Webogram Power
	We\'ve all done it. We\'ve entered a store planning to purchase a single item -- a set of bags for the vacuum cleaner or perhaps some tomato paste. Then, before you know it, we\'re at the checkout with vacuum cleaner bags, a new vacuum cleaner, extension cords, optional attachments, an extra two-year warrantee, and maybe some tomato paste.
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	Unity, Fraternity, Loyalty
	In the good old days, recognition was something customers were able to establish with their favoured stores over time. I\'m sure you know the feeling. It\'s that special warm feeling you get when you\'re remembered by name, and by your usual purchase, when you enter a store. Well, being remembered is still common today -- on the Web, that is. The personal touch has been transferred to the Web and, sure, the old trick gets some of us. But does it really inspire customer loyalty?
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	Sensory Branding
	Most marketing plans appeal to only two senses: sight and hearing. Why so limited? How come almost all marketing and brand building concentrate on two senses when we know appealing to all five is likely to double brand awareness and strengthen the impression a brand leaves on its audience? Several surveys document our olfactory sense as probably the most impressionable and responsive of the five senses. Smells invoke memories and appeal directly to feelings without first being filtered and analysed by the brain, which is how the remaining four senses are processed. We all recognize and are emotionally stimulated by, say, the scent of freshly cut grass, brackish sea air, or the perfume of roses. I\'m convinced any car lover drinks in the smell of a new car.
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	ROI Branding
	The days where branding was all about big budgets and doubtful return on investments is long gone. Even though the big brand image campaign still might work – its harder and harder for any company justifying the big investments they require leading to alternative ways of building and maintaining brands – like ROI Branding. Let me check up the health of your brand – from a ROI point of view – ensuring that you haven’t overseen three of the most effective alternative ways of building brands. Team up…
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	Over Deliver
	For most manufacturers this initially would sound like a nightmare – but is it? Recently I checked into The Peninsula Hotel in Chicago. Knowing the brand your expectations are by default tuned to the highest level – still I’ve time after time managed to be surprised. When I wished to access music in my room, I was told that the CD library didn’t exist in this particular hotel. The apologetic concierge however asked me out of curiosity which CD’s I was looking for. Listing all my favourite names I hang up wondering the reason for this curiosity. 20 minutes later the bell rang on my door. The same person as I’ve been speaking with over the phone handed over a bag with three CD’s purchased by the hotel, all matching my name – and given as a gift to me.
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	Is Harry Committing Suicide?
	A quick quiz: What do toothpaste, toothbrushes, chocolate, CDs, hair gel, building blocks, games, calendars, films, chewing gum, cups, and... (could I forget?) four books have in common? You guessed right. Harry Potter! I\'m sure neither J.K. Rowling nor any of the rest of us expected Harry Potter to become, within only four short years, one of the most sought-after kids\' brands ever, competing head to head with venerable names such as Disney, Nintendo, and Sony. The amazing and positive fact is that a book, for the first time in over a decade, has managed to become the key attraction for kids all over the Western world, despite the competing presence of computer games, the Internet, interactive television, and mobile phones. But a shadow is looming, one that\'s likely to cast a pall over the amazing brand story.
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	Cross Channel Branding
	Five years ago, you were likely to be asked, \"What\'s your Internet strategy?\" Today\'s question is, \"What\'s your channel strategy?\" If within 30 seconds you can summon up a reasonably sound answer to this question, forget about reading the remainder of this article. If you can\'t, reading on might be worth the effort. One of today\'s realities is that new communications media are hitting the market every year. I don\'t need to name the plethora of choices already on consumers\' plates -- the Internet, the personal digital assistant (PDA), WebTV, the wireless application protocol (WAP) phone -- all of which appeared within the last decade.
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	Country of Origin as a Branding Statement
	Imagine that I told you of a product that I knew nearly nothing about. I didn\'t know what its price was, what any of its unique features were, or even what type of product it was. But I did know the product\'s country of origin… Let\'s say the product is from Switzerland. Now what would your impression of this product be? Even though this is a hypothetical scenario, I bet that you\'d be able to tell me something about the mystery product\'s price, its quality, and the reputation it most likely enjoys. Such assumptions would be inspired by the preconceptions you, as a consumer, hold about the country in question.
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	Contextual Branding
	When I first surfed the Net, some six years ago, I clicked on every banner ad that came before me. I reckon this was, not so much because I was in desperate need for home loan advice, fly fishing equipment or wedding dresses, but because I was curious to see what a banner ad was all about. I can promise you, I\'m not curious any longer! But I am still curious about ads that appear in logical contexts. In these cases, the advertising message makes sense and, piquing my curiosity because of this fact, encourages me to revert to my earlier discovery-oriented behaviour.
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	Brand Survival
	As the international financial downturn continues, so does the test of branding. I’m sure you’d agree with me that the easiest strategy for securing a couple more customers is to reduce the price of your product or service. But, needless to say, this is also a strategy, which will damage your brand, weakening it in the eyes of consumers. As soon as the economy starts looking up, your discounted brand will be cast aside in favour of those perceived to be market-leaders. Your competitors will generate customer loyalty and you’ll lose the custom you thought you’d harnessed. So, no matter how tempting the price-reducing strategy might seem, don’t adopt it. The world of branding offers you a lot of other survival strategies, based both on rationality and emotion. Here are a couple of hints to help you generate sales in the hard times and to even bond your brand more strongly to your customers.
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	Brand Building not Bland Building
	Ever heard of a brand that rejects customers? Probably not. Brands are uniformly desperate to attract them. So why would a brand take the opposite approach? Some years ago, I developed the concept for the Pepsi Web site\'s relaunch. I was challenged by the big question, how do you create a Web site for promoting sticky soda? The site had to be cool and relevant; it had to make visitors drink more soda than they already did. Given Pepsi\'s prominence, the task might appear easy. Yet without abusing the usual solutions, such as games, screensavers, and music news, it wasn\'t. Those hackneyed techniques were, even back then, so overdone they weren\'t suited to brand building unless the brand was in the gaming or music industries.
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	BRANDchild
	You may be surprised to learn that close to 80 per cent of all brands purchased by parents is controlled by their offspring. But what will undoubtedly startle you are the figures that show a whopping 67 per cent of all car purchases is also determined by the children of the home – and not by the parents. Tweens (8- 14 year olds) are an increasingly powerful and smart consumer group, which in 2002 alone, spent and influenced an astounding €1.88 trillion. Did you know that an average British kid between 8 and 13 years of age is exposed to 22,000 television commercials a year? In fact these kids are exposed to more than 300,000 commercial messages each year if we include radio, television, print ads, billboards, and the Internet. These figures are from project BRANDchild – the world’s largest study on tweens and their relationship with brands.
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	B2Branding
	Let\'s discuss a product category that\'s excruciatingly boring: rolling bearings and seals. I want to look at SKF, one of the world\'s largest manufacturers of rolling bearings and seals. I don\'t know about you, but I couldn\'t think of a less sexy and uninspiring product line. If you didn\'t know this business or the brand, you\'d think (when you visited SKF\'s site) you\'d arrived at the wrong URL. SKF not only tells you about the company\'s support of one of the world\'s largest rock shows and how SKF products help their clients make delicious biscuits, it also has a special postcard section. The SKF postcard facility allows you to download cute love letters or birthday postcards that you can send to your friends. For example, one of the postcards illustrates a couple who have just been married and are now kissing each other. The text reads, \"We reduce friction to help you move the world forward.\" Another postcard bears two hearts created with an assemblage of rolling bearings. The title on this one reads,
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