This is an article in the NY Times from 12/11/06. Excellent example of how experiential marketing, digitazation and word of mouth marketing are converging - right in our back yard!

One quick excerpt (the whole article is worth the read.):

"Experiential marketing, as the ad industry calls such campaigns, is intended to give people something they can tryout and photograph. Companies are holding such events in cities around the world, but advertisers said Times Square was unparalleled in its reach. People around the world recognize Times Square in photos and videos online and are more likely to view them, marketers said.

Charmin's bathrooms, which opened on Broadway near West 46th Street on Nov. 20, generated traditional coverage with more than 100 articles published about the fancy toilets. But consumer videos posted on YouTube alone have been viewed more than 7,400 times. "

Continue reading "Hottest ad space? Camera phones...."

So many of today's articles reporting the departure of Home Depot CEO Robert Nardelli cite within the first few paragraphs the staging of the shareholders' meeting this year and the "enormous digital timers" that appeared onstage with Nardelli. That's true of the New York Times' editorial as well as the Wall Street Journal.

Note to CEOs: events matter. Staging and design matter. And avoid enormous digital timers at all costs!

This ‘retail installation’ demonstrates, to customers and staff alike, a Brand that embodies wit, originality and panache.

But do the internal communication solutions we create, often on dry and technical subjects, always truly bring to life our client’s brand values and messages as successfully as this?

Continue reading "GIMME REALITY EVERY TIME"

The giant brains at Google and NASA have announced a partnership where Google will access the immense stores of NASA's data and imagery to create new applications.

For example, they'll be able to dump all the images of Mars and the Moon into the Google Earth engine so that users can do a 3D fly-through of those terrestrial bodies. Of course, NASA has great images of Earth as well, so they're talking about new apps like real-time weather visualization, and tracking the orbit of the International Space Station.

When I was a kid in the 60s, the brainiest of wonks aspired to be an engineer at NASA. If you've ever seen the film Apollo 13, you'll probably remember the scenes of all of those engineers frantically working to save the astronauts... with their slide rules! I've heard it said that at that point in history, the cumulative computing power of NASA was less than today's iMac. Puts things in perspective, huh?

Rocket forward 40 years and the brainiest of wonks aspire to work at Google. Maybe they think working with NASA is still pretty cool, but why not do it while earning Google stock at the same time?

Six days since I survived CES 2007, and for anyone who's ever been to CES will know that "survived" is the right word. Actually, I was only there for two show days--I don't know how anybody can handle all four. Just a few observations from my visit...

There is SO MUCH branding barraging you there that it loses its effect. I don't think I'd spend money for brand signage. So what if your brand is on top of a cab... there are a lot of cabs there! Seems like a wasted marketing dollar.

At most tradeshows, we try to help our clients attract attendees from the aisle into their booth. At CES, it's so huge that the challenge is helping attendees even FIND your booth. Maybe it would make sense to hire some young "brand advocates" to act as tour guides to get people from the front door to your booth.

I went to the much-touted Sony booth, where they had set up a big movie theater. I got to see an "exclusive" extended preview of the next Spiderman flick. Really fun stuff, but they wasted a great opportunity to market to us. As about 200 people checked their cameras & cellphones at the door and made their way into the theater seats, I sat for about 15 minutes with nothing on the screen. No audio, no picture. Wasted opportunity.

The Gibson Guitar tent outside the main exhibit space was the best thing I saw. They had a stage with different bands playing, free Hershey bars with a Gibson branded wrapper, guitar giveaways and an area where people were competing with the video game called Guitar Hero. It was fun.

Were you at CES? What did you like?

As the Smurfs enjoy their current pop cultural resurgence I got to thinking about how ahead of his time the much misunderstood Gargamel was.

The man was possibly the first to truly understand the power of zagging and consumer-initiated brand development as successful marketing practices.

Continue reading "Marketing trendsetting wizardry from Gargamel "

I am fascinated by the freedom and flexibility Jack Morton has allowed me within this corporate blog. I can just type whatever I want and press "submit" and there it is, on our site, for anyone to see.

It's risky...it's dangerous...it's downright scary...

And it's exactly the right approach.

Continue reading "A corporate blog about corporate blogging"

As I was getting ready this morning, they were talking about brand extension on the morning talk show. I generally agree with the benefits of brand extension (increasing awareness, leveraging equity, world domination, etc.), especially when you think about the success brands like Arm & Hammer and Starbucks have had.

Continue reading "Brand Extension..going, going, gone"

China moves quickly - when I say quickly, I mean building a 1000 bed/22 ward hospital from plan to opening in 7 days* (yes days, not years): Between 1st and 6th May 2003, 7000 workers worked day and night to build the 1000 bed Xiaotangshan hospital from scratch. The hospital was constructed in a rush in response to the SARS epidemic of that year.

This ability to make things happen quickly leads to a very exciting market in the experiential space - Chinese companies desire immediate brand awareness on a global scale and are not afraid to embrace methods that are unfamiliar to them, and have delivered the desired results on similar objectives in western markets.

Of course this can't be done in a 'cookie-cutter" fashion - Organizations need to be cautious and not to expect brands to be built overnight. Brand advocacy is an emotional state and takes time to win. Lenovo have already learnt their lesson that brand awareness and loyalty takes time to develop, how many more companies will fall in to this trap?

Watch this space…….

Did you ever have a tune running through your head and you just couldn't remember the name of the song? Fret no more! Just link over to Midomi.com and sing or hum a few bars of the tune into your computer's microphone. Quick as a wink, you'll have a listing of songs that match your tune. It's really amazing... and no, I'm not a good singer.

It returned correct results on a few tests I ran, including Fur Elise, Pop Goes the Weasel, and that Sesame Street classic, Rubber Ducky. However, I was able to stump them with the opening cadence of Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water. Clearly, this search engine was never in a garage band!

Beyond the technology, the really interesting thing is that people log in and create profiles and add recordings. Kind of hard to explain... like Name That Tune meets MySpace. Like online karaoke. It'll be interesting to see if the social networking aspect of Midomi turns it into more than just a novelty search engine.

Selfridges department store London, has just opened an art installation by Brian Eno entitled LUMINOUS, 77 million paintings. And that's just what it is. A series of computer fed images gently emerging to create a constantly evolving artwork. Alannah Weston, Creative Director of Selfridges explains that the store is not a gallery for art-articulate visitors. It's a living, breathing organism with 30 thousand customers passing through each day. "We sometimes need to stop people in their tracks. It's the sense of wonder that will remain with them" she says. I say it's a great idea and totally fit for purpose.

At a recent event for the General Motors brand in the UK 'Vauxhall Motors', Jack Morton used a live 'beatbox' soundtrack. For those not in the know, now's the time to get educated. Basically it's fantastic 'music like' effects created entirely by the human voice. The kind of thing you do in the bathroom whilst the music is playing in the other room - only much much better. I recently saw our performer (Beardyman) do the soundtrack to a whole fashion show in London. Truly inspiring. Go see him on YouTube. Then have a go yourself next time you're in the bath.

There's a great article on page 1 of the Wall Street Journal--above the fold no less--about an innovative marketing campaign created for Procter & Gamble's Prilosec OTC brand that's built around the popular dice game bunco. 7 million women in the US play bunco regularly. Here's an amazing stat: six out of 10 say they have made buying decisions based on recommendations from members of their bunco group. What an outstanding opportunity to leverage that as a platform to generate advocacy for the brand. And that connection is being made to Prilosec OTC because of the brand's association with the game--visible online as well as at face-to-face events like the World Bunco Association's national championship event in March in Las Vegas