Strategic Public Relations

International Brand Design Conference

To see how ingrained brands have become in our lives, take the brand alphabet test. I’m willing to bet you’ll recognize more than a few of the brands chosen for this online quiz.

Next week, I’m attending the International Brand Design Conference here in Cincinnati. I’ll also be blogging it so you can expect a heavy dose of brand content at Strategic Public Relations next week.

Disclaimer #1: This is also work-related as two FRCH Design Worldwide vice presidents will be presenting at the event. Their presentation is entitled “Immersive Design: Creating Environments that Bring Brands to Life.” However, the content I post here will stick to the usual focus on marketing and public relations.

The conference is focusing on what it calls “the innovation imperative in consumer goods.” The news release claims that “innovation and new strategies are aligning design, product development, and marketing into new, interconnected partnerships that are driving product success and ultimately changing the future of consumer goods brands. Leading practitioners and brand thought-leaders from consumer goods companies, brand consultancies, and academia will come together to examine new approaches to brand management.”

The perfect example of this alignment is Issac Mizrahi and Target. Target offers Mizrahi’s designer goods at an affordable price and creates a competitive advantage over Wal-Mart in the process. Cool.

The presentations should be interesting, including a keynote from Claudia Kotchka, Vice President of Design Innovation and Strategy at Procter & Gamble.

Kotchka will discuss how innovative changes in design at P&G are not only helping exceed the demands of the consumer goods market but are also producing a change within the P&G culture.

Additionally, Bruce Nussbaum, Editorial Page Editor of BusinessWeek, will address the shift underway from a technology economy into an experience economy, where the new value proposition is based on co-creating products and services with customers that fill their needs, makes them happy, and increase earnings. He will discuss how companies are using "design thinking" to transform into innovation powerhouses, and how this is reshaping the future of design.

More on the event and Cincinnati's branding prowess can be found here. Disclaimer #2:  my firm is quoted in this article.

tags: marketing, branding, brand, design

You want fries with that iPod?

We have two examples of how technology is being used to slow down fast food in the hopes it will bring more people into these restaurants and keep them there a bit longer. In both cases, music plays a large role in making these environments more appealing.

McDonald’s is offering tunes for download and Kentucky Fried Chicken has a free digital jukebox that offers music based on location—R&B in urban locations and Top 40 in suburban stores. Disclaimer: Kentucky Fried Chicken is a client of my employer.

Starbucks is playing out a similar strategy. And, similar to my Starbucks post, I will wonder aloud if Ronald McDonald or Colonel Sanders will be sporting white ear buds anytime soon.

Side note: Chris Pirillo sees a much more interesting connection between fast food and high technology.

tags: marketing, brand, design

Hungry for the Web? Dig into RSS.

The Canadian Press brings us another overview of RSS for the uninitiated. How many more of these articles do we need? As many as it takes to explain RSS in clear and simple terms…simple enough that it becomes mainstream.

The marketing folks were clearly not in the room when RSS was named. Amy Gahran at Contentious held a contest to rename the technology and, more importantly, to prove a point. The winner, Web feed, is much more descriptive than our favorite acronym.

In all seriousness, I'm willing to bet that a confusing name is slowing down RSS adoption rates. At the other end of the spectrum we have RSS fanatics passionately evangelizing the benefits of the technology (myself included). I'm afraid this doesn't always help clear things up.

Passion is good. Pragmatism is better. A no nonsense description is best.

RSS won’t slice, dice and julienne fries. And it’s not cleaning my oven as you read this. RSS does make it easier for me to organize and track a lot of information from the Internet, including blogs, Web sites and search engines.

Once I can explain this to my four-year-old I will have THE definition.

tags: RSS

Brand Design

June seems to be the center of the design universe. Editorially, Fast Company’s June issue is focused on the topic which is book ended by issues from Newsweek and BusinessWeek.

There are also several large design shows spanning graphic design, interior design and even brand design.

What IS brand design exactly? P&G’s Claudia Kotchka gives us an excellent example at the product level using a tin of Altoid mints.

As the scent of peppermint oil wafts out of the box, she points out the nostalgic typeface, the satisfyingly crinkly liner paper. "Even the little mints look handmade," she says. "It's not completely full. The whole thing is very authentic."

Then comes the twist. "Let's say P&G buys this brand. What are we going to do?" asks Kotchka, P&G's vice president for design innovation and strategy. "[Employees] always gave me the same answers. 'We're gonna cost-save on this tin. We're gonna get rid of this stupid paper -- it's serving no functional purpose.'" She plops the tin on the table and picks up another product, unable to suppress a mischievous smile. "And I go, 'Okay! Exactly! And this is what you get.' "

Kotchka reveals "Proctoids," a box made of cheap white plastic from P&G's baby-wipe containers. With uniform beige ovals jammed into the container, fewer colors on the lid, and no paper, Proctoids taste like Altoids, but they look as appealing as a pile of horse pills. Gone is the pleasure people get when they buy Altoids. Gone, too, is the up to 400% premium they pay. "That's what design is," she says of the look and feel. "That's what designers do." (courtesy of Fast Company)

Tags: marketing, branding, brand, design

Marketing Sherpa's 2005 Readers' Choice Blog Awards

Voting for the 2005 Readers' Choice Blog Awards from Marketing Sherpa is now open. Congratulations to the PR blogs that have been nominated: A PR Guru's Musings, Active Voice, Beyond PR, Media Guerrilla, Musings from POP! Public Relations, PR Machine and Strategic Public Relations.

Yes, that is my shameless, er, subtle way of telling you that this blog has been nominated. Blogs are being evaluated by personality, usefulness, writing style, usability & design and if would you revisit.

So be sure to stop by before June 8th and decide if this blog is excellent, not bad or blah. There are 10 categories in all. I'll be interested in seeing who wins the general marketing and advertising category. Seth Godin and AdRants are going head to head.

tags: pr, public relations

Blogs: The Dais of the Internet

Intelliseek is interviewed for a great Wall Street Journal article, “Measuring the Impact of Blogs Requires More Than Counting.”

Add it to your folder of pragmatic blog articles that don’t simply dismiss blogs as being over hyped, but instead dig deeper and speak to blog evolution and not revolution.

As we’ve noted here before, qualitative and quantitative metrics need to be considered when measuring blog impact.

“Instead of comparing a blog’s influence to a number not unlike a trade magazine’s circulation, you should dig deeper. It is understandable that this occurs. Print media are still trying to bolt this metric onto their online offerings...and after all, this is push-button PUBLISHING.

But perhaps we should instead consider a blog to be a presentation at an industry trade show. People are showing up to a blog, or a presentation, as they have an expressed interest in this content. Not to mention, a few hundred folks attending a presentation can be pretty impactful.”

USA Today on blogs

USA Today brings us an exhausting, but funny, article from Kevin Maney on blogging's over exposure. The 825-word article mentions the word blog 80 times, nearly 10 percent of the article, to note the effusive evangelism of our favorite push-button publishing platform needs a reality check.

By mentioning the article, I'm taking the "echo chamber bait" he floats out there:

In fact, let's create an Alice in Wonderland moment: I'm writing about reading about my columns in blogs, which bloggers will inevitably post. So now, I'll be able to read a blog about my writing about me reading about my writing in blogs.

I'm fulfilling his prophecy as the article is a funny, friendly and necessary reminder to be pragmatic about the whole B-phenomenon because, as most know, we've all seen this before. Not to mention, Maney gets cool points for tying it all back to Monty Python and the magical, mystery meat.

Marketing’s Summer Road Trip

As Memorial Day hurtles towards us in the United States, one of my favorite forms of marketing is hitting the road—mobile marketing. And I am not referring to marketing via mobile phone, but rather trucks, cars and even trains sporting bright paint jobs, emblazoned with logos and packed with product samples.

The father of mobile marketing, Oscar Meyer, has tuned-up its latest Weinermobile for another summer tour. Last Sunday’s paper even promoted Oscar Meyer’s contest to win a trip on the Weinermobile. The uber dog, which first hit the road in 1936, is sharing the road with P&G’s mobile marketing fleet, which includes the purple Prilosec mobile home and the new Crestmobile.

The Crest Imagine Tour is making stops at major events including food and music festivals, vacation destinations, major cities and other venues where visitors can step into the toothpaste tube-Crest Whitening Plus Scope-to use brushing stations to brush their teeth. Via Adrants

While mobile marketing comes with a hefty price tag, this consumer marketing tactic is quite effective. Consumers are outdoors soaking up sunshine instead of strolling down store aisles this time of year. The unique, highly-visible vehicles raise awareness, encourage product trial and accelerate from zero to buzz in seconds. Look for them at carefully-selected events throughout the summer.

Have Buzz, Will Travel
This marketing convoy is not limited to consumer products. Business to business marketers use flatbed trucks to hawk everything from caskets, software and hardware to commercial food equipment, copiers and corrugated steel pipe. In fact, a client at my previous job created their mobile marketing effort back in 1956.

Manufacturers have been going to great lengths for years to get products in front of customers. It is a trickier proposition in business to business. Trade shows are one approach, but you are competing with the noise of an entire industry, which just happens to be tucked under the same roof for a few days. Sometimes these shows are not enough.

Mobile marketing can be used to visit outlying, rural areas where showrooms are not economical. Customers get first-hand experience with products and can meet with salespeople.

Batesville Casket Co. is taking its line of caskets and other funeral products on the road with its Honoring Lives Tour Center...two 18-wheeler showrooms designed to cater to busy funeral directors who are on call around the clock and cannot afford time to visit Batesville, Ind.

I’ve seen clients send their mobile marketing unit to a trade show to boost their presence. It served as an off-floor meeting space and was even used to conduct new product focus groups during the show. Siemens uses their train to educate US customers of the depth of their product offering.

Hmmm, maybe this gives me an excuse to get that big, shiny Airstream I’ve secretly yearned for all these years? If you know of a company looking to sponsor a summer tour, let me know. I’ll send you a postcard.

Tags: public relations, advertising, marketing

Gadgetry

To organize the handful of posts here on satellite radio, the iPod and mobile phones, I created the Gadgetry category.

In researching some of these posts, I came across the Mobile Marketing Association. This professional organization offers up some great case histories showing how Master Card, Nike and even Dunkin Donuts are using mobile phones to reach their target audiences.

Several recent news stories underpin the importance and opportunity this relatively new marketing vehicle holds.

A local pizzeria now sends coupons via mobile phones to those customers that opt-in. As the technology advances, it will be interesting to see us go beyond merely replicating offline strategies online. Moblogging tools are readily available and clearly lend themselves to some creative opportunities to engage the customer. And Adrants reports that RSS is, finally, easily accessed via mobile phone.

As always, I’ll be covering these technologies from a public relations and marketing angle. For insight into the products themselves, be sure to visit Engadget and Gizmodo for the latest scoop from the experts.

Will Mobile Phones Outpace the iPod?

Bill Gates predicts the mobile phone will outpace the iPod as the mp3 player of choice in the near future.

"As good as Apple may be, I don't believe the success of the iPod is sustainable in the long run," he said in an interview published in Thursday's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

"You can make parallels with computers: Apple was very strong in this field before, with its Macintosh and its graphics user interface -- like the iPod today -- and then lost its position," Gates said.

Apple has around two thirds of the global market for MP3 music players and sold more than 5 million iPods in the last quarter.

OK, but maybe he made the prediction because “Microsoft is now positioning itself to be a key player in the growing market for digital movies, pictures and music and grow beyond its core Windows operating system business, partly in response to pressure from Apple.”

Microsoft is working with partners such as Samsung to provide its Windows Mobile smartphone software to 40 handset makers. "If you were to ask me which mobile device will take top place for listening to music, I'd bet on the mobile phone for sure," Gates told the newspaper.

Mobile phones can surely become a handy, Swiss-army knife of a utility...we've only started to tap into their capabilities in my opinion. But are we asking too much from a device where small size is clearly an advantage? I mean, several mobile phone models are starting to look more like a choking hazard than a wireless communication device.

Gates goes on in the interview to discuss retiring at 60 and he predicts that “Microsoft will make wireless e-mail ubiquitous."

Is it me or do the CEOs of US-based companies get awfully chatty with international media? Gates knows that any paper can have a truly international readership in the age of the Internet. Perhaps this is a calculated move, hoping international media are more likely to quote him directly?

media relations, Microsoft, mp3