SOTB Omnibus Edition: 2011 Predictions about brands, branding, social media and other stuff

It's that time of year when people are looking forward to the year ahead and making their informed predictions (or guessing) about what's to come. There's tons of stuff. Here's what just a few of the many are thinking:

1) Top 11 Marketing Predictions for 2011: It’s All About Protecting and Nurturing the Brand: MENG
Mark Burgess' eleven predictions consider how companies will adapt to the new world order driven by social media and mobile technologies.

2) Eleven Brands to Watch in 2011: Forbes
Landor's Allen Adamson picked eleven brands to watch in 2011. The list includes: aol, the NFL, SNL and Sony. (He's not predicting that they'll all be winners, just that they'll be interesting to follow as they try to keep (or win back) relevance, differentiation and authenticity)

3)Top Ten Branding Keys For 2011: Branding Strategy Insider
Ten tips for better branding focusing on better quality of interaction and service to your customers

4) Social Media Predictions; Content Marketing Predictions for 2011: Junta42 (via Drew McLellan)
More than 100 participants contributed to this collection of social media predictions. With that many people contributing, someone's bound to be right about something.

5) Predictions From Customer-Experience Experts for 2011: MarketingProfs
Another survey of thought leaders, this time in the area of customer experience.

6) What are experts predicting for 2011?: Samuel Parent's Blog
You want more? Samuel Parent has put together a comprehensive list of which the following are just a limited set:
Forecast 2011: The digital backlash begins, Monocle
Tech Predictions 2011: Winners and Losers, Mashable
11 B2B Marketing Predictions for 2011, Social Media Today
25 Customer Experience Statistics For 2011 (And Beyond!), The Social Customer
2011 Trends: Census Highlights Demographic Shifts, eMarketer
Consumer Trends to Watch in 2011, Marketing Charts
2011 Trends: Content Marketing Is Critical, eMarketer
Five Social Media Trends for 2011, Social Media Explorer
2011 trends: Social media marketing and ROI. Social Media Today

That's it! Back soon with more stories from the world of brand strategy. More thoughts and comments also available on Twitter (@martinjbishop).

SOTB: 2010 Retrospective

It's almost time to say goodbye to 2010. A year that featured the launch of the iPad, the Old Spice commercials, the European debt crisis, Foursquare rising (soon to fall?), Groupon turning down a $6 billion offer from Google, Steven Slater's dramatic exit from his Jet Blue flight (and career), the TSA-inspired catchphrase "Don't Touch My Junk," a Gap logo that was junked following a Twitter outcry and Spain winning the World Cup (while I was there). While all this was going on, these were the six most popular Brand Mix posts of the year:

1) Great Brands of Tomorrow
Credit Suisse released an impressive report on the 27 brands it considered to have the greatest potential in the years to come. Most of the brands on the list are ones that have started to make the leap from niche/emerging players into powerful mainstream brands. Brands like Trader Joe's and Hyundai. These brands still have plenty of room to grow but are more established and have less risk of flaming out than early-stage companies. The report also had some interesting thoughts on the power of brand investing and what, in their opinion, constitutes sustainable brand value creation.

2) Marriott launches Autograph Collection, a tricky proposition
It was nice to see a post about brand architecture, my specialty area, make the top six. This post talked about the branding challenges for Marriott as it launched its new Autograph Collection bringing together high-end, unique properties in an upscale franchise. It's a  tricky challenge to get the balance right between recognizing marketing and operating efficiencies of bringing these properties closer together without eroding the unique characteristics that customers value.

3) Six of the Best: Sticky accelerators, iPad jokes, phone book forts and more edition
Back in January, almost any reference to iPad in your headline was guaranteed to increase traffic. In the early days of the iPad, there was a lot of chat about the name and its unfortunate proximity to a category of feminine hygiene products. In this SOTB, I listed a post written by Hayes Roth, Landor's CMO, who correctly predicted that the product would be a smash and the hoo-hah about the name quickly forgotten.

4) In questions of perception and behavior, font matters
This post reported on an article by Hyunjin Song and Norbert Schwarz in the February edition of The Psychologist that showed how fonts can significantly influence people's assessment about how easy or difficult things are to do. People estimated that an exercise with instructions printed in Arial would be much easier and faster to complete than the same exercise with instructions printed in Script MT. The more difficult-to-read fonts tax our brain's limited processing power and lead us to make false inferences about the task itself.

5) Six of the Best: Branding edition
I should probably put the words brand and branding into my titles more often if I want to get more readership. Anyway, this SOTB featured six posts about various aspects of branding from what we can learn from the remarkable turnaround of Ford to the transformation of Bill Gates as a presenter.

6) Essentials of Branding: FREE! download
Well this post had "branding" and "FREE!" in the title so it should have been the most popular of all. McGraw Hill's Big Book of Marketing is, they say: "The most comprehensive book of its kind... the definitive resource for marketing your business in the twenty-first century." Landor contributed content for the chapter on branding and it's that content that's STILL available for free download on landor.com

That's it! Back soon with more stories from the world of brand strategy. More thoughts and comments also available on Twitter (@martinjbishop).

Photo: last rays by paul (dex)  (Flickr)

Six of the Best: It's a mad, mad world edition

It's the all-mad edition. From mad scientists to mad art, mad artists, mad politics and Mad Men:

1) The chosen research areas of mad scientists (1810 - 2010): Mad Science

What do mad, fictional scientists research? Annalee Newitz decided to look into this important question and reports on the results of his own mad research going all the way back to Frankenstein in the 1810s. Key findings: There are lots more mad scientists out there than there used to be, biology and biotechnology are the most popular fields of research and mad chemistry never goes out of style.

2) Visualizing Madness: The Art of “Howl” NeuroTribes

NeuroTribes interviews painter and graphic novelist Eric Drooker. He created images for "Howl," a feature film starring actor James Franco as a young Allen Ginsberg. His images formed the basis of the digital animation that visually represents the surreal, incantatory language of the poem.

3) Casey Affleck levels about "I'm Still Here" Roger Ebert's Journal



For all those who were worried that Joaquin Phoenix had gone completely mad, this week brought relief. It was all an act (including this Letterman interview)--an Andy Kaufman reprise. Roger Ebert was one of the many who originally thought the "I'm Still Here" movie that documents Phoenix's performance was "real" but, to his credit, this interview with Casey Affleck is mainly inquisitive, not accusative.

4) Stephen Colbert draws attention to self, then farmworkers during Hill appearance Yahoo! News



Oh, the truthiness of it all! Stephen Colbert, in character, performed and testified in Congress this week about an immigration bill he had not read, “like most members of Congress.” His appearance guaranteed a sell-out crowd and possibly the highest rating ever for a CSPAN 3 broadcast. Some were amused. Some weren't.

5) Freud. The rebranding: McSweeney's
Jim Stallard imagines Anna Freud visiting Sterling Cooper to ask Don Draper and his Mad Men colleagues to help rebrand her father's work as it continues to lose share to that annoying upstart, behaviorism:

FREUD: Society is changing. At our last board meeting, we decided we have to reposition ourselves. We want to promote our expertise in dreams. We want people to see them as the means to discover themselves, and that Freud will show them how.

PEGGY OLSON: When I was a girl, I always lay in bed in the morning thinking over the dream I just had. It was the happiest part of my day.

FREUD: (Brightening) That's the feel that we're looking for. People want a lift, and we give it to them.

OLSON: You could have a slogan like, "Dare to Dream." Or "Full Dream Ahead."

DRAPER: (Annoyed) That sounds like a carnival ride.

6) Network-I'm Mad as Hell: Peter Finch
"I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more." Peter Finch. Awesome.



That's it! Back soon with more stories from the world of brand strategy. More thoughts and comments also available on Twitter (@martinjbishop).

Six of the Best: What would you do? edition

What would you do if...

1) WWYD if you saw this sign as you were driving along the freeway and you did, in fact, have a stash of something you shouldn't in the car? (A puzzle in game theory: Marginal Revolution)

2) WWYD if someone was talking annoyingly loudly on their cell phone right next to you. Would you listen? Would you get extremely irritated? (Why Cellphone Talkers Are So Grating: Wired)

3) WWYD if you were a Corn Refiner and were fed up with all the negative press around high fructose corn syrup? Would you try and change the name? (High Fructose Corn Syrup, not so sweet: Ries' Pieces. Picture by: dunno source. Caption by: Brown via Poster Builder)

4) WWYD with a whole lot of dog poop? Power up? (Dog Poop Powers Park Lights: Wired)

5) WWYD if you were Club Med and had just turned 60? Would you turn out the lights or would you find a way to reinvent? (Club Med remember and refresh what made them famous: The brandgym blog)

6) WWYD if you'd lived or worked in the same place for years and years? Would you be a pack rat saving all sorts of junk because you might need it some day? Would you be in dire need of a de-cluttering? (De-Cluttering Your Organization: Ron Ashkenas. Photo: b.frahm)

That's it! Back soon with more stories from the world of brand strategy. More thoughts and comments also available on Twitter (@martinjbishop).

Six of the Best: Why carpets in Vegas are so ugly and answers to other important questions

There are things you've always wondered about and then, one day, you finally find out the answer. For example, why are those carpets in Las Vegas so hideous?

1) what's with the ugly carpet in vegas? brandflakesforbreakfast
This important question has been on everyone's mind ever since Chris Maluszynski put together a gallery devoted to these spectacular carpets. Wired, Gizmodo and Marginal Revolution and their readers have all joined in the speculation as to why they are so ugly. Do they somehow keep people gambling? Are they designed to hide chips that fall on the floor so that the casino can pick them up later? Or are they just part of the Vegas tacky vibe? Unfortunately, the most likely answer is the most mundane--they are just designed to cover up stains and wear and tear.

2) Who is the UK's most unwanted author? telegraph.co.uk
By comparing the ratio of books sold to the books donated, Oxfam (a UK charity) says that Dan Brown is the winner of this unwanted title. He was the #1 author donated but only #10 on the author's bought list. (Best sellers at Oxfam are: Ian Rankin, Stieg Larsson and JK Rowling.)

Dan Brown is the author that other authors love to hate. The Economist explains why, referencing a Geoff Pullum critique that points out that the Da Vinci Code may be the only novel ever written that begins with the word "Renowned" as in "Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery." As Pullum says: "I think what enabled the first word to tip me off that I was about to spend a number of hours in the company of one of the worst prose stylists in the history of literature was this. Putting curriculum vitae details into complex modifiers on proper names or definite descriptions is what you do in journalistic stories about deaths; you just don't do it in describing an event in a narrative."

3) When will the last CD be sold? Thought Gadgets
This was Apple-announce-a-lot-more-stuff week and one of those things was "Ping," a social network based on music. "It's like Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes," Steve Jobs said. Coinciding with the announcement, a new iTunes logo was unveiled, one that no longer has the CD image as part of its background. The death of CDs foretold.

4) Does a Whopper really look like that? boredpanda
Bored Panda has a guest post from Dario D. who wondered what real fast food products would look like compared to what they look like in their ads. Not close, it appears. Olivier Blanchard shared his thoughts about these results also referencing this famous clip from Falling Down: "Breakfast at Whammyburger" which includes its own variation on the theme at 04:06.

5) How do I get my kids to eat carrots? USA Today
Maybe by making them look like junk food. USA TodayI reports on an effort by Bolthouse Farms and nearly 50 other carrot growers to change the image of carrots with the industry's first-ever marketing campaign (developed by Crispin Porter + Bogusky).

6) Should I wear a monocle? Len Kendall
There's no decision that can't be put through the lens of a SWOT analysis. Len has started up this Tumblr dedicated to bringing SWOT analyses to the masses. "These four pillars have been hogged by business & marketing people far too long. It's time to take back these quadrants in the interest of over-complicating the simple things in life."

That's it! Back soon with more stories from the world of brand strategy. More thoughts and comments also available on Twitter (@martinjbishop).

Six of the Best:The end of the world as we know it edition

It's the third birthday for the blog. Yeah! What better time to consider these end-of- the-world-as-we-know-it stories:

1) The Web is Dead. Long Live the Internet Wired

Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff thought-provoked us this week with this Infographic and its accompanying proposition--the World Wide Web is dead (or dying anyway), eclipsed by Skype, Netflix, peer-to-peer and hundreds of thousands of apps. Chris looking on the demand side: "As much as we love the open, unfettered Web, we're abandoning it for simpler, sleeker services that just work." Michael considering the supply side: "Chaos isn't a business model. A new breed of media moguls is bringing order--and profits--to the digital world." The article has generated tons of comment and discussion including this graphic-disputing rebuttal from Boing Boing.

2) Who's Got the Money? - Visa, Mastercard, AT&T, Verizon, Discover, Paypal: The Phoenix Principle
So, the web may (or may not) be dying. What about money, checks debit and credit cards? Are they doomed too? In 10 years, we may live in a world without cash. Adam explores the implications of the news that mobile carriers are working on a venture to replace your credit cards with a smartphone app that acts as your debit and/or credit card. No cash. No plastic. Potentially massively disruptive. He asks: "What happens to cash registers? What happens to desk clerks in hotels - will they be necessary? What about cashiers in retail stores - any need? Will banks have any need for a local branch? Why would ATMs exist? Quite literally a raft of companies would be affected that deal in the handling of transactions - from Visa and Mastercard to IBM and Diebold."

3) Facebook Places: Foursquare Without the Fun? socialmediatoday
Big news of the week on the social media front is Facebook's launch of Places. It would seem like this would be the end of the world for Foursquare, Gowalla and the rest but, according to socialmediatoday, it looks like Facebook is in more of a partnering than obliterating frame of mind. Plus there are no badges or mayorships on Places. So, your choice may be: Function without Fun or Fun without Function. Here's more: 1) Places User's Guide 2) An NYT article on the bitter Foursquare rivalries and office battles.

4) The Last Exorcism
Early on, Merton/Ben Folds Five found a great use for Chatroulette. Now The Last Exorcism has found another use--marketing that makes your head spin:



5) How Snooki Got her Gucci: The Dirt on Purses: The New York Observer
Snooki, star of MTV's Jersey Shore, self-proclaimed "guidette," known as Nicole Polizzi at high school before earning her nickname (apparently based on the character "Snooki the cootchie crook" from the film Save the Last Dance) because she was the first of her friends to make out with a boy), is not that special someone that luxury brands typically want to associate with. (All Snooki info courtesy of Wikipedia, btw.) Yet, there she was, on red carpet after red carpet toting her Coach bag. Until she started to be seen with other bags--seemingly a different brand in every new tabloid photograph. Were other fashion houses gifting her bags? Yes, but not theirs. In perhaps the first known example of unco-branding, it seems like the fashion houses have been rushing to send her bags from their competitors. It's a race for disassociation!

6) The Majestic Plastic Bag - A Mockumentary: HealtheBay
A different type of bag--the plastic bag. Jeremy Irons narrates this mockumentary, in David Attenborough style, about a plastic bag's journey from your careless hand all the way to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, twice the size of Texas. Not sure about the effectiveness of this video. I found myself routing for the bag!



That's it! Back soon with more stories from the world of brand strategy. More thoughts and comments also available on Twitter (@martinjbishop).