The Power of Branding

A little lesson in marketing for a Thursday afternoon.

I found this a while ago – I think on some eternal email forward – and I love it.

For anyone that doesn’t understand our crazy world, here’s a bit of a breakdown in terms everyone can understand:

1) You go to a party and you see an attractive girl across the room. You go up to her and say, “Hi, I’m great in bed, how about it?”

- That’s Direct Marketing.

2) You go to a party and you see an attractive girl across the room. You give your friend a fiver. She goes up and says “Hi, my friend over there is great in bed, how about it?”

- That’s Advertising.

3) You go to a party and see an attractive girl across the room. You somehow get her mobile number. You call and chat her up a while and then say “Hi, I am great in bed, how about it?”

- That’s Tele-Marketing.

4) You go to a party and see an attractive girl across the room. You recognize her. You walk up to her, refresh her memory and get her to laugh and giggle and then suggest, “Hi, I am great in bed, how about it?”

- That’s Customer Relationship Management.

5) You go to a party and you see an attractive girl across the room. You stand straight, you talk soft and smooth, you open the door for the ladies, you smile like a dream, you set an aura around you playing the Mr. Gentleman and then you move up to the girl and say, “Hi, I am great in bed, how about it?”

- That’s Hard Selling.

6) You go to a party, you see an attractive girl across the room. SHE COMES OVER and says, “Hi, I hear you’re great in bed, how about it?”

- Now THAT is the power of Branding.

All jokes aside, it does rather sum up the life blood of our industry: relationships.

Ultimo’s latest range is just Peachy

 

Loving Peaches’ campaign for Ultimo underwear, from which a second batch of pictures were released to the press today. Guaranteeing coverage in Nationals, London papers and all the weekly celeb gossip/fashion mags, Ultimo have made a smart move signing up Sir Bob’s eldest and most notorious daughter to front their latest range.

And if you fancy more regular updates from the world of Peaches, follow her @peaches_g on Twitter.

Branson hits Oz for six in Ashes promotions

Looks like Richard Branson‘s up to his old tricks again.

This week saw the Virgin Media boss (already renowned for his proactive PR stunts) project an enormous image of himself onto Sydney Harbour Bridge in an effort to rile the Aussies and generate some Ashes-focused press coverage. Successfully it seems with all our national newspapers running with it and national outrage down-under.

A little more credible was the substance behind the ‘fifty50′ that subtley adorned the bottom left corner of the image. This refers to Virgin’s pledge to donate £1,000 to charity for every half-century that our England batsmen rack up throughout the 2009 Ashes campaign. Synics may point to the fact that it is all a promotional tool for Virgin’s 50Mb Broadband national roll-out, but with £3,000 already in the pot (KP, Colly and Prior), it certainly has more kudos than most PR stunts.

Real life Barbie dolls

I loved this story in Metro this week. No, not the Barbie-doll-like Jessica Simpson kind, but actual life size human dolls. Still in the box and everything.

Not quite the entrance I would have chosen to my high school prom (despite my love for the pink blonde plastic brand) – Mattel might think these two high school students are pretty cool given the global press coverage attained, but I’m guessing most of their peers thought differently.

Just a hunch.

NFL Tampa Bay Buccaneers cheerleaders rock the UK

As part of the NFL Bucs cheer girls‘ UK tour this week, they dropped by three primary schools in three different cities to teach youngsters all about the sport.

The Bucs were over drumming up support for their team before they come back over on October 25th to host the New England Patriotsat Wembley – the third annual NFL match-up that the UK has seen in recent years.

As a former cheerleader, it was hugely rewarding to be able to set up these school camps, and show young kids first hand what cheerleading can bring. I was only given the opportunity at uni and I wished so much that squads had been active and available when I was little too.

 

But what was most heart-warming was Head Teacher of Newcastle’s Wingrove Primary, Denise Harland’s glowing endorsement of the girls when they came to visit the school – hopefully dispelling the renowned air-head myths surrounding the cheer community:

“It’s a great opportunity to have the cheerleaders come into the school and show the children a different side of sport. These girls are very fit, articulate and fun, and it’s gives our children an idea of what sport can offer. They need to see and experience as broad a range of activities as possible and are very fortunate to have been part of the Buccaneers tour.”

Bring it on.

Murray HEADs into the quarters… with a new racket

After his epic victory on Centre Court on Monday evening, Andy Murray seems to have given mixed reviews on the now infamous Centre Court roof. While during the match, the humidity clearly affected play, Murray has since expressed his enjoyment of the crowd atmosphere gained by effectively playing indoors.

Less positive for his racket sponsor, HEAD, was that half way through a game in the crucial fifth and final set his strings broke, forcing him to play out the rest of the point effectively using a hand-held trampoline. Granted, the conditions may have induced a weakening of the strings beyond Murray’s usual expectations of his racket’s life-span, but even so – hardly an ideal impression to give tennis fans during play.

With that in mind, the Daily Mirror’s back page today made me chuckle:

I guess a back page headline must be some consolation for a broken racket.

To Tweet or not to Tweet?

Amongst all the clamour extolling the numerous marketing values to Twitter, this morning I came across a sage example of when it can rather spectacularly backfire.

Last week’s UTalkMarketing.com newsletter displayed a lead story on the subject of Twitter: a Marketing Director’s guide to utilising the platform best, a list of do’s and dont’s for PR’s and the like. The whole article is definitely worth a read for those of you considering using the service for more than your own personal ramblings, but particularly worthy of note is the now classic ‘Watch your mouth’ anecdote teaching all Twitterers, quite frankly, when to just shut the hell up.

Ketchum, the US PR and marketing agency, keen to impress upon their client (FedEx) their expertise in all areas of social networking and digital media marketing, sent a young executive by the name of James Andrews to their HQ in Memphis for a meeting. Unfortunately, the said executive was rather too down with the kids, and sent out a tweet upon landing using his own personal moniker @keyinfluencer, decrying the desperately uninspiring state of his client’s home city, in his own tweet words:

True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say ‘I would die if I had to live here’

Perhaps more savvy with social media than Mr. Andrews had anticipated, FedEx employees, already following Andrews on Twitter, promptly caught the offensive Tweet and emailed around internally (including the top executives in FedEx’s front office as well as the corporate comms department) – all before Andrews had even set foot through the door.

Safe to assume he received a less than warm reception upon arrival – in fact, the full response that FedEx immediately sent through as a Direct Message to Andrews is now available online. As well as a public FedEx statement on the incident. Check it all out here.

And so the term CLT (Career Limiting Tweet) was born.

When Virgin met WCRS

 

This afternoon, everyone in the Engine building, the London marketing industry and beyond was passing back and forth a letter of complaint to Richard Branson, complaining about the shocking state of the food served on a transatlantic Virgin flight.

It is possibly the most hilarious piece of epistolary writing I have ever read.

It was sent to me by a friend from a market research agency, who had been sent it by her boss, who’s friend had sent it to her because he knew the author… and the author turned out to sit two floors directly above me in WCRS.

Small world huh? Even better, we found out that Richard Bransontook the time to call up Mr. Beale himself to firstly apologise and secondly thank him for keeping him and his family in stitches all weekend with the hilarity of his letter. Safe to say it was the most bizarre 10 minutes of Mr. Beale’s life, but good work Mr Branson I say.

In any case, please do read it – it is a prime example of how much damage can be done to a brand when a man is bereft of sleep, stimulation and left very, very hungry.

But then also how quickly it can be at least partly rectified by a 10 minute intervention from on high.

Enjoy.