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ADMIN

Burning Platform, Anybody?

August 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment

A guest column by Jonathan Salem Baskin, author of Branding Only Works on Cattle.

There’s more bad news for marketers in every morning’s newspaper or splatter of news on the Internet: companies large and small are lowering sales forecasts for 2009.

In general, that means marketing budgets are going to get cut. It’s a particularly foreboding outlook for those of us who make our living in the branding racket.

And it’s playing out like a kabuki drama.

Tougher markets mean it’s harder and more costly to win every sale. Job losses, credit pressures, and other factors weigh both directly and indirectly on people (whether they get fired or go bankrupt, or simply worry about such things in the abstract). Company budgets get squeezed, and difficult decisions get made.

But it’s not so difficult to cut stuff that doesn’t address the present circumstances. And, since many branding budgets are based on broad, qualitative assumptions, if not simply benign neglect — “It must do something for us, but I couldn’t tell you what, exactly” — those funds are among the first to evaporate.

What’s our reaction?

We marketers tell one another that everyone else is stupid; that we need to do a better job of educating our fellow execs and clients on the errors of their ways. And we go about doing what we always do, only trying to find ever-more creative ways to do it with ever-less budgets…and valiantly making our case as the marketplace continues to deteriorate around us.

It’s as if the reason that everyone else can’t quite learn to risk their jobs on the vast, long-term benefits of branding isn’t because there’s no immediate evidence that they should, but rather that we’ve just done a bad job of branding branding. If others don’t understand why, it’s simply their failure of vision. Challenge our preconceptions and, well, you just don’t get it.

Only what if we’re the ones who’ve got it wrong?

Why aren’t alarms being sounded? Where’s the soul-searching about the very foundations of how we define brands? How come we keep trying to resurrect in social media, games, and other tools of technology the tenets of brands that were invented in strange, distantly different times (i.e. the Dark Ages of the mid-20th Century)?

For that matter, where’s something like Brandweek’s Manhattan Project on inventing a way to objectively measure brands, once and for all? Why isn’t our trade abuzz with working groups and committees and industry conclaves finally creating metrics that are dependable, and that have real meaning across industry categories, not just as nice color-commentary within them?

Instead, we make sure that there’s no shortage of newfangled ideas, mostly centered on the idea of distracting consumers instead of interrupting them. The Big Idea in branding is even further removed from selling anything.

Most blogs are happy to blather on about some latest gimmick to waste consumers’ time, even though the real problem is that they’re more difficult to find, harder to keep, and nearly impossible to focus on buying anything. We’re happy to talk to one another about our creativity, and the boldness of our commitment to challenging employers and clients to do branding in spite of their almost instinctual, visceral disbelief.

And so it plays out like a kabuki drama.

As it stands now, 2009 will not be a banner year for the branding business. Budgets will be smaller. Patience will be shorter. Trust will become even a rarer commodity. Marketers will spend more time talking — participating in more conversations with consumers — yet reputations, purchases, and loyalty won’t necessarily follow.

We’ll learn little new, other than a few revised ways to excuse brandings’ shortcomings, or explain away its outright failures.

Instead of finding new ways to do the same old stuff, you’d think somebody would be advocating doing something truly new. If there’s never been before today a burning platform for actually changing the branding game, we’ve sure got one now. Don’t we need to do things differently?

I don’t presume to have the answer. But why aren’t more people asking the question?

Jonathan Salem Baskin has 26+ years of experience working with some of the largest brand names in the world. He writes a bi-weekly column on marketing leadership for Advertising Age, and blogs daily on Dim Bulb. His new book, Branding Only Works on Cattle, declares a radical, new way to look at brands, and will be published in the U.S. in mid-September by Business Plus.

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Posted by toddand | Filed Under Advertising, Authors+Books, Educational, Management, Marketing

Great Moments in Print Advertising

August 28, 2008 | 1 Comment

Ikea demonstrates its creative storage solutions with creative print advertising.
Nod: Comunicadores

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Posted by toddand | Filed Under Advertising, Design, Strategies+Tactics

Further Evidence That Newspapers Will Someday Only Be Read on Trains and Toilets

August 27, 2008 | 2 Comments

The Tribune and Sun-Times once fought vicious daily readership battles in Chicago. Now, amid declining circulations and ad revenues, they’re just concentrating on turning a profit. Both the Tribune and Sun-Times had major news break today that demonstrates their struggles to stay afloat:

1) To help revitalize the suffering Chicago Tribune, radical redesigns are being considered. One such prototype (pictured left) has been circulating the web and appeared on Editor & Publisher today. This version of the overhaul makes the paper look more tabloidish like the Sun-Times and uses the nickname “Trib.” Just last week, the Tribune named a new managing editor, who most recently served as editor of the Tribune’s youth-oriented, pop culture-heavy RedEye.

2) Only 10 weeks after signing a three-year extension, one of Chicago’s most well-known and controversial columnists has quit. Jay Mariotti, who spent 17 years at the Sun-Times, said he quit because news is entirely a web business and there was no future in newspapers. That simple. Apparently, he came to this conclusion while in China covering the Olympics because most media in attendance were from websites. (Most likely because traditional newspapers couldn’t afford to send journalists to China with the industry struggling so much.)

In the wake of today’s news, CBS 2 Chicago asked viewers if they think Mariotti’s resignation asserts that newspapers are dying? Click here to read the responses.

Sounds like most people agree that printed newspapers will eventually only be read on trains and toilets. More reason to start collecting historic newspapers.

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Posted by toddand | Filed Under Advertising, Blogging, Design, Management, Marketing, Media, News, Public Relations, Strategies+Tactics

Metro Logo Design

August 26, 2008 | 2 Comments

Nod: Comunicadores

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Posted by toddand | Filed Under Design

Daily Deadlines Did in the Newspaper Industry

August 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Daily deadlines did in the newspaper industry is the insightful theory of technology gossip site Valleywag. “The pressure of getting to press, the long-practiced art of doom-and-gloom headline writing, the flinchiness of easily spooked editors all made it impossible for ink-stained wretches to look farther into the future than the next edition… The newspaper industry has a devastating history of letting the future of media slip from its grasp,” according to Valleywag’s post titled “5 ways the newspapers botched the web.”

For more on the demise of printed newspapers, check out these posts:

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Obama’s VP Text Message Drives CNN Crazy

August 24, 2008 | 1 Comment

Nod: 23/6

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Posted by toddand | Filed Under Marketing, Media, Politics, Strategies+Tactics, Technology, Video

Skyfire Eliminates My iPhone Envy

August 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Last week, my iPhone envy practically disappeared when I downloaded the beta edition of Skyfire on my AT&T Tilt. Skyfire is a free web browser for mobile devices that delivers desktop-like and iPhone-like surfing experiences. With Skyfire, I get lightening-fast page loads and ALL video, audio, flash, ajax, java, etc. Even better, websites appear in all their multimedia glory, not stripped down or text-based outlines. Thanks, Skyfire, for making my phone a lot cooler and easier to use! Below is a video demo and here is a great review by Brighthand.

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35+ Examples of Corporate Social Media in Action

August 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Aaron Uhrmacher shares 35+ examples of corporate social media in action, including instances from Adobe, Ford, HSBC, Intuit, Johnson & Johnson, Marriott, New York Times, Sears, Starbucks, Toyota, Wells-Fargo, Zappos and many more.