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Beg to Differ

A brand strategy blog - by DenVan

Brand Brief: the Shack meets the Lance

July 23, 2009 // Dennis Van Staalduinen Leave a Comment

BBC Sports reported this afternoon that 1) fabled cyclist and inspirational uber-achiever Lance Armstrong   will surely NOT repeat as the winner of this year’s Tour de France, pharmacy but 2) in even bigger news: “Lance Armstrong will compete for Team RadioShack as a cyclist, buy runner and triathlete in events around the world, including the 2010 Tour de France.” So he’s dropping his current team Astana (bankrolled by the Kazakh government) eh? But Radio Shack? Isn’t that a bit like joning Team Edsel or Team Jurassic Era?

Crash

Here’ s Lance Armstrong himself on the partnership – from his daily video-blog at LiveStrong.com:

So DIFFERs: what do you think?

  • Is this a good move for brand Lance Armstrong? For brand Radio Shack?
  • Are both brands past their prime and in need of serious reality checks?
  • Or could this be the beginning of a new comeback for all involved?
  • Your comments are welcome.


Filed Under: Brand Brief, Brand Names, Brand Value, Contains Video, Rebranding, Retail Brands Tagged With: beg to differ, begtodiffer, brand brief, brand strategy, lance armstrong, radio shack, sponsorship, tour de france

Brand Brief: Amazon.com gets legs – and feet

July 22, 2009 // Dennis Van Staalduinen Leave a Comment

Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos has just released a long video in which he rhapsodizes about the history of Amazon.com – including early troubles with technology… and even elecricity. At 8 minutes plus, sale this DOESN’T qualify as an elevator pitch. Then he eventually gets around to announcing his company’s all-stock aquisition of online shoe retailer Zappos.com. The full TechCrunch Newsflash is here.

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From the other side of the acquisition, Zappos.com CEO Tony Heish has posted this letter to employees explaining the aquisition. It’s a serious letter, but also manages to be light, breezy-but-informative piece that speaks to the corporate brand culture Hseih has built at Zappos. Just what you’d expect from a guy with a Zappos logo tatooed to his head.

But one thing that caught my attention was this:

We learned that they truly wanted us to continue to build the Zappos brand and continue to build the Zappos culture in our own unique way. I think “unique” was their way of saying “fun and a little weird.” 🙂
…
The Zappos brand will continue to be separate from the Amazon brand. Although we’ll have access to many of Amazon’s resources, we need to continue to build our brand and our culture just as we always have. Our mission remains the same: delivering happiness to all of our stakeholders, including our employees, our customers, and our vendors.

So what do you think?

  • Cynical DIFFERs, how long do you think this will last before Zappos.com is absorbed into Amazon?
  • Hopeful DIFFERs: is this the greatest thing you’ve ever heard?
  • And how about that backyard Billionaire video?

Filed Under: Brand Brief, Brand Value, Contains Video, Online brands, Rebranding, Retail Brands Tagged With: Amazon.com, brand culture, brand strategy, Jeff Bezos, merger, Tony Hsieh, Zappos.com

No, Twitter brand: what are YOU doing?

June 12, 2009 // Dennis Van Staalduinen 2 Comments

twitter-home-pageOkay, dosage confession time. As an emerging Twitter devotee, page (@denvan) I’ve been “drinking the Kool-Aid” of the Twitter brand for too long to really be objective about their brand strategy. I’m a tribe member now, viagra 100mg and I’ve learned the buzzwords, tools, and idiosyncrasies of this social media monster. But as a brand strategy geek, I also hear rumblings of trouble in the Twitterverse that I can’t ignore…

As I encounter more and more fellow “tweeps” (a word about insider language later) and have the same old “what the heck is Twitter GOOD for” conversation, the more I begin to wonder about different aspects of the Twitter brand package – are the elements holding together? Do they make sense? Could this be why we learned yesterday that Twitter’s growth is flat-lining and more than 50% of Twitter accounts are dead? Perhaps.

But let’s start with the good stuff.

What I love about Twitter Branding:

Basically, the thing I like about Twitter is the thing that may kill it in the end: it’s rough around the edges.

Twitter gained my instant affection by making absolutely NO attempt to be slick or professional – in design, messaging, or corporate positioning. The graphics are simple and inviting in a cartoonish-but-zen-elegant way that gives the site class tempered with a sense of humour. Nothing arty farty-highbrow or in-your-face revolutionary here.

Scroll down to the bottom of any twitter.com page and click on About Us and you get the feeling that this thing started in somebody’s garage in 2006, and that they’re hoping to stay there. The main login page is a study in simplicity with only 183 characters in the main body copy (note to Twitter: I could help you get this down to 140. I’m getting REALLY good at that!).

“Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”

Aw shucks. Ain’t that nice?

The whole brand package seems to promise new users a few key things: 1) small (i.e. unintimidating – easy to grasp), 2) fun (breezy tone, quick hits of cool content perhaps) 3) free (not going to take my credit card and sucker-punch me later with weirdo fees), 4) easy (get started – and hooked – fast), 5) social (geared toward social, not “serious” conversations)… and 6) disposable (geard toward a quick pay-off for a small amount of effort).

Which brings us to the potential dark side (spoiler alert: the light sabers are about to change colour!).

The potential problem(s) with Twitter Branding

The problem with sustaining this promise can be expressed in one word: Oprah. Okay, maybe two: Oprah and Ashton Kutcher. All right, three: Oprah, Ashton, and the coming of Summer patio season to the Northern Hemisphere (now THAT’s a social network!!). The first two are problems of scale, that is, reasons for rapid viral growth, while the third is one of the non-brand factors that should lead any sane person to want to get away from the computer or Blackberry (he writes at 5:01 p.m. on a gorgeous Friday evening).

The big question for the Twitter brand is this: can it scale to meet the hype?

In early 2009, Twitter went from cool-kid buzzword to mass market sensation with over 5 million additional new visitors in March – up from 4.3M in February to 9.3M in March. And the growth continued strong into April with the addition of the Great One (Oprah not Gretzky) and the 1 Millionth follower for Kutcher – with the attendant .

And the pressures are only increasing with big serious events like the election in Iran and the attacks in Mumbai, and the pundits trumpeting the game-changing nature of the medium.

And with all that hype, came… a great big collective “HUH?!?” from the new users attracted to the platform.

Because, you see, the Twitter brand is havign trouble emerging from the basement it dug for itself. Its initial brand promises are being met with the problems of massive growth:

Promises Twitter might be breaking

1. Small: sorry Twitter. MILLIONS of users. Repeat that. MILLIONS.

2. Fun: despite the breezy graphics and light tone, Twitter is not fun until you connect with at least one other active human. But for the average newbie, Twitter.com doesn’t do a very good job of helping you understand how to make that first connection (or whay
you’d want to)…

3. Free: for now, but with the weight of so much stuff comes the time cost that mid-market adopters are more likely to factor into the equation. Business users in particular are skeptical that this isn’t just another time-waster for employees, and Twitter doesn’t help itself – starting with the name “Twitter” which is incredibly catchy and viral, but also implies empty, and possibly annoying background chatter.

4. Easy: I like and compulsively use Twitter, but even I barely ever use Twitter.com. TweetDeck and other tools are absolute necessities for anyone serious about the medium. Twitter itself may be Open API-ing itself into obsolescence unless it starts taking the user experience – and more to the point – the IMPRESSION of control that a new user needs – more seriously.

5. Social: This and all the other examples on the site imply that Twitter is just for F2F (Friend-To-Friend) communications. Sample value messages are about delving into the trivial parts of people’s lives, which, as most people find pretty quickly, is not the main content that forms the bulk of Twitter traffic. I’m finding that the most successful Tweeters mix maybe 10-20% personal with maybe 60-70% subject matter expertise and useful cross references, and the rest being current events, trivia, etc. Twitter has outgrown “What are you doing” and has crossed into the realm of “Why are we doing what we’re doing?” and “What does it mean to me?”

6. Disposable: here’s the crux of it for me. By playing up “fun” “easy” and “social” aspects, Twitter’s current brand strategy is focused on “fast-twitch” brand drivers, and missing the most important aspect of the Twitter service: that it takes time, effort, and commitment to really get anything out of the medium. New users see the firehose coming at them, and it’s no surprise they’d be tempted to go elsewhere for a drink.

So how does Twitter tune its brand package to 1) help the newbies get it and get involved, 2) make the case about the serious work values the medium can fulfill, without 3) losing the core values and emotional ties that made the brand attractive in the first place?

Or is it all just a deeper level of brilliance than this poor brand geek can grasp – after all, they’ve got the millions of devoted (and not-so-devoted) users, so something must be working.

That’s a question I throw back to you dear reader. Comment away.

Filed Under: Analysis & review, Brand Names, Brand Value, Logo, Message & Positioning, Online brands, Positioning, Retail Brands, Service Brands, Social Media, Tag Lines Tagged With: brand management, brand strategy, branding, Consumer product brands, critique of Twitter, Internet, Logo, online, positioning, Service, Social Media, tagline, Technology, Twitter, Twitter branding social media brand audit critique tweetdeck oprah ashton kutcher

Why we brand – video clip from May 27 Brand Strategy BOOTCAMP

June 3, 2009 // Dennis Van Staalduinen Leave a Comment

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Dennis discusses the human roots of Branding: the need to make sense of our surroundings by naming, organizing and telling stories about the things we encounter.

This is a theme I come back to over and over in all my work: the need to understand branding in the context of human values and human needs.

It’s never been exactly about the “psychology” of branding for me, because that always makes it feel a bit manipulative – like a form of mesmerism.

To me a smart brand manager is more concerned with anthropology. We study patterns of behaviour to place our products where they will be appreciated most readily. And maybe, if you want  a really fancy word for it, epistimology: the study of how people create ideas and meaning.

Filed Under: Brand Value, Branding Advice, Consumer Behaviour, Contains Video Tagged With: anthropology, brain branding, brand psychology, brand strategy, What is a brand, Why brand

A modest proposal for General Motors and the new boss

June 1, 2009 // Dennis Van Staalduinen 2 Comments

So with all the kerfuffle around the GM bankruptcy (and the gajillions of dollars we’ll all be shelling out to save its butt from the fire), troche the one thing that gets forgotten as always is the brand strategy angle: 60-90 days from now, GM will be re-emerging from bankruptcy under a new coporate banner. Now, that could be a simple mechanical switch, but we at Brandvelope started thinking: what if the new boss has something to say about that?

BRAND STRATEGY DECK
View more presentations or Upload your own.

Trouble viewing the deck? Try this link instead:

http://www.begtodiffer.com/LADYLIBERTYMEETSGM

Filed Under: Automotive Brands, Brand Value, Humour, Recession Tagged With: big three, brand architecture, brand comparison, brand management, brand strategy, Humour, re-branding

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