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The name of the game is speed.

With the insanely rapid pace of information on social media, keeping your brand intact by responding to consumer issues ASAP, or even before they happen, is absolutely essential.

According to John Thomson, CEO of Saepio, "Whether it means pulling ads featuring a controversy-laden spokesperson, changing messaging that is offensive to certain cultures or not leading with a product that isn't performing at its best -- you need to react quickly and just as important, consistently."

Otherwise you might just catch the tiger by the tail. (Sorry!)

The full article is over at MediaPost's site.


(Photo by Keith Allison)

Since the 1990's SunChips have been Frito-Lay's healthy option for their snack line.

For years, however, the brand never really seemed to take off. In fact, sales seemed to stall over time.

Then a few years back, their brand team discovered that many of the people who buy brands like SunChips also happen to be environmentally minded. In an interview with BrandWeek, Frito-Lay VP of Marketing Gannon Jones said:

"We started to see that there was an intersection of people who were concerned with their health and with the planet's health. Out of that was born the hypothesis that we could begin to connect SunChips more prominently with the environment so [the brand would become] a small step for me and the planet."

The brand seemed to take the message to heart and remake themselves - and not just greenwash their image.

* They started producing some of their chips in a Modesto, California manufacturing plant that is completely solar powered. (It's one of their eight of their manufacturing facilities.)
* They buy green energy credits to offset the electricity to produce their snacks.
* They partnered with National Geographic to launch a "Green Effect" contest, which encouraged people to submit environmentally-friendly local projects. They would fund the winners' ideas for up to $20K each.

And, if you managed to miss their barrage of ads during the Olympics, they've just developed the compostable chip bag to be release in America on (of course) Earth Day. Yes, in a mere 14 weeks, that pesky SunChips bag in the vacant lot across the street will be dust. Or plant materials, more likely. (They've retained both Ketchum and OMD to get the word out for their compostable bag).

So, how's all this greening of their brand working out for them?

According to Frito-Lay, sales grew 17.6 percent to $201.8 million in 2008 and has tripled its household penetration in the past four years.

I don't know about you, but those sound like pretty sustainable numbers to me.
 

(Photo by cogdogblog)

According to BusinessWeek, Apple is looking at replacing Google with Bing as their default search engine on their iPhone.

Yes, it turns out the rivalry between "I'm a Mac" and "I'm a PC" isn't as strong when it comes to Apple battling Google in the smartphone sector. According to sources at Apple, now that Google has released its Nexus One, "Apple and Google know the other is their primary enemy". Moreover, "Microsoft is now a pawn in that battle."

Meaning, it's okay to battle Microsoft on one front and take them out for drinks on the other.

Which is I believe how The Hundred Years' War was fought. But then again, history has never been my strong suit.

So here's my marketing question. How does Apple exactly cover itself brandwise, here? It tells its customers that PCs stink, yet uses Bing as the search engine on their phone. How do you handle that without coming off as, um, insincere?


(photo by Incase Designs)

You know, I have no idea what the people at am pm or their ad agency are thinking.

The small print indicates that you'll only taste the ampm burritos twice, so I guess you'll be safe with a hot dog or quesadilla.

(photo by jesthered)

When I was at university, my all time favourite subject was Consumer Behaviour.I loved learning about the relationship between organizations, their brands and their customers.In those days though, most marketing messages were delivered via a one-way street - broadcast from company to consumer.

Today, the dynamic growth of digital channels, and in particular social media, has truly shifted the communication paradigm. Marketing as a conversation has arrived!

There's no better example of this than the recent case of Vegemite iSnack 2.0. I'm sure there isn't anyone in Australia that is unaware of this saga but for our friends elsewhere I'll give you a quick overview:

Vegemite (http://www.vegemite.com.au) is an iconic breakfast spread that has been enjoyed by Aussies since 1922.They recently decided on a brand extension, adding a Vegemite and cheese spread.As was the case when they named the original product all those years ago, they decided to choose the name of the new product through a competition. iSnack 2.0 was the winning name but it didn't resonate well with the public. (http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1101797/Backlash-kills-off-iSnack-2.0)

The new name was revealed last month during the Football (AFL) Grand final.I was enjoying the game but also had an eye on Twitter and saw an avalanche of protests appear before my very eyes. Not long after the social media uproar commenced, traditional media jumped on the bandwagon and for days the naming of this product was headline news.

This story got me thinking about a case study we had looked at in class years before. It was the Cola Wars and Coca Cola's introduction of 'New Coke' in April 1985.Coca-Cola did the unthinkable and changed their secret formula.They too received an 'instant' backlash. Consumers wrote letters of complaints (Remember them? They got delivered by snail mail). They phoned the company and talk-back radio stations and wrote letters to newspapers. The outrage was enormous!

(http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/heritage/cokelore_newcoke.html) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke)

There are a lot of similarities in these two stories. One could argue that decisions were made without enough research and consultation with their customers. Anyway, both cases required a reversal of decisions made by the marketing and management teams.The difference in the stories is the speed of reaction:

- Time to change Coke back to its original formula = 3 months
- Time to change the name of Vegemite iSnack 2.0 = 3 days!

If you're a 21^st century marketer, engage in conversations with your customers! The powerbase has definitely shifted and consumers are speaking - are you listening?

PS - The new Vegemite product was renamed Vegemite Cheesybite. How was the name chosen? By an online poll :)

There was an interesting article about the cost for online copyright violations in yesterday's Business section of the LA Times by columnist David Lazarus.

In essence, Lazarus says the damage costs demanded by companies such Getty Images and Corbis, which could be up to $1,200, are exorbitant.

The column starts off with a story about a small businessman who gets a letter from Getty asking for $1,000 in damages for illegally using their image on his site. The businessman has no intention of paying the fine, because he believes it's too high. He took the image off his site and decided to ignore the request.

Though the columnist points out that the photographers who take these photos are small businesspeople, too (and thus need their cash as much as the businesspeople who use their photos), he veers around the point that it should be the Web design firm who built this man's site who pays for illegally using someone's work to build a site.

According to the Times, "Getty says it finds about 42,000 examples of copyright infringement a year. For its part, Corbis says it uncovers about 70,000 violations annually."

That's a pretty sizable number of copyright infringements. And a lot of money that should rightly go back to the photographers and the companies that handle their work.

I don't know about you, but I think $1,000 is a fair fee to a design firm who openly steals another person's work to make money. Buying photos and their rights has always been part and parcel of doing design work.

It'd be different if Corbis and Getty are going after a Blogger who doesn't know any better (and I would say give that person a warning and direct them to Creative Commons), but I think it's pretty clear here that the design firm, not the businessperson, should take the hit for this.

Any other opinions?

(legally used photo by Ed Yourdon)

It seems the favorite affordable store of Designers all over the world IKEA, has just stepped down a notch in they eyes of many of their fans.

Yes, they've switched their font selection for both print and Web materials from Futura to Verdana.

Designers everywhere have gone ballistic with pages of column space devoted to the cause at CreativePro.com, Time, The Guardian, and yes, The New York Times.
 
It's enough to make you throw your Kamprad right out the window, I tell you.

If you've already heard enough of this argument, maybe you would prefer to visit a site where you can have your name generated as an IKEA piece of furniture.


(Photo and silkscreen by Mat Honan)

When you have kids you know when fall is coming - even in Southern California. I'm lucky enough to have a wife brave enough to take the children to Target for the yearly trip to pick up backpacks, crayons, pens, notebooks, etc.

(You know when I list all those things it makes me think of Susie Hall in the LA office, who must have loved going back to school. I've never seen someone so excited about gel pens and post-its in my life.)

If you haven't been popping over to the Aquent site to check out the events page, you may be missing out on real, life events that rarely ever make it to TV (The film Objectified, for one - "a feature-length documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them". Don't look for that running against America's Next Top Model.)

For future reference, the events are all listed over there to the right and you can click the More Events link to get to... um, more events.

If you have anything you want to add, just email me and I'll pop it on our site (well, if it's related to Marketing and Creative, that is. I will not be advertising your garage sale, so please don't ask.)


(Photo by paalia)