Posts Tagged ‘Brands’

17 August 2010

The 30,000 Foot View: How KLM stays “in-touch” with customers

by Jennifer Adams

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All posts by Jennifer Adams

I have always loved flying. Now, I don’t mean just the hurtling through space in a comfortable cabin with movies, wine and dinner at my discretion. I mean everything about it—from the preflight wandering of airport bookstores and people-watching—to the in-flight blissfully out-of-time, disconnected from the world, “me time” with no chiming BlackBerry or demanding email—to my ultimate safe arrival somewhere across the globe that always has me marveling things like: “Seven hours ago I was in London, now I am in New York—that is crazy!”

I have always loved flying. Now, I don’t mean just the hurtling through space in a comfortable cabin with movies, wine and dinner at my discretion. I mean everything about it—from the preflight wandering of airport bookstores and people-watching—to the in-flight blissfully out-of-time, disconnected from the world, “me time” with no chiming BlackBerry or demanding email—to my ultimate safe arrival somewhere across the globe that always has me marveling things like: “Seven hours ago I was in London, now I am in New York—that is crazy!”

How crazy that transportation across space and time is—from a sheer logistics standpoint—I never really thought about it until I began, three years ago, to manage for KLM its In touch Community of Elite flyers from the Netherlands, U.K., Germany, Norway and Sweden. Before then, I never spent much time considering how much thought goes into getting 300+ people to their destinations, on time, in comfort, fed and entertained, without incident. … But now, I arrive at the airport and ask myself, as KLM asks its members every day in the In touch Community: What does efficient boarding mean? What is important in an airport lounge? How is the food? … the seat comfort? … the entertainment? What would make me more loyal to this airline? And how would I bring innovation to the industry? Now, as I board my flight, sip my wine, eat my meal or simply watch the wheels alight on the ground of Schiphol, I can’t help but notice the details.

Charles Hageman, Research Analyst for KLM and the driving force behind the In touch Community, never forgets the details, as he meticulously ensures that Elite flyers’ answers to all those questions get funneled throughout the KLM organization, to over 200 different people across functions and roles. His next magic trick? Opening the community up to the larger Air France-KLM organization, and expanding community membership into France, Spain and Italy. I, for one, cannot wait for even more reasons to interact in the In touch …with Air France and KLM Community with fellow travelers and help guide the innovation of an industry and brand that has transported me—on time and in style—across the world.

Charles recently sat down with Tamara Barber at Forrester Research to discuss the origins and impact of the In touch Community. You can read that case study here and also watch a video below of Charles talking about the community:

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6 August 2010

Marketing is Dead

by Charlotte Birkner

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All posts by Charlotte Birkner

Well actually it’s not; marketing is more powerful than ever these days, as the latest Old Spice campaign can attest! But, who started this whole viral, user-generated, guerilla, social marketing concept anyways? Lately people have been saying it was the Grateful Dead.

Well actually it’s not; marketing is more powerful than ever these days, as the latest Old Spice campaign can attest! But, who started this whole viral, user-generated, guerilla, social marketing concept anyways? Lately people have been saying it was the Grateful Dead.

Unfortunately, I never became a Deadhead. But, I did admire the stuffed animal Dead Bears during trips to Newbury Comics, with my dad and brother, back in my middle-school days, and even bought a purple-and-green one. Little did I know, I too was part of their strategy. The CEO of HubSpot recently co-authored a book entitled “Marketing Strategies of the Grateful Dead,” which was reviewed in the Boston Globe last week.

They write that the band cultivated a loyal following by giving things away — letting people record their concerts and freely distribute music, going around their promotions department and building their own mailing list, and even letting people buy premium tickets by mail (what, mail? yeah in the “olden days” you had to get tickets right at the box office, so this was pretty cool). They also encouraged “artisans” to “co-opt the band’s fan base by selling compatible, often handmade, products at performances,” says the Globe article, hence my Dead Bear. 

To add to the Dead “buzz,” an article in the March issue of The Atlantic talks about how it was the Dead’s lyricist, John Perry Barlow, who made this connection way back in 1994, in Wired Magazine, saying that “the best way to raise demand for your product is to give it away.”  He went on to say in the Atlantic article “if I give my song away to 20 people, and they give it to 20 people, pretty soon everybody knows me, and my value as a creator is dramatically enhanced.” That’s a pretty good Customer Value Proposition if you ask me!

In terms of connecting with their market and creating loyal customers, the free model worked pretty well for the Dead. But, how is it working today for other companies? Well, consider how we are all marketed to online.  About five minutes ago, I got an email from Virgin America saying that if I buy a plane ticket in the next 24 hours they will donate $5 from my purchase, and for every ticket sale, to an educational cause. Wait, I have to pay? Well, I think it’s pretty popular because I just clicked on the link and I’m still waiting for the page to load. Or, when I followed one of my favorite clothing companies on Twitter and they sent me a 25-percent-off coupon; thanks guys! While I’m not getting “free” stuff, I already know which dress I’m buying with the coupon, so I’d say the strategy is working pretty well!

What do you think? Can companies create brand loyalty by giving things away? Or is the Dead’s strategy just going to Hell in a Bucket?

3 Responses to “Marketing is Dead”

  1. Barry Silverstein says:
    August 6, 2010 at 1:46 pm

    One good contemporary example might be Apple and its free apps. Of course the Apple devices are not cheap, but they build a lot of brand loyalty with the downloadable apps., many of which are free.
    Taking it a step further, Google has done pretty well with free search.
    Couple of current examples where companies build value and loyalty through “free” services to consumers.
    Barry

  2. Jeff Dale says:
    August 8, 2010 at 11:17 pm

    Great post Charlotte! My feeling is that free marketing is a great way to gain visibility and “share of mind”, but often fails at gaining “share of wallet”. A quick example from my experience:

    I manage marketing efforts for two local dance studios. I produce videos of various performances by the dancers and give free DVDs and video links away to students. This added value increases loyalty among customers. It also builds visibility as these students share the videos with their friends and family.

    On the other hand, we tried giving away a free month of dance classes to anyone who refers a new student (an attempt to increase enrollment). We distributed this info on a certificate to over 300 active students, and not one redeemed it!

  3. Aviva says:
    August 9, 2010 at 9:53 am

    The Dead’s strategy is definitely alive and well today, even in the music industry. Amanda Palmer, a Boston-based solo artist and member of the Dresden Dolls, is notorious for reaching out directly to her fans and being extremely generous with her content – and her fan base is nothing if not loyal.

    Jeff, I think the key to making these promotions do help you grab that share of wallet is looking at your business model and figuring out how you can use free or discounted services to push your high margin, or highest demand, products, while delighting the customer will extras. So for example, concert ticket sales might have been the top priority for the Grateful Dead, and their customers essentially acted like marketing agents for ticket sales.

    Really interesting post, love the blog!

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2 August 2010

Would You Want to Know Your Competitor’s Strategy?

by Bill Alberti

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All posts by Bill Alberti

A story surfaced today on TechCrunch.com claiming that a Facebook employee boasted the company “has obtained copies of proprietary Google documents outlining their social strategy.” Besides being way uncool to yammer on about at a cocktail party, it poses an interesting question: Would you even want to know your competitors’ plans?

A story surfaced today on TechCrunch.com claiming that a Facebook employee boasted the company “has obtained copies of proprietary Google documents outlining their social strategy.”  Besides being way uncool to yammer on about at a cocktail party, it poses an interesting question: Would you even want to know your competitors’ plans? 

Wouldn’t it limit your thinking – from offense to defense; from what you believe to what your competitors believe?  Chasing competitors who are behind you is a dangerous business.  Might you lose focus on your customers by thinking too much about your competition?

What do you think?  Would you want to know their plans?

2 Responses to “Would You Want to Know Your Competitor’s Strategy?”

  1. Brad Mampe says:
    August 2, 2010 at 3:00 pm

    I read this and immediately thought, “Runners on second still try to steal the catcher’s signals.” That’s not 100% analogous, but it’s a good start. And sports and games serve as a useful analogy in and of themselves: More often than not, the person who acts last often has an advantage, as they get to plan their own strategy based on the actions of their opponent. That’s ignoring any assumptions about the time involved, of course – in football, you wouldn’t elect to kick the ball if you won the coin flip in overtime.

    There is tremendous value in understanding what your opponent is doing. Unlike the sports and games analogy, though, in a business context, you’re not limited to a single opponent, and spending time to evaluate how to best proceed can be costly.

    Consider risk/reward propositions. The risk part is the cost associated with being wrong; the reward part is comprised of the gain associated with being right. The more I understand the hows and whys of what my competitor is doing, the better I can devise an approach that effectively counters it. While I can’t quantify it, I’m guessing these gains more than outweigh the losses of plodding ahead without knowledge of what my competitors do. I’m taking the insider info virtually all the time.

    Of course, all this is assuming that knowledge is absolutely legitimate. If there’s even a small chance of deception, then the choice is much more interesting – but that’s a topic for another blog post.

  2. Rich Weiss says:
    August 2, 2010 at 5:16 pm

    Bill, could not agree with you more. There is a mystique to not knowing that pushes you to wanting to stay ahead. While I’m sure it would be nice to have insight into their plans, I’d much rather have a wild imagination and plan for the worse.

    Also, the pragmatist in me wonders if I were to stumble across this information, is it real or a set up? I say know who you are, what your values are, and build your strategy with that in mind instead of chasing your tail.

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30 July 2010

Trust Me.

by Rocky Prozeller

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All posts by Rocky Prozeller

Did you know there are currently 10 elephants enrolled in painting schools in Thailand, and among the trunks toting paint brushes, the overwhelmingly preferred color is purple?

Did you know there are currently 10 elephants enrolled in painting schools in Thailand, and among the trunks toting paint brushes, the overwhelmingly preferred color is purple?


Having trouble sorting fact from fiction? You’re not alone.

According to the 2010 USC Annenberg Digital Future Study released earlier this week, nearly 80 percent of Web users rely on the Internet as a rolodex for informed reading, but a significantly smaller segment believes the spouted stats are sincere – and those digits are dropping annually. Ten years ago, 55 percent considered the majority of material concrete; in today’s edition that number dropped to 39 percent, a new low for the Digital Future Project.

Even search engines such as Google and Yahoo – traditional stalwarts of online sincerity – have lost some of their luster, dropping 11 percent on the reliability register. But what’s most stimulating (or simply scary) is the significant slide in trust even among websites we choose to visit regularly, a stat which trickled down for the third time in as many years.

If consumer confidence in online information continues to erode, how long do companies have before the lack of faith moves beyond the one medium and infects a brand’s overall believability? This raises the real question of how to win that confidence back and attain the vaunted status of ‘old faithful’.

Solid relationships require true trust – an attribute earned, not owed. The one direction offered by websites, purely pushing information out, isn’t engaging enough to build the requisite rapport needed to create certitude – that requires a two-way dialogue. Dynamic conversations allow consumers to think, test and ultimately interact with a concept; the ability to challenge inspires confidence.

Providing a platform for pondering back and forth is a means for entertaining the elephant in the room, that way we can sort fact from purple propaganda.

– 

Here’s to wishing readers from sea to shining sea a whale of a weekend as we jump out of July and attack August!

One Response to “Trust Me.”

  1. Janet Bednarz says:
    August 1, 2010 at 12:44 pm

    Well, I don’t care what other people say – I think Mr. One Eye is real.

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27 July 2010

Can McDonald’s Pull Off “Local”?

by Lou Tamposi

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All posts by Lou Tamposi

Local is all the rage right now. Everywhere I turn, I see restaurants and stores pitching their food as locally grown and sold. I think this is pretty fantastic (though it certainly can get out of hand—I recently saw a “locally raised and organically fed filet of rabbit with a side of natural root of summer squash and a home-grown fat of pig garnish”), so I was especially intrigued when I saw that McDonald’s has recently launched a “locally sourced” food campaign in Washington state.

Local is all the rage right now. Everywhere I turn, I see restaurants and stores pitching their food as locally grown and sold. I think this is pretty fantastic (though it certainly can get out of hand—I recently saw a “locally raised and organically fed filet of rabbit with a side of natural root of summer squash and a home-grown fat of pig garnish”), so I was especially intrigued when I saw that McDonald’s has recently launched a “locally sourced” food campaign in Washington state.

The premise is simple—McDonald’s claims that 95 percent of the fries and Filet-O-Fish sandwiches and 88 percent of its apples served in Washington come directly from within the state. These are pretty interesting statistics, especially because McDonald’s is seen by many as a big bad corporation—the antithesis of local. If you take a look at the microsite for the campaign, you can see the full list of specific products, and where they come from in Washington. Nifty stuff, and, if nothing else, they’re offering a free medium fries just for checking out the site. You can bring that one right to your nearest Washington McDonald’s for about 28 free fries from Washington, and 2 from god knows where else.

The question is—does a big company going local mean anything to you? If you heard that your local McDonald’s used locally sourced ingredients, would you be more likely to succumb to your Big Mac cravings? Or, do you think this campaign, with its varying “participation and duration” clause, is a sham to “localwash” consumers? If it’s successful, should McDonald’s try to expand the idea throughout the country? You tell us!

2 Responses to “Can McDonald’s Pull Off “Local”?”

  1. Nina Kentsis says:
    July 28, 2010 at 8:49 am

    This is interesting because many large companies are trying to do this, including Wal-Mart. While I don’t eat at McDonald’s, and I’m not sure how many people like me would be swayed to do so because of a campaign like this–or even how many regular customers care about this kind of information–I think it’s a good thing. Companies like this have the power to move markets and to change the way we eat. For example, when Starbucks decided it didn’t want the milk that it served to have rBGH, I’m sure it had an effect on milk production in this country because Starbucks buys so much milk.

  2. Geri Koeppel says:
    July 30, 2010 at 7:43 pm

    I don’t care if McDonald’s grows their own food in their parking lots or on their roofs; I won’t eat it because it’s uber-processed and full of chemicals. They are missing the point of eating locally and seasonally, and attempting to pander to a demographic that probably never will be customers anyway. Or, more likely, they’re giving current customers a way to justify their bad eating habits, which they don’t need — folks who eat fast food will eat it no matter what. Either way, I think it’s wrong-headed.

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19 July 2010

Alternatives to the Comfort Food of Search

by Guest Blogger: Andrew Davis from Tippingpoint Labs

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The way we search is changing. Whether you’ve noticed or not, more and more people are using content-specific alternatives to Google searching. Why? What does this mean to those of us trying to reach our audience?

Google is the comfort food of search

The way we search is changing. Whether you’ve noticed or not, more and more people are using content-specific alternatives to Google searching. Why? What does this mean to those of us trying to reach our audience?

Google is the comfort food of search

Image via Flickr @trekkyandy

We all use Google. I use it everyday. Josh Cole, an executive producer at Tippingpoint Labs, calls Google the “meat loaf, mashed potatoes and peas of search.” It’s hearty, straightforward and the traditional comfort food in the Internet search world. However, Google’s not the best search engine for finding a meat loaf recipe.

If I’m looking for a recipe, I go directly to Recipezaar or FoodNetwork or maybe even Yummly. I know that at all of these sites a search for “meatloaf” is going to return to me the most relevant search results possible. I’m only going to get meatloaf recipe results.

Now, let’s say I was looking for the title of an album by Meat Loaf, the singer. You know, the guy who sings “I’d Lie for You” and “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”? I wouldn’t use Google. I’d go right to AllMusic.com and search for “Meat Loaf” and I’m guaranteed to get only one result—Meat Loaf, the singer.

This is how I search when I know exactly for which type of trusted result I’m looking. I call these kinds of sites (search engines for recipes, music, movies or events) Branded Content Aggregators.

Branded content aggregators are the future of search

Search results for Meat Loaf on IMDB.com

I define branded content aggregators as “human-edited websites that deliver results from trusted sources delivering a consistent quality and volume of valuable content.” So, Amazon.com could be considered a branded content aggregator for products. Or IMDB.com (the Internet Movie Database) is a branded content aggregator for all things movie- and television-related.

These content engines are amazingly powerful and deliver a vast amount of focused, reliable and smart results designed to deliver exactly the information I’m looking for without having to search through pages of “ten blue links” from Google.

So, branded content aggregators are tremendous sources of information, but they also provide brands and community members with wonderful opportunities to engage and participate in an active community by creating, curating and editing valuable content designed to make their experience better.

The Semantic Web is here—and you helped build it

Tim Berners-Lee, proponent of the Semantic Web

For years, people have been advocating the standardization of all Web data, searching for a way to build a machine language that supports a more intuitive and content-rich experience. Tim Berners-Lee calls this the Semantic Web.

Here’s the deal, Tim. The semantic web is already here. Every one of the branded content aggregators I visit understands the content, the lexicon and architecture of their specific niche better than any machine language ever could.

If I search for “pineapple” on AllRecipes.com, I get a list of the recipes that include pineapple as an ingredient. I don’t get the history of the pineapple. If I wanted that, I’d head to Wikipedia. Millions of individual contributors on millions of branded content aggregators have built semantic understandings of their specific niches to address their specific lexicon. That means the semantic web is already being built.

Harnessing the power of branded content aggregators in two search engines—is this the future of search?



So what if you don’t know where to find a branded content aggregator for your specific need? Where do you go? Who can introduce you to new, trusted sources?

I use two search engines that draw only from trusted sources to provide relevant results and contextualized navigation. I suggest you head over to DuckDuckGo.com and Kosmix.com and try searching for “meatloaf” (the dish) and “Meat Loaf” (the artist) with both search engines.

Each is an innovative search experience and a great use of branded content aggregation!

3 Responses to “Alternatives to the Comfort Food of Search”

  1. Ron Blau says:
    July 19, 2010 at 10:36 am

    What about WolframAlpha (www.wolframalpha.com), which calls itself a Computational Knowledge Engine? Though not a universal search engine, it’s very different and very informative.

  2. Andrew Davis says:
    July 20, 2010 at 5:21 am

    Ron,
    I love Wolfram Alpha. I would call it a branded Content aggregator actually, because it’s the place I go for all things numbers! It’s great!
    Thanks for the reminder!
    - Drew

  3. Andrew Davis says:
    July 20, 2010 at 3:23 pm

    By the way, Ron, I highlight Wolfram Alpha in the session that inspired this post.
    Check out the video here:
    http://vimeo.com/13370259
    Thanks again for commenting.

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16 July 2010

A Renewed Call for Creativity

by Barry Silverstein

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In their latest issue, AdAge provides a summary of a UK report stating that award-winning advertising has more effective in-market results because it engages the consumer and creates real buzz for the brand.

In their latest issue, AdAge provides a summary of a UK report stating that award-winning advertising has more effective in-market results because it engages the consumer and creates real buzz for the brand.

The argument about advertising creativity is not new, but it has taken on renewed urgency as creative budgets are slashed and making the sale for any brand is tougher than ever due to the global recession.  The advertising and communication business has been focused on survival, cost-reduction and chasing digital expertise.  At the same time, many clients have been focused on short-term earnings, staff reductions and giving procurement more control in the creative process.  If it wasn’t so destructive it would seem comical.

The results haven’t been pretty.  Recycled campaigns from years ago, advertising that focuses on the pure sell vs. engagement and brand-building and agency firings/changes that make your head spin.

On top of this, creative research is stuck in a time warp.  Focus groups, persuasion-driven copy-testing and quantitative studies suck the life out of creative people—and ultimately the creative product itself.

It’s time for the communication business to take a collective breath, and focus on building brands in new and creative ways.

It’s time to find ways to inspire creative people who are uniquely capable of inspiring consumers.

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13 July 2010

Old Spice’s “Man Your Man Could Smell Like” Campaign is Fantastic

by Lou Tamposi

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All posts by Lou Tamposi

Old Spice has been getting all sorts of praise for its “Man your man could smell like” advertising campaign. The premise is simple: jacked dude explains to women that if their men used Old Spice, they could smell like him—while all the while he is shirtless doing amazing feats (and riding horses… backwards). It’s cracked me up from the start and is absolutely brilliant in its absurdity. Understandably, the ads were instantly viral.

Old Spice has been getting all sorts of praise for its “Man your man could smell like” advertising campaign. The premise is simple: jacked dude explains to women that if their men used Old Spice, they could smell like him—while all the while he is shirtless doing amazing feats (and riding horses… backwards). It’s cracked me up from the start and is absolutely brilliant in its absurdity. Understandably, the ads were instantly viral.

With their new series of ads though, they’ve taken brand participation to a new level. The Old Spice twitter handle is written in the “voice” of the actor, which is funny and is a great way to make the brand accessible. But tweeting isn’t all—the company is also taking the time to individually respond to “@OldSpice” tweets with commercial-style video responses.

So when Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg.com tweeted “i’m considering buying old spice body wash just so they keep making these epic commercials – http://bit.ly/K87jz” while also complaining about a fever in a later tweet, Old Spice guy responded with this:

Absolutely love it. Now, I may not be a marketing guru, but I do think I know funny. And this, dear readers, is funny. Funny things get passed around and talked about. And that, I’m pretty sure, is marketing gold.

So what do you think: Is this an effective campaign? Do you think that as brands look to engage deeper and deeper with their customers we will be seeing more of this direct participation? Or, even more importantly, does a funny, viral campaign even affect sales? Will Old Spice be able to measure the effectiveness of this campaign?  Let us know what you think in the comments!

5 Responses to “Old Spice’s “Man Your Man Could Smell Like” Campaign is Fantastic”

  1. Steffani Cameron says:
    July 13, 2010 at 8:37 pm

    The thing that makes this advertising campaign so effective is it’s just ludicrously funny, and because no one knows Mustafa’s name (and he’s been signed as “talent” to NBC for a series to be developed), everyone keeps calling him “The Old Spice guy”. Brand, brand, brand.

  2. Lou Tamposi says:
    July 14, 2010 at 9:24 am

    Steffani–I completely agree. If nothing else, this keeps the Old Spice brand buzzing. Do you think Mustafa is so linked to Old Spice that if and when NBC develops a series around him it will generate even more hype for Old Spice?

  3. Mike P says:
    July 14, 2010 at 1:53 pm

    Hype is 1 thing, but a more interactive and engaging experience with the brand would be to follow up with free “product” or attach coupon codes or other incentives to get people to purchase the product. That is a more integrated campaign, IMO

    Mike Pascucci
    @mikepascucci

  4. Barry Silverstein says:
    July 14, 2010 at 1:54 pm

    I agree it’s a brilliant campaign. It has brought an old, tired brand back to life. It’s not often agency and client teams are able to be bold and use humor in a way that has this much impact. I wonder what if any copy testing research was used or if they just went for it?
    Very cool.

  5. Jack Cahill says:
    July 14, 2010 at 4:37 pm

    I agree with Barry. I remember the first time I saw this ad, I did a double take and thought to myself, “that was Old Spice?!”. Great job of making me start thinking “cool” about a brand I had pretty much forgotten about. And Lou, it cracks me up everytime too. Nice post.

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1 July 2010

FIFA Fever: Athletic brands take front stage

by Lorena Leonard

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All posts by Lorena Leonard

The World Cup has always been surrounded with ad campaigns from various brands trying to get a piece of the action, and this year is no exception. Some of the world’s top brands that have partnered with FIFA include Coca Cola, McDonald’s, VISA and SONY, to name just a few. In an event of such magnitude, athletic companies compete for center stage. Adidas is FIFA’s official partner but other companies have done their part to make themselves visible to the worldwide audience the World Cup draws. PUMA is one of these athletic brands that created an elaborate campaign to attract global audiences.

The World Cup has always been surrounded with ad campaigns from various brands trying to get a piece of the action, and this year is no exception. Some of the world’s top brands that have partnered with FIFA include Coca Cola, McDonald’s, VISA and SONY, to name just a few. In an event of such magnitude, athletic companies compete for center stage. Adidas is FIFA’s official partner but other companies have done their part to make themselves visible to the worldwide audience the World Cup draws. PUMA is one of these athletic brands that created an elaborate campaign to attract global audiences.

PUMA enlisted the collaboration of much sought-after artist Kehinde Wiley to create four original pieces of artwork featuring three of the best football players in Africa –Samuel Eto’o of Cameroon, John Mensah of Ghana, and Emmanuel Eboué of the Ivory Coast. The theme of this campaign was “African togetherness.” The company also created a unity uniform for African national teams.

PUMA has differentiated itself from the other athletic brands by relying on their long-established relationship with African football. Unlike the other brands, PUMA has had a presence in Africa for over a decade, sponsoring football teams in many African nations. Because the 2010 World Cup was held in Africa, creating this campaign was a clear fit for PUMA.

Additionally, the company introduced The PUMA Africa Collection, an apparel line inspired by the Kehinde Wiley portraits. And as part of their social responsibility efforts, PUMA is donating a portion of the Africa Unity Kit sales to programs in Africa that support diversity.

 With such efforts and immense amounts of cash that go into campaigns aimed at huge sporting events drawing even bigger audiences, as we are seeing in the World Cup, I can’t help but wonder how effective this particular sponsorship is in terms of revenue. It is clear that supporting a social cause, like the one PUMA is doing with diversity programs in Africa, is viewed positively by the consumer; but does this actually translate into dollars for the company? Will consumers buy the Kehinde Wiley-inspired items because of the “African togetherness” theme this campaign communicates or simply because the styles are appealing to the consumer? Or is it really just FIFA fever that is driving consumers out to their favorite sporting goods stores to buy World Cup apparel? 

I encourage everyone to chime in. From a marketing perspective, do you think these types of sponsorships really bring in big money for a brand or are other factors playing a role? Have you purchased World Cup apparel? Why? Do you support one brand over the other? Are social responsibility efforts important in your purchasing decisions? Or did you just like the style, regardless of the brand or the company’s support for socially responsible causes? 

If you’d like to see the portraits, merchandise, and making-of videos of PUMA’s campaign visit: http://africa.puma.com.

2 Responses to “FIFA Fever: Athletic brands take front stage”

  1. Janet Bednarz says:
    July 4, 2010 at 2:47 pm

    Lorena – This is a true confession of a born-in-America Baby Boomer: the World Cup is barely on my radar screen. My brother-in-law is from Spain, and every four years he rattles the chains of his provincial in-laws to get with the World Cup program! But we barely do. I keep an eye on the headlines to see how Spain is doing – but that’s about it. So…I have not purchased World Cup apparel.

    I do pay some attention, however, to the socially responsible actions of sports apparel brands. For example, I avoid Nike products because a number of years ago they were exposed for engaging in exploitive sweatshop practices in oversees manufacturing facilities. Their continued endorsement of Tiger Woods as a Nike spokesperson has alienated me even further.

    Patagonia, on the other hand, is an excellent example of being an environmentally and socially responsible business, so I try to buy their sports gear when I can.

    I like what PUMA is doing in Africa. Will it give them a good return on investment? Probably not with American-born Baby Boomers like me. But perhaps yes given the rich diversity of World Cup enthusiasts around the globe.

  2. Lorena Leonard says:
    July 6, 2010 at 8:58 am

    Janet, thanks for your message… your point of view is quite interesting! I wasn’t aware of Nike’s involvement in sweatshops and I’m glad you brought that up. I don’t necessarily lend all of my support to a particular brand because of their social responsibility efforts but it does help. However, I am appalled by companies that are involved in immoral manufacturing practices and I try to boycott these -such as Guess, whom I’ve been boycotting since the 90’s for having children in sweatshops in Central America.

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18 June 2010

Can You See the Lite?

by Rocky Prozeller

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All posts by Rocky Prozeller

Friday features the most welcomed of workweek traditions, Happy Hour; a simple sip of suds revs up the relaxation regime as we brew a better vibe. So which beer-top will you pop?

Out with a new campaign, Miller Lite is making a bid for you to buy their brew. Their advertising recipe offers a bit of beer-battering, with a series of spots featuring a frisky bartender belittling men as boys for their willingness to accept any light beer — pulling punches with overplayed ‘computer bag/carryall-as-purse’ lines, ‘lose-the-skirt’ statements and the like. The givers of ‘Great Taste, Less Filling’ have gone aggressive, challenging would-be chuggers to ‘man-up’ and have a Miller Lite.

Friday features the most welcomed of workweek traditions, Happy Hour; a simple sip of suds revs up the relaxation regime as we brew a better vibe. So which beer-top will you pop?

Out with a new campaign, Miller Lite is making a bid for you to buy their brew. Their advertising recipe offers a bit of beer-battering, with a series of spots featuring a frisky bartender belittling men as boys for their willingness to accept any light beer — pulling punches with overplayed ‘computer bag/carryall-as-purse’ lines, ‘lose-the-skirt’ statements and the like. The givers of ‘Great Taste, Less Filling’ have gone aggressive, challenging would-be chuggers to ‘man-up’ and have a Miller Lite.

At the other end of the cooler, Heineken Light is looking for the same segment of sip seekers, but with a dramatically different design. Their commercials cover a pair of 30-something pals at a Florida retirement community, raking in lessons on life from their elders. An education earned through experience is shared in a series of chat sessions, serving up a glass of appreciation for the classically cool; those handing down the hops help inspire future brewmasters to ‘See The Light.’ Heineken Light is never mentioned outright, just coyly covered by a couple of clips of camera work.

The difference is degradation versus aspiration. Light (and/or Lite) beers serve their purpose, simpler on the stomach and efficient space savers; but few beer buyers (particularly the guys both brewers are going after) define themselves, or more to the point, their manhood, by way of light beer. The context Miller Lite has created, testing testosterone levels by goading guys, falls flat; while Heineken helps itself by giving men the means to elevate their game — the difference is focusing on what we hope to be, rather than what we are not. It’s bottoms up. 

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As always, a beat to help you break for the weekend in search of your own brouhaha; be sure to raise a mug in honor of the men you define as Dad!

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