Business TV Show: Saatchi’s boss on how to make your brand irresistible

Gone are the days of marketing and brands says Global Chief Executive of Saatchi & Saatchi Kevin Roberts. But if the methods that upheld these concepts are no longer to be used, what should you and your business be doing instead?

Watch this show to find out what Kevin Roberts, the creator of Lovemarks - a total rethink of the way branding is done – says about getting people to associate with your product or service. Saatchi & Saatchi is a global leader in branding and advertising. Kevin has held the top office of the firm since 1997 and is credited with having brought new life to the firm, taking the agency on to achieve great heights.

Basic online networking with Twitter – must see Business News TV

Twitter is the biggest thing to happen in online social networking this year. It has changed the way that people interact online and has ushered in its own new world of apps – many of which can help you to increase the visibility of your business online. There’s a lot of buzz around it, and a lot of people who are curious but don’t know what use Twitter will be to them, or how to get started.

For this series, we’ve compiled more top expert advice from our Tweetathon with over 100 leading edge Twitter experts.

In this, the second episode in this series, you’ll find out the top 14 steps to take to get started with Twitter, and we give you some essential tips and etiquette so you can avoid making newbie mistakes!

Find out the best way to create your public profile, and how to make it look good. Then we’ll show you how you can begin building your network immediately, and how to start creating your own “tweets”. We’ll also show you how to listen to and engage in Twitter conversations, and how you can add value to those conversations.

If you’re looking for the best ways to get Twitter working for you - then don’t miss this show! Be sure to tune in for more in this new yourBusinessChannel series, as we continue to show you how to formulate your own expert level Twitter campaign.

Guide to Being Don Draper

Nation Branding Japan

Image via WikipediaHard power, referring to military and economic power, has revealed its limitations in the world political economy and therefore the international community has begun looking at soft power as a strategy. Japan, comes foremost to mind (along with China) of late due to the rise of China's economy over the past five years.

In the Korea Times article today, "Historical Issues Overshadow Japan's Nation Branding," staff reporter Kang Hyun-kyung, write about how post WWII Japan and Tokyo in particular took a proactive "nation branding" campaign to reestablish the country and city in the world's view. The news is that recently the country/city has started looking eastward toward China and Korea.

The source of Japan's re-branding plans lay in the following past events (these are Japan's 'brand threats':

• Japan's past invasion of the U.S./Hawaii
• Japan's past colonial rule of Korea
• Japan's past invasion of China
• China's current economic rise and world Olympic stage for the Summer of 2008
  

Post WWII and Hiroshima, such a feat to change the minds of the world would have seemed impossible, but if you consider that Japan is now the World's second largest economy, it's possible and it happened. Further re-branding steps for Japan could include:

• Government action that is not directly related to nation-branding per se
• Thorough and frequent apologies for past deeds
• More generous compensation for survivors
• Dismissal of officials who question the existence or extent of past war crimes
  

Meanwhile, we can't just think that Japan is alone at this task, for Korean President Lee Myung-bak expressed interest in branding Korea as a national strategy to improve its national reputation in a manner fitting its place in the global economy. Korea is thus looking at Japan and what it has done. Japan, though not a military powerhouse, has developed a world reputation for high tech companies like Sony, Panasonic, Toyota, Honda and Hitachi; sushi; and global cultural products such as manga and anime, comics and print cartoons.

Marketing 101 Implications: Should your brand stop pulling out the huge gun Football stadium sponsorships and instead spread some good will with some WOM, PR and people swapping? (I'm still pondering this PR move by P&G and Google, aren't you?).

Online Coupons: Driving Offline Sales

'Something new' - 'Taking pricing power away from the retailers' - The digital era’s version of bargain hunters arrives - those who used to spend hours clipping coupons to shrink their grocery bills now move online

--CPA networks, lower-grade coupon sites begin to flourish in awareness and traffic--

In today's New York Times article, "In Lean Times, Online Coupons Are Catching On" we see another affirmation that the Internet is increasingly being used by America's retailers as both an online and an offline direct response driving tool.

Been to Jamba Juice lately? Noticed that when you order your protein shake they ask you everyday if you'd like a Jamba Card. Why? Noticed that Starbucks rolled out their Gold Card recently? Notice your baristas encouraging you that if you go to Starbucks a lot, you should get a Gold Card. What's it all about? Are these companies looking out for the good of us all, trying to make our lives easier? Are they trying to build some brand loyalty? My hunch is that Jamba and Starbucks are "on" to the fact that a lot of people dump a lot of money on these gift cards and in fact frequently never use all the cash up. In essence, they are encouraging us to spend money knowing that the statistics likely say that 40% of the money they earn from these cards - they won't have to deliver product for. (Nice marketing plan!)

Back to coupons. What's my fascination with coupons lately? Free trial coupons, online coupons - these direct response vehicles along with "buy one get one free" are flourishing deals across the country. Retailers are taking the guns out to drive traffic - and it's intriguing the lengths they'll go to do it and there's no doubt why per this key sentence segment in the New York Times article as to why retailers are pulling out their guns: "With online retail sales falling this month for the first time". As one person in the article from ComScore stated, "Coupons had never been a big factor online the way they are offline. This is something new....it’s taken pricing power away from the retailers and given it to the consumers, because the consumer is totally up to speed on what the prices are."

Cyber Monday 08

You may have heard Christmas jingles in stores as far back as Halloween, but the Friday after Thanksgiving (or Black Friday), serves as the official start of the holiday season; for online marketers it moves to the following Monday, or Cyber Monday. (This year Cyber Monday is Monday, December 1.) With the Wall Street Journal repeating daily that stocks are down, unemployment up and consumer confidence is at all time lows, it's no wonder that analysts are fearing our next Cyber Monday. While retail foot traffic is down, online retailers can only hope that this Christmas online shopping traffic will somehow increase and lead to foot traffic (this IMRG research study predicts just that).

Walk into any retailer today and you'll be bombarded with price promotions and offers from every direction. Now retailers are moving more aggressively online to effectively drive online traffic, offline. (The Gap recently launched an effective viral marketing email campaign the weekend of November 15th which offered consumers 30% for four days at any of their stores; note the coupon was re-usable.)

Per MediaPost's "Retailers Prep for Cyber Monday" there are some intriguing competitive insights online marketers would want to heed this season (i.e. leverage the digital daytime demographic):

• a new poll from the National Retail Federation finds that 83% of retailers are pulling out all the stops, offering some kind of price promotion just in time for Cyber Monday
• a new NRF eHoliday Survey reports that 83.7% of retailers will have some sort of special promotion for Cyber Monday--up from 72.2% last year. These will include specific deals (38.8%), email campaigns (32.7%) and one-day sales (24.5%). And 22.5% are offering free shipping on all purchases. Increasingly, consumers will track down these bargains from the office.
  

1. The NRF says that 55.8% of workers with Internet access, or about 73 million people, plan to do their shopping from the comfort of their own cubicle. (In 2005, only 44.7% shopped online from work.)
   
2. Younger people are more likely to shop on company time--with 70% of those between the ages of 18 and 34 shopping from the office--and men are more likely to do so than women (60.3% versus 51.5%).

Bob Greenberg, CEO, R/GA, with Brian Morrissey

New Priorities for the Post-Agency Market

Seth Godin on Social Networking: Help Others

T-Mobile G1 Review: Web and YouTube

Micro blogging to mass markets: Business TV Show on Twitter

Brand Blogging

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Crucial Conversations in Social Media

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Web 2.0 Technology/Internet Trends

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Facebook on 60 Minutes

Facebook COO Defends Redesign

HP Boosts Customer Service with Social Groups

Inside H&R Block's Social Media Marketing Blitz

Marketing in a Recession

Marketing In A Recession

From: davo26, 3 months ago

Marketing In A Recession

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Branding & Social Media

Can Social Networking Build Your Brand?

From: robberbaron, 2 years ago

Can Social Networking Build Your Brand?

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The popularity of web applications with a social context has exploded in the last year. This session will look at how social interaction can be applied to a brands online presence to generate a deeper connection with the customer. We will discuss what can be learned from these interactions, how market research can be conducted, and how a brand can enter the conversation without turning its audience off. SXSWi Link

Source: Presentation by Jason D. Schwartz of Robber Baron Music at SXSWi 2007

Credits: Campari case study originally by Richard MacManus at Read/WriteWeb. Background provided by Andrew Reeve.

Links: Del.icio.us, Similicio.us, Technorati, CurrentTV


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