Brand as mythology December 11, 2006
Posted by David Kaye in : Uncategorized, Marketing , 2 commentsNice post from Seth, which struck a chord after my recent paean to Pinkberry: great brands are stories, and stories form around them. It’s happening for that little frozen yoghurt vendor right now.
How To Lose Friends And Alienate People: Sony Edition
Posted by David Kaye in : Marketing , add a comment
Check out this genius example of how not to do viral marketing.
Step 1: Hire a “consumer activation” agency (shudder) to put up a fake blog extolling the virtues of your lagging handheld gaming device.
Step 2: Fill your blog with witless fake amateur video footage.
Step 3: Get outed because your marketing agency forgot to hide the domain registration details.
Step 4: Watch your blog fill up with hundreds of derisive comments, and bask in the ridicule of every major gaming blog.
You have to wonder why big companies with a lot of brand equity to lose do this kind of thing. Particularly when there are so many ways to do it right.
Seth Godin’s Stupid Idea December 1, 2006
Posted by David Kaye in : Product Development , 17 comments
I enjoy reading Seth Godin, I really do. He has a knack for saying sensible things in a fresh and engaging way.
This idea of his, though, is completely inane:
What we need is a centralized captcha server that everyone can use for free. And how would it be monetized, you ask?
Easy. Logos.
It might be for soup or a server or an airline…
Type the brand you see above, please.
Which is great, except that a system like that could be so easily gamed that it would be rendered entirely pointless. Brand logos are supposed to be easy to recognize, which is the complete opposite of what a captcha image should be.
You might be able to up its reliability by distorting the hell out of the logo in question, but I don’t see thousands of marketing managers scrambling to take up that opportunity, do you?
