An almost absurdly simple point made recently at EffWeek 2017 should give marketers cause to reconsider their content marketing expectations and efforts. To state the obvious, driven by the ‘content is king’ mantra, almost every brand is churning out more content. This all modestly adds to the 2.5 quintillion bytes of data that according to … Continue reading
Filed under Brand Communications …
The Case Against Social Media Marketing
Recently a growing number of voices have been questioning the logic and value of social media marketing. But in the main these views are overwhelmed by the ubiquitous support for all things social. This post summarises a range of these dissenting arguments to help invite greater debate about why and how brands should use social … Continue reading
Johnny Depp’s Sauvage ad – deeply meaningful or deliberately ridiculous?
Fragrance advertising is one of the last bastions of pure image advertising. Little concerns about brand ‘authenticity’ or ‘truth’ here – just good, old fashioned aspirational sizzle. The latest offering from the category is the campaign for Dior’s new men’s cologne, Sauvage. The commercial is a big budget production with – interestingly – both art … Continue reading
A story CEOs & CFOs need to know about brand story-telling
The view that a brand should tell a story rather than just have a ‘positioning’ is not new in marketing circles. However, for CEOs who often already see marketing as the ‘soft’ side of their businesses, investment in story-telling may seem too esoteric a notion, and one with questionable commercial benefit. But the outcomes of … Continue reading
Should brands always confess their imperfections?
Over the past few years it’s been in vogue for brands to do what not long ago would have been unthinkable. To point out their flaws, openly admit their mistakes and offer products that are deliberately less than ‘perfect’. More often than not, proudly so. Imperfections are the latest phase in the brand authenticity movement. … Continue reading
Three amusing ‘brand’ examples of why nothing should be a commodity
Let’s face it, despite all the efforts of the marketing community to champion brand building, there are many businesses that don’t get – or simply pay lip service to – ‘brand’. Typically they see ‘branding’ as a name, logo, slogan or a few graphics that they slap onto what they sell. And typically these businesses … Continue reading
A key to the tourism marketing of small destinations, places and attractions
Brand strategy is now part of the mainstream of destination and place marketing. But for small destinations brand management can seem too complex. Or the stories that they develop look too similar to other places, and so don’t do enough to enhance the destination’s attractiveness. But there is one simple and effective technique any destination … Continue reading
Tosando Music – the Classic Power of Story, Music & Emotion in Advertising
This web ad from Japan for the Tosando Music School is the latest viral tearjerker. In testimony to its crafting, you won’t need to understand Japanese to follow it or to be touched by it. At a time when brands are building increasingly complex digital communications programs, and are turning to oblique forms of branded … Continue reading
Successful brand building – like life – is a game of inches (Part 1)
Fans of sports movies will recognise that the title of this post borrows from Al Pacino’s famous coach’s speech in the American football film, Any Given Sunday. “You find out life’s this game of inches, so is football. Because in either game – life or football – the margin for error is so small. I … Continue reading
How marketers overcomplicate executing strategy – the hilariously pointed lessons of the ‘Designing the Stop Sign’ video
According to Richard Branson, “Complexity is your enemy. Any fool can make something complicated. It is hard to make something simple”. It’s ironic then how much marketing tends to overcomplicate things, given that Branson is one of the profession’s most popular pin-up boys. Our last post for 2013 held a comic mirror up to some … Continue reading