Archive for the 'Brand' Category
First impression disasters - Windows Vista
January 11th, 2007One of the blogs I read, Lifehacker, had this post about a preview of Windows Vista. I love a bit of technology, so quickly navigated to the site to have a look and a play. You would have to assume that this is exactly what the marketing people at Microsoft would have hoped for.
So I […]
Is this the greatest challenge in modern marketing?
November 28th, 2006Do you remember when you had to choose a home loan? Or car insurance? Or a printer? Did you go online? How many choices did you have? Did it make you happy having those choices? Barry Schwartz says it didn’t.
In “The Paradox of Choice” Barry Schwartz tells us that all this choice doesn’t make […]
Why would you call your company SICK?
November 15th, 2006Well, you might call your company SICK if you were German and your customers didn’t speak English… You might if you didn’t think of ever entering international/English speaking markets.
However, these guys have actually built a very significant business in the US and many other overseas countries, so they might argue it makes no difference whether […]
“Marketing” has a brand problem
September 27th, 2006The role of “marketing” is one of those subjects that often raises as many questions as answers. Now if people don’t excactly know what it is that you should be delivering, it is pretty easy to not deliver to a CEO’s expectations.
(I wrote about a related issue, how marketing is rated within an organisation, […]
Just accept it; you’ve got no option
September 12th, 2006I recently tried to sign up for an online banking service with the National Australia Bank. As expected, I was asked to read an agreement, scroll through it and click the “I accept” button at the bottom.
So I scrolled, and scrolled, and scrolled….the “agreement” is the equivalent of 29 pages A4, or almost 12,000 words. […]
Steve Irwin and the brand Australia
September 5th, 2006I don’t think most people here in Australia know exactly how big Steve Irwin was overseas. Or the influence he had over the brand “Australia”.
He told a story of Australia that people wanted to hear; a beautiful, wild, dangerous place full of 5 meter crocs, snakes spiders and sharks. Never mind the fact that 90% […]
Anyone who is not taking customer service seriously should look again
August 12th, 2006I love this story about a chinese man who didn’t quite get what he expected from Dell and wanted action. Only a few years ago the power balance between complaining customer and multinational would be tipped well and truly towards the multi-national. Not anymore.
Instead of the Intel Core Duo T2300 processor he had expected, […]
Brands and a broken promises
June 23rd, 2006We were made an offer recently to bundle all our telecommunications services and pay a fixed monthly sum. You’ve probably had similar offers. After looking at our total spend and comparing that to the offer, we decided that it was going to save us a fair bit. Condition was, you have to sign up for […]
Advertising money can’t buy; unplanned and very effective
May 10th, 2006Melbourne, Australia is arguably the most sports mad city in the world.
Australia also has it’s own code of football, Australian Rules, better known as “Aussie rules” football. I won’t go into detail about the game (just follow the link if you’re interested.)
As with most sports, many people have a particular commentator they love; maybe because […]
Understanding your target market
April 13th, 2006I have started to use Firefox as my browser a while ago (and I like it a lot). They have been extremely successful in marketing this (free) new browser, even getting recognised as “one of the top 10 most influential brands. (Always take that with a grain of salt; read the disclaimer about their research […]
