Jeff Squires at PSFK points out the new brand extension initiatives from Bravo’s top rated show Top Chef. Here are the three initiatives:
Tour – Basically a truck will stop in 20 cities around the nation giving demonstrations, selling Top Chef gear and will feature appearances from contestants on the show. Sounds a little like the American Idol Tour with food (probably because Top Chef is just American Idol … with food). I am all for it, giving fans a physical experience to connect to, pretty cool.
Cruise – A luxury cruise set to take sail May 2009. Wha?!?! Am I missing something? How does this fit in with the brand or the show? Again this will provide a real world experience, but I think the commitment necessary stretches too far past just showing up an hour or two at a tour stop.
Cooking Classes – Top Chef branded cooking classes at the Culinary Institute of America. Oh no. The CIA is an institute in culinary education, and while Top Chef may be hot right now it is just that, hot for the moment. I can see the thinking, popularity of CSI and similar shows led to a big up-tick in applicants for forensic science, but I didn’t see co-branded classes showing up at University of Mississippi, University of Central Florida, or Loyola University (some of the top schools for forensic science). Every time two brands come together there is a positive association for one and a negative association for the other. I have to think the Culinary Institute is the one taking the hit here.
I am all for creating brand experiences and cooking is certainly ripe for that. I just believe there could be more relevant example to coincide with the Top Chef brand.
This is a quick update to a couple previousposts on the Internet becoming a platform. Along with the introduction of the 3G iPhone, Apple also announced a new service, MobileME, at the WWDC. Through me.com (wonder how much that cost?) subscribers will have access to enterprise level PUSH calendar, PUSH email and PUSH contacts along with photo sharing and file storage. Beyond just simple storage online Apple has used AJAX to create online applications. To show this trend will continue here is a quote from the MobileMe website:
Access and manage your email, contacts, calendar, photos and files at me.com. All with amazing applications that are so feature-rich and easy to use, you may end up preferring them to your regular desktop applications.
Adobe
In addition to Photoshop Express, Adobe also recently launched an online version of Acrobat.
Full disclosure: I am a complete Mac Fanboy. It seems to me that in recent years Apple and Steve Jobs have rarely come up with a miss when it comes to introducing new products. This is why I spent most of my day yesterday following live coverage of Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference on sites like Engadget and Mac Rumors and subsequently watching video of the keynote later in the day when it was posted.
While I was watching the keynote I started to think about how Apple seems to pull it all together, and I mean all: product design and performance, store design, distribution plus interesting advertising and communication. The question that entered my mind was “how can you tell?”
Brand Metrics
There are brand metrics that offer a really good status indicator, but don’t always indicate future performance or how others feel about a brand. For instance, one standard measure is brand awareness. I, like many others know the Hummer brand, but don’t count on me buying one in the future or even having positive emotions for the brand.
Stock Price
Stock price could prove to be a good indicator. Apple’s stock price has skyrocketed in recent years. Unfortunately there are many financial maneuvers that typically wouldn’t affect the brand, but could affect the stock price. This also seems to be a much more long term indicator, but not necessarily a short term indicator (yesterday during the keynote from Steve Jobs where he introduced the new iPhone, Apple’s stock price was down at least $6.
Fetishized Products
While certainly not scientific, I have noticed that Apple gets some seriously amorous talk online. There are several blogs devoted to rumors and news about the company. Think Secret (which has been shut down), Apple Insider, Mac Rumors, and even Engadget just to name a few. I understand that online conversations happen about many companies and products, but there seem to be a few products that stand out above the rest and generate much more affectionate conversations. Take for example the “unboxing” that has happened online for virtually every new Apple product, here is one for the MacBook Air.
Apple isn’t the only company getting this kind of treatment. Activate Drinks was a product that I saw getting some “buzz” and popping up on a few blogs hereandthere. Then NOTCOT did an exhaustive post on the vitamin drink and it’s packaging. This seems quite similar to the posts unboxing Apple products. The GM Volt, plug-in hybrid concept, gets its own blog from a customer advocate just like the Apple blogs. These are just a few examples, that represent a more in-depth level than just casual online conversations about brands, or “buzz”.
While, I wouldn’t base my agency compensation on producing these kinds of results it does seem that whether customers are fetishizing your products could be a good anecdotal indicator of how you are doing from a holistic perspective. Customers take everything into account rather than just looking at one element of a brand at a time.
Gratuitous Steven Colbert Image nicked from here, many thanks.
Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand, in conjunction with the Human Interface Technology Laboratory, have created an interesting interactive campaign for the Wellington Zoo. Using their mobile phones, readers of the newspaper can point their cameras at a print ad that looks like a simplified QR code and an animal appears in 3-D above the page. AdForum has a short article about the campaign and a good video explaining the concept (although the video can’t be linked to or embedded, guess they aren’t too keen on social media over there).
The ads themselves are fairly unremarkable. They just look like clunky graphics of a bear, a giraffe and a cheetah to me. Although it is nice to see they had a reason for using the technology, that is to bring the animals to the people to promote the close encounters exhibit at the Zoo. (Side Note: I can’t help but think walking though New Zealand with a bear or cheetah on a leash would have gotten more attention, but possibly more lawsuits). It is nice to see a new technology being used in conjunction with newspaper advertising, goodness knows it needs all the help it can get.
Honestly, the best part of the campaign is seeing the reactions of people discovering this new form of advertising. I am guessing the shock and delight comes from the novelty of this execution and not from the actual display itself. If this technique were to become widely adopted with this particular example stand out from the crowd? Probably not. It is the technology that is playing the lead role here above the idea, whereas I like to see it the other way around. This campaign does seem to be effective, delivering a 30% increase in visitors.
All in all it is a pretty neat technology to add to the toolbox. Do I believe the video when it says, it is “set to revolutionize advertising as we know it?” Uh, nope. It is exciting to think of the possibilities. In the video they mention increasing the technology to include animation and video as opposed to the static image. What if you made it truly interactive, like a game you could play or clues to a scavenger hunt? What if you made it interactive where participants could store information at a certain site to build a knowledge bank over time or communicate with other participants?
The main problem I have with this technology is it requires a download (already the kiss of death for any interactive campaign). Further complicating matters, it is a download to your phone, activated by a text message. This seems to be asking a lot of the viewing public and quite honestly for not a big payoff. It is something that seems to be universal across all executions in new media, there is a novelty factor, but the idea seems to play second fiddle.
I just started writing for another blog, associated with alldaybuffet (you can check out the first post here). ADB is an organization I have followed fairly closely for a while and I am happy to help out. This will tell you a little more about the group, but essentially the mission is to inspire GOOD action. As the site says:
It’s a simple idea: Inspire Action. Change the world. Have Fun. Because doing good shouldn’t feel like a chore.
So, check them out and participate if you are so inclined. A great way to get started are the Cause For Drinks events. Also, be on the lookout for future posts to the site from me, which will center around cause related branding and profiles of people who do GOOD.
Tim O’Reilly, from O’Reilly Media opens the web 2.0 conference speaking about cloud computing, and the internet as the new platform. I touched on some of these topics in a post I wrote earlier (although Tim is much more of an authority than I am). Tim does a great job of explaining how all this is working, and even highlights some companies that are taking advantage today. What we, as brand planners, need to look at is if we can provide greater utility for our customers, how should we be doing it, and what meaning can we convey as we do?
Within the article it details how doctors are beginning to reject the typical “deny and defend” option proffered by hospital lawyers in the event of a mistake. Instead they are opting to full disclosure, immediate reconciliation and a sincere apology. For instance, this apology from Dr. Tapas K. Das Gupta, a 76-year old oncology surgeon, who mistakenly removed a sliver from a patient’s eighth rib instead of the ninth:
After all these years, I cannot give you any excuse whatsoever. It is just one of those things that occurred. I have to some extent harmed you.
How is that for complete honesty? That is not easy news to give and certainly not easy news to hear, but wouldn’t you still prefer that to not having this mistake revealed to you? I believe it is better to appreciate this level of honesty and work through a sensible resolution. Apparently the statistics agree with the honest approach. According to the article hospitals are reporting decreases in their caseloads and saving in legal costs along with a decline in malpractice premiums.
Looking at marketing and communications, it is sad that this level of honesty would really stand out. I can only think of a couple examples. One is JetBlue’s written and video apology after their operational mistakes.
Another is the tagline that rests at Russell’s blog “we’re as disappointed as you are.” I can’t seem to find the article right now, but I believe it was an idea W+K UK pitched to an airline client as a way to bring back customers and work toward a better future. The last is for a shoe manufacturer that ran an apology ad stating that due to an accounting error they had not received new calendars since the eighties, which was why they had not updated their styles. Now that they had the new calendars they would be working on updating their look. That’s taking a humorous spin on honesty, but no one ever said honesty had to be depressing all the time.
What I like about all of the communications is that they are authentic. If you have a problem with your company don’t just try to stick a smiley face on it and pretend everything is okay (the very definition of insanity, by the way). The first step toward resolution is admitting you have a problem. I suspect that just as the medical patients who suffered an accident, your customers will respect your honesty and enjoy looking forward to a brighter future, perhaps even helping you along the way.
Steve has a real commitment to design that really shows through in the output of products from Apple, don’t you think?
I found this quote along with many other great tidbits on a site meant to inspire user experience designers. Check it out, I think the quotes can inspire us all.
I just finished reading this article about Amazon’s move to offer outsourced computing services (online storage, infrastructure computing services and even real-world fulfillment services) all on a pay for what you use model.
For laymen like me, what this means is that instead of needing tens- or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to get an Internet startup off the ground you could start by uploading your code to a server for 10 cents/hour and storing your files for 15 cents/gigabyte/month. The best part is it is completely scalable, so as your project takes off, it costs you more (you should be making more money, too) and Amazon makes more money. This gives web start-ups a chance to get started without sacrificing large chunks of their companies to venture capitalists, and tying their capital up in computing power that will quickly become outdated. On the other hand it gives Amazon a way to sell computing power and infrastructure services, to a vast array of start-ups and when one takes-off both parties win. For instance, as the article says, one heavy user is spending five-figures/week on Amazon Web Services.
This, to me, is just another example of our computing power moving into the ether. Where historically we have needed to buy software (ensure it will run on our machines) then store any data we created on that same machine, where it could only be accessed there unless physically being transferred to another machine. Now that game is changing, where my computer used to be everything it is now transitioning to be an access point to connect me with my data and applications that I have strewn about the Internet. This may sound a little odd, but should benefit from the clarity of a few examples.
Banking
Online financial management tools are so prevalent they would be easy to overlook. If you think about it though, none of the data you create and work with there is stored on your computer, allowing you to access it from anywhere, yet it still offers powerful applications. For instance you can check you balance, transfer money from one account to another and even set up recurring bill payments just by moving numbers around in the ether. Beyond just managing finances you can also use these tools to build wealth, buy and selling stocks via a portfolio manager. (Bonus points if you use your profits to acquire the services of a clown, which you will undoubtedly, underestimate the creepiness of, as the E-trade commercial suggests.)
If you haven’t seen or heard about Google Docs, check out the video. You can upload your documents, (Word, PowerPoint of Excel) and work on them collaboratively with a select group. More importantly though, you can also create the documents online, without needed a word processing, spreadsheet or slide creation program. Essentially you could work within a more collaborative existence without ever needing to purchase Microsoft Office of for that matter a computer, just so long as you have access to one and a Google account.
Typical Word, Excel and PowerPoint junkies like myself aren’t the only ones that can benefit from the shift to purely online access point applications. This trend is showing up in the world of the pixel pushers as well. Adobe’s Photoshop Express is being beta tested currently and allows users to upload photos and utilize a limited set of tools typically only available to those who have purchased the program and loaded it on their own computer.
There are other examples and I expect to continue to see many more. Another proof point that this trend is starting to take hold exists with the machines themselves. If all the computing power, data storage and applications now exist in the ether then what will we need? Plain and simple, all you really need then is Access. Just enough computing power to get you connected and enough storage to cache the sties you visit. Lo and behold, it appears Steve Jobs sees the trend coming and has given us the MacBook Air (the name alone says a lot).
This computer isn’t as fast, and doesn’t contain the massive storage capabilities of some of Apple’s other laptops. What it lacks in brute force, it makes up for in compact size and lightweight portability. I mean, this computer doesn’t even have a CD-ROM, and instead allows users to access cd-drives from other computers – you guessed it – though the ether.
These are just a few examples and there will likely be more with increased effort and technological advances. Hooking everyone up to a fiber optic connection wouldn’t hurt either.
