Old Spice in a Win-Win Duel Between Mustafa and Fabio

When Old Spice announced that Fabio would be replacing Mustafa, the outcry was instantaneous. Was Old Spice going to end up like The Gap and quickly backtrack when customers on social media screamed loudly enough?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not so fast. It was a set up from the beginning—a set up perfect for generating buzz and involving fans. Fabio [...]

Google+ Screws Up the Brand Trust Equation

I was right in the middle of writing a blog entry on how the well-documented trust problems of the Facebook brand have left a gaping strategic hole that could have allowed Google+ to topple the social media giant. But then Google+ messed up in a big way. They no longer can claim trustworthiness and may [...]

Consumr: A Yelp For Consumer Goods—No Help

Advertising Age reports the launch today of Consumr, a new social media ratings site. It’s meant to be Yelp-meets-Foursquare to rate consumer packaged goods like Cheerios and Tide. This is a service without a need.

Consumr is working with publisher Rodale to import Yelp-style product reviews for some 50,000 products you can find on grocery store, [...]

Don't Drop the F-Bomb...And Other Good Social Media Advice

“Don’t use the F-Bomb” is a seemingly common sense rule when using social media for corporate purposes.

But, common sense is not as common as you might hope.

A purported social media expert working for a leading social media agency tweeted this for Chrysler: “I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the Motorcity and yet [...]

Social Media Forces Candid Truth from Brands

Rance Crain has an interesting post in Advertising Age: “Back in the Mad Men days, when the “pioneers of advertising,” as my old boss Stan Cohen calls them, ruled the roost, it was commonly held that a little exaggeration was not unreasonable to accentuate the selling points of the ad messages.”

Don’t try [...]

Johnson & Johnson OB Tampons Stringing on Brand's Consumers

Johnson & Johnson used to be held up as the ideal case study of how a company should respond in a crisis. Their handling of the Tylenol tampering case back in the 1980s was masterful. Johnson & Johnson’s response to the seemingly endless string of current product recalls, however, has been anything but masterful. (see [...]

How Half Naked Congressman Saves Gawker Brand

Gawker.com fans were in full rebellion. Some threatened to never visit the site again. The Twittering class hated Gawker’s redesign launched February 7th. On February 9th, that all changed. Gawker.com broke the story of the “classy” Congressman showing off his flabby torso and traffic boomed.

Consumers pretty much always hate change–witness the initial flack when the [...]

Facebook Connect's Brand Trust Disconnect

More and more Web sites are offering the “Connect with Facebook” option.

It appears Facebook Connect is succeeding where others have failed (most notably Microsoft’s Passport product). They are becoming the default internet ID card, saving users from having to create user names and passwords for every site they interact with.

Facebook Connect’s success is partly due [...]

Brand Message Gap in Blogs and Social Media

Burson-Marsteller released a study that claims 76% of blogs were off message. They analyzed more than 150 messages sent out by companies listed  in the Financial Times Global 100 and discovered a large gap between the official brand messages and how they were reflected on blogs, in tweets, and on other social media posts.

The brand [...]

The New Logo ALWAYS Sucks: Consumers Hate Change

Okay, the new Gap log did suck.  But EVERY new logo design ALWAYS kicks off a spate of negative logo reviews, and many new logos don’t suck. Crowd sourcers beware: consumers hate change.

Google “New Starbucks” logo, and you’ll see page after page of negative reviews.  Negative response to change has always existed. That social media [...]