Archive for the ‘Brand Voice’ Category

11.25.11

Ex-wife Bitter — the Power of a Brilliant Brand Name

packaging design agencyNothing’s Colder than an Ex.
The Truly Deeply brand team were enjoy­ing a Fri­day arvo pub lunch up at The Claren­don a cou­ple of weeks ago when one of our guys spot­ted a point of sale promo for Ex-wife Bit­ter. The brand name was so bril­liant, at first impres­sion we assumed it to be a made-up brand. But we were delighted to dis­cover there really is a beer brand called Ex-wife bit­ter, and the brand lan­guage just got bet­ter with the tag line of ‘nothing’s colder than an ex’.

As we enjoyed our chicken par­mas and pub steak san­gas, we reflected on the brand build­ing power of an extra­or­di­nary brand name. Few brand names cre­ate the mem­o­rable talk-ability as inspired as Ex-wife Bit­ter, and for a con­sumer brand like a beer, talk-ability goes a long way to launch­ing a new brand and build­ing mar­ket share. Espe­cially for small brands lack­ing sub­stan­tial mar­ket­ing bud­gets, the abil­ity to cre­ate a pow­er­ful brand asset like a name with this much kick is an oppor­tu­nity to really punch above your weight. In the mod­ern blokey world that is the major­ity of the mar­ket for beer brands this piece of inspired brand nam­ing was always going to be a winner.

Dave Ansett, Bran­da­men­tal­ist
Cre­ator of Bril­liant Brand Names, not ex-wives
For monthly updates of our think­ing, click here to receive our free Brand Newsletter

11.24.11

Australian airline Qantas jumps out of the brand frying pan into the fire

social media brand agency

A Case Study of the Pit­falls of Brand­ing with Social Media
Iconic Aus­tralian air­line Qan­tas can’t seem to do any­thing right just now. Hot on the heels of ground­ing the air­line to break-up an indus­trial dis­pute and leav­ing thou­sands of irate cus­tomers in the lurch, Qan­tas came up with a nice lit­tle social media cam­paign idea to help restore its bat­tered rep­u­ta­tion. The thing so many brands con­tinue to fail to grasp is that social media is no free kick. As a chan­nel for com­mu­ni­cat­ing with cus­tomers, social media inter­ac­tions fol­low the same rules as every other human inter­ac­tion. If it seems like a dumb thing to say to your cus­tomer face-to-face, then it’s going to seem just as dumb in social media, only the dam­age can be a million-fold greater.

Read the rest of this entry »

11.23.11

Omni-channel retailing — A brand management mindset that is critical

We have been bang­ing on for a while about the need for retail­ers to move beyond see­ing them­selves as chan­nel spe­cific mar­keters. They need to develop an inte­grated mind­set that moves beyond see­ing online and bricks and mor­tar offers as being mutu­ally exclu­sive. Like­wise they need to stop see­ing dig­i­tal tech­nol­ogy as the domain of online mar­keters only. The rules have been re-written, with the empha­sis being on imag­i­na­tively engag­ing with cus­tomers in what­ever for­mat matches their needs. Tech­nol­ogy, per­sonal ser­vice, phys­i­cal or vir­tual, the new game is sim­ply wow the customer.

Read the rest of this entry »

11.22.11

Movember — a Not for Profit Brand with Craft and Pride

not for profit brands

When it Comes to Brand, few Not-for-Profits Really Hit the Mark.
As a rule, not-for-profit organ­i­sa­tions fall short of the mark when it comes to sophis­ti­cated brand devel­op­ment. Given the hugely com­pet­i­tive envi­ron­ment they play in, a clearly dif­fer­en­ti­ated brand propo­si­tion pro­vides a crit­i­cal plat­form on which to build an effec­tive brand. Then there are the organ­i­sa­tions whose brands oper­ate on another level alto­gether. These brands don’t see them­selves as part of an unso­phis­ti­cated mar­ket, but have a sense of who they are and how they’re unique within their very DNA. For these organ­i­sa­tions con­nect with their mar­ket at the level all great brands do, and as a result, are the real bright lights in this category.

Read the rest of this entry »

11.21.11

Benetton — Brand Building on a Higher Purpose

branding agency Melbourne

Benet­ton Unhate Cam­paign Fea­tures Kiss­ing World Lead­ers
If there was ever any doubt of the effec­tive­ness a pow­er­ful image can have in build­ing a brand, the lat­est visual brand cam­paign for Benet­ton makes a most com­pelling point. Benet­ton have long been loved for build­ing a brand around the higher themes of com­pas­sion­ate thought and tol­er­ance. In the fash­ion world of young, sex­ual and anorexia dri­ven visual lan­guage, the Benet­ton brand has always tra­versed the high road. In choos­ing this path, Benet­ton have built many cam­paigns around a con­tentious thought, illus­trated by a pow­er­ful image.

Read the rest of this entry »

11.16.11

God, Scandals and Brand Narratives

For those of us play­ing in the brand space, we have been very well drilled over recent years to the need to cre­ate com­pelling brand nar­ra­tives. The need to become mas­ters at the art of sto­ry­telling. To cap­ti­vate, enthrall and evoca­tively strike such  an emo­tional blow that our tar­get mar­ket is left spell bound and con­nected for ever.

We have for months also been hear­ing how the cur­rent Labour Party in Aus­tralia lacks a com­pelling nar­ra­tive. Even the for­mer PM Paul Keat­ing has been offer­ing assis­tance. A com­plex task for sure and one that will judged in due course at the next elec­tion. How­ever, one call for bet­ter sto­ry­telling that recently caught my atten­tion was the sug­ges­tion by Car­di­nal Gian­franco Ravasi, as reported in Age 8/11/11,  that ser­mons deliv­ered by Roman Catholic priests are often painfully ‘grey and dull’ and need to be livened up with the ‘scan­dal’ con­tained within the Bible. He said, and a great reminder for all, (sorry about this grey, dull, scan­dalous free blog) that …’the advent of tele­vised and com­put­erised infor­ma­tion requires us to be com­pelling and tren­chant, to cut to the heart of the mat­ter, resort to nar­ra­tives and colour.’ Read the rest of this entry »

11.15.11

The Art of Crafting the right Brand Personality

Craft­ing the Right Per­son­al­ity for your Brand.
More and more brands are con­cen­trat­ing on devel­op­ing a sense of per­son­al­ity in order to con­nect with their mar­ket. But many end-up with a sim­i­lar, whim­si­cal style. Cre­at­ing a unique per­son­al­ity that is on-brand is not always easy to do.

Read the rest of this entry »

11.09.11

The new B in branding: B Corporation

This year I had the plea­sure of a 2 month sab­bat­i­cal in Europe, with a com­bi­na­tion of trav­el­ling and cocoon­ing and read­ing a big pile of busi­ness and brand writ­ing. One thing that struck me was that from a brand per­spec­tive the time of the socially respon­si­ble com­pany has well and truly arrived. Cor­po­rate cit­i­zen­ship was a re-occurring theme across so many books that I explored. One telling fac­tor was the weight of writ­ing mar­ket­ing guru Philip Kotler, in his new book Mar­ket­ing 3.0, devoted to val­ues dri­ven busi­ness mod­els. In the early 90’s I remem­ber sub­ject­ing my MBA stu­dents to Kotler’s mar­ket­ing text, which was bril­liantly dense in sub­ject mat­ter per­tain­ing to the 4 P’s, but lack­ing any­thing like the spir­i­tual and noble essence of his cur­rent writ­ings. It was an amaz­ing awak­en­ing for me to wit­ness such a shift in empha­sis from a doyen of the mar­ket­ing fra­ter­nity. It reaf­firmed what one has been sens­ing is play­ing out in many mar­ket categories.

Read the rest of this entry »

11.02.11

Brand Management: Billabong controlling its destiny

Surf­ing brand Bill­abong Inter­na­tional is mov­ing down stream into retail to bet­ter con­trol how its prod­ucts are sold. An increas­ing trend amongst the large retail chains is to increase the pro­por­tion of mer­chan­dise they sell under their own brands. Brands like Bill­abong can either cop it sweet and sit back and let their share of floor space and sales decline or they can take steps to con­trol their own des­tiny. It is pleas­ing to see that Bill­abong has opted for the lat­ter. Bill­abong is increas­ingly seek­ing to make retail acqui­si­tions as a way of gain­ing greater con­trol to their route to mar­ket. Last year they acquired the Cal­i­for­nia based RVCA brand,  the West 49 retail chain in Canada, Surf Dive’n’ Ski  and Jetty Surf in Aus­tralia. Like­wise Bill­abong is invest­ing to build its online sales, which cur­rently makes up 3% of their revenue.

Read the rest of this entry »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »