Brand Noise

Grin Reapers

Marie Tupot Of scenarioDNA is featured in an article in this weekend's San Diego Union-Tribune:

Poking fun at recession fears — getting laid off, watching the 401(k) slide into the abyss — can sometimes make the unthinkable, at least for a time, bearable, some marketing experts said.

Laughter is communal and brings people together, so humor can be marketing gold for a company when it is done right. But it can also backfire if it crosses the line. With black humor, that line can be razor-thin, experts agree.

“There are times black humor works, but it has to be done well,” said Marie Lena Tupot, co-founder of scenarioDNA, a New York consumer behavior research firm that helps companies build their brands. “In these volatile times, when people are being laid off without notice, an advertisement or gimmick that plays on the recession can turn negative and be in poor taste.”  Read more

Understanding Gen Y Narrative: The Transformer Generation

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: culture marketing)

Weird Ad of the Day: Treximet

Maybe its me...but ads with people holding their own disembodied head seem a bit strange considering the world we live in with TV and Internet spreading the culture of beheading.   I just don't get it. There is a creative disconnect here...pardon the pun. Check out the TV ad and make your own call.

The Next Starbucks

It has been a hard to watch some of the news items trickling out about Starbucks lately.  From cheaper coffee to smoothies (how very late nineties)- the brand's recent moves have me underwhelmed and quite puzzled.  A brand that has led the rest of the market for so long is now, at least appearing to scramble to do what everyone else is doing and has been doing. In early 2007 Howard Schultz warned of the  commoditization of the Starbuck's experience. Starbucks reshaped consumer behavior in the US (and Asia).  It turned coffee into a new social concept.  The Starbucks ritual reshaped how people get together, meet up and spend time in between the activities of the day. It was more than coffee - it was a reinvention of the American eating out experience,  which had stayed unchanged since the birth of McDonald's. Ironically we now see the brand feeling more like McD's than anything new - and in fact with some of what the fast food brands are doing with partnerships like Nestle and Vitamin Water - they come out looking like the innovator.  Easier to do when you are "trading up" the brand.

An article in the WSJ delivers some advice from Starbucks Asia on how to recharge the passion around the brand.  " To break into the market, Starbucks strategists observed customers at its first outlet on a back street in Tokyo's Ginza district and soon caught on that women with disposable incomes would become the main patrons of Western-style coffee houses. Subsequent Starbucks outlets in Japan catered to them with a smoke-free environment conducive to lengthy conversations."

It seems to me that the brand that has been leading in this passionate twist on lingering and grazing is the Belgian brand Le Pain Quotidien.  We mentioned this point in an article about Starbucks when it was announced that Howard Schultz was returning.   There is a lot to be learned from this brand for  Starbucks.  Perhaps  at least in developing a tiered brand strategy where different locations function in unique ways.  Some faster - some that encourage lingering.  In the meantime I think Le Pain Quotidien will be filling the space that Starbucks seems to eager to leave behind. 

Activision casts brand for Wii gamers

It used to be build the title and then just shoot it to as many consoles as possible.  Game software is now branding to a specific console.   There will be more of this....as gaming takes on a far broader market and range of play. 

Activision unveiled a new consumer initiative last week to promote its Wii portfolio. According to the firm, the new effort -- which it is calling "Wee 1ST" -- will highlight games specifically developed for Nintendo's Wii platform. The branding will initially roll out with the titles Little League World Series 2008, Rapala Fishing Frenzy, and Dancing with the Stars: Get Your Dance On. Activision said the new branding effort will include national television and print advertising, staring this fall.

Dead Ends

My cinema mapping thought from he other day got fueled by an article by William Safire in this Sunday's NY Times Magazine.

Sutton Place in the 1930s was a Manhattan neighborhood of lush apartments and townhouses with unobstructed views of the East River. Bands of young toughs from nearby tenements, however, roamed the local streets. The stark juxtaposition of rich and poor gave the playwright Sidney Kingsley the setting for a Broadway play soon made into a memorable movie about this contrast titled, “Dead End.”....He took the title from the signs at the ends of the streets that warned motorists they were coming to the road’s end or a cul-de-sac at the river’s edge.....The collocation dead end, rooted in plumbing pipes in a previous century, was used metaphorically in the 1920s, but it was Kingsley who dramatically put together the street sign and the idea of lives with no upward mobility likely — bleak futures in an unfair society.

Maps & the Cinematic Narrative

Summer tends fuel omnivorous thinking.  Two seemingly disconnected things came together for me as thought that I would love to see come to life.  The main thought comes from my involvement over the last year in the Community Board 2's Omnibus Committee related to the demolition and redevelopment of St. Vincent's Hospital - a huge and highly politically charged redevelopment project of Greenwich Village that has many people fearing the end of the city they remember and love. 

Second thought came from watching a rerun of Knocked Up.  In the movie the brotherhood of burnouts scheme to start there own online version of MrSkin.com. The site gives users access to a comprehensive archive of  nude scenes search-able by actor names. 

OK....how are these connected?  It is all about how we rebuild and how we see our relationship to time and place.  Our quickness to tear down and start over comes because we forget the stories that live in the buildings and environment around us.  How they have shaped what we do and believe. We are losing a sense of the narrative of urban (and suburban) environments because we don't remember and have disconnected to what the architecture means to us.  It is easier to bulldoze instead of reuse if we don't connect to the historical narrative inherent in these structures.  Perhaps the intersection of analog and digital can help to keep the connection going and help inform better how we grow the story going forward. 

These buildings and locations live on film in the history of cinema.  Thousands and thousands of locations that were chosen and immortalized in the history of film.  Perhaps geo-tagging (a la Mr. Skin) the hundreds/thousands of scenes to the geographic map would grow this perception of this relationship between place and identity in the minds of people.  The mundane locations that we walk by day after day have been the context and backdrop for so many films. Slices of time and evolving narrative.

The problem with maps is that we tend to think of them as simply tied only to the present.  The reality is that they are obsolete the moment they are published.  The broader idea of maps as a series of layers by which we experience place - past, present, future - virtual is far more  powerful  in  plotting  the  relationship between space and identity.  The  evolution of  technology  seems ripe to bridge this  gap.

3 Brands that could do better

Summer is a great time to reflect on how we could be doing better.  A chance to spend marketing dollars in a new and more interesting way.  Here are a few brands that come to mind that could improve their connection with consumers. 

Quiznos is seriously missing out on a "taste" over the Subway "good for you/fit" strategy.  The brand means more flavor to the people who are loyal - but the ads never seem to reflect this passion. Most advertising I have seen since the account switched agencies last year has been a "me-too" approach on the value of $5.  Silly throw away ads. Subway does it better on this front with the more pop-authentic ads.  Focusing on flavor and variety would go further for Quiznos.  Also the lack of technology integration is leaving the brand falling behind to innovation from the lower-end players like BK and McD's - who also are geting much more jiggy with flavor and value-adds lately.  Time to take the brand up a notch.

The brand is benefiting from the down economy - bu a lack of new interesting product launches could leave the consumer less than loyal when the wallets start fattening up.  One can't live on Hannah Montana and Garanimals alone.  The retail brand needs to show that they can sustain the increase in traffic to the stores by keep the story interesting beyond just price.  Invest back into what happens next. There is a huge opportunity to build on this time.  The brand negatives will diminish during the economic downturn - our own research seen less aversion to the brand amongst teens  - but they still don't buy deep into the brand.  There is a lot of skimming the surface with Red Bull and socks.  Wal-Mart could be much more cool if it can be different things to different people - especially to teens and yougn adults which will drive the brand post-recession.  A gamer haven - a quasi Army/Navy for the brand averse.  Even taking the brand outside the box to explore new ways to engage more elusive consumers in context of other experiences. The consumer is currently engaged - build on it.

Gamers who bought their PS3 last year are feeling a bit duped.  There is little to play on it - and many gamers are becoming wary of shelling out the bucks for new games.  The need for titles is crucial to drive this brand - but especially titles that have an online component.  Part of this is in building better reliability on the back-end of some of these online gaming environments.  Many of the servers are still buggy and effect game play.  There is little or no difference in having a PS3 in playing these games.  The brand needs titles with lush online titles that promote software value-adds such as maps and tools - and horsepower.  The difference in experience has to be super clear.  It is not just about  the picture quality - it is about the reliability and expandability of the experience.  The value needs to be much more clear.  Gamers are waiting.

BK Trades (Way) Up

If you have ever worked on an "eating out" brand, you probably are aware of the way in which food/restaurant chains are often positioned and grouped.  The difference from fast food and fast casual.  It seems that these groupings are slowly losing their meaning.  Do consumer see a difference between "semi-upscale" fast food like Panera and "everyday" fast food like BK's?  The consumer is looking for innovation and it seems like it is anyone's game if you can capture the imagination and attention of the consumer.  Trading up is the opportunity in every action you take.

(excerpt from Adage)The world's most-expensive burger -- at $190 a pop -- is not to be found in an exclusive Manhattan restaurant, but in a tiny branch of Burger King in West London.  Determined to show the world that it takes meat quality seriously, the fast-food chain is marketing a limited-edition gastronomic glory available once a week, Thursdays only, in this single location. All proceeds go to a local children's charity. "The idea is to change perceptions by pushing the envelope to raise awareness of our ambitions," said Mark Dowding, Burger King's head of product and innovation for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. "We have emphasized the quality to create noise and interest in the market."

Is Porn Green?

Reading an article by Rob Walker in the current of issue of Fast Company I thought of how two key trends in our culture are sharing a parallel track - Porn Normal & Green - and in the case of American Apparel, intersecting in a way that reveals a new twist on an old economic problem - namely the tragedy of the commons. The downfall of recycling programs and other well-meaning public expressions towards a common good.

The case of American Apparel offers some interesting food for debate when branding green, fair trade and sustainable products.  The strategy can be far more effective when you learn to message in one voice and, at the same time,  deliver through tangible actions in how the business is run.  The reality there are two campaigns going on.  The campaign to the die-hard anti-sweatshop hubs in the network are far more likely to respond to real actions - the ad messaging is not as important to them.   

(excerpt from Fast Company) ....building a brand solely around a company's ethical practices was not a good strategy for reaching masses of consumers. The ethical sell was too limiting. It was a niche strategy, at best. Which was why American Apparel was moving away from the ethical sell to something very different. Charney pulled out a copy of a book called The 48 Laws of Power and read me No. 13, which suggested that to get what you want, you must appeal to people's self-interest, not to their mercy.