Make Your Brand Pop (BusinessWeek)

A good collection of case studies about four companies that built their brands.

Make Your Brand Pop via BusinessWeek

Make Your Website Work For You (BusinessWeek)

Here’s a good article on how to ensure that your website investment brings healthy returns:Make Your Website Work For You via BusinessWeek

Brands Don’t Need A Language

“Brands don’t need a language… they need a connection.” – This was inspired by a quotation I recently read.

The Aim Of Marketing – Peter Drucker

“There will always, one can assume, be need for some selling. But the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself.”

— Peter Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices

A Long Time Ago Is Last Year

Nowadays, a long time ago is last year. That is how fast things are changing.
~ Datuk Nazir Razak, CIMB Group Chief Executive

People Read What Interests Them. Sometimes, It’s An Ad

“The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them. Sometimes it’s an ad.” ~ Howard Gossage

What’s The Big Idea?

We all know this, and ignore it at our peril, yet we still bullheadedly press on without answering this most fundamental question:

What’s The BIG IDEA?

Great article (“Your Marketing Campaign: What’s the Big Idea?“) from Marketing Profs.

You’re rolling out a marketing campaign. Launching a product. Revitalizing your brand.

What’s the big idea? Not to sound flippant, but you need one. Because without it, it’s likely your campaign, product launch, or brand repositioning won’t be memorable—or particularly effective.

“Today, it’s economically crucial to create something that’s beautiful, whimsical, or emotionally engaging,” writes Daniel Pink in his influential book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.

Whether you’re just starting out or farther along in the creative process, ask yourself the essential question: What’s the big idea?

Helping the Perfect Improve

Seth Godin points out an interesting insight into targeting one’s audience:

Most people in the US can’t cook. So you would think that reaching out to the masses with entry-level cooking instruction would be a smart business move.

In fact, as the Food Network and cookbook publishers have demonstrated over and over again, you’re way better off helping the perfect improve. You’ll also sell a lot more management consulting to well run companies, high end stereos to people with good stereos and yes, church services to the already well behaved.

I wonder why, though?

Could it be that the “perfect” arrived there because they originally sought “perfection” – while those who are not “perfect” will probably never seek “perfection” anyway? Hence, if you think there is a great “market potential” for the “unconverted,” chances are it’s a dead market anyway. So, those who “get it” will want to “get it” some more, while those who didn’t get it probably never will.

Obviously, it is always easier to “preach to the choir/converted” than it is to get someone “saved” (to borrow some evangelistic/church parlance).

But how do you “convert” the “unconverted”?

A Better Way

I think…

What we are looking for is not necessarily a NEW way to do things… but a BETTER way.

It’s about innovation, not novelty.

Art Without Frame

This is a fantastic article about a social experiment that reveals so much about context, branding and the state of our lives:

Pearls Before Breakfast (Washington Post)

Technorati Buzz TV covers the story:

My favourite parts:

Before he began, Bell hadn’t known what to expect. What he does know is that, for some reason, he was nervous.

“It wasn’t exactly stage fright, but there were butterflies,” he says. “I was stressing a little.”

Bell has played, literally, before crowned heads of Europe. Why the anxiety at the Washington Metro?

“When you play for ticket-holders,” Bell explains, “you are already validated. I have no sense that I need to be accepted. I’m already accepted. Here, there was this thought: What if they don’t like me? What if they resent my presence . . .”

He was, in short, art without a frame.

Another part:

“Let’s say I took one of our more abstract masterpieces, say an Ellsworth Kelly, and removed it from its frame, marched it down the 52 steps that people walk up to get to the National Gallery, past the giant columns, and brought it into a restaurant. It’s a $5 million painting. And it’s one of those restaurants where there are pieces of original art for sale, by some industrious kids from the Corcoran School, and I hang that Kelly on the wall with a price tag of $150. No one is going to notice it. An art curator might look up and say: ‘Hey, that looks a little like an Ellsworth Kelly. Please pass the salt.’”

Leithauser’s point is that we shouldn’t be too ready to label the Metro passersby unsophisticated boobs. Context matters.

So, the next time you think that your “great product” or “great brand” doesn’t need “the whole works” to have people truly appreciate it… I think you might just want to think again.

Other Commentaries:

• Too Busy To Stop And Hear The Music – Gene Weingarten (follow up to original story)
• Violin Monday – Guy Kawasaki
• I’d Ignore Him Too – Seth Godin