Safety info + Glee-ishness = brand Virgin

11/03/2013 Unknown 0 Comments


Virgin America's latest in-flight safety info video is getting lots of buzz.  See this at Branding Magazine.   Wired was also, well, wired for the video: see here.   Even Fox News likes it.

But does it sell seats? (Should we care?)


Chobani shows resilience, determination

11/03/2013 Unknown 0 Comments

brandchannel has posted a good wrap-up of the incidents surrounding the recent Chobani product recall and the company's brand-defense. Chobani is not holding back -- aggressively reaching out to consumers with "quality" messaging, product sampling, and public affairs/CSR initiatives.  Just shows: admitting a problem / shortcoming does not mean you can't responsibly design a brand defense.

Fusion ("salsa is a bigger condiment in the U.S. than ketchup") and other news

11/01/2013 Unknown 0 Comments


ABC and Univision teamed up this week to launch the new cable news network -- Fusion  --  focused on millenials and Latinos. The positioning for that demographic is described their spokespersons as a mix of news, satire, and comedy.  The Bloomberg TV spot sums it up.  Fusion's launch video, maybe, sums up their brand even better: check it out here.

There is no doubt that cable news (not to mention broadcast news and even NPR) is aging (with America). And, there is no doubt that some lesson needs to be learned from the successes of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and The Onion.  And, there is no doubt that America is (soon) a minority-majority nation.

It is, however, an open question as to whether the Fusion product / brand is going to be a wan spin-off concept of MailOnline + TMZ + Comedy Central -- or whether it will take its audience seriously, and respectfully.

(Just a question -- how many journalists will Fusion employ?  Just another question -- how will Fusion, as a serious competitor in the cable news category perform against the most recent entrant, Al Jazeera?)

We'll see.  In the meantime, we loved the (Glee-ification of news) video.


PPC and (yes) branding

11/01/2013 Unknown 0 Comments

Ninety-five percent of viewers don't click on a specific PPC (pay-per-click) ad. But does that PPC ad have any branding value?

"Yes" -- says Aga Bojko, VP, User Experience at GfK research. And it's not just her opinion.

Using eye-tracking data, Bojko assesses what percentage of research participants actually look at an online ad, how long they took to notice it, and how long they looked at it. Bojko and GfK can help advertisers decide on whether to increase or decrease bid amounts for moving their ad up or down on the search engine result pages regardless (in addition to) consideration of click-throughs.

See Bojko's blog post here.  Check out GfK's global practice in online ad global user experience research here.

The brand is in the process

11/01/2013 Unknown 0 Comments

DC.StreetsBlog today posted about a new MIT study that argues that the "benefits of placemaking go deeper than better places." This study asserts that the process (political, social, neighborhood, architectural, construction, public education, etc,) for creating an urban "place" is more important than the change of the place itself.

Similarly, I've often seen, when working with a large organization, the the process of branding or re-branding the organization is as -- or more -- important than the final product. The branding process brings together the the opinions (and objections) of the stakeholders; it tests the view of management against the views of employees, customers, and others; most important -- the process forces the marketing professionals / creatives to deal with the "politics" as well as the marketplace for the organization. The brand emerges -- a brand that may not be what the creatives or the marketing communications pros anticipated.