SOTB: There's a lot going on edition

SOTB is back, finally. So much going on in the world and my world that it's been hard to find the space and time:

1) Understanding Japan's Nuclear Crisis: Wired Science
The definitive guide to what's been going on at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors in Japan. Meanwhile, wear red for Japan (My faded, almost pink, Manchester United shirt was the best I could do) and donate to one of these donation sites.

2) 7 Billion: Are You Typical? National Geographic Magazine 



You are not the world's most typical person.

3) Is no evidence more persuasive than no evidence? Barking up the wrong tree
Unfortunately, but perhaps not surprisingly, the answer is 'yes'. People react to a little evidence by poking holes in it and seeing its deficiencies and end up less convinced than if they saw no evidence at all.

4) Heinz: Innovating the core to make a leader even stronger: brandgym

Heinz Beanz have a 65% share of a $500 million plus category in the UK. Beans on toast (with lashings of butter on the toast), yum! Anyway, Heinz has come up with a real innovation in this category, one that may well help revive the fortunes of other canned goods as well-- a re-closable plastic fridge pack

5) how to hack video screens on times square: BITcrash44 (via brandflakesofrbreakfast)



There's been some debate about whether this is real or faked. I call "real" and it'll be interesting to see the (probably nefarious) ways in which this technology will now be used. Also a business opportunity for those who can come up with ways to protect screens from unwelcome intrusion.

6) Chatroulette love song: DoneRightJr



One in a million. Occasionally Chatroulette dlivers. Love song to Diana.

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

SOTB Super Bowl 2011: Your guide to watching the ads, not the game

Super Bowl XLV: An iconic symbol for a world-class event (Landor)

Time to watch some ads. While two teams I dislike equally battle it out on the field; cars, beers, movies, sodas and GoDaddy will be competing for attention and praise. This year, some companies have decided to jump the gun and have released their ads ahead of time. I4U has a rundown of all the ads and links to the ones that have been pre-released. (It's also set up its Super Bowl for Geeks Guide to cover all the news about the ads.) A couple of the notable pre-releases:

1) VW The Force



2) HomeAway: Test Baby (This one may generate some heated commentary.)



This pre-release of some of the ads means that armchair judging can already begin:

3) Brand Bowl 2011: Mullen and Radian6 have teamed up again to give us a way of ranking all the commercials. In last year's bowl, Doritos beat out Google for the top spot. Doritos is back this year with another fan-made ad and will be hoping for a repeat.

4) The Super Bowl Ads You Can't Miss: Forbes
Forbes interviewed a panel of experts (CMOs, creative directors and marketing professors) for their top picks. Most anticipated include:  Snickers (featuring Roseanne Barr this year, not Betty White), Best Buy (the unlikely pairing of Justin Bieber and Ozzy Osbourne), GM which has a whole bunch of ads including one for the Volt and CareerBuilder.com which is bringing back its monkeys.

5) Top 5 Social Media Game Plans for Super Bowl Advertisers: Mashable
As Todd Wasserman points out, social media offers an opportunity to improve the ROI of an ad spot. He outlines five ways companies have been leveraging social media from the ultra basic approach of posting their ads on YouTube to the more ambitious approach adopted by Kia which has devised an online puzzle that can only be solved by finding clues buried in each of its ads.

6) Puppy Bowl VII: Animal Planet
Hate football, love puppies? The tune into Animal Planet's Puppy Bowl VII. Two hours of cute with kittens also performing in the Bissell Kitty Half Time show.

SOTB: Is nothing sacred edition?

astronomical clock by mararie (Flickr)

There are some things that should not be subject to the scrutiny of science or comedy. Things like the signs of the zodiac, the importance of design and advertising, and Ken being unbeatable on Jeopardy.

1) Your Zodiac Sign May Have Changed: Gawker
Astronomers have some cheek These so-called scientists peer through their big old telescopes in the middle of the night and think that gives them the right to kill off planets (Pluto) and mess up the whole astrological map. I was a Scorpio and now these people want to turn me into a Virgo. I think not. How dare they recalculate the dates of each sign to accommodate the shifts in the Earth's axis since the original Babylonian calculations. It's an outrage.

2) Things real people don't say about advertising: Bill Israel
This isn't funny:

@tomheg

Nor is this:

@adverplanner

3) Logoland: Why consumers balk at companies’ efforts to rebrand themselves: The Economist
And while we're on the subject, what's with all these companies thinking that they have the right to change the logos we know and love? The Economist explores.

4) Pink Ponies: A Case Study John St.
Here's another thing that's just too important to be taken lightly:

5) IBM's Watson Computer Wallops 'Jeopardy!' Champs in Trial Run: Fox61 Chattanooga
Luckily this was only a practice round. But, Ken, you better your act together for the real thing. You cannot be beaten. Warning: This video of Ken being humiliated by the computer is difficult to watch.

6) Elizabeth Hughes, 8 years old, National Anthem, Norfolk Admirals Game, Scope Arena
Finally, something uplifting (really). She's a great singer but what makes this video great is what happens when her mike stops working towards the end. The first thing you hear is a woman laughing. She picked the wrong lane. What happens next is that you hear the crowd collectively deciding that "no" this isn't going to end badly and they all join in and help her finish the song. Fantastic. (Reminds me a bit of this.)



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

SOTB: Holiday edition

It's definitely time, if you haven't, to get into the holiday spirit. To help you out, here's some, mostly Xmas-themed items I've seen over the last couple of weeks.

1) Rudolph (You Don't Have To Put On The Red Light) mojochronic
Red light, red nose. Why, of course, they should be mashed together:



2) Merry Christmas from Grolsch: Grolsch
A video from Grolsch and the Swingtop Philharmonic Orchestra putting beer to music.



3) Christmas Food Court Flash Mob, Hallelujah Chorus - Must See!
The Hallelujah Chorus has been flashing up everywhere this year. This was the one that I saw first. Very high singer to bemused diner ratio:



4) Adam Sandler original Chanukah (Hanukkah) Song
Love the song, love the crowd signing along 



5) Narayanan Krishnan via Mary Slavin Wallace
Capturing the real spirit of the holidays: "What is the ultimate purpose of life? It's to give."



6) The Salvation Army goes all high tech
Small steps on the giving front. How about those red kettles? The kettles outside your grocery store now take plastic! Or, better yet, you can give online, right here, right now.

Donate here!

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

SOTB: Thanksgiving food and fights edition

Happy Thanksgiving everyone and here's wishing retailers better success in this year's holiday shopping season than the last two:

1) 10 Awesome Turkey Recipes: BuzzFeed (via Fritinancy)
A couple of years ago, I featured the understated elegance of the bacon-wrapped, turkey-bacon combo, the Turbaconducken. That's nothing compared to this, the TurDunkin: "Turkey brined in Dunkin Donuts coolattas, stuffed with munchkins and served with coffee gravy and mashed hash browns." Yum!

From Unwholesome Foods

2) How to Make an All-Instant Thanksgiving Dinner: Wired Science

As we continue our tour of the culinary depths, let's turn to Wired Science and its quest to make an all-instant thanksgiving dinner. Apart from the canned cranberry in the photo, they were able to find all the other important ingredients in cans from the turkey to the mashed potatoes and gravy.

3) This outta be good: Indexed

4) Turkey Tussle: Slate
Slate's guide to your annual Thanksgiving arguments with three of the hot topics being TSA pat-downs, extending the Bush tax cuts and how/whether to cut the deficit. Quoting Loudon Wainwright's Thanksgiving prayer: "If I argue with a loved one, Lord, please make me the winner," Slate provides the ammunition you need to upset one or more family members around the table.

5) Thanksgiving Seating Chart: College Humor

6) Saks Fifth Avenue: 3D Holiday Windows
A few weeks ago, I linked to a beautiful video mapping show projected on Prague's famous astronomical clock. Now, here's Sacks Fifth Avenue using video mapping for holiday windows on a grand scale.



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

SOTB: Guess the brand edition

Pop quiz week:

Question One: Can you match any of these numbers to their brands?

Some numbers are specifically associated with products and brands (like 7-Up). How many can you get?

19, 409, 57, 45, 31, 8, 9, 501, 1, 0, 5, 2, 6, 33, 76, 20, 40, 3, 711

Answers at @issue: (via Fritinancy who has three other non-brand quizzes on her post if you're not all quizzed out by the end of this post.)

Question Two: Which brand came up with an idea that I thought was just brilliant this week?

Homer Simpson Stamp by Mt T in DC on Flickr

OK. You could have had ten thousand guesses and I'm pretty sure you'd never have come up with the United States Postal Service. I'm no big fan. Still, credit where credit's due. USPS is planning to test pre-stamped greeting cards that could be bought at Papyrus, drug stores etc. That's a great idea and could mean I might, just might, buy snail mail cards instead of sending e-cards once in a while. However, perhaps more true to form, there are already signs that it's going to screw this idea up. First of all, it's planning to test the idea for 2 years (and not start in time for these holidays) and it's also going to levy a 48 cent surcharge.

Question Three: Can you draw well-known brand logos from memory?

Austrian art-technology group Monochrom wanted to test the power of brands by seeing whether people could draw any of them from memory. I'm not sure I buy the premise but it's fun to look at the results. (via brandflakesforbreakfast)

Question Four: How many NASCAR Winston Cup tires are equivalent to the weight of an Airbus A380?

According to WeirdConverter, the answer is 26,532. Which seems low to me. This converter created by AVS to promote their video converter tool. (Also from brandflakesfor breakfast)

Question Five: Which brand took the worst hit after one of the Rolls Royce engines of an Airbus A380 operated by Qantas exploded in-flight?

And while we're on the topic of the A380 what about that engine blow-out? From two HBR reports, it looks like Qantas has suffered more than either Rolls Royce or Airbus. Leslie Gaines-Ross talks about how Qantas' reputation has been damaged even though the plane landed safely and the company was pretty fast to react. Stefan Stern talks about the same incident from the Rolls Royce perspective noting that, although it was slower to say anything, it took the time to get all the facts straight and that helped rebuild trust.

Question Six: Which brand did GM kill this week?

Is there no end to this brand carnage at GM? This week, it was Mr. Goodwrench who got the pink slip.

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

SOTB: Halloween Edition

Carving credited to Ray Villafane, an artist in Michigan

It's Halloween, all scary, orange and sugary:

1) Zombie Reports via @LenKendall
First off, it's important to keep tabs on where all the zombies are. This useful site keeps you up-to-date on sightings, places under attack and deaths. Plan accordingly.

2) The Sears Zombie site



One more sighting--zombies on the prowl in Sears. If you are already a Zombie, click on this link that translates everything into Zombian for you. The "Fitness for Zombies" video will also be of interest because, as it points out, "It's not uncommon to feel a little stiff after becoming undead."

3) 'Stranger Danger' and the Decline of Halloween: Wall Street Journal
Of course, we all know that zombies aren't the problem--it's our neighbors and all the horrible things that they're planning to do to our trick-or-treating kids that we need to worry about. Here's a remarkable fact from the WSJ: "No child has ever been killed by poisoned candy. Ever." Lenore Skenazy, author of Free Range Kids, uses the pervasive myth of poisoned candy as a jumping-off point to explore other ways kids childhoods are being taken from them by fearful parents.

4) A Not So Scary Halloween: The Keyhole
Not scary for retailers perhaps since they are benefiting from more consumer confidence and the fact that Halloween falls on a Sunday this year. But scary enough when you read that Jersey Shore characters are the #1 costume choice of the year. What a situation!

5) Ridiculously big pumpkins and what you can do with them
First of all, if you ever wondered about the science of growing really huge pumpkins, Wired Science has all the answers here. The big 'uns can put on 50 lbs a day and The New York Botanical Garden, is predicting that a 2,000-pound pumpkin could be grown soon. (The record is just a measly 1,800 lbs right now.) But, more important, is to know what do you do with such a big pumpkin once you've grown it. Here's one idea (via @GeorgeKrautzel):



6) Beards, Wigs and Panda Heads: It’s Giants Baseball: The New York Times

Great Pumpkin Sighting by chucknado

Finally, I can't let this week pass without some mention of the San Francisco Giants who ARE IN THE WORLD SERIES. The team's orange and black colors are perfect for this Halloween time of year and the eccentric personalities of the team are a perfect fit for the city. They should be in the World Series every year, I think. Go Giants! Fear the Beard!

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

PS: This new editor on Blogger is driving me crazy--it keeps on changing all my line spacing. Maybe time for a change?

SOTB: Failure, Fakery, Shouting and Swearing edition

A mixed bag of stuff this week from branding problems to the effective use of swearing:

1) 41 Causes Of Brand Failure: Branding Strategy Insider
This post from Branding Strategy Insider summarizes their long-running series called the 40 Most Common Brand Problems (now at 41). These are the most common and notorious problems they've encountered.

2) China: The Land Where Fake Brands Reign Supreme: Weird Asia News

Not on the 41 causes of brand failure list, but still a big problem is China, are fake brands. Taking things to a whole new level, the city of Nanjing, east of Shanghai, is soon to open a new shopping center dedicated to some 58 fake brands. There'll be the triple arches of McDnoald’s, a Starbucks lookalike Bucksstar Coffee, Panosaonic electronic products, Gillehe shaving supplies, Pmua sneakers, etc etc. 

3) The animated Sir Ken Robinson: Presentation Zen



Sir Kenneth Robinson explores the failure of education. in this RSA animation adapted from a much longer presentation given at the Royal Society of the Arts in London. It's interesting both for the content of the speech itself and the animation. Garr Reynolds adds another layer of interest here by exploring the persuasive presentation qualities of both the animation and the speech.

4) The Persuasive Power of Swearing: PsyBlog
Not something that Sir Kenneth would resort to, but swearing is persuasive, apparently. Researchers found speeches which included the use of "damn" at the beginning or end of a speech were more influential than ones that didn't. Maybe I should start dropping the "f" bomb in some of my presentations. I think it could work out great.

5) When in doubt, shout – why shaking someone’s beliefs turns them into stronger advocates: Discover

More from the wacky world of cognitive dissonance--when someone's beliefs are shaken, they become even stronger advocates for those beliefs. Could this finding mean that, the current louder and louder volume from people with entrenched positions is a harbinger of a future world of peace and harmony?

6) Superheroes - GEICO commercial


This latest Geico spot was produced entirely in XtraNormal. Inspired by this spot, I am going to post my first XtraNormal spot on branding next week. Stay tuned.

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

SOTB: The future's so bright edition

As the 33 Chilean miners made it out safe this week, it triggered a memory for me of a famous headline: "Earthquake in Chile. Not many dead," which apparently won a newspaper competition for the dullest headline ever. Dreadful as the experience was for these miners, especially in the days before they were found, their future seems much brighter.

1) Made in the Shade with Oakley real-time Chile miner marketing coup: Web Ink Now


Here was some good thinking. As an estimated one billion people tuned in to see the 33 Chilean miners get rescued, Oakley donated Radar model sunglasses with their black Iridium lenses to protect the miners eyes. Graceland also found a way to grab some of the limelight.

2) Glass Half Full-Montage: Jet Blue


The promise of a better traveling future from Jet Blue with some funny ads that point out some of the absurdities of air travel that we would never accept on the ground.   

3) Mom's on Facebook: Saturday Night Live


In the future, more of us will need the "Dammit, my mom's on Facebook filter." Like!

4) Smell Like A Monster: Sesame Street


In case you haven't seen this yet, the best Old Spice parody yet. Sadly, you're not a monster.

5) 106 things that are awesome: brandflakesforbreakfast

Perhaps in the 20% of their time devoted to "other" projects, some people at Google have assembled this reference document of 106 awesome Internet things. You'll have seen some of them but there's tons of good stuff here, all in one convenient place.

6)  Beautiful video-mapping show projected on Prague's 600-year-old medieval Astronomical Clock: Boing Boing

The 600 Years from the macula on Vimeo.
Google's doc does have some examples of video mapping but it doesn't have this show, projected on the medieval Astronomical Clock in the city's Old Town Square as part of a celebration for the 600th anniversary of the clock's construction. Fantastic.

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