Brand Kudos

Boony in New York

2006-05-16T22:11:00.000+10:00

The One Show Pencil awards were held last week in New York, basically this is an event that recognises and gives kudos to all those wonderful examples creative excellence in print, television, radio, outdoor, innovative media and marketing, and more recently, integrated branding. Each year, an international jury of award-winning art directors, copywriters and creative directors, judge a wide variety of work, entered by a wide variety of places, from multinational advertising giants to small regional shops. Why this is of particular interest to me this year is that the Boonanza campaign spearheaded by George Patterson Y&R with involvement from Accure won a silver pencil!!! Check out carpark at Accure.

The beezneez of blogs

2006-05-04T10:57:00.000+10:00

I'm not talking about the local boutique beer, which I'm told is quite the biz, but thats reserved for a later post. I am in fact here to tell you all that I am joining a collective of weird and wonderful things over at the beezhouse. Of course there will still be posts of a branding kind here, but I've been told that the grass is greener over there, so like a readership junkie, I have offered my services. Please support this world changing exercise by adding it to your feeders!

Personal Branding

2006-05-02T22:29:00.000+10:00

Ok, this post is for all you Melburnians and anyone who has been in Melbourne of late. It is a post on the subject of "Personal Branding". I'm sure you would have noticed that one particular little Chinese man has been getting a lot of press and its all good press... at least on the surface. Cr John So (the Honourable Mayor of Melbourne) has somehow captured the hearts of the general public during the recent Commonwealth Games and this has somehow carried on a while after the Sierra Leone athletes were located. Now if you're like me, you have no idea how this happened and you're probably still baffled at his astronomical rise to fame. There is considerable scope here for the goat to get out and about to do some research to explain this phenomenon, but as you effective researchers will know, some qualitative groundwork is required as the first step. So before I go any further to present my thoughts (and rants) on Personal Branding, here is a brandkudos debut - an interactive cyber-poll on the very issue. In the words of Cr So himself "I invite you all" to participate if you would like to see this whole thing cracked open and the secrets revealed. Take the poll

Free Poll by Blog Flux Happy voting!

The Technicolour Dream Goat

2006-04-21T16:37:00.000+10:00

Emily Bennington over at Maple Creative posted an entry on the persuasive effect of colour in communication. Taking her lead, I have decided to use more colour...if nothing else, it livens up all the blackness. For you long time readers, you will have noticed a few changes to the blogspace here at brandkudos. The most prominent one would be my profile picture which at the moment is in a bright shade of green. Using colour to reflect the my mood at the time of posting, the BGE mugshot will change colour accordingly. I'll leave the interpretation of the mood up to you... So...As Emily has pointed out, I have opted for green first to reduce the likelihood of argument.

Is the current state of the Blogosphere polluting our collective consciousness?

2006-04-18T19:30:00.000+10:00

Dave Sifry in his latest post on the Technorati WEBLOG lays down the facts on the blogosphere as seen through the tracking eyes of Technorati. As Daves suggests, the sphere is probably much bigger, but from his figures alone, I am gasping. Here's a summary: * Technorati now tracks over 35.3 Million blogs * The blogosphere is doubling in size every 6 months * It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago * On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day * 19.4 million bloggers (55%) are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created * Technorati tracks about 1.2 Million new blog posts each day, about 50,000 per hour There's a lot of other interesting figures on Dave's blog for those who are that way inclined, but this has further added to my fascination of the empowerment of a global conversation. The question I ask you is whether all this infolust and millions of voices are polluting our consciousness as a society? I tend to think that ideas and opinions regardless how big or small cannot be considered as pollution. Yes there may be heaps of it, but this very state allows people to connect and share specialised content, in this sense, more information is OK. The bigger the blogosphere the greater the amount of tools for filtering all the white noise until you get content that is truly interesting to you. It is only the voices of those that truly resonate with me that ends up on my RSS reader. I can't agree with the notion of "information overload"...its the time of "information control". Speaking of voices that resonate with me, Seth Godin's post on Small is the New Big is a good 21st century common sense look at business and marketing, I've linked here because i am getting the vibe that Seth would agree that many little voices are crucial to the collective growth of our hyperlinked society. What do you think? What voices are resonating in your head? And who's on your RSS reader? Talk back...I'd love to hear your thoughts despite the fact that I may get some staunch opposition here.

Cool hunting

2006-04-17T01:37:00.000+10:00

The guys at Random Culture have pointed to a good compilation of great outdoor and guerilla campaigning. Created by JWT. Check it out!

Some hidden commands for your Ipod

2006-04-13T16:00:00.000+10:00

I know some of the readers here are proud owners of an Ipod (and why wouldn't they be) so I thought I'd share some information I stumbled across that may come in handy. I don't know how useful or relevant these are, I haven't had a chance to try them out on a Ipod myself, but thats where I am asking readers to post the results of their experiments. The original post was from Comman-Tab, there is considerable discussion here. Happy commanding!

Do you want to do your MBA?

2006-04-11T13:43:00.000+10:00

There has been much talk between a few of us on the topic of a MBA...Well it looks like Josh Kaufman (an assistant brand manager at Procter & Gamble), along with the endorsement of change agent Seth Godin is onto something. Forget about the $$$ required for an MBA, The Personal MBA is worth a look. In keeping with my regime of life long learning, I have decided to enrol in PMBA (as well as the fact that I have read 3 books on the list already)

What the F#*K are "Best Practices"

2006-04-10T21:26:00.000+10:00

OK people, time for my weekly dig at the Corporate Zoo. I was walking into work today after I was bitterly disappointed by Mr. Woods' attempt at defending his green jacket (woeful putting! For those of you who missed the action at Augusta). As I strolled behind two guys with nicely cut suits pondering where the hell my own golf game had gone the Sunday just passed, I overheard these two guys talk about something to do with implementing some sort of procedure for whatever they were doing. One of the guys kept going on about 'best practices'....What the fuck are best practices? Like mindless research, it seems I have found something else that really eats a me. As I thought about it some more throughout the day and decided to actually devote a little time to try an understand what everyone at management level or higher is adapting to, I seem to have come away even more confused. From what I understand, there is little explanation given by those adhering to best practices as to why they are actually doing it, but it seems that they're all very proud of adhering to them. To me, the term "best practices" means "let's copy what everyone else is doing" and once again, it brings me back to the fact that most businesses these days have no balls to actually come out and be brilliant in fear that they may get themselves into trouble. I suppose, if you are a boring business that gets by on producing safe mediocrity than "best practices" offer an extremely attractive short cut that can be easily cut and pasted into a lovely powerpoint presentation. I think its all an excuse for those sitting in their ivory towers to stay put instead of venturing outside to the real world and actually opening their eyes and ears for once. I know you might be wondering what the hell this has to do with Brand Kudos, but imagine if all businesses continue to adopt so called "best practices" what am I going to give kudos to? Originality counts especially in a market filled with "Masters of the YOUniverse" and best practices the way I see it has no originality whatsoever. As an extension to this, I read a great article in the latest strategy + business magazine: Sharpening Your Business Acumen by Ram Charan. Charan points quite clearly to the fact that business (leaders) need to look outside of their four walls and really study what is happening in world. The ability to effectively assess the external landscape drives the strategic and executional acumen so essential for the new age leader. He states verbatim: "This is the art of business acumen: linking an insightful assessment of the external business landscape with the keen awareness of how money can be made and then executing the strategy to deliver the desired results..." "...It requires transcending the old rules of thumb that are etched deep in the psyches of many executives, and it means giving up the habitual reliance on precedent (best practices??)that worked for many companies during times of more linear change. While this material might make some of you corporates shake at the knees, take note next time you're thinking about best practices. Read Charan..Hee even puts it in nice little bite size pieces you love so much: 1. What is happening in the world today? 2. What does it mean for others? 3. What does it mean for us? 4. What would have to happen first (for the results we want to occur)? 5. What do we have to do to play a role? 6. What do we do next?

What do "lovebrands" and U2 have in common? Don't ask Audi!

2006-04-04T23:29:00.000+10:00

A reunion, a coffee and some long overdue catch up today prompted some discussion into my last post on "obsessive branding disorder", I believe "nothing new" was the general comment thrown around. So in response, I have decided to explore this branding issue further (like I said, this was bound to get some lip service). Instead of going on and boring you with my opinion on brand, I want to bore you with some passionate rant on how companies might develop a lovebrand. Some of you companies out there take note, your 4 rings won't hold you up forever, this is the market talking. Its all good and well to say "let's create a lovebrand", but spending squillions on advertising that is a sorry excuse for creative won't do it. The people behind the brand need to step up to the plate and be prepared to truly lead this discerning community of ours and deliver something far greater than a stylishly engineered lemon! Improve our lives, change our lives, connect with our beliefs...take a lesson from U2. Our discerning nature has been fuelled by our growing resourcefulness and apetite for information, it's access beyond belief; so much so that our daily lives continue to receive emails on our blackberries deep into the night, information ready and waiting for us to use for whatever the fuck we want. Aside from all this knowledge though, we are still human and are continuously in search for people with character who will help us form opinions, lead our inquisitive nature and question old principles. U2, Bono and many other modern day poets offer belief through their craft and we hang off their every note. Why can't business take this same approach? Why don't more business' offer insight and attitude I want to be part of? Here's a big clue right here companies, to create a lovebrand, you all need to buy a pair of "Flies-eyes" sunnies like Bono and see the world differently. Like most of the people close to me, I am willing to take brands to the heart, so long as they offer something true to my beliefs. But don't be fooled companies, we are discerning, cynical, judgemental and very particular. We won't like something purely because mum and dad have spent their whole lives mindlessly advocating! This is a time of information and lots of it, www.whateverthehellyouwant/butnotAudi is at our fingertips and we'll put everything you offer on trial and if you treat me like a clueless car owner, then we'll hyperlink your ass to oblivion. Belief is a wonderful thing (just look at Steve Jobs), we all want to put ours to something, give this to us, link us to others who share the same views or problems, give us product and services others can't disprove and you just might see some love to your brand!

Obsessive Branding Disorder...RELOADED

2006-04-02T23:05:00.000+10:00

The title and subject of this post has been adopted from Idle thoughts and Lucas Conley who in their respective posts about the same subject - "Obsessive branding Disorder" asks the question "What is a brand?" While I have made comment, for those of you who have not read it, I thought I'd regurgitate some of my rant here. After all, this is a blog about brand and what better way to start (or continue) a debate... Having had the opportunity to consider this question a little before my post, I have come to the conclusion that the question “what is a brand?” has too many restrictions (bought about by mindless mass advertising) to fully illustrate how I see brand. So, like many before me, I will introduce an extension to the idea of brand. On the surface, most would be excused for mistaking a company logo/name/tagline with a brand. After all, the former also embodies what Idle thoughts points to in his post as "all the information connected with a company, product or service", but the truth is, in order for a company logo/name/tagline to become what I see as a brand, it must transcend beyond what any tagline or objective the company is delivering. And hence become a “lovebrand”. While this is concept is nothing new in the marketing arena (Yes Schoffer, I know what you're thinkin!), in a billygoat world, the two terms brand and lovebrand are synonymous with each other. Brand on its own means fuck all! Like most goats, this one also consumes a hell of a lot of products, but only very few (love)brands. Take a product away from me and I will happily find a replacement. Take my “Illy” away and I will fight to get it back. Why? Because the product has delivered beyond expectation but more importantly, it told a great story and has found a way to somehow intertwine with my life so much that it infests my stories, my wife’s stories, my work, our holiday stories, my existence. The intimacy is scary once you think about it; somehow you lose the ability to logically reason its absence. This is what a brand is! Real sensual and emotional grab not empty words that ramble about its own greatness. Any brand without connection is merely a product and products can be replaced. To move a little side ways, Idle thoughts or Conley in his article makes an interesting point that organisations, products or services is what creates the brand. I can’t argue with this, but I think these days, too many organisations truly believe they actually own the brands they create. I’m not talking about some hoity toity, Fort Business type reference to ownership, but true emotional ownership, the type that lives differently within each consumer and yes they’re very different. So, to all you drab, monolith organisations with monkeys masquerading as customer service reps, get with the times and realise you don’t own the brand you created, in fact if you want continue to grow and transcend to a level where we really value you, then stop trying to fit everything you do (including “branding” your products) into some nice little "business as usual" model you learnt in your MBA program, it won’t fit fuckers! Tell us a story, let us feel make us laugh and we’ll show you’ll loyalty beyond reason.

To my loyal readers

2006-03-30T16:29:00.000+11:00

Hello all, Brand Kudos has just been improved with a subscription function. If you enjoy reading the content here or simply like to rip it into it everytime the contributors publish something new then I urge you to subscribe by entering your email at the bottom of the sidebar menu. Alternatively if you have a news reader type account, you can hook onto Brand Kudos for an automatic feed. Go like a goat! BGE

Branding Charity - Good will getting creative.

2006-03-29T19:31:00.000+11:00

Random culture with their all round insightful posting shows us the latest from a London based agency Daft London who seem to have put together some package for Oxfam and the Make Poverty History (brand?). Play bit unfair here From a marketing perspective, I think this is genuinely good stuff and something very few are actually doing in the "grab your dollar" charity space. I ask the question though, is it too good? All this lights and whistles surely had to come at a cost. Who funded it? If it was internally commissioned from within OXfam, how deep did the creative bill eat into the stash to reduce poverty? I guess eliminating poverty is quite a task and needs the leverage of a few billion people, I can't fault Oxfam for trying something new in the market to get first dibs at your donation dollar. Lets just hope it doesn't get to a point where we get MPH and Red Nose Day head to head to see who will out creative the other...No thanks, I want to be confident that my money actually gets to Kiaan in Bangledesh. ARE YOU IN?

Apple...Spacevertising???

2006-03-29T10:45:00.000+11:00

Adrants points us in the direction of a post about no other than my favorite friends this month - Apple. You can check out the original post from boakes.org I'm not totally convinced about the legitimacy of this or whether its a clever little use of Google Maps for some self promotion from boakes.org. Spoof or not, it would be quite an unveil if Apple did pull something like this off, they'll keep me advocating!! I can't see that Steve Jobs is the poker type though. Check out the Google Maps image here.

Dating, marriage, parenthood...all without having to step out the door (oh, except for chips)

2006-03-21T20:29:00.000+11:00

If you haven't heard of it already, here is post on a new form of tryvertising and Sponsored content that has hit the Netherlands in the form of Eccky: Virtual Love Child. Read more about it at Springwise. Or you can read all about it on Eccy's weblog. The jist of the story goes like this: 1. Buy a bag of specially marked Doritos which contains codes that are valid for the creation of a virtual love child- Eccy. 2. Log onto Doritos website, enter codes and find or flirt with a potential virtual mate. 3. Somewhere along the line, I assume virtual sex may take place and BANG! out pops a virtual love child. 4. The child bears the unique DNA of its parents which was obtained prior conception through somesort of online quiz. 5. After the child is conceived, the parents have a set period of time to raise this baby through its formative years into a well rounded young adult (each day is equal to 3 Eccy years). 6. During this time, the child requires nourishment and everything else a real baby needs including communication. The parents can provide all this via a beefed up MSN Messenger type service. Supposedly dear old Eccy is capable of responding with over 45000 phrases. (I wonder if it would develop a liking for Doritos at a very young age - which brings me to the next point). 7. Obviously, all this nourishment, food and clothing comes at a cost to the parents, the cost can be negated by simply buying more credits over the phone, online or simply buying more Doritos. Kudos to the creativity and interactivity! But look out guys, if this catches on, Eccy may be become the litmus for married life and fatherhood.

China - Have the "rip offs" gone too far?

2006-03-19T23:03:00.000+11:00

Without a doubt, one of the brands to keep an eye out for is China. Despite the censorship issues of late which seem to have Google in the thick of things, I am fascinated by what the middle kingdom's re-emergence into the modern world will bring. From Arms to Branding, things are sure to change (hopefully for the better). I can see that I will be blogging about China a lot more. One thing I do not want to see is a piratered version of an already crap song. 50 cent: Shanghai style picks up on an interesting festival in Shanghai where "the music from streets" has just done the China brand a world of no-good! I must warn you that listening to this clip may scar you!. Check out the clip here or take a gig at the Shanghaiist.

The Microsoft "One-size-fits-all" & "People Ready" camouflage

2006-03-19T15:58:00.000+11:00

In his post "What would happen if Microsoft were to re-package the Ipod?", Idle thoughts points us to an impression of what Microsoft would do to the beautiful artistic temperament of Apple. It's brilliant!! If you haven't seen it, check it out here: YouTube After seeing it, I can't help but comment on how far off tech giants like Microsoft are when it comes to marketing communication. While it is not clear from the video, could you imagine the type of language being used on MS's Ipod box! Technolatin - "a vocabulary of vague but precise sounding words that work like the blank tiles in Scrabble: you can use them anywhere, but they have no value..." Thank goodness MS are not into baby products or we may start to get marcomms that would suggest that a baby serves as a platform for vomiting, is a seamless solution for reducing sleep time and that it supports crying!! Kudos to MS for everything it has done...but please come to real terms with your customers (me included) before you slowly slip into the dark, dark abyss. Read this latest article "Microsoft unveils Marketing Initiative" by Peter Svensson and see how many technolatin phrases you can pick...Is your company "people-ready" or "attempting to prolong a pre-internet, proprietary one-size-fits-all computing model"?

New Comments platform

2006-03-19T12:54:00.000+11:00

Contributors and anyone else, I have recently changed to HALOSCAN for my commenting and TRACKBACK functions on this blog, it has taken over the entire commenting system from Blogger and therefore all your valued comments are unable to be viewed. My apologies, but feel free to repost. Please use the Trackback URL's if you are linking or referencing any of the posts. Much appreciated.

Rules of Engagement

2006-03-16T15:37:00.000+11:00

To all you marketers out there, How will you react to someone writing to you asking for free stuff? Scam or perhaps an opportunity to build genuine "sneezers". Seth Godin points us in the direction of the $39 Experiment: Asking random companies for Free Stuff. Seth wraps it up nicely - a little treat and a little time could generate a whole lot of brand equity for your business. This may have been an exercise to test the limits by Tom Locke, but what an excellent example of how companies could build genuine 1 on 1 conversations with their customers with very little output. Del Monte foods seems to think so, if it was a genuine customer, think of the cred for their Think treats brand.

A table for Mr No Name and I...let's chat

2006-03-16T00:26:00.000+11:00

Just to ad to my last comment on my post "Where the hell is the passion, the brilliance and the big balls. Mr. No name.....If you are relying on research to "talk" to your customers than are you really talking? Real conversation takes place impulsively with no restrictions, no red tape, no project teams and definately no scores of business road maps and risk registers (all of which are involved in traditional forms of marketing research.) If this is the sort of research you are doing than kudos to you, but spare me the data mining antics. Genuine interest and conversation with people. We're not markets or subjects. To quote Chris Locke, markets are where people exchange stories and thoughts, if this interchange results in a sale than thats a bonus, but you will find that when you stop using the term market as a verb, you just might sell more of your craft. BGE

Where the hell is the passion, the brilliance and the big balls?

2006-03-13T23:46:00.000+11:00

I am starting to think that these days; we are going research mad. Now, before you pre-judge my rather brash comment just let me say that I am just as guilty as anyone for contributing to this “research” threat. Can you believe that I am actually devoting time to learning about research methodology? However my saving grace is that I am learning these methodologies in an attempt to destroy any blinkers I may still be harbouring from my corporate monkey days. We seem to be living in a time of decision by research or dare I say opinion by research. If you think about it carefully, our world – especially the “business” world is so infatuated by so-called experts in unreal situations each giving their carefully considered and constructed opinions based on…yes that’s right…RESEARCH! A dear friend once said to me, (when I asked him for a carefully considered and constructed answer to a marketing problem) “Use your intuitive feel & go with your gut…” My initial response to this was typically corporate monkey…”what do you mean go with your gut? How can I possibly make an informed decision based on warm and fuzzy feelings?” Now that I have had time to really ponder this answer, I have come to realise how far off the track I really was. Research, particularly in qualitative form, can be truly misleading! These businesses are all spending squillions on pages of questions to ask participants what they want, how they want it and when they want it. Do they really want to know? Deep down, all these businesses & researchers actually want to hear is a “smart-sounding”, “well considered” answer. Get with the plan businesses!( & researcher) Do you really think that these participants actually act or decide in the way they tell you on your questionnaire when they are at Chad-Vegas? You will at least have more fun by sending the questionnaire back to the every monkey occupying a block on your 7-tier org structure that has vetoed and analysed the questions for you before they are triple signed off for release. Give me a break! Don’t get me wrong, I still think good research has a vital role to play, but it has to be performed and commissioned for the right reasons and not purely by the cowboys who feel they have to justify their $150K p.a. jobs by feeding off those who use research to tell them when to take a shit! A lot of research is rubbish, but this is not the true problem. What if businesses persist in relying on this rubbish to deliver pragmatic courtesy? What if these same businesses take this sort of junk as a cue to remain mediocre and risk averse? Who will inject the inspiration, the passion and the balls? Thankfully at the moment we still have a silver lining in the clouds of mediocrity - long live Apple, Virgin and all those little brands (Chiodo) that tell like it is and keeping it real. “How many dudes you know rock like this? Not many…if any!” - Scribe. I for one will try and exert the same sort of passion at work like that of the love I have for my wife…I’ll keep you posted of the results. BGE

Creative? Or missing the point?

2006-03-10T13:08:00.000+11:00

from Coloribus... Advertising gone absolutely mad. I can't imagine that Coca-Cola would ever run a campaign like this one, especially on the back of their commendable efforts in bringing back the "retro" glass bottle with pop top (nothing like coke from a glass bottle, there's something comforting about it). Although, I must say the promotional product spin-off for a campaign like this could get rather interesting. I once came across a ceramic looking Buddha that would shoot a constant stream of water just like he was urinating when water was poured over it!! A pissing lemon or lime....Now there's an idea CCA.