Brand Central Station

Okay, it’s hardly news that the Absolut campaign is one of the all-time great ad campaigns. Plenty has been written about it and it’s won all sorts of awards.

But for the curious or bookmark-happy, I thought I’d provide links to information on the campaign as well as a number of other Absolut-inspired projects (provided off the Coolz0r – Marketing Thoughts blog).

On the Absolut campaign (launched in 1979):

- Absolut Ads blog
- Whitepaper on the Absolut Campaign
- Instructional text on the Absolut Campaign
- Overview of the Absolut Campaign
- Photo gallery of Absolut ads
- TBWA case study of Absolut outdoor assignment

Other “inspired” projects:

- Absolut Update
- Fake Absolut Ads
- Absolut’s 82 Bottles
- Absolut Spoof Ads 2
- Absolut Ikea / NY
- Faux Absolut Ads
- Absolut NewYork
- Absolut Temptation
- Absolut Kravitz Full Update
- Absolut Kravitz
- Absolut Spoof Ads 1
- Absolut Sweden Viral X-Mas
- With Love From Paris
- Absolut Ads Archive

Jon Fine, the media blogger for BusinessWeek, provides a concise review of what’s wrong with Time Magazine’s latest rationale for moving to a Friday street date for the publication. Time’s justification for the shift in publishing schedule is, in theory, advertiser-driven:

“The new Friday on-sale date gives advertisers a tremendous opportunity to convey their messages to TIME’s 27 million readers before the weekend, when consumers do the large majority of purchasing.”

But as Fine points out, similar scheming for Time’s sister publication, Life, hasn’t borne any fruit.

Print media is writhing under pressure to drive down costs, increase ad pages and stay relevant with a media that can’t change once its made and isn’t timely under any circumstance. Mike Driehorst points out the very same problems in this post on the Newspaper Industry’s problems.

Your thoughts are welcome here – what should Time do?

The geniuses over at Maple Creative (the bloggers behind the Marketing Genius blog) have posted this critique of the Dr. Z campaign from Chrysler.

Sales are down. Down big. Like double-digit big. Is it all Dr. Z’s fault? Of course not.

But Emily Bennington’s point is that Dr. Z isn’t helping.

Then again, could even Lee Iacocca turn things around in this economic environment? I don’t think so.

John Jantsch provides some insights on women-owned businesses in this post. As a category, growth of women-owned businesses has been outpacing the economy as a whole for the past five years.

What does this mean in terms of business opportunity for women, in general, and your business, in particular? According to a column by Nan Mooney in Inc. Magazine:

“… now there are more women in leadership positions than ever. Whether they head their division or head the whole company, these women are in a position to do something they may have wanted to do for a long time. Hire other women.”

That means hiring other women to work for them both as employees and as consultants. Agencies and consultancies that refuse to look at the changing social landscape around them and act accordingly will be left behind – and may not even know it!

John used information from the SBA as his source material. An Inc. story on the Census Bureau statistics can be found here.

My friends Peter Shankman (author of PR. Differently) and Kevin Dugan (one of the bloggers behind the Bad Pitch Blog) are on the road at different speaking engagements later this year. Both guys are smart, smart, smart and worth listening to.

Unfortunately, you’ll need a passport and plane tickets to catch up with Peter. And while a passport won’t be required to see Kevin, you will need to know how to speak Chicago-nese.

Since today is my birthday, I found this post about Gumby’s 50th birthday to be of particular interest.

Fortunately, I’m not made of green clay, my head isn’t THAT pointy and although I work with clients, I can’t bend THAT far over.

I’m also NOT fifty.

Happy birthday, Gumby.

In the Web 2.0 world, marketers and online businesses are focusing on user-generated and user-directed content. But in order to make the content manageable, there’s still a significant amount of automation required.

As a result, it feels (from time to time) that the result is a odd mish-mash of personal preference and pre-defined choice. Good or bad, that’s just how it is. (more…)

Jonathan Bernstein has taken his Crisis Manager newsletter online into a new blog format. Posts include commentary on the impact of terrorism on crisis communications and issues surrounding business continuity.

Jonathan also provides some excellent background information on the fundamentals of crisis PR as he does with this post describing the role the Internet plays in the immediate (and often confusing) spread of information surrounding corporate crises.

For seasoned PR pros, this may be a little to PR 101, but for most business managers and younger PR’s, this is great background. After all, it’s nearly impossible to manage a crisis if you don’t understand how the different communications channels surrounding that crisis actually work.

What’s the most annoying examples of corporate-speak that you run into on a daily basis? Fast Company’s blog tipped me off to a recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer on the same subject.

Clichés are a short-handed form of communication – conveying entire concepts in a simple phrase or allusion. But when clichés get over-used, well, let’s just say they can “re-align someone’s paradigm faster than drinking from a firehose.”

My personal favorites:

• “touching base”
• “taking it to the next level”
• “when it’s all said and done”
• “at the end of the day”
• task, product or brand “champions”
• “speak to” a topic
• “liase with”
• “all things being equal”
• “drilling down”
• “silos”
• “learnings”
• “take aways”

Of course, most people use clichés to sound smart. Now you can sound smart with even less thought by clicking here.

The moral to this whole, sordid tale: “Avoid clichés like the plague.”

What are your most dreaded clichés?

In all fairness, ratings had nothing to do with this. But when Sweden’s state-run broadcaster had a porn channel running on a monitor behind its newscaster Peter Dahlgren, it raised more than just a few eyebrows.

Of course, Sweden is known for its more liberal approach to sex – so it comes as no surprise when SVT officials say they haven’t received any complaints from the public. The media, on the other hand, is having a heyday with this.

Ironically, the station was running the latest political poll results while the monitor showing the pornographic movie, Sex Tails, was in view. No word yet on whether or not the results of the poll were up or down.

I wasn’t particularly impressed with any of the new creative on the blogs I checked this weekend, so I thought I’d pass along this classic McDonald’s spot.

I remember seeing it when I was a kid. John Amos (one of the African-American actors in the spot) eventually signed on to the Mary Tyler-Moore show as the WMT weatherman and went on to star in Roots as the adult Kunta Kinte.

Amos is still working, having made appearances in the West Wing and, more recently, Dr. Dolittle 3 (a must see on home video, no doubt).

Micropersuasion’s Steve Rubel shares a list of the things every company should be monitoring online:

- Your company name
- Your company URL
- Your company’s public-facing figures
- Your product names
- Your product URL’s
- Your industry hang-outs
- Your employee’s blogs
- Online conversations about your brand/company
- Your brand’s image
- Your competition

Thanks to Steve for tipping us off to Cameron Olthuis’ blog post on this subject. Cameron provides a list of web sites and tools that you can use to “track your buzz.”

Sounds like a full-time job, doesn’t it? I know a firm that would be happy to help.