Book Club

Brands are dead. Advertising no longer works. Weaned on TiVo, the Internet, and other emerging technologies, the short-attention-span generation has become immune to marketing. Consumers are “in control.” Or so we’re told.

In Buying In, New York Times Magazine “Consumed” columnist Rob Walker argues that this accepted wisdom misses a much more important and lasting cultural shift. As technology has created avenues for advertising anywhere and everywhere, people are embracing brands more than ever before–creating brands of their own and participating in marketing campaigns for their favorite brands in unprecedented ways. Increasingly, motivated consumers are pitching in to spread the gospel virally, whether by creating Internet video ads for Converse All Stars or becoming word-of-mouth “agents” touting products to friends and family on behalf of huge corporations. In the process, they–we–have begun to funnel cultural, political, and community activities through connections with brands.

Walker explores this changing cultural landscape–including a practice he calls “murketing,” blending the terms murky and marketing–by introducing us to the creative marketers, entrepreneurs, artists, and community organizers who have found a way to thrive within it. Using profiles of brands old and new, including Timberland, American Apparel, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Red Bull, iPod, and Livestrong, Walker demonstrates the ways in which buyers adopt products, not just as consumer choices, but as conscious expressions of their identities.

Part marketing primer, part work of cultural anthropology, Buying In reveals why now, more than ever, we are what we buy–and vice versa.

Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are

Wal-Mart Plans New Logo to Update Image

Part of Wal-Mart's continuing effort to update its once-dowdy image, the new logo for signs and building facades includes white letters on a burnt-orange background followed by a white starburst, according to an artist's rendering that the company filed recently with planning officials in Memphis, Tenn.

Wall Street Journal

Solution, or Mess? A Milk Jug for a Green Earth

The redesign of the gallon milk jug, experts say, is an example of the changes likely to play out in the American economy over the next two decades. In an era of soaring global demand and higher costs for energy and materials, virtually every aspect of the economy needs to be re-examined, they say, and many products must be redesigned for greater efficiency.

New York Times

Blood, Sweat and Tiers: Building Optimal Brand Identity Architectures

Certainly not all brands are relevant enough, nor all brand experiences rich enough, to extend to all tiers. Regardless, all ideal brand identity architectures effectively differentiate each brand offering while actually building on the brand’s integrity. In this article, we’ll show how it’s done by using two examples: the first is Lean Cuisine, an actual, established brand of frozen entrees, and Sunshine Grove, a fictional brand of orange juice created for illustrative purposes.

AIGA.org

Herbal Essences Case Study

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To find the right new, smaller target market for the brand, Arnold and her team turned to Clay Street, an immersion program for P&G managers to jump-start innovation. There, the team came up with a new target audience for the brand—Generation Y. "In the case of Gen Y, there really wasn't another hair-care brand that was really meeting their needs," says Lafley. "The question was: 'Can Herbal do it?'"

Business Week

2 Things In 1

Shoppers beware: Products shrink but prices stay the same

"Downsizing is nothing but a sneaky price increase," says Edgar Dworsky, former Massachusetts assistant attorney general in the Consumer Protection Division, now editor of Mouseprint.org, a consumer website. "I'm waiting to open a carton of eggs and see only 11."

It's not that bad, yet. But as packaged goods makers' costs rise, they eventually have just two choices: raise prices or put less stuff in the package. While most are trying a price boost first, a growing number are shrinking the contents of their packages — from Frito Lay's chips to Dial soap to Dreyer's ice cream.

USA Today

Making men feel sexy

“This was part of the promise, I guess, as we acquired Gillette, in how we would take this phenomenal equity that we’ve got and blow it out across multiple categories where P&G has got strengths,” he said while addressing the Wachovia Nantucket Equity Conference.

“We’ve got about 50 million men in North America who shave every day with Gillette. If we can get about 10 percent of those guys … to buy these adjacencies, we’ll hit our trial targets and I think build a very sizeable business.”

Cincinnati Enquirer

Book Club

Journalist Conley examines the implications of brand-centric marketing in an incisive investigation that illustrates how defenseless consumers are against advertising—on any given day, they are assaulted by 3,000 to 5,000 ads and branding stratagems that subtly dictate every aspect of their lives. Harnessing scientific innovations, branding has become increasing insidious—whether it is the Xbox audio logo or Southwest Airlines' incorporation of the fasten seatbelt sound in their marketing campaign—consumers are being conditioned to think in brands. Beyond ad creep and product placement in entertainment programming, viral and word of mouth (WOM) marketing now make even personal recommendations suspect. According to Conley, 1% of American children and 7% of mothers are compensated for participating in WOM marketing. Even social policy is being corrupted—the author asserts that public branding initiatives such as post-Katrina New Orleans' allocation of public funds toward refurbishing its Mardi Gras City image rather than addressing its safety issues shifts resources away from problem-solving in favor of perception. Conley's perspective on branding's encroachment into social areas is as alarming as it is stimulating.

OBD: Obsessive Branding Disorder: The Illusion of Business and the Business of Illusion

Razorfish shames its timesheet laggards

Avenue A/Razorfish is going all Hester Prynne 2.0 on them. Its HR department in New York has set up a flat-screen TV that flashes offenders’ photos with a message that reads, for example, “I haven’t done my timesheet in 3 weeks.”

AdFreak.com

Yves and Mitch's Excellent Venture

We're 30 people, and we've got a desire to stay small and close to our clients because that's where we add value. So Yves and I have built a machine for investment that allows us to diversify revenue. We've developed a three-pillared approach: One is what I'd call strategic engagement, which is long-term contracts with corporate clients like Coca-Cola or Johnson & Johnson. Another is civic projects, such as One Laptop Per Child, which we designed and branded because we feel the need to do good work. The third, slightly unusual pillar is true partnerships with the companies we work for.

Business Week

Unilever and P&G ease marketing fears

AG Lafley, chairman and chief executive of P&G, said: “Right now the plans are to spend about the same percentage of sales [on advertising as last year].” In particular, P&G would be increasing its communications in shops, where research said consumers were making more purchase decisions. “In a period of food price inflation, more of the shopping list is being decided in the store.”

Financial Times

Why Don't Managers Think Deeply?

In their new book, Marketing Metaphoria, Gerald and Lindsay Zaltman suggest some answers to the questions. In decrying the lack of what they call "deep thinking" among managers and especially those responsible for marketing, they suggest some things that get in its way. Among them are: (1) reluctance to take risk, especially when short-term performance is at stake, (2) the fear of disruption resulting from "thinking differently and deeply," (3) the potential psychological cost of changing one's mind resulting from deep thinking, and (4) the lack of information providing deep insights on which to base deep thinking.

According to the Zaltmans, while nearly all research techniques commonly used today probe humans only at their conscious level, the subconscious (offering deep insights) really determines behavior, and that explains why humans don't behave as they say they will, whether in buying or other behaviors. As a result, for example, four in five product introductions perform below expectations.

Harvard Business Review

Merger Leads to Extended Results

I always wondered what the combination of European sensitivity, American innovation, and Asia's pioneering spirit would look like. And, unfortunately, now I know: Purple Helvetica Extended.

Brand New

The New Direction of Design

IDSA’s executive director talks design

The Generation Y Hotel

These new travelers are far more adventurous, far more curious and far more tech-focused than their parents. "They're interested in things that are a lot less traditional, things that have much greater personality and the experiences that are a little less predictable," says Yesawich, "which is why design has become the primary basis of differentiation for these lifestyle hotels. They don't want stuff that looks like it was all shipped out of the same warehouse in North Carolina."

Time Magazine

What's That You've Found?

Indexed

Packagers Put Costs On Consumer's Backs

“Behavior is quickly changing in the packaging sector, as an unprecedented surge in energy costs has translated into massive price increases,” said Wachovia Capital Markets analyst Ghansham Panjabi.

Forbes

Snipers

Pulp Branding

Merger brings new CEO to Cincinnati's Fisher Design

The Walnut Hills agency combined with LiBrandi Communications Group, a 3-year-old firm founded by former LPK brand strategist Bryan LiBrandi. The merger will add 15 clients with bookings of $500,000 and three design experts, for a combined 38 employees and roughly 30 clients. Fisher declined to provide details of the combined firm's bookings, as well as specifics on the merger agreement.

Business Courier of Cincinnati

Coke (Yes, Coke) Wins First Design Grand Prix

"It was simply the best piece of work in the entire collection," said Rodney Fitch, head of the design jury and chairman-CEO of Fitch, a design company. Jurors also cited as a factor in the win that the work was done on behalf of a major multinational brand, and said the streamlined new brand identity represented the "iconization of a brand's heritage."

Ad Age

Can Hotshot Ad Guy Alex Bogusky Make Microsoft Cool?

Now Crispin has been handed perhaps its biggest challenge to date: Microsoft. The tech giant stunned the ad world in March when it passed over safer choices like Fallon, JWT, and its agency of record, McCann Worldgroup, and awarded its new $300 million consumer-branding campaign to Crispin. It was an act of courage or desperation, depending on whom you ask.

Fast Company

P&G Names New Global Beauty Chief

Mr. Shirley, 51, becomes vice chairman-global beauty and grooming on July 1, overseeing both the Gillette business from which he joined P&G in 2005 and the rest of P&G's beauty business. The post has been unoccupied since Susan Arnold became president-global business units last year.

Ad Age

Beloved Characters as Reimagined for the 21st Century

An unusually large number of classic characters for children are being freshened up and reintroduced — on store shelves, on the Internet and on television screens — as their corporate owners try to cater to parents’ nostalgia and children’s YouTube-era sensibilities. Adding momentum is a retail sector hoping to find refuge from a rough economy in the tried and true.

New York Times

Hummer Bummer: GM Wants Out of Guzzler Game

But for now, Hummer is a liability for GM. It's hard to sell, and it's hurting GM's chances of increasing its credibility as a green player. Last week, for example, when GM was announced as the "exclusive automobile sponsor" of Discovery Communications' new green channel, The New York Times said this might "raise eyebrows" given that GM makes Hummer.

Ad Age

Design firm chooses home

The new company, Brandimage - Desgrippes & Laga, will have double the revenues, double the clients, double the offices and double the employees as the old Laga.

Cincinnati Enquirer

Difficult is Worth Doing

Werbach Sells Out to Saatchi

This morning Werbach announced that his San Francisco sustainability consultancy, Act Now, has been scooped up by none other than the lovemark-man himself: Saatchi & Saatchi's Kevin Roberts. The new company, called Saatchi & Saatchi S, in which Werbach will remain CEO, plans on bringing sustainability to the ad agency's clients, which include A-listers like P&G, Toyota, and Visa.

Fast Company

These Games Brought to You by . . .

But let’s be honest here: if the real point of sponsorship is to use the Olympics to reach potential customers — of which China has a staggering 1.3 billion — it’s hard to see what Adidas gets for its $100 million (besides a black eye in the West for refusing to speak out on Tibet). Nike and Li-Ning will be every bit as ubiquitous as Adidas. So I can’t say I was surprised when I heard, during my recent trip to China, whispers from marketing experts that expressed what no one dares say out loud: Olympic sponsorships may not be worth it.

New York Times