You know how it works. You pay X dollars for a radio or TV spot and it gets so many “viewings”. Or, you put an ad in a newspaper or magazine and you get X amount of circulation. Done deal, right?! NOPE.

By thinking INside of the viral box, it’s possible to create an ad environment where a person will either get multiple exposures OR they’re motivated to share the ad with others (and not just another email virus idea). Some good examples:

• Personiva allows web users to upload their own pictures which get overlayed into YOUR company’s video or TV ads. The vid gets seen once … then tweaked and passed around to family and friends.
• Eggfusion’s idea of putting advertisements on eggs. OK, you may not send the eggs to your Aunt Sally, but think about it … you open the box at the store (one), you bring the eggs home and transfer them to the refrigerator door (two), you see these same eggs every time you open the door (three, or more), and you see them again when you crack them open (four).

As they say in the Guinness Ads …. “BRILLIANT!!”

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This is a love-hate post.  I was at a birthday party this weekend chatting with a photographer who told me “you have to go see this site”.  She said this with such conviction, I knew I had to check it out.  My knee-jerk reaction was to censor the entire experience and chalk it up as a waste of time….. it starts out with a Flash pre-loader and the home page is fully Flash (no text for the search engines) and uses “mystery meat” navigation.  AAAACK!!!  These are some of the worst design offenses you can make with a site.  SHEEESH! 

Then ….. I started checking the site out.  Hang on folks — It’s fun, it’s fresh, it’s quirky, it’s easy to navigate, and it even looks like they have a great product.   Hmmmm, maybe I was too harsh before.  What’s for certain is Crumpler Bags is fearless and bold with their brand!

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As we watch the caveman return to the Geico commercials, a recent viewing got me to wonder about the life of the real cavemen. If you take a look at the Paleolithic cave paintings (this one found in France), you’ll see that an important part of their life was communicating visually to future generations and through the telling of powerful stories. Does this sound vaguely familiar?

My guess is that the cave paintings would have been far less effective had the author, instead chosen to tell his story using a 32 slide Power Point presentation with each one containing 14 text bullets in 8 point font.

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Hmmmmmm.  Great list … BUT, there’s no mention of making a strong emotional connection with the customer.  Isn’t that the point?

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Let’s say your company recently merged with another company. Clearly, a rebrand may be in order. BUT, what if you’re a generations old power brand like McDonald’s, or UPS and are not faced with this immediate need? Does a complete rebrand then make sense? Probably not. But, an overly cautious person may see any type of change in a successful brand as “fixin’ something that ain’t broke” and would stick with the same ol’. What to do?!

Visionaries aren’t paralyzed this way. They know that brands are living, breathing, evolving entities that need to be grown over time.

When UPS decided to update its logo for the fourth time in 97 years (March 2003), they thoughtfully implemented a redesign that most people didn’t even really notice. Why? … the essence of the logo was retained. It’s kind of like seeing a Hollywood starlet get plastic surgery. It’s obviously still her …€” she just looks younger, and most people don’t even notice.

Similarly, take a look at the new face of McDonalds. When seeing this change for the first time, Saturn’s new tagline comes to mind … it’s “Like Always, Like Never Before”. The architecture certainly qualifies as bold in the redesign of, arguably, one of the world’s strongest brands, but it doesn’t stretch to the point of losing brand equity. Bravo!!

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Consider the world-wide singles scene today …€” compared to the sixties.  Are most people today looking for the beginning of a relationship … or are they looking for a one night stand?   Marketing and Advertising are the same, and John Jantsch with Duct Tape Marketing agrees.

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A quote from Disney’s CEO, Michael Eisner …

“A brand is a living entity - and it is enriched or undermined cumulatively over time, the product of a thousand small gestures”

Let’s start a list:

• Are you smiling when you answer the phone?
• If you say you’ll call back in 2 hours, which happens more often … a 90 minute callback or a 3 hour callback?
• Do you use “www” in your URL like everbody else or are you “geek cool“?
• Did you actually put thought into the difference between the fonts that you use in headlines vs. body text?
• Do you reinforce your own brand by giving your employees computer wallpaper?
• etc.

Keep going until your list contains a thousand (or ten thousand, or a hundred thousand) small gestures. When you get to the end, you’ll have a living, breathing (and powerful) entity …. your brand.

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