Filed under: 1 | Tags: brand rankings, branding, Cisco, IBM, intel, Interbrand, Marlboro, McDonalds, Nokia, Samsung, social media, Sysomos, Toyota
Agencies are always making up rankings to try and get noticed. So when I saw the Sysomos ‘Top Brands by Social Media Presence’ I thought hey, anyone could’ve counted up the number of social media mentions brands get, what’s so special?
But wait…here’s something a bit more interesting.
- The top-scoring brands for positive reactions are in green, negative reactions in red. (See the Sysomos page for actual rankings.)
They’ve done an additional ranking using their ‘sentiment engine’ (an accurate name but odd image) which analyses whether the mentions are positive or negative from their context.
It’s interesting to note that all of the highest scoring positive mentions are related to electronics – due to review sites perhaps? More surprising then that Apple and Google, the top two from the mentions rankings and general favourites, don’t feature in the sentiment top 5.
It’s also unclear whether positive and negative mentions could cancel each other out or whether they were separate scales.
Do you think it’s accurate?
Filed under: 1 | Tags: branding, business, Coles, corporate identity, Design, Hulsbosch, strategy, Woolworths
It’s becoming a game of ‘spot the difference’.
There’s some mentality that the moment your main competitor does something, you’ve got to do what they did.
When that something is ‘make lots of money and use it to completely change the layout of their stores’, it’s a bit more difficult.
One, it’s expensive. Two, they’re going to have a massive headstart on you.
So sometime when Woolworths was having their consultation with Hans Hulsbosch and started rolling out their new corporate identity, Coles was having a chat (with McKinsey, if the rumours are true) about its own identity crisis.
Lo and behold, a new store layout!
This humble observer would like to present to you what’s new, what looks suspiciously similar and where Coles might be breaking from the mould.
In the top ten of ‘times I have felt very Asian’ would have to be when I pointed out to a friend that her brand new iPhone did not have the appropriate infrastructure to support dangly things**.
Not a great omission, you’d think.
That is, until everyone at the table gets their iPhone out, compares them, and then can’t figure out which is which.
Now iPhones come in four colours; Blackest Black, Whitest White, Covered and Heavily Smudged. Three out of those four don’t look very good (which is half the point of having an iPhone). This means that there is a proliferation of black iPhones with very little external recognisability.
How about an app that tells you which one's yours? It could scan the fingerprint smudges...
For a company driven by good design, this should have come up as a potential problem. Currently about a third of my friends either already have an iPhone or are about to buy one. Not to mention the iTouch, which is essentially the iPhone except not a phone.
Macbooks are not much easier to recognise, unless one defaces that clean surface with stickers.
So far the only Mac product with any sort of external self-expression is the iPod Nano. Notably the addition of colour has not reduced the iconic status of the device.
True, the simplicity of Apple products has been touted as allowing them to be for anyone as ‘they can be whatever you want them to be’. But the practical issue remains.
So for the next iPhone, please Apple…we don’t care about copy/paste, turn that design genius to identification!
**As this post’s token irony, the iPhone doesn’t support Asian language input either.
Filed under: 1 | Tags: Black Eyed Peas, branding, I've got a feeling, product placement
For years hardcore Black Eyed Peas fans have been repeating that litany of the musical world; “I liked their earlier stuff better”
But the latest track ‘I’ve got a feeling’ hasn’t just caved to the electro phenomenon, it’s also clearly sold some advertising space.
I count five products, how about you?
Reminds me of a conversation with Age about American Apparel…similarly, BEP started out with niche appeal to a few of the ‘cool kids’, and rode the wave when their style became mainstream. Now that their style is no longer dominant, should they retain their roots or face tough competition in trying to trend-hop?
Filed under: 1 | Tags: branding, CSR, employer branding, gen y, Generation Y, marketing, recruitment
PR is lovely. It allows companies to make newsflashes of ‘insight’ into topics ‘we have little to no understanding of’ (ie. Gen Y**) and promote themselves in the process.
Recent example: Morgan Stanley’s report by a 15 year old intern on why teenagers don’t use Twitter.
Let’s just ignore the fact that I’ve seen umpteen posts saying exactly the same thing from ‘Gen Y’ blogs. I think a more sensational headline might have been ’15 year old interns handling affairs of global financial management company’.
Like I said, PR is lovely.
This brings me to my original question: does Gen Y really look for CSR when choosing an employer?
…because according to headlines from several large companies, this is a key requirement tabled by ‘Gen Y’ in interviews.
Is this really true or just a marketing stunt?
- It allows the company to grab a headline
- It makes students think that if everyone else is aware of it maybe they should be too
- A further 250 words can be devoted to the company’s CSR efforts
[Let us note at this point that just because a story has been used for marketing purposes, it is not necessarily made up – the Morgan Stanley case demonstrates this.]
However, as a blanket statement, I don’t think you can say that ‘Gen Y’ feels CSR is important in an employer.
Rants on the general nature of the term ‘Gen Y’ aside, at the moment those just graduating or in junior roles are mostly just glad to GET a job. Many will not have the option to ‘choose’ their employer, and they will rank pay and job description higher than CSR in importance. It only comes into play where all else is equal. (Not that it’s so black and white – it’s usually that we like the brand more from the impression we get.)
This is something we’ve seen from before the GFC, though. Unethical corporate behaviour can be a disincentive, but proactive CSR strategies mostly only aid HR in forming company culture.
Not to say that CSR is not important – as a generation we are more aware of environmental issues hearing about a brand doing ‘good things’ can leave us with a better feeling.
But from talking to a variety of people, there is only a select group to whom CSR is very important. They’re generally highly educated, grew up with volunteer work or come from a religious educational background. Caring about issues like sustainability or human rights often coincides with a dedication to studies and long-term results. If they form part of your target market for candidates then your employer brand will benefit from an extensive CSR program.
Me personally? I wouldn’t feel comfortable working for an unethical employer and would much prefer to go for a job where I have the opportunity to continue making an impact on causes I believe in. Quite a few friends are the same. But I know we’re definitely not the majority.
**Irony fully intended.
I like to help people. Generally speaking.
So I note that some search engine cleverly delivered someone to this blog four times with the phrase:
“can you patent brand image”
I find this slightly confusing as I’m reasonably sure that I’ve never discussed patents on this blog. However, in response:
No, you can’t.
Patents are used to protect inventions, ie. product design. FYI, they usually need to take an ‘inventive step’ to solve a problem. ‘Inventive step’ means ‘not obvious’. (read: at discretion of the judge) Once you’ve patented an invention you can take claims against people trying to register similar ideas.
What you probably want is a trademark.
This allows you to protect phrases, made-up words, images…basically all of your branding. Other people can register similar trademarks, as long as it won’t be deceptive.
Assuming you find me again, hope that helps. Of course, this is ridiculously simplified and you should look for your country’s IP authority website at the very least.
Filed under: 1 | Tags: branding, carbon credits, Carbon Planet, CSR, culture, gen y, strategy
Too often, when I ask representatives of corporations (in the wide-eyed innocent manner only a prospective graduate can achieve) what their CSR program is the answer is a resounding “Errr…”
This is most disappointing when one of the key parts of their marketing pitch to ‘Gen Y’ is that they are socially responsible.
I’d like to look at this from a branding and strategy perspective.
If one of your reps didn’t know about one of the other ‘five basic tenets’ of your business, say, client service, you’d fire them on the spot.
The best way to communicate the values that your company wants to represent are through the actions of the people that make it up. Increasingly, due to societal pressure, companies are throwing ‘the community’ on a list of things they value. But how can staff embody company values if they don’t even understand them?
As more and more companies get on the bandwagon, CSR will shift to being a hygeine factor and the motivation will have to come from interesting concepts and authentic execution.
If you are going to go for CSR programs, it’s NOT just a ‘role’ that you can palm off to one person in corporate communications. It’s not a profession, it’s not a function. It’s part of company culture.
Otherwise, you end up with the situation I described earlier. For the students you’re trying to attract who care about CSR and want to know you’re doing it, that would be an ‘epic fail’ (to use ‘Gen Y’ speak).
All it takes (imho) is training and dialogue. This is why I’d like to see companies like Carbon Planet not just offering carbon credits and consultation but also training for entire organisations.
Make sure that your employees have an idea of what your company is doing. (Especially if you’re in an ‘evil’ industry like oil.) Better yet, an understanding. The feeling that through little extra personal effort they’re part of an organisation which is helping the community gives employees something to feel good about.
At the very least, please, brief them before sending them out to represent your company.
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I’d like to add something for evangelists of CSR: it’s important to remember that when you’re talking to people outside of the CSR community the things that are obvious to you may not to be obvious to them.
It’s a constant sales pitch. You need to convince them in a way that doesn’t make them hate you.
Sweeping ‘obviously we must do this’ statements, absolute refusal to discuss other points of view, spam; they’re annoying and they give others who don’t want to listen the perfect excuse to brush you off.
If you’re going to call for action, how you’re communicating is just important as what you’re communicating.
Filed under: 1 | Tags: branding, Christian Lacroix, Green Day, Lacroix, luxury brands, Million Dollar Traders, My Chemical Romance, NGOs, recession, SBS, vlogging, wikipedia
There occasionally comes a day when you have too many things to say to make a coherent blog post…
So here’s news, ironic commentary and observations from the last week.
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Looking forward to doing my uni readings for this week – the handouts include a lovely summary courtesy of Wikipedia. Saves on licensing costs. Although the academic indecency doesn’t stop there – a sample project that gained high marks references an essay from the critically reviewed ‘echeat.com‘.
I LOVE university.
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Christian Lacroix has been the first fashion house of cards to fall, declaring insolvency. When you’re not a super-haute house with waiting lists filled with bourgeosie (like Hermes), releasing a movie (a la Chanel) or distributing luxury to the masses (Louis Vuitton) a recession is dangerous ground.
Lacroix is one of the youngest of the haute couture houses, but has gained a lot of fame for its costume designing. Problem is, high art is not always profitable. Personally, I think the brand has a disjointed identity – haute couture and collaborations with Avon? Hmmm…
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The producers of Million Dollar Traders are one of the few who actually benefited from the bear market. When they put 8 ‘normal’ people into a hedge fund environment and gave them money to invest they couldn’t have known that a few weeks in the markets would crash. What started off as a kinda interesting concept is now a fascinating story of novice traders learning in a crisis. Tip 1: Don’t say ‘buy’ when you mean ‘sell’…
It’s a BBC production but you can catch it on SBS this Tuesday.
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So far the only likely suspect not to have taken advantage of the recent ‘stimulation package’ innuendo is AMI’s ad agency.
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Further to my post about video as a storytelling medium for NGOs, have stumbled on Lights. Camera. Help.
The annual film festival is giving NGOs an opportunity to submit videos telling their story, with recognition for the best films and most worthy causes. Check it.
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Enfin, is it just me or is the new Green Day album cover strangely reminiscent of My Chemical Romance circa 2003?
the grass is greener on the internet 