A Penny For... is hosting "brand week" over at his blog. One post asks you to define a brand in 25 words or less. This exercise is similar to the elevator speechconcept. The bottom line is that if you cannot simply summarize your pitch...you probably cannot sell it.
One item "Penny" points us to is a Forbes article entitled "Power Brands: Beyond the Balance Sheet." It is interesting to see Forbes rank 25 top brand names by specific drivers of brand value, including reputation, management, innovation and human capital. The online version allows you to slice and dice the data using these metrics.
This study reminds me that CoreBrand's annual brand equity study. Due out in a few months, it ties a company's brand to its overall valuation—probably integrated marketing communications' most powerful metric. In the meantime, you can head to CoreBrand's site to access a few free whitepapers along with a ton of registration-required content on brands.
Edible Marketing?Some folks joke that advertising will take up every inch of free space someday. From coupons jumping out at you in grocery store aisles to restroom ads, advertising in previously ad-free environments has become accepted.
This news story makes me wonder though. Pringles Potato Crisps will be printing Trivial Pursuit questions ON their chips. I'm all for new and innovative ways to cross promote, but this one leaves, um, a bad taste in my mouth? Sorry, couldn't resist. I guess it is a step up from paying people a couple of bucks a week to wear your logo on their face.
Search Wars From snack foods to search engines—Google recently fired the Gmail salvo at Yahoo and Hotmail recently. Yahoo has been the first to respond with a new ad campaign. The "Life Engine" campaign focuses on how Yahoo users get everyday things done using their search engine. I get the concept, but it IS just a search engine. The "Search is Life" implication might be unintentional but from first view, this campaign smacks a bit of self-importance. After all, have you ever seen Morton Salt try and position itself as a "Life Spice?"
Of Agencies and Acquisitions: Sure signs the economy is truly back (no really, this time we mean it) are the recent agency acquisitions taking place across the nation. The New York Times details the big ones underway. A colleague of mine calls this timing the annual spring thaw. The market is back and, with acquisitions like this, people will be on the move.
The Onion has a perfectly timed response to Yahoo's Life Engine campaign:
"Yahoo Launches Soul-Search Engine"
http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4014&n=1
Posted by: Kevin Dugan | 04/07/2004 at 10:47 AM