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
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
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.
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.
You! Customer! So What!Will anyone, anywhere, ever say anything nice about Delta again? The answer is… no. Never. Just when I thought the statue of limitations on self-inflicted airline stupidity had run out after the Pringles/Virgin Air episode, Delta’s merger completion with Northwest last January actually signaled a fresh round of lowering the bar of customer expectations to depths previously unknown.
Reporting for Feministe, Jill Filipovic hit the mother lode of original travel horror story source material on her recent “trip” to Austin’s famously famous SXSW. Lucky for Delta, Jill’s a lawyer with a samurai writer’s instinct.
So even though the year’s still young, here’s my nomination for Best of Show – Travel Horror Stories (Domestic). Turn off the phone, make yourself comfortable, and enjoy.
Oh how the woe continues to flow. And you’d think there was no such thing as corporate PR. We said last August that when brands don’t pay attention, bad things happen. Delays during flight are part of the package. Multi-hour delays while you’re leisurely parked with a full load of frantic passengers continues to amaze.
Imagine finding yourself in the headlines, spotlighted like an upcoming episode of “Lost”. As in, “Starving Passengers Rationed Pringles.” And only one passenger suffers a panic attack? That just has to have major buzz kill written all over it. Continue reading
Brilliant, Watson!The sticker on the hood of this back from the grave Chevy isn’t a wasabi Rorschach test. It’s a QR code, which, when you snap a shot of same with your ever-present smart phone, will transport you to a mini-site where you can see the exact same vehicle you’re looking at in 3D, only a lot smaller and in 2D.
Not a good trade you say? Ha! Start swapping out options and accessories to get a brain bolt as to just how you’d set up profiling down the boulevard in a ride of your own. That’s what Chevy cooked up for their social media experiment March 12-15th at SXSWi in Austin, TX. Continue reading
Coming out of stealth mode into the technorati world of discoverability.