, against the grain of network based models)

Apparel - zara, threadless (innovation in on-demand merchandising and logistics, against the grain of the big seasonal buy that suits the retailer but not the wearer)

Books and General Merchandise – amazon (intense customer involvement in rating and recommending merchandise, superb IT infrastructure and world leading fulfilment)

Homeware - Ikea (great example of a company that outsources an inventory challenge to the customer, against the grain of the homewares retailer that has a fancy store in an upmarket shopping district)

What Google has in common with Apple

2010-03-14T16:06:00.001+02:00

The World Without Us

2010-03-14T15:59:00.000+02:00

Branding or "How to Switch Off Customers' Value Judgments"?

2010-02-21T22:22:00.027+02:00

In his 2001 article, The Case for Brands, Wally Olins made a strong point about the value of brands. Olins argued that brands ensure that each offering is as good as the previous one, thereby holding companies more accountable to consumers. The ironic reality of how branding works, however, is that as soon as brands win our loyalty, our propensity to make accurate value judgments is hampered by the very same state of loyalty. In fact, companies that get the most commercial return from branding are the ones that train their customers to switch off their sense of economic value and instead choose to pay a margin-boosting 'premium'. $5k for a Louis Vuitton handbag anyone?

From Bud Lite to BMW, leading brands leverage this distorted notion of value by engaging our emotions. The most primal emotional hook that they employ is when they associate their brand to social acceptance or the converse of this: fear of being rejected by peers. This gives brands a lot of permission to fail (through the entire supply chain) and stalls us from challenging them, as we are mesmerised by the ‘social credits’ they offer us (Klein, 2001).

In product categories like fashionable apparel or cigarettes, lifestyle branding was a natural evolution, given the conspicuous nature of the consumption ritual. When business grasped the power of branding in this kind of social role and turned hundreds of functional categories (home loan providers to personal computers) into fashion categories, we start to see the ‘tipping points’ of consumerism.

These are categories where social cachet should (logically) only play a minor part in the purchase decision. But the sheer weight of branding on the social consciousness convinces millions of hapless consumers to buy social cachet when considering these products. This is not to say that brands shouldn’t play a role in these kinds of transactions, as the respected name of a value delivery system, in fact this is a very efficient means of communicating value.

This type of consumption goes hand in hand with ‘new’ consumer markets where millions of consumers desperately want to show that they ‘get’ this new brand world. This kind of conspicuous consumption will play untold havoc with the environment and social values when it happens to the tune of another 3 billion people in developing markets like China, India, Brazil, Russia and South Africa.

The Value of Nothing - New Book by Raj Patel

2010-02-05T12:58:00.000+02:00

Nokia's Sign in London

2010-02-01T20:34:00.000+02:00

The World's Biggest Signpost from adghost on Vimeo.

The New Invisible Hand

2010-02-01T10:36:00.016+02:00

The widely accepted idea that free markets still serve the species well needs to be seriously reconsidered. The popular notion is that the free market provides a kind of utopia in which the consumer ultimately receives the best value based on the invisible hand of market forces and competition. What we don't hear enough about is that the idea of the invisible hand was posited before the hegemony of the mega company. So walmart, SABMiller, coca-cola, Procter and Gamble, Unilever, BAT, AOL, Viacom, Sony, News Corp, Virgin, Nestle, Exxon, GE etc have so much power over the forces in a given market that the invisible hand is really the aims of a handful of powerful board members and corporations - which is a hand forced by the ridiculous idea of sustained stock market growth.

The Brand Portfolio Con
To further support the notion that there is such a thing as a free market these mega corporationa put many different brands
into the market at different value levels in the market. The idea of competition is actually the consumer's delusion of choice. All these great companies offering all different kinds of cool products can't be a bad thing. 'Bring on the free market', is the rallying cry of the hungry consumer.
Go Independent Where Possible
What can we do to stop the Free Market Con? By supporting as many independent companies that are not beholden to unsustainable growth is a way of growing real free markets. With a much healthier invisible hand.

Google Goggles!

2009-12-07T23:11:00.002+02:00

The Problem With Cap & Trade

2009-12-02T15:35:00.000+02:00

The Story of Cap & Trade from Story of Stuff Project on Vimeo.

should commercial speech be more heavily regulated?

2009-11-17T14:12:00.008+02:00

We are exposed to more content than ever before ( a weeks worth of the NY Times contains more content than a person in shakespeare's era was exposed to in a lifetime).

most of this content has a commercial intention (think of ads on all media, PR infiltrating editorial, brands moving into content creation.)

collectively most of these messages form a common, pervasive & shallow narrative: 'buy me' and you will be(happier, more popular etc.)

if there is a link between the messages we allow into our collective consciousness and our direction as a species are we heading towards a consumption fuelled end?

50 Best Inventions of 2009 - Time Magazine

2009-11-17T14:07:00.001+02:00

Who Owns Them 'Little' Organic Brands?

2009-11-03T10:41:00.002+02:00

Rugby World Cup Movie Trailer Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon et al..

2009-10-28T15:14:00.000+02:00

Web 3.0 Explained

2009-09-30T21:01:00.000+02:00

The Evolution of Web 3.0

View more documents from Marta Strickland.

Best Freelance Self-Promo Ever

2009-09-28T23:54:00.005+02:00

Fizzy Drinks : A Big Glass of Human Fat

2009-09-02T07:00:00.001+02:00

New York City takes a hard line against fast food.

The End of The Line

2009-08-26T21:30:00.001+02:00

Church Random

2009-08-25T22:08:00.010+02:00

Supermarkets & Progress

2009-08-19T22:16:00.031+02:00

The local supermarket is a 3D model of the issues we now face as a consumer species. The percentage of floorspace allocated to over-processed and over-packaged products reflects how branded messages from inside and outside of the store have impacted our collective ability to vote wisely with our wallets. To put it plainly, if we were to take nutrition experts seriously the middle of the supermarket would be out of bounds, but we continue to fill most of our superstores and trollies with goods that promise so much yet deliver so little.

So the products that are layered with packaging and promise, yet contain very little real value are given a lot of physical and mental space in the store.

An interesting indication of how we have allowed 'empty complexity' into our lives is that a single product in the middle of the store, often contains more ingredients than the entire fresh produce or wholefoods section combined. So although healthy = less packaging & less hype it has also come to mean less space on our shelves. And many critics say this isn't a major issue because after all consumers have the agency to choose a healthy lifestyle despite being bombarded with sodium and sugar filled marketing messages? The supermarket and obesity stats seem to tell a different story.

Imagine if one of the fmcg giants invented the humble carrot or should I say "The see-in-the-dark wonderfood for all growing families!". Instead, we ironically see 'heart health' promises and 'smart kid' associations coming from the margarine section...of all places.

Shop here.

The contents of mainstream supermarkets are an indictment of our collective wisdom as consumers.

Swine Flu Ads From the '70s

2009-08-10T18:50:00.002+02:00

Good Brands Report 2009

2009-08-06T11:15:00.000+02:00

Good Brands Report 2009

View more documents from PSFK.

startalie.com - Interesting campaign against bottled water

2009-07-27T22:14:00.000+02:00

start a lie

MJ Zeitgeist

2009-07-08T09:20:00.000+02:00

We knew that Michael Jackson’s memorial service would be one of the biggest events in Internet history, and so far, the numbers are confirming it. We’ve learned that CNN.com’s live stream of the event drew at least 9.7 million views (through 5pm ET), with a maximum of 781,000 concurrent viewers.

While that falls short of the 27 million total and 1.3 million concurrent live streams that President Obama’s inauguration saw on CNN.com, it would appear that users were more engaged in the company’s Facebook Connect integration for Jackson, with upwards of 6,000 status updates being posted per minute earlier today. CNN also reports that their website has received 11.8 million unique visitors and 81 million page views so far today.

Elsewhere around the Web, Twitter is seeing massive volume of Jackson-related tweets. In addition to occupying all 10 of Twitter’s trending topics, we now know that the term “Michael Jackson” alone was generating 80,000 tweets per hour. Taking into account all of the other associated terms being used, the event likely rivals some of the most discussed events we’ve ever seen on Twitter, with the most recent example being the #iranelection. More on this at Mashable

When sustainability means more than ‘green’

2009-07-07T10:40:00.001+02:00

Fiat Eco Drive -Cannes Cyber Grand Prix Winner

2009-06-25T15:06:00.000+02:00

The Age of the Social Media Soapbox

2009-06-22T19:58:00.003+02:00

I teach brand leadership at vega and a big part of the course these days centres on social media and how brands can engage stakeholders through proper interaction with these platforms. Found this complaint recently from one of my students that was backed up by three other students:

It's bizarre to see this scenario playing out in a brand school, but a sign of the times I guess.Exciting prospect this transparency/soapbox thing..

"The complaint – Watch for posts complaining about your products or services, company, and staff. Catching something early means getting a chance to show how responsive you are. A complaint is an opportunity to demonstrate problem-solving abilities. A posted complaint may also draw out other comments from people with the same concern, which provides an opportunity to reach out to them as well. And who knows, impressing customer with great customer service may generate some positive posts about how you resolved the problems." Toprankblog.com

To know it is to love it.

2009-06-19T15:02:00.004+02:00

If this statement rings true after your brand name you have a holistic approach to brand building.

Kevin Lane Keller, the worlds most widely prescribed author on branding, says that brand equity has a lot to do with our knowledge that we have accumulated over time about a given brand. Various other thinkers in the field agree with this approach.

The revered Jean-Noel Kapferer defines a brand as follows:

“The brand is a focal point for all the positive and negative impressions created by the buyer over time as she comes into contact with the brand’s products, distribution channel, personnel and communication”.

So hopefully we can agree then that knowledge, in brand building terms, is the alpha and omega. Knowledge in, brand equity out. But hang on a sec: knowledge delivery has done a complete flip in the last few years. Before this web 2.0 thing our knowledge about brands came from only a few platforms. TV ads, packaging and maybe that promoter in the store would build most of your perception around your favourite brand of cereal. But now for a growing number of consumers the access point to brand knowledge has become wider and from the brand point of view, harder to control. For the big, bad brands that relied on these neatly controlled broadcast platforms the wake-up call is at rooster-pitch.

So, if people could see further and further inside your value chain, beyond the façade of brand communication, would they love you even more?

A lot of my knowledge about say, Monsanto, is negative – from their GM policies to their approach to farmers in third world countries. The brand equity is negative. A lot of my knowledge about Google – from their company culture, to their approach to sustainability and information sharing - is positive. This accumulated equity is not a result of conscious brand building activity but all of it has resulted in brand equity. It is about business domains that have rarely been thought of as branding centres: HR policy, procurement policy, product development, financial modeling.

What this means is that in a connected world, everything is brand building. And in fact brand communication, the pillar of a brand strategy in the 20th century, plays an ever smaller role in brand building.

Quite simply, when more people have a wider access point to your brand through the network: Everything communicates...and a marketing department becomes a very strange notion.

GM's 'Tomorrow-Land' at the 1964 World's Fair

2009-06-19T00:01:00.002+02:00

BoingBoing

Just call him Al

2009-06-17T14:04:00.001+02:00

More Eckhart Tolle Wisdom

2009-06-13T23:31:00.000+02:00

The insanity of the collective egoic mind, amplified by science and technology (and consumerism?), is rapidly taking our species to the brink of disaster. Evolve or die: that is our only choice now.

GM Reinvention? Lets Do it One Commercial At a Time..

2009-06-09T19:11:00.000+02:00

Move To Japan So You Can Drink Veggie Pepsi, Or Green Tea Coke

2009-06-07T18:40:00.001+02:00

Two new cola taste sensations are set to hit the vending machines of Japan, and no, you can't either. They're Green Tea Coke and Shiso-flavored Pepsi. Who in the what now?

Shiso is a minty green herb popular for flavoring stuff in Japan, and, apparently, gives a nuclear green color in extract form. The offerings are not unusual for Japan where vending machines are stuffed with wacky and exotic snacks and vendors must constantly roll out crazy concoctions to stay competitive in the Japanese marketplace, where fads can literally start, explode into a national fever, and become completely forgotten within an hour.

Consumerist

A Visual History of the Credit Card (www.consumerist.com)

2009-06-07T18:33:00.002+02:00

Credit cards weren't always the adorable little pocket debt machines that they are today. They weren't even plastic until AmEx decided to class things up in 1959. Travel back to the good old days when credit cards were a "ticket for anyone to spend freely and decide when was best to pay it back" with this revealing photo set from Slate.

more

Health insurers invest billions in tobacco stocks (courtesy boingboing)

2009-06-07T18:27:00.005+02:00

Health insurers around the world collectively hold $4.5 billion worth of tobacco industry stock, according to a new study. The Consumerist has great highlights on the story, including this killer quote from the study's co-author, David Himmelstein, "[It's] the combined taxidermist and veterinarian approach: either way you get your dog back." Also: Toronto's Sun Life financial lied and said it didn't have any tobacco stock -- it has over $1 billion.

Why is it a big deal? "If you own a billion dollars [of tobacco stock], then you don't want to see it go down," says Himmelstein, "You are less likely to join anti-tobacco coalitions, endorse anti-tobacco legislation, basically, anything most health companies would want to participate in."...
But with $4.5 billion still invested in Big Tobacco, many insurers are reaping profits from a cancer-causing industry. As Himmelstein puts it, "Is this who we want running our healthcare system?"
more

Chomsky

2009-05-19T22:24:00.001+02:00

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.

thats how we do things round here

2009-05-19T16:02:00.009+02:00

(apologies for the weird captain of industry tone) Gather round adfolk, this is big. We gonna be changing some of our adspeak now. Seeing that the concept of brand is far too veiled in mystique and jargon, lets try this. Lets drop this word brand and start talking about experience for staff and customers. Everything visual we can call visual identity design. Here’s why:

When people that work in any position of authority in a company are:

1. Aware of their roles as experience designers;

2. Are able to weave a specific ethos into these experiences

The result is an impossible to copy competitive advantage.

Getting the above right is a sure way to attract and retain staff and customers. Sometimes they call this ‘branding’ – but then logo design and advertising is also called branding so people get confused. The problem is most managers do not see themselves as experience designers. It is far too smarmy. Instead they are in the game of getting stuff done and making money - sometimes the stuff they do smacks of a certain ethos (like when they’re talking about branding – item 4 on the agenda), but mostly they just do stuff. But while they are fixing stuff, changing stuff, buying stuff, selling stuff etc they are usually impacting the unique experience of their staff and customers - usually unknowingly. Isn't that bizarre? That lack of awareness. It makes them so replaceable and it turns business into a lottery. Yet, we live it everyday.

It confounds me as to how this concept is still a relatively novel one and how it mainly lives in the realm of brand consultancies. Somewhere deep down all of us know that as consumers we make purchase and loyalty decisions based on how our experience is being uniquely shaped by the people in organisations. Sure, there are many organisations that practice excellence in their field, but how many create a uniquely excellent experience? Most companies follow the herd in their category - aiming to just be one of the members of the category. Why not try and do stuff differently in a specific direction, surely this is the most fundamental thing that a business is based on? I guess it’s a case of not having the initial definition in place – we have a very well defined set of visual rules but normally scant regard for principles that shape our behaviour. So the visual stuff is aligned with military consistency but behaviour is potluck. In a world where we make decisions based on as set of experienced behaviours this is crazy indeed.

Homegrown Experience Heroes

How many established coffee shop chains, airlines and insurance companies scratch their heads at the likes of our very own Vida E Caffe, Kulula,com, Discovery and Outsurance - asking why are they klapping us in customer and staff acquisition and retention? Its simple: these new players realised that to beat the incumbents all they had to do was to place as much, if not more importance on human behaviour as they do on the size and shape of their logo.

Wow - Intel are doing the fake comment thing...impressive

2009-05-19T08:38:00.002+02:00

this comment was added below my Intel ad post - they must be using some PR agency to trawl the net and post comments...so lame....

I think this campaign does a fantastic job of changing the conversation with Intel. For years, Intel was seen as a sleepy giant that rested on its successful, commodity products. Now, it provides an emotional connection to consumers, showing them the quirky, human, and ultra-intelligent side of Intel. If you know anything about the company, you know that this "Sponsors of Tomorrow" tagline is really something they live and breathe. It's time that the geniuses under the surface got some credit. I also like the fact that during this tough economic climate, Intel is providing an optimistic voice the looks towards a brighter future.

New Intel TV ad -- Sponsors of Tomorrow

2009-05-12T18:48:00.000+02:00

Nice Alternative to PET Water Bottles...

2009-05-01T11:14:00.000+02:00

Just Drinking Water

The Myths of Sustainable Branding (Kleanthous and Peck)

2009-04-29T21:33:00.004+02:00

Myth 1: “The objective of business is to encourage sustainable consumption”.

Wrong! Brand managers and marketers are offered incentives to increase sales and market share, not human wellbeing; new incentives are therefore required.

Myth 2: “Marketing cannot drive sustainable consumption”.

Wrong! Marketing and brand communications can make a major contribution to meeting the biggest challenges of our age.

Myth 3: “Mainstream consumers do not value responsible brands.”

Wrong! There are huge market opportunities waiting for canny marketers who tune in to deep shifts in societal values.

Myth 4: “Marketing professionals do not understand sustainability”

Wrong! Many marketers are just waiting for “permission” and an appropriate framework in which to engage with sustainability issues, even if they aren’t familiar with the language and concepts of corporate responsibility.

Myth 5: “Media owners should enforce a strict separation between editorial and advertising departments.”

Wrong! If anything, editorial and advertising policy needs to be more closely aligned.

Myth 6: “Agencies are barristers, not beacons.”

Wrong! There is unmet latent commercial potential for more responsible brands; helping clients

to spot and exploit that potential is part of the essential function of agencies.

Gotta Love This Take on How We Can Move Forward

2009-04-29T21:29:00.000+02:00

http://www.wwf.org.uk/filelibrary/pdf/let_them_eat_cake_abridged.pdf

Honda Insight and Vimeo Collab

2009-04-28T15:21:00.001+02:00

Honda Insight - Let It Shine from Honda on Vimeo.

More Story of Stuff

2009-04-27T20:56:00.003+02:00

Annie Leonard makes these points: the world economy follows a straight-line growth model based on planned obsolescence, while the planet prefers to work in a circular symbiotic relationship. Because of the causal bond marketing has with our spending habits, in just fifty years, America (and most Western cultures) has doubled consumption rates. Leonard walks us through the process from extraction of natural resources to production and distribution and finally to consumption and disposal of the accumulation of all these products (all while our government, supposedly for the people, sits back and takes direction from corporate interests). Some of the more incredible facts she’s collated:

• 80% of the world's forests are gone.
• 2000 trees a minute are cut down in the Amazon alone. That is 7 football fields a minute!
• The U.S. has less than 4% of its forests left.
• 40% of our waterways are undrinkable.
• The U.S. has 5% of the world's population and 30% of the waste.
• 75% of global fisheries have been fished beyond capacity.
• 100,000 synthetic chemicals are used in production today.
• Bromated Flame Retardants (BFR) neurotoxins (toxins to brain) are in computers, mattresses, pillows.
• Food with highest level of contaminants is mother's milk.
• 200,000 people a day are moving to cities from environments that no longer support them.
• U.S. industry *admits* to 4 billion pounds of toxic pollution released per year (likely far more).
• We see more ads in one year than people 50 years ago saw in a lifetime. 3,000 ads a day!
• Average house size has doubled in the U.S. since the 1970's.
• Average American creates 4.5 lbs. garbage a day -- an amount doubled from 30 years ago.
• For every one garbage can you put out at the curb, 70 cans were filled by all the processes needed in order to make it.
• 99% of all those things we buy are not in use after 6 months.

Going to the 27 Dinner in JHB: 27 May

2009-04-27T12:59:00.002+02:00

Have decided to do some "networking" and am attending the next 27.....

Great Ad For Voting Day in SA (Not.)

2009-04-22T11:06:00.000+02:00

Design Indaba Presentation

2009-04-14T12:33:00.000+02:00

Design Indaba09 Pc height="500" width="100%" > value="http://d.scribd.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=14215450&access_key=key-2oo3lm09p8n1nfrqmnr8&page=1&version=1&viewMode=">

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Marketing Business & Law design indaba design thinking

www.storyofstuff.com

2009-04-09T13:34:00.001+02:00

All you need to know about contemporary life.

the girl effect

2009-04-07T21:54:00.000+02:00

The Brand Bubble

2009-04-05T13:19:00.001+02:00

CALAMITY: Marketing Your Way Out of This Recession height="500" width="100%" rel="media:presentation" resource="http://d.scribd.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=13430197&access_key=key-ax9pizdhz3he77fvwul&page=1&version=1&viewMode=" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/searchmonkey/media/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" > value="http://d.scribd.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=13430197&access_key=key-ax9pizdhz3he77fvwul&page=1&version=1&viewMode="> CALAMITY: Marketing Your Way Out of This Recession John Gerzema This presentation was given at The Economist Conference, March 17th, 2009. It discusses the reality of the Brand Bubble and how to build brand value in these challenging economic times.

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Marketing Business & Law marketing strategy

Credit Crunch Visualized

2009-04-01T17:57:00.000+02:00

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

getting deep - eckhart tolle wisdom

2009-03-26T11:46:00.001+02:00

death strips us of everyhting that is not truly us. eckhart tolle

PC tries to counter Mac

2009-03-16T13:42:00.000+02:00

Design Indaba 09 Random

2009-03-11T12:00:00.001+02:00

a message to the sponsors

the challenge

the conqueror

saving the world one access card at a time.

Design Indaba 09

2009-03-11T11:30:00.002+02:00

looking very tentative about meeting Ferran Adria of elbulli

bruce mau spoke of massive change - parking at the ICC was around R50/day

they welcomed me.

All about Google

2009-03-04T18:33:00.001+02:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

All about Google

View more presentations from Ouriel Ohayon. (tags: google strategy)

Positive Spaces

2009-02-18T15:57:00.004+02:00

convention says that filling a retail space means a long, expensive shopfit with permanent fixtures (a nice n' shiny facade for the brand) - but can we make use of dormant 'in-between' stores - solutions need to be quick, cheap and quirky...adidas demonstrate above..
empty and sad
droog

Mcflooded

2009-02-11T17:16:00.002+02:00

Flooded McDonald's from Superflex on Vimeo.

The work is both intensely dramatic and irresistibly funny. Flooded McDonald's goes beyond the usual fast food suspect. It hints at the consumer-driven power and influence, but also impotence, of large multinationals in the face of climate change. Unlike some documentaries on the same subject, the movie doesn't point an angry finger, it doesn't give lessons nor does it make you feel as guilty as sin. Instead, the film elegantly and comically allows you to draw your own conclusions.

George Carlin Wisdom

2009-01-29T12:21:00.001+02:00

Update - apparrently George Carlin - detests this quote that has been falsely attributed to him- thanks P. I still say there is heaps of truth in it no matter who said it...

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness. We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things. We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less. These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. …

Ching Frank About China

2009-01-24T20:06:00.004+02:00

Brave author with some long overdue facts about the place that makes all our stuff. Not too many authors have taken on the chinese regime so directly and succinctly - big up Mr. Ching.

Obey Shepard Fairey

2009-01-24T19:31:00.001+02:00

“I believe with great conviction that Barack Obama should be the next President. I have been paying close attention to him since the Democratic convention in 2004. I feel that he is more a statesman than a politician. He was against the war when it was an unpopular position (and Hillary was for the war at that time), Obama is for energy and environmental conservation. He is for healthcare reform. Check him out for yourself www.barackobama.com.”

Scam Karl Marx Quote Doing the Rounds

2009-01-14T09:18:00.002+02:00

"Owners of capital will stimulate working class to buy more and more of
expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more
expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt
will lead to bankruptcy of banks which will have to be nationalized and State
will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism."

Purple Cow Debunks Scam Quoter:

That Karl Marx quote above is an obvious and rather clumsy fake. For the following reasons:
1. Marx never envisaged that the Proletariat would be able to buy property.

2. In 1873 the word technology referred to the application of science, not something you could buy or own.

3. The word 'nationalization' was not used in the sense of governments buying out institutions before 1913.

4. Marx did not believe that this was a method that would lead to communism. He identified key intrinsic issues which he believed would defeat capitalism, but only after the proletariat had been destroyed. Marx believed that communism would arrive through the sturm und drang of a good old fashioned revolution with barricades and jacqueries and whatnot.

5. A LexisNexis search shows no reference to this quote before August 2008.

6. A date of 1867 means Volume 1 of Das Kapital. A word search of that volume of the word ‘owners’ gives no quote anything like the one above.

7. As a roadmap to Communism the quote sounds more Fabian than Marxist.

8. To suggest that Marx believed that communism would arrive when a solvent organ of the bourgeoisie (the state) bought out an insolvent one (the bourgeoisie) is pretty bizarre.

Truly Great Campaigns have nothing to do With Advertising

2008-12-09T15:06:00.000+02:00

Traditionally a marketing campaign has had something to with a snappy concept, integrated across media platforms. The winners these days are campaigning at a business model, product and people level and letting the crowd do the talking.

FOR EXAMPLE:

Vida e Caffe – campaigning with their people (in a category where service is mediocre)

Google – campaigned through search relevance (when everyone else though jumbled search was ok…oh and monetized later)

Apple – through hardware design (in a category where design was mediocre… think beige, ivory, off white)

MAC (Cosmetics retailer)– through personalizing the service experience (when everyone else said that a make up artist per customer was unachievable)

Coca-cola – a distribution campaign (when everyone else didn’t bother with that trading station at base camp 2 in the Himalayas) – to this day the one true thing that people say about coke is how amazing it is that it is literally available everywhere.

Toyota – a manufacturing efficiency campaign (when everyone thought fast and quality were mutually exclusive)

Defining Strong Leadership

2008-11-13T10:11:00.001+02:00

The more you think about the more branding is about leadership. But leadership is such a murky territory and can be likened to personal effectiveness as a realm of thought. Often fuzzy and impractical. This is the most practical definition of leadership I have come across so far:

"Leadership is the reduction of uncertainty in an organization. It comes from clear messages, which lead to focused actions that cannot easily be misinterpreted. It comes from developing channels for continuous feedback. All these characteristics reduce cost and stress to the individual working in the organization." Dunno who came up with it but it makes big sense..

The Early Noughties: Rise of The Cappuccino Heroes!

2008-11-05T09:12:00.002+02:00

Obama, Lewis Hamilton, Tiger Woods and Bryan Habana for President!!

I dunno what I am going to talk about in class any more - old white guys are such a great target for cynicism and doomsday talk. Looks like our crop of cappuccino heroes mean hope for at least the next four years!

Now, if we could just turn Zuma into an African prince...

Don't Make a Brand, Make a Category

2008-10-23T12:12:00.002+02:00

Ries and Trout bang on about how we should be first in mind in a category (effectively saying that we should look at relevant new categories, instead of new brands in existing categories), but do we give it 'air time' in marketing meetings:

lets look at 4 levels that have spawned just recently:

first their was reality tv: and big brother was first in mind in this category

then we saw reality TV (talent search) category: idols

then we have reality TV (talent search) (dance): so you think you can dance

the we have reality TV (talent search) (dance) )(celebrity): dancing with the stars

the we have reality TV (talent search) (dance) )(celebrity)(South African): dancing with the stars

so in the very new category of reality TV there are already at least three established subcategories within a category that have effectively been owned by the above brands. How often are we talking about marketing as being a bet on the next hot category? So often we are creating new brands in old categories, and are failing dismally at trying to get into the mind of the market. The Godfathers of positioning were right: don't develop a brand unless you can start a category.

Meet Real People!

2008-10-14T13:50:00.002+02:00

walking around the karkloof farmers market on saturday really left me wondering whether we would be better off without commercial brands...dealing with people and their produce is such a refreshing way to transact...compared to the falsehood of modern day branding efforts - it seems like the building blocks of what it means to be human have been chipped away at by brand-fuelled consumerism...would be interesting to experience this thing called community again..

A Great Definition of a Healthy Brand

2008-10-06T21:48:00.006+02:00

At Vega we have developed a pretty cool definition of a healthy brand. If a brand is 'a particular and unique construct that creates, communciates and sustains value for all its stakeholders through its products and or services'..a healthy brand:

has a clear and differentiated identity
is an effective and engaging communicator
adds value to the majority of stakeholders, but never to the detriment of others
creates and implements the brand relevant points of contact with its stakeholders
is transparent and genuine - it delivers on its promise in all that it does
believes that sustainable profit is not the driver but the consequence of all of the above

ONE P ONLINE

2008-09-16T14:41:00.004+02:00

These days its all about product.

Consider online.

Come up with a cool tool - eg ebay, kiva, google, facebook etc. and your marketing is close to sorted.

Product: the hard part.

Price: generally free now and 'monetized' later. Sorted.

Promotion: web is a comms tool where the rule is: if you build it and they love it, they will tell. Sorted.

Place: automatic and complete (global) distribution is achieved on day one. Sorted.

A World of Independents

2008-09-05T19:00:00.001+02:00

Been brushing elbows with a couple of independent brands lately: a local micro brewery and an authentic italian restaurant (with real mama behind the scenes and son front of house). When big brands talk brand truth and human truth it seems so hollow but when these independent 'craft/artisanl-type' brand talks truth it is inevitably visceral and colourful. Perhaps the network economy is all about millions of these brands instead of a few megabrands and megacorps..one can only hope...

Viva Kulula & Viva La Vida...

2008-09-02T18:43:00.002+02:00

From online booking to ad campaings to the attitude of flights attendants, Kulula.com seems to be one of the few homegrown (South African) brands that consistnently gets it right through all contact points.

The other one that is proving brand pundits right is vida e caffe - every point of contactt seems to be packed with specific meaning.

If only more brands realised that branding needs to be about dramatic injections of value through all (especially human) contact points instead of mediocrity across most with a cool ad campaign...

Kulula and Vida e exemplify the use of branding as an effective useful organisational tool - in the service context especially.

http://img217.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=76379_vida_e_122_206lo.jpg

What if Cuil was Cuiler?

2008-08-12T17:08:00.001+02:00

By all accounts on the blogosphere, Cuilmania will pass quickly and Google’s brand strength will give the search leader time to respond to its new competition if need be. But what if Cuil did get the double thumbs up from the online community, leaving the world’s strongest brand scrambling for answers?

1. Brand Loyalty Means Far Less Online

Brand loyalty loses a lot of business value when switching between brands is a very easy and low risk consumer decision. Switching bank brands, car brands even cigarette brands represents much more risk and effort than switching search brands. On the Internet people are more able to show loyalty towards a product rather than a brand.

2. Incumbency Means Less Online

Incumbency, the lifeblood of hundreds of supermarket brands, also means far less on the Internet.

Consider this.

A new cola launches in the US promising to take on Coke. At launch it manages to achieve exactly the same distribution as Coke but has far less brand awareness because of its newness.

Nevertheless it manages to get the word out to a substantial amount of people (with almost no advertising). On day one of launch it achieves 50 million samples consumed with many regions unable to keep up with such phenomenal demand.

This scenario would be impossible in a bricks and mortar brand world, but Cuil’s recent entrance onto the search scene has at least proven that incumbency means far less on the Internet than in the supermarket.

4. Brand Valuation must change

Google was ranked as the world’s most valuable brand by Millward Brown in 2007, attaching a value of $86bn to the brand (Brandz, 2007). Why don’t we have a globally recognised tool that measures the value of a product or the proprietary design of anything for that matter? Measuring the value of deeply different products (Google Search) or deeply different distribution systems (eBay) or deeply different service experiences (Vida e Caffe) is surely more tangible and meaningful than measuring brand perception. This is especially true when the collective wisdom of the crowd rapidly recognises good design (be it of products, channels or experiences) over branding efforts.

5. Marketing 101 is Branding 2.0

Branding should never have overshadowed the good old 4 p’s. ‘Brand’ is merely the result of a well designed marketing mix, linked to a particular vision. So, in the interests of clarity, let’s bring back old classics like product, service, distribution, communication, internal culture, leadership and ultimately reputation (a word that people seem to have a better understanding of than branding).

A strong reputation (that fortifies your market position and promises future revenues) comes from the quality of design thinking in your 4p’s.

If there is a visionary thread that runs through your marketing you probably have a better chance of building the aforementioned reputation. Google talk about their vision as ‘managing all of the world’s information and making it universally accessible’. This is a filter for all of their endeavors and it hones their reputation, keeping it distinctive and focused. Google has not engaged in much branding at all but has the luxury of time to respond to competitive threats because of getting all of the above so right. For some reason I can’t imagine Google’s founders brainstorming their brand essence till the wee hours back in the day. But heck they have brand equity in spades.

Seth Godin (2002) indicates that there is much hope for companies that decode the new rules of a connected economy. He refers to an Internet dominant scenario called ‘After Advertising’:
After advertising we’re almost back we where started. But instead of products succeeding by slow and awkward word of mouth, the power of our new networks allows remarkable ideas to diffuse through segments of the population at rocket speed.

Brand Value = Precious Response Time in a High Pace Market

What brand equity does is it buys the company time to respond to market threats and even borrow innovation from new competitors where it sees fit. It allows Google to add some ‘Cuilness’ to its product without losing too much traffic in the mean time. People would rather have Google plus some Cuil functionality than just plain Cuil.

'Incumbency Brands'

2008-08-01T21:30:00.003+02:00

these megabrands appear to succeed today based on incumbency (mainly to do with established relationships with intermediaries as opposed to innovation that keeps the end user interested & what made the business model a success is no longer progressive or new):

coke - biggest brand in the world (interbrand 2007)
kellogs - biggest breakfast brand in the world
mcdonalds (except that they still lead the world in terms of quick service)
knorr - biggest Unilever brand
heinz - biggest beans brand

should incumbency be rewarded to this extent?

A Case for Regulating Branding

2008-07-11T10:21:00.004+02:00

Our ability to make and store mental associations equipped us with a potent decision-making mechanism in a pre-industrial world. A hyper-branded world has preyed on this instinct as we make millions of easy yet deadly decisions, ironically, in a quest for a better life. Managed properly a more connected world promises to clip branding’s fake plastic wings as the web reveals true value and facilitates a more textured economic narrative. Brand-bashing used to dovetail with anti-capitalist sentiment, and render the argument useless in a money-centric world. This black or white view needs to shift as the web allows for less empty branding but still a fertile business landscape for those willing to embrace a new socio-economic paradigm.

A branded world says that he who delivers the most perceived value wins. It’s in this world where Dubya got into the world leader seat via an ad campaign that manipulated the vulnerable memescape of Middle Americans.

The broadcast media age took branding practice way beyond the simple naming of a value offering. Its one-way, reductionist style of information delivery was leveraged to the hilt by many influential companies. Marketers realised that ‘he with the best memes’ can manipulate perceptions of value and values to the benefit of their bottom line.

At the height of the brand craze the perception was that the practice of branding had become more important than the design of a unique and compelling value offering. The result is that the economy has become too loaded with intangible assets, leading to vacuous consumerism and a blur of offerings that offer hardly any sustainable value. Or as Milton Friedman and his crony’s would put it: modern economic prosperity.

Since 1980 when business thinkers drove the branding agenda this rampant value distortion has wreaked havoc with supply chains and the environment. This is effectively when brands decided to make image in the west and stuff in the east. Now a more connected world promises to clip branding’s fake plastic wings as the web reveals true value and facilitates a more textured transactional narrative.

Why Not Brand VII

2008-07-08T22:07:00.024+02:00

In her famous anti-globalisation tome, No Logo, Naomi Klein documented why we should be wary of brands:

• Brands have become too pervasive and powerful

• Brands mask exploitative practice in their supply chains

• Brands often distort our notion of value instead of being beacons of it.

However, like a lot of cult non-fiction hits very few people actually read it, settling instead for the soundbite version: Klein thinks brands must back off out of our sacred spaces and Nike must rethink their labour practice, and she’s probably right. And maybe I will even make my next skinny latte Fair Trade.

Despite the oversimplified perception of it in pop culture, her work definitely added value to society. The organisational practices behind the brands in question were shaken up a bit, and as a collective we treated brands with a bit more healthy skepticism. But the effects might have been much more than this had Klein built the work around the deep flaw in branding as a practice, instead of ‘taking aim at brand bullies’. By dismantling the practice of branding itself, instead of highlighting cases of brand malpractice (as ubiquitous as they may be) , the takeaway thesis could have been: branding itself needs to be challenged. This could well have seen a more seismic shift in how we buy, and how companies sell. The more direct attack might have looked something like this:

1. Any practice that affects how we think and act on a massive scale shouldn’t be based on reductionism. By reductionism I mean the ‘he with the best meme wins’ mentality which forms the basis for brand awareness and positioning. If reductionsim becomes accepted (which in a branded, cluttered world it sure has) it dampens our ability to form textured and true value judgements born out of healthy dialogue around products, services and organizations (value offerings and value delivery systems).

2. Brands, especially the ones we love, often distort our notion of value instead of being beacons of value . Although Klein did touch on this, it would have been way more powerful than highlighting supply chain exploitation. Let me unpack it. Once a brand has won our loyalty, our propensity to make value judgments on future offerings (new products and services) from that brand decreases. This anomaly is played out every time we pay a premium for a specific brand of product when something of equal value could be obtained at a cheaper price (and is a key reason that brands are seen as so valuable in business).

Yes, this is how the world spins, and it ain’t so bad on the face of it, but when this becomes too pervasive bad things start to happen. The most concerning effect of this phenomenon, unabated consumerism, is currently threatening the planet in the form of climate change. Another issue, that by no coincidence, is being trivialised and marginalised, by reductionist thinking.

Why Not Brand VI

2008-07-08T22:04:00.001+02:00

Encouraging big business to move away from the practice of brand building sounds daft. After all, strong brands promise value to customers and future revenue to companies.

But what if we could prove that the brand-driven approach to value delivery in business is the very thing that threatens our existence on this fragile blue planet?

Brand communication as a practice inherently promotes the distillation of information into easily digestible units for easy consumption.

Brand awareness and brand positioning is based on reductionism and the creation of compact and powerful memes. This approach to information dissemination simplifies our lives but also makes us less critical of the world, effectively dumbing down the complexity of companies and their value offerings.

This gives brands permission to fail and stops us from challenging them. We've ended up in a siutuation where brands run roughshod over people and the environment, already a critical state of affairs.

Why Not Brand V - The Web Can Save Us

2008-07-08T22:01:00.000+02:00

This approach seems difficult and unrealistic, but our new mediascape is well designed to realise real value delivery. The wisdom of the participative crowd allows us to deeply interrogate value offerings from sourcing raw materials to consumption, and vote for the best one. If we embrace and promote this complex, but now highly achievable approach it can only benefit all stakeholders in the long term. Thus has already been evidenced by Google’s rise to prominence as a leading, profitable and sustainable company. They’ve engaged in very little perception management, but lots of real value delivery. Like all of us they are by no means perfect but are a great model to look at if we are going to survive the current onslaught of global issues.

Why Not Brand IV

2008-07-08T21:46:00.000+02:00

Are people loyal to brands or a named, proprietary value delivery system? Should we be teaching brand or how to build a unique value delivery system? In other words if amazon.com changed their name to madagascar.com tomorrow,would they lose a lot of business?

A well used example that defends the value of brands to business goes as follows:

If Coca Cola’s hard assets (trucks, bottling plants etc) were destroyed tomorrow the power of their brand would see them back in business very rapidly soon after all of this was restored. However, opposite however is surely also true – ie. if we radically changed the branding (name, colours, icons, ads) their unique value delivery system would see them through. Do we need coca-cola or do we need a strong, multi-national beverage delivery system. Could they not still make us feel good about what we are drinking in a heartbeat with a new brand name/brand ID? you bet.

In the tv industrial complex branding effectively masked the value delivery system which lay beneath the gloss, whilst the consumer was less questioning. The effects of branding was far greater. But a truly unique value delivery system has much more velocity and validity in todays connected world. just ask google - not known for engaging in traditional branding, yet rated in some quarters as the worlds most valuable brand. Maybe we aren't so brand bonkers anymore after all...

Consumers use the net to examine the value delivery system beneath the branding.

Spread happens on the net as well, negating the need for heavy traditional media spend..

Why Not Brand III

2008-07-08T21:43:00.000+02:00

In the early days of branding there was a small gap between perception and use experience. This new foreign brand of pie that was replacing my tried and tested local butchers product better stand up to intense scrutiny. There was an inherent, healthy skepticism towards anything unfamiliar, keeping brands on their toes. These days very little is local (my local greengrocer was steamrollered by “insert brand of powerful multinational retailer here”) and brands these days have the media might to never feel unfamiliar to their consumer. With the dominance and proliferation of the media this gap has become a gulf as consumers find out that both values and value have been distorted via branding.

Why Not Brand II

2008-07-08T21:35:00.001+02:00

The case for brands is well summed up as follows: "Because consumer trust is the basis of all brand values, companies that own the brands have an immense incentive to work to retain that trust."

By all means companies should proudly give a name to a great value offering and keep it consistent. But anything beyond this and we start heading into dangerous territory (saluting brands, unabated consumption etc). In a wired world real value delivery will win under the scrutiny and spread of internet users. Any brand that has to engage in elaborate branding efforts has come up short in its value delivery. The magic lies in the value proposition, not the brand. As soon as we buy lifestyle and social cachet we are making a poor value judgment.

Brands that base their strategy on our propensity to seek social cachet are driving conspicuous consumption and promoting values which ultimately harm the planet.

What Do We Really Know About Green?

2008-07-06T23:09:00.000+02:00

Head spinning about the causes and solutions to the global climate crisis? Well we really only face one simple issue: large organisations (like retailers) need to drastically curb carbon emissions. Instead retail brands are leveraging the issue to sell more stuff to more people.

Our local gem, Woolies, recent winner of the World Responsible Retailer Award is a good case in point.

Is The Big Dubya For Real?

At first glance it seems great that they are making an effort across the board to be more sustainable but under the surface lie some home truths:

1.The judges were from the World Retail Association (objective?), closely linked with the likes of Tesco, Walmart and co. (all responsible for massive carbon emissions and killing small and medium sized businesses). Tantamount to George Bush and his crony’s choosing who should get the arms contract for the next war on terror.

2.The fact that Woolies trumpeted the win with a multi-million rand ad campaign. Surely a responsible organisation would spend this money on something more sustainable than advertising?

3.Part of their ‘good business journey’ that won them the award is that they are planting 17000 trees – one for each of their employees. Surely it is your carbon emissions should be offset, not your headcount. The carbon generated from sourcing cumquats from Kenya alone is worth 17000 trees.

Shaping What We Know

Meanwhile the organisations that are really making a difference don’t have the financial muscle to shape the consciousness of the public. Instead it is left to the players that really only answer to one stakeholder group: their shareholders. They win an award, they trumpet it through ads, their brand loyalty goes up and their shareholders are smiling.

If Woolies were a truly green organization they would be selling only locally produced fresh produce under their Foods brand. Instead they are famous for processed and packaged food which is hard on the wallet, health and the environment.

Why Not Brand?

2008-06-20T11:22:00.001+02:00

Brand building theory propagates packing information into more easily digestable units. This trains us to be less critical and ‘dumbs down’ the complex ideas of organizations, products and services.

What is the new agenda of strategic and creative communicators?

We need to find new ways to address sustainability challenges in business and society through creative communication.

We need to make our conversations smarter as a society. Bring to the fore what really matters and debate it.

In light of the climate crisis threatening the entire human race, we need to use compelling communication to ensure that people start buying less, not more.

Making virtually zero budget work

2008-05-05T13:12:00.001+02:00

SA Ad Big Guns Leaving/left SA

2008-04-01T11:14:00.001+02:00

saw this on www.bizcommunity.com today - pretty much the entire old guard are bailing it seems...

Mike Bosman –TBWA interests in Eastern Europe.

Mike Schalit - moving to London as marketing director of Virgin Atlantic.

Reg Lascaris - small ad agency on the island of Santorini

John Hunt - going to London, as non-executive chairman of the London International Advertising Awards.

Graham Warsop - Emeritus Professor of Marketing at Oxford University.

Grey boss Ann Nurock as CEO of Grey Canada

Kawasaki Vs Ballmer

2008-03-27T14:49:00.000+02:00

A Company That Got the web 2.0 Brief

2008-03-26T15:02:00.002+02:00

Leo Burnett Branding Predictions

2008-03-20T09:39:00.000+02:00

Brand Comms & The Value Chain

2008-02-24T14:51:00.005+02:00

Brands are a defining characteristic of modern living. They deliver incredible value to businesses by ensuring future revenue in the form of consumer loyalty as well as uniting people behind a set of values and goals. In No Logo Naomi Klein pointed out some of the pitfalls of their ubiquity (globalization and sweatshops), but do we really understand just how our species and our planet are threatened by this phenomenon? Klein's book stirred some debate but for almost every perpetrator of social or environmental harm it’s been back to business as usual. The amazing customer experience of many of the world leading brands can be uncovered to reveal faultlines in the value chain. It used to be the devils we knew (oil, sweatshops, heavy industry) but now it is quite clear that the problem is far more ubiquitous.

Take a look at the by no means exhaustive list of not only brands but entire industries that have been in on the act of using branding to mask deceit.

Unsustainable labour practice

Footwear (sweatshops)
Diamonds (human conflict at source)
Textiles (sweat shops)
Chocolate & coffee supply chain (child labour)

Environmental issues

Cotton (excessive use of resources)
Petrochemicals (carbon emissions)
Electronics (built in obsolescence and mountains of e-waste)
Convenience food (extraneous packaging)
Fishing (rapid depletion of the ocean’s resource)
Year Round Vegetables (huge carbon footprint)
Paper (strain on natural resources and pollution at factory level)
Fashion (Fur/fuelling material culture)
Brand communications (‘aesthetic noise’)

Consumer's screwed

Fast Food (aggressive marketing to Children)
Petrochemicals (price fixing)
Cigarettes (health)
Carbonated beverages (health)
Confectionery (aggressive targeting of children=obesity)
Bread (price-fixing),
Milk (steroids),
Chicken and Beef (labour and animal abuse)
Brand communications (masking the value chain)
Brand communications (reconstructing the notion of self – body image, values etc)
Brand communications (promoting excess materialism)

G R E E N

2008-02-24T14:47:00.001+02:00

At some point across the value chain, of nearly every product on the planet, there is always some form of misdeed being perpetrated towards society or the environment. So it’s not just the known beacons of profiteering such as Nike, Starbucks and Wal-Mart, (all companies that have been proven to initiate massive societal and/or environmental wrongs). The profit motive inhibits all businesses from taking a view which is in the best interests of the collective (i.e. society at large). The smartest minds on the planet all pretty much agree that brand fuelled consumerism is fast tracking the end of life as we know it. Will we stop? If we do will our shareholders care?
There is some hope as some businesses are showing that it is possible to make a handsome profit whilst being sustainable through the entire value chain.
Patagonia (http://www.patagonia.com/) – very transparent value chain
Innocent (http://www.innocent.co.uk/) – progressive talent management policies
Google (very manageable and low carbon footprint)
Prêt a manger (very progressive policies and practice around employee relations and sourcing of ingredients)
Apple Mac BookAir – Apple's greenest computer to dat
..and the good old Toyota Prius – hybrid petrol-electric low carb car