Brands: Fight WikiPanic By Being WikiReady

Wikipanic—it’s the new word for the latest marketing threat. What will happen to your brand if Wikileaks attacks it? As Mastercard, Paypal, Visa, and Bank of America are finding out, marketers need to be ready in advance of disaster, whether a plane crash, an oil well explosion or a wikileak/hacktivist attack. Companies can’t risk a [...]

The Michael Vick Brand: Lessons from Martha Stewart and Tiger Woods

With Michael Vick stepping back into the role of spokesperson, an old blog post “When a Brand Is a Person” is newly relevant.  That post was written while Martha Stewart was rebuilding her brand. Now, years later, we can look back and consider what drove her successful comeback. We can also look at the [...]

Things Not to Do on Social Media Sites

The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur has some interesting (if sometimes contradictory) observations, tips and advice for businesses and individuals  in this post: Things Not to Do on Social Media Sites

Wikileaks, Hacktivism and Brands as Political Symbols

It was just a matter of time before the kinds of people who vandalized brand symbols at world economic summits resorted to brand cyber-vandalism. The Wikileaks hacktivists have targeted and threatened global brands like Mastercard, Visa, Paypal, Amazon, Twitter and Shell.

Gone are the days when a brand was a simple guarantee of product quality. Brands [...]

Geomentum Is Specialty Agency of the Year

Interpublic’s hyper-local media agency Geomentum (whose brand name was created by Merriam Associates last year), was selected by MEDIA magazine as a specialty agency of the year for 2010.  The awards was based on the company’s strategic vision, innovation and industry leadership. A profile of Geomentum and its achievements will appear in the [...]

Product Placement Makes Macy's a Star in Tower Heist

Forget product placement–think parade placement. A week after the real Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Central Park West closed down for a Hollywood version of the event, complete with floats, Macy’s balloons and the Macy’s marching band.

The Macy’s December 4th and 5th Parade was staged for a movie staring Matthew Broderick, Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Tea [...]

Digital Media Branding Mistakes: Search Result Slip-Ups

A shocking number of companies miss a critical opportunity to communicate in search engine results. What you say in Google, Bing and Yahoo! impacts traffic to your site and your brand image.  Yet, too many companies let programmers write this marketing copy. Here are the five most common search engine results copy writing mistakes:

1) Providing [...]

Brands on Parade: Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

My daughter and I slipped out to meet a friend for coffee Thanksgiving morning. Serendipitously and inexplicably we ended up lost in the press section of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Talk about a wrong turn that turned out alright…

I took the opportunity to  survey some of the brands on parade:

Congratulations to GM. The GMC’s [...]

Proxios Uses Web Video for Customer Testimonials

We covered several weeks ago a comprehensive list of ways to use Web video. One of the easiest and most powerful uses of Web video is the customer testimonial. With more impact than a customer list and more persuasive than a quote, is a short video of your customers talking about your product or service [...]

Social Media Brand Engagement Rules Toyota vs Chevrolet

Firefly Millward Brown’s New Rules for Brand Engagement study discusses the trouble brands are having effectively using social media. As we have discussed in previous posts, many marketers come across as insincere, pandering, or boring. The relationship/conversation thing seems to still stump many, many marketers. Consider the different Twitter approaches of the worlds’ leading car [...]