Facebook revisited

I recently posted a piece speculating what floatation might mean for Facebook. At that time my view was that the brand's biggest asset was its followers, many of whom had an irrational, emotional attachment. Many of these fans were likely to want a slice of the business in the same way that football fans buy...

What will flotation mean for the Facebook brand?

IPOs change businesses. Imperatives and pressures change; new cash facilitates new initiatives. This means new strategic business models are called for that inevitably impact upon the brand. We can look at the example of Google: it was conceived as a simple search engine, and a very successful one, but its growth was based upon the...

Is it time to bring behaviourism back into strategies?

In the golden age of 1950's advertising, the Mad Men days, one of the driving disciplines was psychology. It was the new kid on the marketing block, driven by two factors. Firstly, there was the development of sophisticated measurement techniques. This grew out of academic research methods and was translated into the new discipline of...

Is there an ideal number of syllables for a social media brand?

There has been an explosion of brand names in the social network sector and though they differ widely there are some underlying similarities. I was working on a new brand project in the social arena and was assembling a list of competitive companies which the new brand needed to stand alongside. Looking at this wide...

Brand value is not about control of social media.

I was attending a digital marketing conference last week and I heard a speaker talking about social media say, and I quote, 'The value of a brand is diminished because we, marketers, have less control.' That's right - I did a double-take too, but he repeated the same incendiary statement. I struggled to understand what...

Plenty of bing

If I asked you to make a list of the new, groundbreaking brands about to send shockwaves around the web, I doubt that 'bing' will be among the top ten. Which is a shame for Microsoft with their $2bn investment so far. But it raises one of the fundamental brand issues - differentiation. Search has...

Ten Brand New Year resolutions

What kind of a year will 2010 be for brands? Well, 2009 was quite up and down and we seemed to be rocked by events both economical and commercial, so I guess one watchword for 2010 must be to take as much control for the destinies of our brands as we can. So here are...

Facebook – the big brand arena

"Overwhelming majority of big US brands are on Facebook by Dan Leahul, Brand Republic 10-Aug-09, 09:15" Having worked for many major US brands, I find this article fascinating. For me,  Facebook is a powerful tool for brands and as the above article states many major brands are having incredible success - but it can also be...

Beware of digging traps for your own brand.

A lesson for brand stewards everywhere... This YouTube clip  has been well viewed, but when Dave Carroll and his band suffered at the hands of United's baggage handlers, and customer service were unhelpful and denied the claim for a damaged Taylor guitar, Dave took matters into his own hands and produced his answer on YouTube....

Sorry my brand won’t be in today… it’s down with a virus

A client of mine has a horror of any social Internet activity and was rocked to his core when his new ad turned up on Youtube and went viral. There was nothing bad or contentious and I would have been quite pleased, but his problem with this was the 'lack of control'. Of course that...