Sustainability idea wins grand prix

nice!

Employees on the loose…

If you believe the Clue Train Manifesto (which I do) then you could start to think that the established brand marketing methods are a stop-gap.  A space opened up when the actors of the small intimate market places of history were dissipated into different places and even time zones by mass culture.  Advertising filled the void and created a semblance of contact even though it was not the kind of personal interaction that typified the old market place. In the mean time we forgot that market places are always just conversations between people. But now we have the internet to help us remember and recently it seems to be bubbling over a little bit. This spirit is probably most alive through the staff in technology companies where a culture of open hyperlinked conversations based on home made intranets and wikis is the norm. But just recently since twitter has been around and since facebook started being used in a bit more of a blog-like way than a myspace way, I have noticed that quite a few people from the big agency group I work in are connected and exchanging interesting stuff in a new way. Many are even posting stuff about the clients they are working on becoming a bit of a media channel in their own right. Whether companies see this as a scary prospect or an untapped opportunity it’s not going to go away. The employees are on the loose! 

Again Obama shows us how its done.

If the UK politicians expenses scandal is a good lesson for the corporate world about how behind the scenes insular thinking is dead then Obama so far seems like a lesson for the new corporation that needs to emerge!!

Green Land-grab

Some people think that there is only a short window of opportunity when sustainability will present a point of different for brands.  In this way of thinking it becomes a space race to claim as much of the available ground as possible before sustainability claims are no longer differentiating.  I think there is a first mover advantage argument to be made but that also the journey will be endless.  In the fast food business their is a fundamental assumption that the entire model depends on scale meaning a small number of large production sites distributing to a high number of outlets.  The 'eat local' movement seems incompatible with their whole way of doing business and would be pretty far down the list of measures that most would consider.  Mcdonalds has actually made big gains in being the first mover in being a better kind of company than peoples expectations of them but at the same time there is already a fast food company with an 'eat local' business model that could blow much of this out the water.  Read more on Springwise.  Lets here it for Burgerville.

Brand Reinvention

Following on from the last post on brand retirement another life-stage that many brands could find themselves in need of is Re-invention.  Celebrities do it all the time to reinvent their image to a public and media who are looking for something new.  Corporate brands seem to think that its all about staying as close as possible to one thing for as long as possible.  Saying something is 'off brand'  is the quickest way going to kill a good idea.  But Ford - they had no choice.  Their re-invention is more like a miraculous resurrection from a near death experience.  And 'green' seems to be something that they want to embed into the post bankruptcy brand.  Again like they had any choice.  Of course its easy to comment from the outside looking in without any knowledge of the broader strategy but a advertising style film would not be my starting point for the new journey.  Perhaps even there was an idea in the old company that external brand communications would be enough to keep the brand relevant without the same innovation in sustainability thinking that has put the top Japanese brands on a surer footing.

See the video on Cherryflava...

Brand retirement

Most companies think about dipping their toe into sustainability by launching an eco brand. The logic is pretty straight forward I suppose i.e. ‘if theres money in this green trend then a new product launch would be the best way to attract it.' But might it be a more powerful marketing tool to do the opposite. To resign to retirement a product or brand that you think is sat on a business model that can't adapt well enough to compete in future more enlightened market places. Companies are not generally very good at counter intuitive thinking because it means backing the less simple, harder to argue option. When 100 people or more need to buy in that’s not easy to pull that off.  

It seems that GM have decided to off load the Hummer which has become short hand in recent years for environmental recklessness and ignorance. 500million is the price quoted. I am not sure if that’s a lot of money or not in the scheme of things but imagine the message it would send if they simply decided to hold their hands up and say they have decided to send the hummer brand into retirement. How much fun would it be to work on the marketing brief for that.  It would be a bit like when George Bush stood down.  We didn’t agree with what he stood for and it was a bit late in coming but we can wave him off with relief and just a little fragment of sentiment.  

I think a good example of dead wood would be airmiles as rewards for frequent flyers. Give regular flyers special treatment and try and make the pain of business travel a little more bearable but don’t give them tokens to fly even more; a well meaning idea that has had its day. On a personal level I have a small build up of air miles from Air Berlin and British airways. Consider them now publicly retired from service. Maybe there is a business idea in that. A retirement home for airmiles that would collect them off conscientious executives and give them to charities for some of the handful of others services that they can be used for such as visits to British tourist attractions that the average executive would not themselves use.