How Do You Like Your Cougher?

Check out www.ricolathanksamillion.com/ and see how a little brand can stand out with a smart promotion. No movie tie-in or celebrity pitchman. Just a simple, relevant way to get their brand to be spread. Nice work somebody.

My Agency Can Beat Your Agency

The "rankings" are out on Promo's web site.

Loved, Hated But Never Ignored

Can I get an AMEN? I just stumbled across a shit load of links to blogs and sites that must have read my mind.

All point to the same idea: the biggest risk is no risk.

The best think is that many site great quantifiable examples. Numbers, you suits! Numbers.

Creating Controversy - Promotional Products Blog
"Nobody attracted attention by playing it safe.  Marketing, especially for small businesses, is about risk.  You're taking a risk being a small business." 

Be brave or go home - Creating Passionate Users
"Creating passionate users is NOT about finding ways to make everyone like you. It's about finding ways to use your own passion to inspire passion in others, and anything with that much power is bound to piss off plenty of status-quo/who-moved-my-cheese people."

Boldy Suck

Why do I hate Volvo's Win a Trip to Space promotion?

First, I don't think it's envy. (That's why I hate Snapple's Snaffle and Heinz's Ketchup Label thing.) I think it rubs me so wrong for the following reasons:

1. What's it got to do a with the product? It's real stretch here. A V8 SUV and flying into space. Umm...I'm thinking here. Ok, I give up.

2. The car's name sucks. I loved the Volvo brand. The safe car. Now they are trying to be the hip, fast, powerful safe car. I think they should have kept making it safer. If it was a like driving a bunker, I wouldn't card if it kept my family alive. Back to the name: Cross Country, nice. XC90 V8, sucky.

3. A trip to M'F'ing space. That's the single most common idea whenever someone says, "The client wants a huge idea--don't be limited by budgets (yeah, right) and just give us the biggest idea you can." Some AE throws out, "How about a trip to space? I mean, why not?" It's a prize everyone has wanted to give away since the invention of space travel -- and probably before then.

So then, maybe the real reason that I don't like it is that it didn't so much as make a ripple. No one talked about it. The biggest trump card in promotions (actually second to Pepsi's Billion Dollars) didn't make a blip on the screen. No buzz. No watercooler chit chat. And that sucks.

Must Read for Every Client

Advice from McKee Wallwork Henderson.

13 Rules for More Effective Advertising

(1) I will avoid exclamation points.

(2) I won’t say “make my logo bigger.”

(3) I won't spam.

(4) I will give my advertising a chance to work.

(5) I won’t be all things to all people.

(6) I won’t project my media habits on my customers.

(7) I will be more open to taking risks.

(8) I will not discount.

(9) I won’t use the word “quality.”

(10) I will not promote my competition.

(11) I will have the courage to overrule the research.

(12) I will not let lawyers write my copy.

(13) I will not pollute.
[with bad adveritising]

DOWNLOAD THE PDF FROM GROWINGFAST.COM

To Be Real...Not Just Viral

Good quote from HBR...

"This unorthodox brand team did not attempt to reduce Snapple to a set of brand essence adjectives, seek out deep consumer truths, or plumb Snapple devotees' emotional connections to the brand. Rather, they searched for ways to further extend Snapple's odd, amateurish performances. At the time, Snapple's followers were so touched by the brand that they flooded Snapple's small office with fan mail. Over two thousand letters a week poured in, not to mention original videos, songs, artwork, and poetry, all odes to Snapple."

-- The Problem with Viral Branding

Another BMW Biter Flop

And surprise, it's also from FORD.

" Far from bettering the brilliant and engaging Web films pioneered in 2001 by BMW, Ford's (F) struggling luxury division has produced a textbook for how not to use the Internet."
--

Business 2.0