Latest BRANDING articles

Future You Marketing

With our busy lives driven by work schedules, home and social demands (yes, I am sure some of us actually have lives outside of work), it’s surprising that we actually have time to eat a meal or sleep. The last thing we want to be asked is, “Please pay attention to this 5-minute commercial break.” When brands market to us, we expect it to be on our own terms, at a time when we’re most receptive and interested in the information, and with personally relevant content.

The Servant of Two Masters

It’s been said that you never see your homeland in its true light until you’ve lived away from it. The truth of this is re-affirmed for me each August, when I soak up the spectacle of the UK political party conference season with the comforting barrier of the North Sea between the principle actors and me. Free from the obscuring lens of self-interest, I can enjoy the show as an exercise in cultural anthropology – and an instructive lesson for anyone in the persuasion business.

The Mutha of All Branding Experts

I recognize that “branding”, as a buzzword, lost its currency a long time ago but whatever the current lingo is (the ever-changing marketing lexicon that frequently substitutes for real understanding and knowledge and allows charlatans and so called experts to create enough uncertainty in you that you stop trusting your own instincts – this is not a science folks, common sense is still your greatest asset), branding remains the most basic and challenging job faced by marketers and advertising people alike. When we see it done well it looks easy yet it gets done well so rarely that there is something about the endeavor that clearly eludes the majority.

Plastic. The Next Great Brand Challenge

“We live in a platform world!” an enthusiastic Jason Foster told me at the recentSustainable Brands Conference in Monterey. “Bulk, weight and mass are the new parameters for innovation.”

If this all sounds a bit confusing, let me backtrack. Foster has created an entirely new format for plastic spray bottles and containers that rethinks many of the core presumptions of the category.

Where Is The Green Brand Vision?

As the Chinese curse goes, we live in interesting times.

Climate change is disrupting our core belief in progress and unending bounty. It suddenly seems every purchase comes with guilt as an added feature.

That said, we still need and want stuff. No matter what Clay Shirky says about our transformation from a consumer to creative society, consuming is core to what we do.

How Do You Balance Trust?

I’ve found myself thinking a tremendous amount about the notion of trust this week. Seriously though, a couple of disparate things crossed my desk that got the ol’ spidey-senses tingling.

One, I helped set up a Facebook account for my 75-year old parents. Now these are people with a passing acquaintance with the internet, let alone a high comfort level with tagging photos of their last tea and biscuits party.

What Can Scotch Teach You About Branding??

Hilton Barbour
Marketing Provocateur
hiltonbarbour.com
When your mother’s maiden name is Anderson, you grow up with some very clear opinions on Scotland and all things Scottish. Scottish rain isn’t as ferocious as people say. Scots are genuinely friendly to outsiders – you just have to get past that gruff exterior. Hadrian’s Wall [...]

The Chinese Multinational Brand: A Long Road to Rome

No Chinese consumer brand is ready go head-to-head against Western counterparts on the latter’s home turf, despite Lining’s open a new store in Singapore. This is true in every category, from autos to alcohol and pharmaceuticals to hotels, although some non-consumer brands (e.g., Huawei electrical components) have made significant in-roads and will continue to.

That said, many Chinese brands are making progress in emerging markets such as India, Africa and South America.

Email Etiquette for Creative Directors

For some reason creative directors have a habit, a bad habit, of not responding to emails. I’m not a creative director but I do run a company and I know tons of creative directors, many of them which run worldwide shops and I can vouch for them in the fact that they get many emails, too many emails, including hundreds from everything from photographers, filmmakers, producers, [...]

Crazy World Of Green Brands

I read an interesting anecdote the other day. The author (Joel Makower, one of the bright lights in the world of corporate green) noted that if you did a google search on the phrase ‘easy being green’, you’d post approximately 1.5 million results. To put that in context, if you searched ‘ ‘til death [...]

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