the blog

What is it called when your branding is so strong that others can use it against you without even calling you out? Read on to find out.

I saw a television spot last night while watching Hugh Laurie’s fantastic performance as House. The spot starts out with some very “apple-esque” music and a series of very “apple” type treatments making all of the negative “iDont’s” that have been said about Apple.

Midway through the ad, the song comes to a screeching hault, the screen is taken over by some futuristic graphics and the simple phrase “Droid Does” appears on the screen. The month of November is called out and a url appears.

Talk about poking the bear. The spot never once calls out Apple or the competitor that is dissing the telecom giant by name. However, it is always clear that the spot is negatively about Apple and once you visit the URL you find out Droid is a Verizon product.

While the spot definitely made me stop and ponder all of the negative claims being made about Apple, what I really took away was how absolutely amazing the Apple brand is. It is amazing that in a millisecond a simple type treatment tells me who the spot is about.

All branding should be this good and unique. Perhaps when we approach a branding project we should look at it from this perspective: If a competitor were going to make a television commercial about our brand, would our visuals (or in this case, simple type treatment) be that recognizable that anyone would know the spot was about us, without ever seeing or hearing our name?

This is a challenge our agency will accept! And, looking at some of the brands that we’ve created over the years (Merrick, Project 7, Before Grain, etc) I’d say we’re doing pretty good. If the pet food advertising wars ever begin we will be able to test that theory!

I love iPhone Apps just as much as the next person, and we’ve been talking about developing a few for clients. Apps are great when they are useful and enriching. That being said, there are definitely some apps out there that don’t need to exist. PC World just released their list of “The 10 Most Idiotic iPhone Apps.”

It’s hilarious! To read the entire article click here. Otherwise, here is a short synopsis of the list:

1. Fatburner2K – makes your iPhone vibrate. Once vibrating you are supposed to place the phone on your belly letting the vibrations turn your lard into a six pack.

2. Hair Clinic: For Man and Woman – This app emits inaudible frequencies that are supposed to promote hair growth as you move the handset around your scalp.

3. Kiss Me – Rate your kissing ability by smooching this iPhone app.

4. Passion – Apparently this app judges your prowess in the bedroom… I’m not describing how.

5. Sexy Girl Talk – Sexy Alphabet Deluxe – This is either better or worse than it sounds. All it is is a sexy girl voice reading the alphabet.

6. HangTime – if you use this you deserve what you get. This tells you the hang time when you throw your iPhone up in the air.

I apologize in advance for this one…
7. Rate a Fart 2.0 – I don’t know what horrifies me more. The fact that this app exists? Or the fact that it is the 2.0 version. I think you can guess what it does.

8. U.K. Payphone – This is irony at its finest. Basically this allows you to search for the nearest pay phone (in the U.K.) from you iPhone.

9. Drunk Sniper – This is so tasteless. This app allows you to fake urinating to see how accurate you are.

10. Beer Opener – This app just lets you pretend to open a beer.

All I have to say is… Wow.

The article has some awesome runners-up, as well. Take a read, and if you are an iPhone developer make sure before you develop another app you ask yourself, “would I be proud to tell everyone at my 20 year high school reunion that I made Rate a Fart 3.0?” If not, put the computer down, back away and come back when you have a better App idea.

Know of an app that there shouldn’t be? Post a comment and let us know!

Four words – Personalized… Top… Level… Domain…

You can’t get more branded than that. With companies spending millions of dollars to buy URLs to promote their brands (Ex. Toys R Us spent $5 million to purchase Toys.com) how much do you think a personalized top-level domain would be worth?

Think about it from this perspective.

You are Starbucks.
You want to set up Starbuck’s Coffee Book Cubs all over the world as your next big branding thing.
What is more branded than each URL having the top-level domain .starbucks?
Pretty much nothing…

Still not seeing it? Okay, another example.

You are ebay.
You want to set up personalized web addresses for individuals to have as their “store.”
You own .ebay and each store has a URL of “mystore”.ebay.
Can you say increased brand recognition?

Whether you work on the agency side or the brand side, the impact this could have needs to be understood. Take the time to investigate and see if this is a possibility for your company. Apparently these will be available starting in 2010.

I wonder if I can beat Toys R Us to the punch and buy .toys? If so, you can find me on a beach in Tahiti.

While flying to Chicago to attend the HH Backer Pet Show with client Merrick Pet Care, I happened to glance at American Airlines’ American Way magazine. The usual travel fluff was splashed across most of the pages, “Visit Branson! Enjoy a show!” However, nestled amongst the ads for “so-and-so’s” Crab Shack and “Visit the Show Me State!” was an article written about a book that covers everybody’s current favorite form of communication: Social Media.

Ophelia Joined the Group of Maidens Who Don’t Float: Classic Lit Signs on to Facebook, by Sarah Schmelling, delves into how literature’s greatest characters would have participated on Facebook. Who would have taken what quizzes, what their updates would have been, who joined what group, etc… The thought of Hawkeye writing a message to Cora of “I will find you” or Holden Caulfield posting an update of “Another lousy day full of phony people” absolutely brought a smile to my face as I went on to explore how my other favorite characters would have danced the social media dance the rest of the flight… definitely better than the in-flight movie.

And while the article discussed only Facebook, what if we applied the Literary Character Facebook challenge to Twitter. How would Hamlet have delivered his entire soliloquy “To be, Or not to be: that is the Question. Whether ’tis nobler to suffer the..?” This simple exercise demonstrates what most people and companies do poorly when it comes to social media – staying relevant and thorough while being concise. Social media is for the tidbit masses, those that don’t want to sit down and read the full length edition of “War and Peace” but rather the “Cliff’s Note’s” version. Social media was created to keep our fast moving, tidbit loving society in the loop and in the know.

Thanks to this article I feel inspired to treat each Tweet, update and post as my next great novel, with suspense, romance, danger and intrigue – capturing the readers attention to the very end… in, of course, less than 141 characters!