Brandopia

Nice article of the best and worst brand extensions.
brand extension survey

20 tips to get prepared for the end of the 30′ spot:
Adliterate: PVRs – less talk and more action

Some interesting ideas for brand activation from JWT Chuco . Thanks to Nicola Gorini for posting this on Soflow.

According to this news:
Emerce – Media/Marketing nieuws: Online videotheek Directmovie: 100.000 video’s in 2006 already 2 companies deliver the possibility to purchase videos online: Directmovie and Movieplus. In the States, of course, many more propose this. I have tried several of them but because I’m based in Belgium I can’t use any of these services. Damn!? What are we waiting for and where are the open source initiatives in this area. Didn’t Skype become huge just because it was open for everybody?

Very interesting story (first found thanks to Brand New): MediaGuardian.co.uk | Media | Advertising: Why the medium and the message matter equally
What we do at Tagora to handle this is using our channel mapping tool in the early stages of the briefing. This tool is based on CIM and gives us the media preferences of all socio-demographic segments. Based on that we have a view on what media we need to include in the plan for the specific segment we want to target. It is only after this stage that we brief the creative team. The advantage is that we give the creative team a framework within which they can work. Once the project is approved we include the mediaplanners to detail the media plan as the channel mapping tool only gives us the channel not which newspaper or which magazine we need to choose.

I only wished I had this before I took the plane with my little girl.
GoGo Kidz: Easing Airport Travel for Parents: “Here’s a great product just waiting for some great promotion and marketing partnerships. The GoGokidz Travelmate is a plate with wheels and a telescoping handle system that attaches to a variety of toddler car seats. The idea is to make your car seat easy to manage in airports. Brilliant! Car seats are one of the most awkward and unruly things to cary through airports. The American FAA strongly recommends that parents bring a car seat for their young children on jetliners. Additionally, rental car companies and ground transportation operators often charge expensive fees for providing car seats. To save the hassle, cost and provide safety parents need to bring their own car seats. The added bonus is that parents can leave the stroller behind and simply strap their child into the car seat and roll them along.

The huge opportunity here is for car seat manufacturers to build this functionality into their products as an added feature and market differentiator. Additionally, airlines could co-brand these to enhance the family friendly image of their airline.

The next step here is to think about the bigger picture. Parents can only roll and carry just so much through an airport. If their rolling their car seat that means they aren’t rolling a carry-on suitcase. Perhaps there is further opportunity here to figure out a way to further attac”

Found this great ad here: Extreme Bike but it looks a lot like these ads for BMW, don’t you think?

This remains one of my favorite ads.

Sorry for the poor quality, but I downloaded it a long time ago and thanks to Google Video I can finally share this with you all.

A quote taken from the review of Space Race
:”On this journey all of the cast have a role. The data houses come to the fore, ad agencies finally fall apart under margin pressures and have to choose between their production and their strategic functions. Ad agencies become production shops or ideas shops. In the final movement clients decide they’ve had enough of all of this and take comms planning firmly by the scruff of the neck and move it inhouse.”

I must say I do agree with this and I guess we are already noticing this today.

Good analysis found on i-wisdom but I guess it does not always evolve this smoothly. It could also go like this:
- blogger criticizes employer
- employer doesn’t respond publicly
- employer doesn’t care about street cred
- blogger get’s fired

Corporate bloggers criticizing their employer on their blog – a catch22?:

Joseph Jaffe has some interesting thoughts on corporate bloggers who openly criticize their employer, like Robert Scoble constantly does with his employer Microsoft. You might think that the employer crosses a line. The problem for the employer is however that (quoting Joseph Jaffe) ‘any overt action by the employer (other than actually addressing the issue) is likely to be a PR-minefield’. Which sounds like a catch-22 for the employer. However, you can also look at it as a a PR-opportunity:

The bottom line is that it is an opportunity waiting to be capitalized. No less. At the very minimum, it gives the company in question the chance to explain itself

A lucky guess: we’ll be seeing some tactictal PR-games on this issue: Blogger will criticize his employer. Employer responds in a very friendly way. Employer gets the street credibility. Employer and blogger have a good meal with the PR-agency aftwards. Links: Jaffe Juice: Blogging the hand that feeds you.