CAN’T GET NO SATISFACTION
I don’t believe this is the appropriate forum for comment on Donald Trump, President of the United States. This post is about Donald Trump, the person, which in his case, is the Donald Trump brand—right up Coyote's alley. I’ll do my best to stay on topic. [...]
BIG BEER & AUTHENTICITY
It isn’t a surprise that Big Beer titan Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) has come up with a marketing campaign—video spot, anyway—that pokes fun at the craft beer segment: Very well done, not surprisingly, by one of the world’s truly great agencies. But here’s the thing—AB [...]
THE MEDIA IS (ONLY PART OF) THE MESSAGE
The title of this post was going to be ‘THE POWER OF CREATIVITY REDUX’, but preparatory research inexplicably led to Marshall McLuhan, and there you have it. To save readers from going down that same rabbit hole inadvertently, all Marshall McLuhan content is relegated to the [...]
THE PUBLICIS STUNT
As everyone knows, the big news at the end of this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity was Publicis Groupe’s announcement that they are suspending all creative awards participation for the next 12 months, including the 2018 Cannes Lions. The stated purpose was to [...]
MORE DECISION SIMPLICITY
Consumers’ desire for personalisation and mass-customisation does not mean they want every purchase decision to be complex. Consumers want decision simplicity, a topic covered here previously. Here are two new tales on the same topic. Liquid-Plumr vs Drano Have you shopped for household drain cleaner [...]
THE PORSCHE LANDMARK
Earlier this month, Porsche AG celebrated the production of its one millionth 911 model. This is big news for the 24,500 people that work for Porsche, the 15,000 or so Porsche dealer employees, Volkswagen Group (Porsche’s parent), the less-than-a-million current Porsche owners and the multiple [...]
THE COST OF YOUR AI-DA
We’re referring to artificial intelligence-enhanced digital assistants (AI-DAs) here. They seemed to start as quirky little chat bots like Microsoft’s Tay (see CHAT BOTS JOIN THE CONVERSATION). Now they are everywhere. Apple’s Siri was at the forefront of AI-DAs with consumers way back in 2011, [...]
BRAND HACKING
Clearly, hacking is a very big topic for the new Trump administration. Fast food, and the McDonald's brand in particular, are big favourites of Donald Trump. After you read this post, check out the TV commercial below from 2014, and its chilling last line of dialogue. In a [...]
MEDIA IS NOT BROKEN
A recent survey by UK-based media consultancy ID Comms, reported by Campaign [1], shows that advertisers (clients) are failing to meet expectations (of clients and their agencies) in four key areas: setting clear KPIs for media; having a point of view on ROI for media; having [...]
BUILDING THE GLOBAL TRUDEAU BRAND
A big part of the success of Justin Trudeau's election campaign success is due to the excellent branding work of Bensimon Byrne. If you need a refresher on that, see the case study here. After election, and before the absolute need to worry about re-election, politicians and [...]
WHAT MIGHT BE WRONG WITH DIGITAL
Today (in France), giant marketing network Publicis announced it is writing down the value of its digital brands (Razorfish, Digitas and Sapient) by 1.5B USD. [1] This was part of a discussion of the company's 2016 financial results, which indicated a loss of 567M USD, mainly [...]
DAZED & CONFUSED BY PwC’s RFP
My last post (IS YOUR MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT NOW YOUR CREATIVE PARTNER?) was of interest to almost no one. Despite that, and acknowledging in advance that it is bad marketing to do so, I’d like to continue on that same thread. According to Adweek/Agency Spy today, [...]
IS YOUR MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT NOW YOUR CREATIVE PARTNER?
This could be the case if your head office is in the UK and your consultant is Accenture. The latter’s November, 2016 acquisition of creative agency Karmarama [1] caught my eye because Marketing Wilderness previously came at this same topic from a different direction (see THE [...]
WHAT DOES YOUR COMPANY STAND FOR?
A while back, I wrote a post titled WHAT DOES YOUR BRAND STAND FOR?, which looked at how brands have handled controversy and how that strategy affects brand perception. This looks at a similar and possibly bigger issue–what does your company stand for and how [...]
TRUTH & TELLING FUTURE VISIONS
A very wise person once told me, “The truth in people is not in what they say, it’s in what they do”. That would be my Auntie E, Canadian farm woman, first introduced here. Rural America clearly needed her homespun wisdom earlier this month, but [...]
A TALE OF TWO LOYALTIES
Yes, Canadians love their loyalty programs, to the point where big retail marketers likely feel that having one is a cost-of-entry marketing investment. Let’s look at two very different approaches to loyalty marketing in the grocery store segment: Loblaws’ PC Plus and Metro’s Air Miles. [...]
THE DESTINY OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOUR IN MARKETING
Right now, there’s a lot of concern about sexism, racism and sexual harassment in the marketing industry. I’d argue there’s a larger ethics issue at play here and it’s been with us in North America since the Mad Men era. Eric Mower wrote a thoughtful [...]
YOUR MONEY ISN’T REAL
When you say this out loud, most people won’t respond with much in terms of agreement or disagreement. As if they’ve heard it before and figure there must be something to it but they don’t really want to know more. This is surprising because it’s [...]
WHAT NEEDS TO BE SAID ABOUT DIGITAL
I've heard it said many times by marketing people, quietly–even sheepishly, "I'm not sure social media/search/programmatic/mobile/whatever digital really works that well for our brand/company/anyone." This takes some bravery because questioning the status quo thinking in any industry brands you as an idiot or a savant. [...]
THE CASE FOR SOLID STRATEGY
I’ve learned the hard way that you should never build a marketing strategy that is dependent on something you cannot control, or at least cannot reliably predict. Here’s an interesting new business campaign from lg2, which currently bills itself as “one of Canada’s most internationally [...]