Archive for 'Branding'
Branded entertainment: What’s the future of advertising?
Posted on 17. May, 2012 by Jonathan Cherry.
Branded entertainment and the community it builds, is the future of advertising. The challenge for brands is how do they now equip themselves to be media companies that sell stuff – rather than just interrupt consumers of mainstream media with their intrusive ads.
How can brands add real information value, offer entertainment, build a community and then service that community with products and services? The answer is that brands will need to become far more proactive and strategic about how they build that community in the future.
We call it community marketing and the idea is to authentically build a connection with people for the purposes of making your marketing budget far more effective.
And if you want case studies of brands that are getting it right – look no further than the surf, skate and energy drink guys for inspiration. Their customers are the future buyers of Volvos, managed investment portfolios, short-term insurance and baby products. They don’t do traditional advertising, they join movements.
So how do you start building a strategy of community marketing?
- Get real: Stop trying to sell your stuff and rather offer a solution. Be it a lifestyle, a cure, an answer – talk like a human being who gives a damn.
- Dedicate resources: Don’t just do some community marketing because it seems to be ‘hot right now’. Do it too add value to society in general so that the community considers your brand as the choice of partner to help them out. You should be a communications company that solves problems not just a product company that advertises your stuff wherever you can get eyeballs.
- Think holistically: Sure, building a fan base on Facebook and Twitter is a good idea, but what about events, seminars, pop-up shops and real-world stuff like that? Gone are the days where marketing was about signing off your media schedule at the beginning of the year and then spending the rest of it drinking cocktails at media functions. It’s active work where you actually have to get off your arse and do some physical labour. It’s not just about digital content, but human interaction and physical experiences of the brand too.
- What about your staff? Your staff are already big fans of your brand – they love it so much they spend all of their time helping to grow it. So why don’t you consider them as a hugely important community audience? Often the staff are almost forgotten by marketing departments or force-fed internal communication that can hardly be considered inspirational. Treat your staff with respect and add value to their lives first.
People don’t want your sales pitch, they have lives to live. If you can add value to their lives, hopefully they’ll join your cause.
Coca Cola branded events: Anywhere in the world
Posted on 16. May, 2012 by Jonathan Cherry.
Coca Cola hosted a ‘Lucky Strike’ style secret gig last Friday as part of their involvement with the Olympics. Featuring producer Mark Ronson and singer Katy B – it’s interesting to see how advertising is going niche rather than the traditional mass reach route.
Projection retail: The future of retail
Posted on 04. May, 2012 by Jonathan Cherry.
The future of real world retail is the marrying of it together with the functionality of digital.
And the tool for that is projected digital displays in a real world setting. It adds value to shoppers, is visually arresting and cost effective if you adopt it as a strategy. We’re just waiting to see when South African retailers finally discover its effectiveness.
Check out: Invite everyone into your living room – Cherryflava
What’s in a name?
Posted on 02. May, 2012 by Jonathan Cherry.
How much brand value does a company / product name hold? Would Google be Google without the name Google?
Some people are lucky, they stumble over a rad name for their business and it just works. Ask Shane from Yuppiechef where the name came from and he’ll tell you straight that it was ‘divine inspiration’.
Shane says; ‘Sunday morning while on holiday I was trying to come up with a name, so was thinking through possibilities. Thought of the name, saw the colour and had an idea for the type of logo’. Bam – just like that!
But most cool names were thought about long and hard and were ‘discovered’ after months of research and brainstorming.
The value of a good name is that it’s an immediate introduction into the character of your business straight up – without spending a cent on media and other expensive stuff like that. It’s like a marketing Christmas present to yourself. Get it right and in one idea express what you’re all about and how you deliver it.
We like the strategy employed by Rui and Brad from &Union. Call it like it is. Versus Goliath is in a smaller bottle [like other - more established 'beer' we know], Berne is a darker, smokier option and Beast of the Deepwill do what it promises – kick your ass and send it forward to tomorrow.
So what makes up a good name? Here’s what we think:
Appropriate: If you’re a professional straight laced law firm – don’t go call yourselves ‘The Legal Eagles’. It’s silly and people that pay lots of money won’t take you seriously.
Descriptive: Does the name describe – without you having to explain – what it is you’re selling? For example, if you’re an all-female, South African drum ‘n bass band a good name for you may be Die Trompoppies?
Memorable: Is it something that’ll stick in somebody’s mind – or have then scratching their heads trying to remember?
Different: Even though it needs to be appropriate – it should also stand out.
Naming, sadly, is often left to a committee and the result is some lukewarm slop that nobody ends up liking and you have to spend millions to try inject some kind of personality into the thing. Forget that – go for something radically extraordinary and save your money.
Gumroad:The next big thing in social media?
Posted on 25. Apr, 2012 by Jonathan Cherry.
What’s the next big thing in social media after the raging success of Pinterest? Could it be something called Gumroad that will re-invent e-commerce as we know it?
Gumroad allows to ‘sell anything you can share’. Now anyone with access to the Internet can sell stuff.
It seems easy enough.
Right now – this is what we feel like doing
Posted on 15. Mar, 2012 by Jonathan Cherry.
[idea courtesy of @andUnion]
Big guys bullying little guys
Posted on 13. Mar, 2012 by Jonathan Cherry.
This image says it all really. Big corporate South African beer guys have spotted a small party that they were not invited to – and have decided to exploit the seemingly festive vibe by recreating [almost exactly] the look-and-feel of the small party.
So with all the money in the world and teams of creative agencies working round the clock to crack the ‘beer drinking desire code’ – the best they could muster was a copy of what a bunch of people driven by passion came up with one late night over too many well made beers…and a bottle of hand-crafted, barrel-fermented Tequila.
The ‘Goliaths’ are getting sloppy.
What is South Africa’s global competitive advantage
Posted on 17. Feb, 2012 by Jonathan Cherry.
China makes stuff, America exports it’s culture, Italy specialises in style, Israel seems to have cornered the market of innovation and India are hedging their bets on solving the world’s call centre needs.
But what’s South Africa’s global business ‘thing‘?
Mining, global events, Mandela, tourism, crime? What’s our thing?
If we had a clear understanding of that, we’d be able to focus a lot more on making it even better. At the moment it feels like we do a bit of everything reasonably well rather than kicking-ass in one thing.
New from OK Go – Needing / Getting
Posted on 06. Feb, 2012 by Jonathan Cherry.
Yet another insane music video by part time musicians OK Go has been released.
The new music video from OK Go, made in partnership with Chevrolet. OK Go set up over 1000 instruments over two miles of desert outside Los Angeles. A Chevy Sonic was outfitted with retractable pneumatic arms designed to play the instruments, and the band recorded this version of Needing/Getting, singing as they played the instrument array with the car. The video took 4 months of preparation and 4 days of shooting and recording. There are no ringers or stand-ins; Damian took stunt driving lessons. Each piano had the lowest octaves tuned to the same note so that they’d play the right note no matter where they were struck. For more information and behind-the-scenes footage, see http://www.LetsDoThis.com and http://www.okgo.net.
No word on how much it cost as yet.
Good customer service doesn’t require anything other than compassion
Posted on 25. Jan, 2012 by Jonathan Cherry.
A customer is never too young not to be taken seriously.
3 1/2 year old Lily Robinson had an important question about Sainsbury’s Tiger bread that needed sorting out… So she wrote them a letter.
Sainsbury’s reply
Bravo. That’s like a BoB T card right there.
