Brand Central Station

Blogger Neville Pokroy from Mastermind Solutions has provided an interesting bit of advice for safeguarding your company against an economic recession.

And for those of you who don’t know what a recession is, check it out here.

Help some charities. Pick a brief. Design a poster. Submit it by April 20th.

Do some good.

How do you keep track of the conversations in the blogosphere that could mean the most to you? How do you locate the blogs that you should be keeping an eye on for you or for your client’s business?

Kami Huyse, at the Communications Overtones blog, provides some helpful links, advice and guidelines for doing just that.  If you’re in the reputation management business (as most PR firms are and many branding and ad agencies want to be), this is an essential post for you to read this week.

Thanks, Kami!

Ever have a burning desire to win a Quackie?  Me neither. 

But Steve Hall at AdRants ran this post summarizing the advertising awards show known as the Golden Ducks – a show dedicated to “the weird, the strange and the head-scratchers in advertising.”

You can see some of the award nominees here.

Heaven knows we’ve all seen enough of that (ref. the Tiddy Bear, a Quackie nominee if there ever was one).
 

According to the annual MarketingSherpa, end-of-year survey of top online marketers, the more passive forms of lead acquisition (e.g. banner ads in e-newsletters and rented e-mail marketing lists) saw a fall-off in investment in 2007 versus the previous year. The more organic forms of list-building (e.g. excercising house lists, contextual search ads and SEO) have seen the best return and appear to be destined for larger shares of top marketers’ budgets in 2008.

Top online marketing tactics for last year (according to the MarketingSherpa research) include:

• Behaviorally targeted ads favored: Still a favorite, marketers say they will be investing more in them in 2008.

• House lists top paid search: More marketers reported success with house email lists than paid search ads — a reversal from a year earlier.

• Test, test, test again: Marketers are measuring and testing more in almost all categories surveyed.

• SEO begets strong ROI: Search engine optimization is delivering a strong return on investment, according to more than half of the marketers surveyed.

• Viral gains converts: Agencies are urging marketers to explore viral marketing and advertising in mobile phones, online video sites and virtual worlds.

A good bit of time was dedicated to discussing viral marketing, too – especially viral video.  Among the observations made:

• 93% of marketers said agencies recommend either an increase in spending or begin spending on viral video.

• 87% reported recommendations to start or increase viral marketing on social networking sites.

• 62% said agencies advised advertising in games and virtual worlds – the highest number of recommendations for a first-time budget while paradoxically attracting the highest number of recommendations to decrease spending. This confusion clearly reflects the medium’s unproven status.

• 60% saying they are urged to try wireless ads on mobile networks –- it came in second in first-time budget recommendations.

MarketingVOX reports that Johnson & Johnson has launched a series of animated shorts at the new web site: touchingbond.com.  The shorts feature Law & Order: SVU’s Mariska Hargitay as the voice of the baby.

The campaign is intended to reach a generation of young mothers who have grown up with the web as their primary source of information.

J&J has also created a series of animated shorts in Spanish.

That was the essence of the first sentance in this post on the Brand Noise blog.  I had to read it twice to make sure I had things straight.  From the blog:

“The new study finds that when men play the games, a part of the brain involved in feelings of reward and addiction becomes much more activated than it does in women.”

Okay, so the preference is not for video games over women – the point is that men get turned on more by video games than women.

Wait a second … that didn’t come out right, either.

The guys over at Mental Floss wrote a hilarious post about poorly named businesses. 

It may seem like common sense, but as I noted in this post about a rather ill-advised branding strategy for a restaurant in India, not everybody gets the idea that the first name that pops into their head isn’t always the best.

Here’s a link to the slide show of some 30+ poorly named businesses.

It’s pretty funny and not neccessarily “safe for work.”

Do you remember Certs? They were breath mints … well, candies really. Minty candies (in the days before Mentos or Altoids) that were supposed to provide some kind of amazing, sexual charisma to the user. It seemed as if any time a person popped a Certs, they always came face-to-face with a gorgeous specimin of the opposite sex. After the requisite moment of sexual tension, someone broke the ice with a corny line and then it was off for dinner and who-knows-what.

And what was it that provided that almost magical attraction? No, not rhino horn. It was a heretofor unknown ingredient called Retsyn. (more…)

Laura Ries offers some worthwhile evaluations of celebrity endorsements enjoyed by Democratic candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.  You don’t have to be a political wonk to enjoy her post.

From a marketing perspective, many of the lessons taught through this endorsement excercise carry over to consumer products and services.  A celebrity endorsement isn’t worth that much if the celebrity doesn’t really understand the “what” and “why” of the brand he or she is endorsing. 

One-dimensional product pitchmen, even if they’re well-known sports or entertainment celebrities, can elicit the same response Laura has about Cheer’s star Ted Danson: “Does anyone care what Ted Danson has to say? I don’t think so.”

Elizabeth Albrycht, in her CorporatePR blog, provides a very clear and easy-to-follow guide for companies considering getting into social media.  Remember, this is an online conversation you’re having here, folks, and walking away or giving up is just plain rude once you’ve made the commitment.

But as Elizabeth points out, the process is relatively straight-forward and – when you consider the implications – time well-spent.

Thanks, Elizabeth.

I get tired of hearing carping from my freelance friends about never having enough work.  After a while, it starts to sound a bit like little birds waiting to be fed.Scott Baradell and the rest of the pickers over at Media Orchard pointed my blog-surfing in the direction of this great self-help post from Matthew Stibbe and the Bad Language blog.  Here are some of Matthew’s 27 tips for freelancers to market themselves:

#1.  Wake up!  No marketing = no business.  (Duh!)
#4.  Allocate time to do a little marketing work every day.
#6.  Keep marketing when you’re busy.
#12. React fast.
#13. Automate processes.
#18. Follow up.
#23. Work for intra-company recommendations.

The whole list can be found here.

The funniest thing in the whole post, to me anyway, is that Matthew lists “PR” as one of the things that doesn’t work for getting new business.  While I would agree that the traditional “media relations” thing is probably not a good way for a solo-practitioner to spend his or her time, there are other aspects of public relations (specifically the relationship-building skills with existing clients, etc.) that helps build networks, referrals and, eventually, business. 

Positioning and reputation are also two cornerstones of a solid PR program that anyone, including freelancers, can benefit from.