No Longer Yours

The past week has seen news of brands making changes to their assets. First up, was Gap with their new logo. That only lasted a few short days, and then they went with the crowdsourcing idea to get people outside the organisation to volunteer their designs. Finally, all were scrapped and it's back to blue.

Needless to say, tonnes of moolah down the drain. And how on earth did that design got green-lighted in the first place? Ugh!

It's understandable that one would want to freshen things up around the house. And fix things up.  But why fix things if it ain't broke?

The thing is as a brand, that last question is no longer a decision you can make. Because in this day and age, you no longer own the house.

The Gap fiasco is a perfect example of brand democratization. The public "voted" and the new design was killed.

Malcolm Gladwell & Branding

Malcolm Gladwell was invited recently to give a talk at a seminar in Singapore for business and marketing people. His presentation can be found here.

I want to talk about his talk from a communications aspect. Now, seminars such as the one I've mentioned tend to be really dry and yawn-inducing. The endless powerpoint presentations with tables of data and charts of all shapes and sizes could really test an attendee's endurance. For me, it makes me want to slit my wrist.

Anyway, he came in to talk about branding. Okay, what could this Canadian journalist/author know anything about branding?

FMCG + CRM = ???

I don't know much about CRM. The little I know is that a big customer database is the ultimate pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the practitioners are dying to get hold of my personal details, and sometimes, I get personalised messages, mostly in print form and lately, digital.

What I'm working on right now is on developing a printed direct mailer for an FMCG brand.

So, here's where I'm not sure whether it'll work.

Facebook : 'Like' or 'Fan'?

Read an interesting article recently from World Advertising Resource Center (WARC) which reported that Facebook has decided to drop the 'fan' term from client ads on Facebook which would direct users to specific brand pages.

Instead they'll be using the term 'like' as they've found through research, that FB users are twice more likely to 'like' something than be a 'fan' of something.

You can read more about this article here.

I have mixed feelings about this.

Brand Sense - Sensory Secrets Behind The Stuff We Buy - A Review

I bought this book because it was endorsed by Philip Kotler and The Wall Street Journal. And the fact that Martin Lindstrom is a renowned marketing guru. The WSJ hailed it to be “one of the five best marketing books ever published”.  Was curious about this and I did some Googling.

Turns out that it was one of 5 books that Steve Cone (senior marketing executive at Citigroup and the author of "Steal These Ideas: Marketing Secrets That Will Make You a Star" ) thought was the best. See the WSJ article here.

Oh dear! More marketing terminology.

Read this research document on trends. Came across these terms ‘Live brand experience’ and ‘real time’ branding.

They're defined as follows :

"...'live' because the brand experience now needs to function like a show, event or multi-club experience so that its essence cannot be copied in any way."

" ‘Real time’ because consumers are now expecting brands to respond to their needs as soon as the ‘send’ or ‘post’ key has been thumbed."

Marketing and Job Finding - Is it the same?

Many times I have been in conversation with friends and colleagues talking about making that career move. I think everyone who has ever worked before is familiar with this.

Aside from useful suggestions, there are warnings as well. 

"Oh, you don't want to go there. They pay peanuts"

"I hear the boss is a control-freak. She's a nightmare to work with."

"The office politics is just horrible. You don't want to get into that!"

"Everything works so slowly there. It's a wonder anything gets done."

"The work is uninspiring. You'll get bored easily."

When Common Sense Fails

I went to the Curve today to settle some affairs.

MALAYSIA AIRLINES

The 1st thing that caught my eye was this huge building advertising from Malaysia Airlines. The ad was on the e@Curve building where the Cathay cinema is at. The 1st thought that came to mind was “Wow, this is a first. I’ve never seen a MAS ad at this site before.”