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Soccer, in the United States, is blowing my mind.
Last August I went to see the Seattle Sounders play the Portland Timbers. It’s one of the biggest rivalry matches in Major League Soccer and it sold out Century Link Field—that’s 67,000+ seats.
67,000+ Americans paid to watch a soccer game. That’s a BIG DEAL.
Imagine discovering an Islamic militant group ravaging Iraq and Syria shared your brand name (ouch!). What would you do? Abandon your name? Or hold onto the equity you’ve built and risk negative brand associations by keeping your newly controversial name?
These are the questions Isis, a mobile wallet company, faced when ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) started hitting headlines for links to sectarian violence against government forces and civilians.
CU Conferences is hosting their annual Social Media Conference in Seattle July 10th-13th and Weber Marketing Group’s Kristiana Lockman is leading two sessions.
I’m a reasonably nice, somewhat affable, yet often curmudgeonly cynic.
Yet, I must admit, I laughed out loud during a Delta in-flight safety video. Ridiculous. More surprising than that: I paid attention to all five-minute-and-twenty-two seconds of the FAA mandated content. (Spoiler alert, there are floatation devices stored under your seats!!! I had no idea.)
Sometimes relying on our history can hinder our best efforts to evolve an established brand. When things aren’t going as well as we’d hoped, when we feel unsure about what to do next, we long for the days when we had momentum working in our favor. It may be tempting to emulate past successes, even though the market has changed. Even though we’ve changed. Evolution takes courage.
Watching JCPenney revert to its pre-2011 logo is like watching an old friend get sucked back into a relationship with the high school quarterback, the guy who still pulls up VHS tapes of past touchdowns when you drop in to say hello. This is obviously a company struggling to find a safe landing, and one that is unsure about its future.
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Let’s face it. The traditional financial services world we have known well for many years is in massive transformation.
As consumers embrace new mobile technologies, wean gradually away from branch teller transactions, and new online competitors rise up, the financial industry is rushing headfirst into a fusion of online, digital, branch and social media channels that are reshaping how we retain consumers, compete and grow.
In this new world of smart phones, tablets, Twitter and video tellers, it raises the bar even higher for how we manage our brand reputation and position our financial institutions to stand apart in a highly commoditized – and now increasingly wired financial industry.
Last week, Josh completed his 151st radio spot. To celebrate this admittedly arbitrary milestone, he’s sharing some of what he learned in his twelve years of making radio. Plus, he’s posted five sentimental favorites, ranging from Metaphorical Ponies to President Grant.
Cadillac’s new ‘poolside’ ad is hard to swallow. It’s the one in which an assertive, confident master of the house surveys his domain and reminds us why Americans are so great. I’m pretty sure this is one of those ads that will reflect the worst of America’s culture when we look back on it in 50 years, and not just to the liberal idealist.
Regardless of whether the ad makes you feel proud or ugly, from a marketing perspective, I think they missed a terrific cross-promotional opportunity. To truly celebrate our culture, they should have leveraged another uniquely American campaign: Viagra.
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Wondering if it’s time to take the pulse of your organization’s brand to see if its moving you forward? How about a simple stress test to check your brand’s vital signs?
If the red flags below look familiar, it may be time to take a more serious look at the state of your brand program. While one or two warning signs aren’t fatal, they should serve as a check engine light, one that’s coming on to alert you that something could be amiss. It just might be time to call in reinforcements to get you moving forward again.
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Slowness. Freezing. Inefficiency. Not connecting. All are symptoms of a computer operating system or program when it is in need of an update. Most often the update notification appears but you have no idea what it means or what to do about it until you have your IT department look at it. And sadly, a great deal of people ignore the update notice until some situation becomes complex enough to warrant immediate and sometimes lengthy attention.
Maintaining your organization’s brand sometimes follows the same path. There are signals that indicate something is amiss or not synced up correctly. These signals can be subtle and easy to miss. Or, just like the update notification, they can be ignored. But that never turns out well – for your computer or your brand.
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