Aaron at BrandPlay lists his top ten brand books. His list - including some heavy hitters - was inspired by Seth Godin’s reference to 30 books that equal an MBA (chosen out of about 300). I was feelin’ all warm and fuzzy inside when I realized that I’ve already read 7 of them … and the other three are already on my Amazon Christmas wish list. (That last sentence was a hint to my wife to go look at my list if she hasn’t already done so).

Since I AM a voracious reader, and am always looking for great reading recommendations, please let me ask YOU, dear readers, what books do you recommend?

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Combine Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point idea of “Connectors” with Fred Wilson’s observations on his early days of connecting as a VC using traditional venues with the bigger concept of the blogosphere. The result? The imperative that ALL connectors (even newbie ones) need to be blogging!

Are you a Connector without a blog? Dive in, the water’s warm! Swim in it ’til your fingers are pruney!!

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Re: Equal’s new design for sugar packets. A quickie reference to a blog post by Seth which refers to the original post by Scott Ginsberg. Described by Scott as “brand breathing brilliance”… it’s hard to argue with that.

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I had dinner this evening with a business associate and the discussion of blogging came up. A question was posed “how often should you post to your blog?” One good story is a post by Rob Clark at TheElusiveFish.com. After a site redesign, his blog posting increased from once a week to about every other day. The result? With this change came a 100% increase in traffic! ZOW! However, after a posting lull later, an expected (but less dramatic) drop off in traffic was observed… 10%-20% per week.

The bottom line: As long as you have high quality, high value, thought provoking information to share with the world, your readers will keep coming back for more. Valuable information is like a drug. Cut people off and they’ll go elsewhere to get their fix.

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Japan, India and the rest of the countries in Southeast Asia account for fully TWO THIRDS of the worlds population.  Go ahead, try to name more than ten brands that come from the region!  “Well”, you say, “that’s because we live here and they live there.”  Mais non, mon frere … that’s not the reason!  When asked to do the same, the answer from Asians is the same.

However, Danish brand expert Martin Roll has written a book that  predicts this is all going to change in the near future.  This change will certainly put pressure on Western competitors on a global level.  Keep an eye out folks.

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In the past week, I’ve had at least six separate conversations about what’s going on with YouTube and the other online video sharing venues … how they’re impacting businesses today and how they’re changing the world at large. Feeling a little left behind? Written by Joel Williams, this article is a GREAT read if you’re wondering what the differences are between the big players and how easy (or hard) it is to get your own videos up and running on the Web.

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Posted in The Junk Drawer | 1 Comment »

Well, I hope their missiles work better than the copy writing in their training programs! Listen to this audio clip from a U.S. Air Force Training Program. Eeeeeeks! 

Step one; Clarity.  Step Two: Compelling, Engaging, Powerful, Differentiating.  … You can’t get to Step Two without getting Step One down cold!

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Let me start a few little ditties and we’ll see how long it takes for you to be able to tell me what the product/company is AND for you to sing the rest of the song. Here we go…

• Mmm Mmm Good
• I wish I was an <Mmm hmm hmm hmm> Weiner
• Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun
• I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing
• You Deserve a Break Today

How’d you do? 100%?

In the 1950’s, just about every television commercial used jingles to reinforce the brand experience. The tendency has dropped off. For those smart companies that DO take the extra time to firm up brand with some form of audio, the benefits are significant;

• It’s easier to remember the ad (a la the experiment above)
• Since your competitors aren’t likely using audio/music, it’s a powerful differentiator
• Music is a powerful emotional trigger
• Music styles can help zero in on your target audience
• Memorable music lyrics can reinforce information about your company and your products/services (phone numbers, address, benefits, features, etc.)

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Posted in Advertising | 1 Comment »

You know the notes … those are the four tones that are as tightly tied to the “Intel Inside” brand strategy as the blue oval logo. People are picking up on multi-sensory branding (finally) and some BIG money is being spent in the process. Microsoft retained musician Robert Fripp to develop the perfect 4 second chime that will help burn the Microsoft Vista brand into our collective Cerebral Cortexes (err … Corti? … Cortexans? … oh, never mind). Eighteen months in the making, this new chime is one second longer than the Intel Inside chime. And, according to this article by Seattle Pi, Microsoft estimates that these and other sounds, “will be played trillions of times in years to come.” (ACK! I’m good with only hearing it a couple of hundred million times, thank you!)

This becomes a love/hate topic for me. It’s fabulous that companies are realizing that there are three or four untapped senses in their existing brand strategies. What distubs me is that, although Intel arguably has the most recognized sound on the planet, there are hoards of people that despise the sound because it’s over played. Repetition good … Annoying people bad.

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Oh, Oh, Oh …. I can’t wait! Check out the “under development” idea of ConceptShare.com. I can see this online app shaving off days or weeks on heavy design projects.

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