THINKing

Brands Out Of Control

Are you taking charge of your brand or placing its control in the hands of others? In light of recent crowdsourced ads at the Superbowl, that’s the question Beau Fraser contemplates in a MarketingDaily article.

Lowe’s Gift List Builder

UPDATE: With Christmas behind us, this Lowe’s tool is offline.

We’re proud to be launching today the Lowe’s Gift List Builder that we just completed.  It’s an online holiday tool catalog that allows you to build a gift list, save it online and then share it with friends via email and your Facebook account.

Branding The Fortune 500 Way

Today’s Fortune 500 Friday is about Nucor, #206 on this year’s Fortune 500 list, & one of my clients. I have been in marketing since 1983, and in my experience, Nucor does a better job of branding than any other company I’ve ever been around. It doesn’t waste time or money on promoting itself outside its niche. The people who need to know about them, know who they are.

America’s Worst Ads

It’s time to vote on the worst ads in America. The Consumerist has launched its first contest to find America’s most annoying ads. And, sadly, there are a lot from which to choose this year.

There does seem to be a theme in 2010. From Progressive’s annoying Flo to State Farm’s pocket agent, insurance companies are dominating the list.

Forgotten Gems

Through no fault of their own, sometimes really good posts just get overlooked. Here are a few forgotten gems you may have missed.

Grandma Says -  Southern grandmothers have often said, “there are only three times a respectable person’s name should be in the paper: when you are born, when you are married, and when you die.” This is the one area in which I part company with my grandmothers.

Dead Brands

2008 was the 100th anniversary of Hydrox, a creme-filled chocolate cookie whose name sounded like bad-tasting medicine. We wrote about the cookie back then because its latest owner, Kellogg’s, was using the anniversary in an attempt to resuscitate the brand. Bring on the CPR!

Advertising’s Not Dead, But Advertisers Are Trying To Kill It

Advertising is on life support but it is not dead. Although it seems that advertisers and their agencies are trying to kill it.

When done correctly, it still has its place in the marketing mix. The problem with advertising, as in so many marketing tactics, is that companies launch ads before they really think their program through.

5 Essential Big Boy Marketing Links

The big boys of marketing, those elite companies in the Fortune 500, know some things the rest of us don’t. Here are a few posts that deal with Big Boy Marketing.

Plan? We Don’t Need No Stinking Plan!

Now that technology has rendered every moment a marketing moment, how do you develop a plan in which you can have any confidence? That’s the question posited by colleague Scott Hepburn recently and I thought it was a good subject for this blog to tackle.

We Care. No, Really!

Listening to the radio today I heard an ad that actually said “because we care.” That was their brand promise. I hear or see lame marketing statements like this too often.

Truth is that company on the radio does not care. If it really cared, they’d spend enough time thinking about why people should do business with them and then develop a brand promise around that.