Posts Tagged ‘brand-scientist’

02.28.11

Samsung may well be Samsunk!

I was read­ing with inter­est recently that Sam­sung Elec­tron­ics has taken the wraps off a new, larger ver­sion of its pop­u­lar iPad rival, the Galaxy Tab. The Aus­tralian Finan­cial Review was sug­gest­ing that many see it as the biggest chal­lenge yet to Apple’s dom­i­nance in tablet com­put­ers. It was this com­ment that really got my atten­tion, because it was sug­gest­ing to me that for the Galaxy Tab to be com­pet­i­tive it must have some real ‘func­tional smarts’ about it.
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01.28.11

Brand Spin Swamps Vitamin Waters

A recent report by CHOICE in Aus­tralia has once again high­lighted the dif­fi­cult road that brand own­ers have when they have a prod­uct with legit­i­mate health claims. The dif­fi­culty does not reside with artic­u­lat­ing the health claim, rather with whether tar­get con­sumers will believe the claims. This is because con­sumers a bom­barded with so many bull­shit claims, and there is no bet­ter exam­ple than the vitamin/nutrient water category.

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01.14.11

The Suncorp brand can turn adversity to advantage

South-east Queens­land remains in cri­sis with thou­sands of homes and busi­nesses inun­dated by ris­ing flood­wa­ters. As of 13/1 the death toll from three weeks of heavy rain and flood­ing has reached 22, with more than 40 peo­ple still missing.

When the floods even­tu­ally ease and the peo­ple of Queens­land who have been impacted attempt to res­ur­rect their lives, their insur­ance com­pa­nies are going to loom large. Already some of these insur­ance com­pany brands are declar­ing their hand as to how they are likely to respond, and unfor­tu­nately for many Queens­lan­ders they won’t be turn­ing up at the door step with any form of ex-gratia pay­ments. It has been reported that more than half of all insured homes in Queens­land are not cov­ered for flood dam­age. In fact most home and con­tents insur­ance poli­cies in Aus­tralia exclude cover for flood damage.

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11.19.10

The Power of Sampling for your Brand

We are always remind­ing clients in the food and bev­er­age indus­tries of the power of sam­pling when they have a new prod­uct on the mar­ket. Get peo­ple to expe­ri­ence your prod­uct, never die won­der­ing. It does not mat­ter how good your food or bev­er­age adver­tise­ment may be, there is no com­par­i­son with allow­ing con­sumers to have the com­plete sen­sory expe­ri­ence. If you are sam­pling the right cus­tomers and you have a great prod­uct with the right level of dis­tri­b­u­tion, you have a high prob­a­bil­ity it will trans­late into sales.

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11.05.10

Coles: The Natural Food Brand?

Coles Super­mar­kets in Aus­tralia has for years sat back and watched its for­mi­da­ble com­peti­tor Wool­worths claim the mar­ket posi­tion­ing of being ‘The Fresh Food’ peo­ple. It is a posi­tion­ing line that is strongly recog­nised and recalled amongst con­sumers. In recent years they have suc­cess­ful rein­forced it with their revamped logo and weekly fresh pro­duce updates on National TV. At the same time Coles has really not owned any con­sis­tent posi­tion­ing. It has sim­ply been seen as play­ing sec­ond fid­dle to Woolworths.

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10.22.10

A Bold Brand Gesture

In an Aus­tralian rac­ing first, lead­ing online book­maker Sportsbet.com.au has declared the 2010 Cox Plate (to be run 23/10/2010) a one horse race and has paid out all bets total­ing more than $250,000 on the Bart Cum­mings trained – So You Think. The unprece­dented move sees pun­ters col­lect their win­nings an incred­i­ble five days before the world’s great­est Weight-for-Age race is run.  Sportsbet.com.au CEO Matt Tripp said he regarded So You Think as a cer­tainty.
 How­ever, given that most peo­ple on this planet think there are really very few cer­tain­ties in life, there is always a chance it won’t win, even if that is only the slimmest of pos­si­bil­i­ties, it is still a pos­si­bil­ity – so why pay?

Sports­bet are pay­ing sim­ply because Matt and his team are bet­ter brand builders than their com­peti­tors. They have an appetite for big bold ges­tures that stand out, because they are bril­liantly counter intu­itive. It is not the first time they have paid out before an event has been com­pleted. They did it ear­lier in the year with Tiger Woods after the sec­ond round in the Aus­tralian Open (he won!), and with the Tigers in Aussie Rules, where they paid out $150,000 to pun­ters, after about round 4 of a 22 round com­pe­ti­tion, who backed them to be wooden spoon­ers (to come last).

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09.24.10

Celebrate Brand Heritage

An endur­ing her­itage is a great way to claim authen­tic­ity when it comes to brand­ing. And in a coun­try as young as Aus­tralia if you can claim a 150 year her­itage you have some­thing worth cel­e­brat­ing from a brand per­spec­tive. And this is pre­cisely what Vic­to­rian win­ery Tah­bilk has been doing through­out 2010, cel­e­brat­ing an esteemed his­tory that dates back to 1860. There have been many activ­i­ties here in Aus­tralia and over­seas mar­kets and it was a great plea­sure a cou­ple of weeks ago to be invited, along with 300 other guests, to a mag­nif­i­cent birth­day din­ner at the glo­ri­ous Regent The­atre ball­room. It was a grace­ful and pas­sion­ate event, very in keep­ing with the char­ac­ter of the brand. Best of all it treated us to the delights of the brand with superbly matched food and wine combination’s. The 2002 Tah­bilk Marsanne com­pared to the 2009 Tah­bilk Marsanne. A 1999 Caber­net Sauvi­gnon com­pared with a 2004. Fac­tor in a cou­ple of dif­fer­ent styles of Shi­raz and hope­ful you get a lit­tle of the pic­ture. There is noth­ing quite like sit­ting down at a table and find­ing enough glass­ware for ten peo­ple being solely your respon­si­bil­ity for the evening. It was an evening of cel­e­bra­tion and sto­ry­telling wrapped up in the ulti­mate sen­sory brand journey.

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08.27.10

Nature’s 9 simple rules for business survival

The suc­cess of the Greens in last weeks Fed­eral elec­tion in Aus­tralia is a great reminder that mar­kets are not homoge­nous, that there are dif­fer­ent seg­ments with dif­fer­ent needs. The Greens have ended up with a National Sen­ate Vote of almost 13% and sur­prise, sur­prise, a con­trol­ling influ­ence on mat­ters that come before that House of Par­lia­ment. Throw in the inde­pen­dents who have also con­vinc­ingly won seats and you get fur­ther insight into the diverse mar­ket needs of an elec­torate. But seg­men­ta­tion is not the pur­pose of this blog, rather the degree to which the Greens have been ever present in Aus­tralia in recent weeks is a great reminder of nature and the Greens quest for eco­log­i­cal sus­tain­abil­ity – more specif­i­cally the lessons on offer for busi­ness, from nature.

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08.13.10

A very Heineken Brand Experience

What bet­ter way to claim your authen­tic­ity than to share your her­itage with cus­tomers in an inter­ac­tive and engag­ing man­ner. Let them play with your brand in a way that is both fun and infor­ma­tive. Claim your place in the cat­e­gory by shar­ing the highs and lows of your jour­ney. And if you hap­pen to do it from the ‘place’ of your ori­gins you add sig­nif­i­cantly to the authen­tic­ity of who you are and what you are about.

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07.16.10

Discovery, the new advertising for brands!

More and more brands are fore­go­ing the big chest beat­ing adver­tis­ing cam­paigns that attempt to broad­cast their pres­ence to the world. This is par­tic­u­larly the case for those wish­ing to posi­tion them­selves in the  cool end of the mar­ket. The onus is on savvy shop­pers to find them, par­tic­u­larly when it we are talk­ing fash­ion and bars. Cer­tainly this was our expe­ri­ence on a recent visit to Berlin.

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