Brand Marketing: To be or not 2B Emotional or Rational This might very well seem like a somewhat existential question: should a brand be fun or functional? Should the product message be emotional or rational? It is very much like the question, should a leader be right brain or left brain? For those of you [...]
Telling stories There are stories (lies) and there are stories (that move). Great storytelling is about communicating the story in a way that draws you in, makes an emotional connection. A telling story is one where the audience leaves itching to do something, to be someone different. Content and context In storytelling, there are two [...]
MDE19: Turning insights into dollars & cents Kathleen Carroll is President and Chief Branding Strategist at The Branding Clinic, which has the stated mission “to unearth consumer insights for Fortune 500 companies to help their brands achieve double-digit or higher growth.” With a powerful background in branding, where she worked with P&G, Heinz and CNBC (as [...]
Bringing value added innovation to your digital marketing With over 500,000 applications now available for your iPhone and iPad alone, it is easy for apps to get lost, forgotten or discarded. According to the recent TechCrunch App-ocalypse article, the average iPhone user has between 40-100 apps. The challenge for digital marketers who have created an [...]
You are your ( social ) network The case of Noah Kravitz has hit front page and, rightly so. If you haven’t heard about it, you should read this article in the New York Times. In short, Noah Kravitz is being sued for damages – to the tune of $340,000 — by his former employer, PhoneDog [...]
Great Branding: Great Listening The social web has been said to turn the world upside down, putting the power into the hands of the consumer. Others harken back to a time when the street shopkeeper knew all of his/her customers by name. You will find some people foretelling the end of the email, while others [...]
Words that go So-Lo-Mo must go Co … As the So-Lo-Mo (Social-Local-Mobile) expression gradually goes mainstream, I ponder how the myndset within organizations must change to accommodate the new style(s) of marketing. Being social is already a challenge. Providing a mobile platform is forcing a shift in habits. Creating a local programme means being super [...]
Storytelling is all the rage… In a quest for content, brands are looking to create stories to recount (online, in particular). The catch is that the stories must resonate with their audience and, more pressingly, must ring true for the employees. I see marketers (assisted by their ad agencies) attempting to create stories; but, the [...]
Getting used to ambiguity in the world of digital marketing Last week, I wrote (post: Virtually Real) about the existential challenge for brand marketers to live with a whole assortment of ambiguities. These ambiguities center on the blurred line between the virtual and the real, otherwise known as the online and the offline. With increasing [...]
Oyé Oyé: managers listen up In the 16 years that I worked in the professional salon business around the world for L’Oreal (Redken, Kerastase…), I met a great number of extraordinary men and women who are hairdressers, several of whom I still count as close friends. Social beings by definition, the best hairdressers have a [...]
