As The Motor Company continues to lurch from marketing pillar to advertising post, this new message for Jeep Chrysler nicely summons the Zeitgeist Harley historically fails to communicate. The 60-second ad from Wieden+Kennedy (Nike) introduces Jeep’s new slogan, “The Things We Make, Make Us.” Wow. Perfect. And perfectly positioned. Continue reading
This bullseye parody by halfthrottle over on YouTube has garnered nearly 150,00 views since it was posted on May 24th, and though Harley’s flailing marketing isn’t specifically called out, it’s a broad – and accurate – indictment of a brand that can’t decide what it should be.
It isn’t until the final frame that the impetus links back to Harley throwing Buell under the bus in 2009. But regardless of the inspiration, there’s no way to argue with the summary judgement of a powerful brand that’s been drifting on the wind for the past three decades. And that’s now paying what may be the ultimate penalty for a status quo strategy.
What are they thinking? Every single time BP head Tony Hayward opens his mouth it’s only to change feet! Now comes news that the geniuses behind what’s shaping up to be the most inept crisis management since the birth of the genre have hired one of the key architects of an industrial disaster that’s quickly approaching the incalculable damage stage.
During the Bush-Cheney administration – and given the way this is turning out “administration” may well have to be reconsidered – Anne Womack-Kolton hauled water as Cheney’s campaign press secretary before graduating to the Department of Energy where she led the office of Public Affairs. Continue reading
Larry Silvey’s the editorial director at Advanstar’s Aftermarket Business, and a favorite target is retailing giant Wal-Mart. In a recent column he called them out on two fronts: their new, and puzzling, supplier relationship strategy in which they took over delivery duties of goods from supplier to store, and a marketing decision pitting store against name brand that apparantly backfired. Our interest lies mainly in the marketing side so we’ll leave logistics aside and look at what happened after Wal-Mart marketing decided less is more when it came to consumer choices in the shopping aisles. Continue reading
building your personal brandJosh Hallett’s a social media pioneer who currently directs new media for content creation powerhouse Voce Communications. Their clients include Sony, Playstation, Yahoo, Disney and eBay. He spoke recently as part of PRSA Tampa Bay’s 2010 Professional Development Day on what’s needed in order for a personal brand to achieve online awareness across various media. (Read our series of articles on the same topic here.)
While his work mainly centers on large multi-nationals, Hallett’s comments were directed at the growing number of professionals who need to develop a coordinated online identity that for many is currently just an ad hoc combination of social networking mixed with the occasional hosted blog and a neglected twitter account. Continue reading
Looks like there’s an opening for using marketing techniques in the message driven landscape of public relations. I’ve always felt comfortable with both and think integration is 1) a good thing and 2) entirely appropriate – assuming proficiency – for maximum audience reach.
Personal experience? PR skills tend to be a developable talent, while marketing instincts depend on process and can, to a much greater extent, be absorbed.
If so, it would be like having two… two… two… mints in one. Given the light speed evolution of mass communications from primarily print delivered by primarily the U.S.P.S., it’s inevitable that public relations dialogue mashes up with marketers advertising message, creating a hybrid format that better fits the digital medium’s need for visuals.
To me, that’s what it looks like is happening, as print only media has blown up and broadcast only media is drying up. Put another way, for PR to rely solely on past best practices renders the message old before its time in a 24/7, app-driven, always on e-reader world.
Check this out at PRBreakfastClub for a first hand account of crossing over.
HD’s still looking for new directions out of the forest of consumer walk-on-by it’s lost in. Media Post’s industry pub Marketing Daily delivers details of TMC’s latest Maxim-ized efforts aimed at winning back share, on the back (figuratively speaking) of spokesperson/model/rider Marissa Miller.
Sigh… I get it. Dangle eye candy in front of viewers, Pavlovian response goes off, reader imagines she’s showering with him, wife’s ok with that, then he’s lickity split off to the dealer where he rite’s dat check before the steam evaporates.
But – but – it’s the chik riding the bike! By herself! And fem biker-ettes need men like fish need bicycles. Meanwhile, the campaign theme “Start Something” indicates an exhaustive naming session that apparantly sailed right past “Hey, What’s Up?” as an inspired call to action.
The image problem remains the bike line, not the actors. The communications problem remains. Period.
What to make of yesterday’s passing of songstress temptress Lena Horne and today’s death of Frank Frazetta? Culturally, they have not one thing to do with one another except that each carved a unique niche in our popular psyche.
They lived in the same eras – he white, she black – read mostly the same headlines, drove mostly similar cars, could easily recall a time without air conditioning, cheap long distance calling or air travel on a whim. Long distance. Does anyone even use the term anymore?
Lena’s smokey “Stormy Weather” always makes me glance upward, just to check. Stormy weather. Birds. Sky. Why?
Frazetta’s iconic “Death Dealer”, by the same token – wait a minute, that’s not right. But it is part of the overall lifetime of influences that define me, just like Lena, about how I feel and how I think and how I wonder about just what that is, that Stormy Weather.
Fantasy illustration, the Times calls it. Goth, legend, murderous mystic raiders astride heavily hooved war horses against a flame lit sky at twilight. It was Frazetta, and his peer Boris Vallejo, whose fantastic works were instantly adapted to chopper tank art as the perfect exclamation mark for the biker lifestyle. Then, anyway, before Conan became governor and Molly Hatchet’s lyrics sort of made sense.
There it is then, a circle formed climbing up through the mountains out of Chattanooga, heading for Knoxville one way or Nashville the other. Alone, fading daylight, blackness behind, straight pipes pounding off the pass, “Stormy Weather” plays in my mind as a summer thunderstorm builds in the distance, massive clouds turned impossible shades of pink by an already set sun, while the single warrior on the tank guides the way.
PBS NewsHour host Gwen Ifill led a five-member panel consisting of local print, digital and broadcast personalities in discussing The Changing Media Landscape, the last stop on a multi-state tour taking the public’s news temperature in cities across the country.
The 90-minute discussion, held today at St. Petersburg’s Poynter Institute, represented community, for profit, consumer and business POVs. It opened to an audience that included a contingent of Iraqi journalists by acknowledging the challenges facing a recession battered journalism that’s also being hammered by social media’s cultural transformation of how consumers take their news. Continue reading
(updated September, 2013: linked to original on Vimeo.)
Bonus: set in ’70’s circa L.A. (?): try to pick out failed, merged, updated and still current brands as they fly by.
NSFW beyond 01:12 mark
Logorama, an infectious Oscar winning (2010 – best animated short) animation from France operates on two levels. First, it proves the point once and for all why solid design is a critical marketing element in our global culture. (link version deleted from YouTube) The YouTube family friendly trailer (above) comes from the Logorama site.
But you’ll need to watch the full length adult (I’m not bad – they just draw me this way!) version over on Vimeo (if it hasn’t been yanked) for a darkly disturbing vision of plate tectonics gone awry. The inference points to that same commercial culture for having created too much demand for the environment to support.