Category: Brand Strategy

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What Were They Thinking?

(Reading Time: 4 minutes)

The world is crawling with bad branding practices. They lurch stupidly across the countryside, inciting consumer cynicism, bombarding the citizenry with meaningless messages, wasting scarce dollars and even scarcer time.

For the most part, these misguided marketing moves are created and perpetuated by people paid handsomely for what they do. But what were they thinking? What was on the minds behind such products as Oil-Free Oil of Olay, Low-Salt Mr. Salty Pretzels and Rust-Oleum for Wood?

Here are a few examples of bad branding practices that I find nettling: Continue reading “What Were They Thinking?”

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300-page Branding Statements?! A Plea for Simplicity.

(Reading Time: 3 minutes)

A colleague relayed the following story about a conversation with the chief marketing officer of an international retail chain. This CMO was grousing about having paid a big-name agency $500,000 for a branding statement.

But it wasn’t the price that bothered him – it was the fact that the statement was 300 pages long (not a typo), and he doubted whether anyone, himself included, would read it. He went on to say that what he had read was far too open to interpretation to suit him. Continue reading “300-page Branding Statements?! A Plea for Simplicity.”

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Want Results? Get Objective.

(Reading Time: 4 minutes)

It was 1995 when the phone rang at Van Melle USA, manufacturer of Airheads and Mentos candies. A reporter from a major advertising industry publication was calling Liam Killeen, Van Melle’s vice president of marketing.

The reason?  To inform him that a panel of big-agency creative directors had just voted the Mentos ads the worst of the year. So, the reporter asked, did Liam have any plans to kill the campaign?

“Yes, we absolutely do,” said Liam.

The reporter began to make some noises about what a smart decision that was, but Liam interrupted him. Continue reading “Want Results? Get Objective.”