Online Branding, Kids Branding and Brand Building - MartinLindstrom.com http://martinlindstrom.com Don’t blame you if you think there aren't any more start-ups left -- but there are. Now, more than ever, you can establish the brand you've dreamed of. It's cheap. It's easy to harness communications channels. Consumers are keenly attentive to anything new.

Cheap? How can you establish a dream brand if you're not equipped with a wallet as heavy as Coca-Cola's and a communications network as expansive as AOL Time Warner's?

There are plenty of things you can do that don't cost a fortune. Too many people think the secret of success lies in the logo. It doesn't. Don't fly into a panic and spend your money on logos, letterheads, and beautiful brochures. You'll only please your printer. Most communications today are digital. If you must spend, spend on digital letterhead. It costs a fraction of what the "real stuff" costs and is just as impressive. Don't tie yourself up in knots developing that logo, either. Some of the most successful companies' logos are hardly logos at all. They merely spell out the entity's name and became powerful signatures for the brands with time - think Microsoft, Gap, Fox...

Instead of cash, invest financial and intellectual resources in your marketing plan. Develop a unique business concept that makes sense from the beginning. My plumber managed to create an interesting concept around his business by teaming up with competitors. He knows how frustrating it is for customers to be unable to get hold of a plumber in an emergency. He developed a plumber portal that shares 15 plumbers' schedules. All these guys' customers now have online access to a backup plumber, recommended by their usual tradesperson. Did my plumber lose business? On the contrary, his own and his contacts' clientele grew, as word spread that the site was a resource for harassed householders needing plumbers, pronto.

Forget about testing your business concept on friends. Even if they can really offer insight, their acumen will be compromised by a desire to protect and be polite to you. Instead, spend energy approaching people you don't know. People who couldn't care less about telling you your idea are no good. People who are your potential customers.

A marketing plan is essential to success. But eliminate any fantasies of full-page colour ads, TV spots, and radio commercials. You can't afford it. My advice varies depending on your industry. In general, I don't believe in traditional ads for start-ups, unless the company has something really interesting to offer.

Instead, optimise your ways of being found: sign up with the Yellow Pages a year in advance, if possible, so your business is visible the day it launches; optimise your site with all the search engines; make sure there's awareness abroad of your place in the scheme of things. You never know, a story might break in which your role and/or opinion might be relevant. Be discoverable by, accessible to, and familiar with journalists and the public before Day One. These steps are logical and much more critical for start-ups with no marketing budget than any expensive ad could be.

What works repeatedly is public relations and guerilla marketing. When, for example, most of Electric Artists' promotional work for Christina Aguilera was on the Web (in chat rooms, where new artists are talked up), buzz was created. According to Electric Artists, Internet communities are the best medium for spreading news and building buzz. Users and participants want to discover things on their own. They hate being over marketed to. Electric Artists started buzzing Christina Aguilera months before her first album went on sale. By the time her album hit stores, teenagers from Seattle to Savannah were talking about her. She soared to number one. Electric Artists isn't a start-up, but what it did any start-up can do: stir up buzz.

Cost? Absolutely nothing.

The rules for starting a new business are simple. Don't spend all your time on the logo and don't spend all your money on expensive marketing. Consider alternatives. Start with a concept so brilliant your business can almost run without marketing. Optimise traffic as early in the process as possible. Then, begin the guerilla work. It's priceless yet nearly free. It will build your brand in a way no ad can, for a much more manageable price. http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Big Brand Zero Bucks.pdf Optimizing budget When a customer complains about your product, service, guarantee, or Web site, it's not always because the quality was lousy. It may have been because you didn't manage that customer's expectations.

Even when I was a kid, I noticed when a new LEGO kit came with a couple extra bricks. I loved it! I actually thought LEGO was giving me something extra, an unexpected bonus. A gift! For me! Decades later, I realized those "extra" blocks weren't really special gifts. They were, of course, the result of operational expedience and economy. The number of blocks in a box is determined by optimal running requirements of whatever production line is operating.

Little I knew, yet how happy I was! And how often I spoke to my friends about my joy. The recollection is instructive. How often does any brand actually over deliver? What brand lately has given you more than you expected? To answer that apparently simple (yet actually complex) question, you must analyse what you, as a consumer, expect of a brand.

Expectations vary depending on what a brand communicates to its audience and individual perception of that message. Most companies over promise and under deliver. A rare few do the opposite. Louis Vuitton, maker of luxury leather goods, doesn't explicitly offer a lifetime warranty on its products. In fact, the company's documentation states a charge will be applied for repairs. The salesperson to whom you return your faulty product reiterates this when you take it in for repair. But when you come back to collect your item, you'll almost never pay for the service. The salesperson assures you this was done especially for you.

Does this build your brand? Certainly it does. The tactic leaves consumers feeling they got more than they expected. It makes them feel happy and inclined to tell other people about the experience. Word of mouth is a powerful brand-building tool -- when those words are positive.

Have you built an over delivery component into your brand's operations that might inspire customers to rave about you to friends? Have you designed an unofficial policy that ensures customers will be delighted by your brand, now and in the future? Is a practice in place to confirm your brand thrives on seeing smiling faces leaving the store?

The potential for over delivery is everywhere. It's behind the promises your brand makes. It's about what consumers can do on your Web site. It's at home in e-newsletters. Your guarantee, stated response times, average waiting times, service statements -- all are opportunities to under promise and over deliver. If I'm told you'll respond to my e-mail within 48 hours, do it within 24. If I'm told the warranty is for 12 months, don't deny service if I arrive with a faulty product 12 months and 9 days after purchase.

Branding still seems to be logo-fixated. It's viewed by some as a matter of plunking that logo in the upper right-hand corner of every piece of communication. Sorry to say, brand building does not stop with the logo. Branding is communicating the spirit of your brand. The more credible and strongly defined your brand's spirit, the more widely its reputation spreads. It spreads by word of mouth, the ultimate branding technique. It is one you can't buy but is worth its weight in gold.

Word of mouth relies on exceeded expectations. Manage your customers' expectations. You'll be rewarded with their loyalty and the power of their word. http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Word Of Mouth.pdf Optimizing sales 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, you'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.

Was this an accident of fate? No, it wasn't! You may have tried to excuse yourself by explaining away the extra purchases, but, from the retailer's point of view, your shopping spree was the outcome of a very well planned exercise -- up selling. This good old-fashioned term should not be neglected, because its successful practice separates effective retailers from mediocre ones -- at least in revenue terms.

To date, the tool most often used to drive the up selling phenomenon has been the "planogram." A planogram is a detailed and thoroughly thought-through map that determines where every product in an establishment should be situated. It illustrates not only in what area every product should be placed but also on which shelf every item should be accommodated. Shelf by shelf, aisle by aisle, the planogram assigns selling potential to every item in a store. These plans are typically the result of decades of tests and help retailers understand what does and does not drive sales.

Check out any well-known chain, such as 7-Eleven or Target, and you'll quickly realize the product-positioning pattern repeats itself in every store. If you were to place a price on such a planogram, it would be worth millions. The planogram is the most potent tool available to retailers who wish to increase their conversion rates.

But, hey, hang on! If brick-and-mortar retailing values planograms so much, then think about the Web. How might the online planogram look? Well, actually, not unlike the offline one. The only difference is that surprisingly few Net-based companies are working in a systematic way to optimize their conversion rates. In fact, I'd claim that close to 50 percent of online retailers are still resisting the dire need that should be spurring each and every one of them to think about their sales generation in a new way.

Let me start by asking you a simple question: Do you know what your site's visitor path looks like? That is, do you know from whence your visitors have come and to which page they are proceeding? If you're familiar with your visitors' paths, do you know how much time they spend on each page, what they read, and what they ignore?

I know your visitors' paths are tricky things to investigate, analyse, and understand, but that's exactly what you have to achieve to build your online planogram -- your "Webogram."

This step-by-step plan will help you optimize your conversion rates.

Typically, a planogram is built on the basis of hundreds, if not thousands, of interviews with consumers. Often, a research team will have monitored consumers' in-store behaviour, observing, for example, which aisles they tend to race down when picking up milk and understanding which products families favour. They look at both pedestrian staple products, such as cereal, sugar, and eggs, as well as inspirational and spontaneous items, such as candy (often placed, as a result of such studies, next to the unavoidable cash register).

Planograms have enabled us to predict almost 95 percent of purchasing behaviour, not only because humans tend to shop similarly, but also because shops all over the world have designed their stores in response to those planogram findings. The more every store looks the same, the more the consumers' expectations are met, and the more their shopping habits are trained to respond to the ubiquitous arrangements now assigned to supermarket products.

With these very familiar facts in mind, I'm sure you can understand the value of knowing exactly how your customers behave on your site. One major difference between on- and offline retailing, and a major advantage the Web has over brick-and-mortar, is the Web site's potential to customize the Web page environment.

The look, content, and structure of a site can be massaged and altered in response to every visitor's profile. To translate this unique opportunity into offline-world terms, this would be like visiting Target on a vacuum-cleaner-bag-buying mission and finding that Target has redesigned its store to accommodate only vacuum-cleaner products.

The downside of customization, obviously, is it could cause you to miss out on cross-selling unrelated products. But cross-selling as well as up selling could be the beneficiaries of your Webogram research. Your first step will be to categorize your customers' needs. Some visitors to your site might be after cleaning products; others may be shopping for health foods; and still others might want a fast-food fix. Each category of need -- and you may come up with heaps of them -- will represent a particular visitor search pattern, and your analysis of these patterns will open up interesting opportunities for optimizing both your consumer's search path and your up- and cross-selling potential.

So, back to the Webogram, the planning device we're using to import cross- and up selling potential to the online store. A successful Webogram could open up a goldmine for you. Let's consider the highest hurdle.

In the offline store, shoppers can browse in a physical environment. The retailer has all of the shopper's five senses to work on: seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, and smelling. That scope just doesn't exist online. Your role, therefore, is to find other ways of inspiring your customers while they're shopping. The trick to achieving this online is to be systematic. You have to systematically and constantly inspire your customers. How would such a strategy look in practice? There'd be a minimum of three ingredients in your toolbox (assuming that, at this stage, you're not prepared to establish a detailed CRM system with personalized membership features):

· Navigation. The navigation panel is the key. It's the tool that allows visitors to jump from section to section on your site in no particular order. If it's too simple, you're likely to lose potential cross-selling opportunities. If it's too complex, you are likely to lose business by confusing your customers. The design of your navigation tools should be inspired by your customers' preferences, which you'll know all about, having done your research and observing customers in the offline store environment. Your online advantage is that your navigation panel could offer detailed options that vary according to where your customer is at the time -- as long as your panel structure and design are consistent at your customer's every turn.

· Linking strategy. You should hyperlink every sentence so that any potential cross- or up selling opportunities are activated and the customer thus inspired to investigate. Having deviated via a particular hyperlink to another virtual aisle in your store -- that is, to another page -- your customers will encounter new and interesting products that are meaningful to their needs. Your linking strategy should work like a virtual sales-person, offering ideas, extending the customer's knowledge of products, and taking hints from the customer as to what else she might need but just hasn't thought of yet. But do remember: The number of links you offer should be informed by your customers' preferences. Again, observe customers' behaviour in the brick-and-mortar store and reflect their apparent tolerance for persuasion, deviation, and exploration in the number of links your site offers. Too many will lead to confusion and frustration; too few may lead to boredom and a quick exit from your site.

· Promotion program. Special promotions are another means of cross- and up selling. You might feature a ketchup promotion with sausages, for example. Or milk where breakfast cereals are to be found. In short, think about uniting complementary products. Again, analyse in-store behaviour to clarify ideas on complementary promotions. Just because you think one product bears a logical relationship to another, doesn't mean a customer will, and the coincident appearance of an arbitrarily chosen product may not inspire a shopper to purchase the promoted item along with the one he intended to buy. Short message: Don't guess at your customers' preferences and tendencies. Know them by research and analysis.

I know these thoughts haven't made you an instant Webogram expert. But, hopefully, they've sparked some ideas for you and perhaps caused you to rethink your existing cross- and up selling strategy. If you're among the 50 percent of online e-tailers who are already thinking this way, I'm sorry for wasting your time. However, the rest of you -- get going!

Remember, cross and up selling won't happen by itself. These are achieved as the result of careful planning, which every online site manager should be engaged in. There's a lot of work to do before you can conclude your conversion rate has fulfilled its potential. Offline retailers have been planogramming their way to increased conversion rates for years. So, what are you waiting for? Plan that Webogram. http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Webogram Power.pdf Optimizing sales Recently I was in a Copenhagen taxi, heading for the city's airport. My co-passenger was a lady who carried a fancy bag. A very nice bag, I'm sure, but what interested me was the combination of brands it represented. Samsonite produced the bag. No surprise there, as Samsonite is the world's largest luggage manufacturer. This Samsonite bag also represented Philippe Starck, a designer known for his work with furniture who, in this case, had designed the bag for Samsonite.

Brand combinations are indeed often surprising. These days, I often notice alliances I'd never have predicted.

Nestlé and L'Oréal recently announced a relationship. What do these two brands have in common? Anything?

Yes indeed. Nestlé's aim is to produce food that's healthy, not only for the insides of our bodies, but for our skin as well. Who's the global market leader in skin care? You got it: L'Oréal.

This new, laterally inspired approach to brand alliances will change the way we build brands. In the good old days, the most obviously related brands teamed with each other. Market leaders joined with other market leaders. These days, there's every indication an alliance between a low-- and a high-equity brand can be just as valuable for both parties as a marriage between equals.

Why is this development so relevant? Most likely you control an online business. If there's one business arena that can benefit from a brand alliance strategy via links, co-branding and general brand alliances, it's the interactive sector.

So try liberating your strategy from traditional alliances and think outside the box. Identify the values your brand stands for and ways the community perceives your brand, then identify other brands that share your brand's ethos, rationale, commitments or aims. Then, start brainstorming. If you really want to heat up the creative debate, consider your nearest competitor. Determine which brands they'd have to team up with to give you a run for your money and to ignite corporate envy. Then, get in first. Approach potential partners before your competitors make their own proposals.

The good news is that not many brands have yet really considered alternative brand alliances. There are still lots of opportunities out there. But don't get complacent. It's only a matter of time before your competitor will run away with a partner that could have exposed your brand to a whole new world of business.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Unorthodox Brand Alliances.pdf Brand alliances 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?

Most likely not. By now, consumers can see the trick for what it is, and the Web's version of the personal touch is not perceived as being very personal at all. Customers no longer feel particularly special just because a site welcomes them back by using their first names.

So, what more can you do to really keep ahead of your competitors? Let me share an anecdote with you.

In outback Australia, I visited a small (and, when I say small, I mean small) town. From a metropolitan person's point of view it looked as if there could be no possible benefit in living in this remote, isolated, and sparsely populated community. Far from the coast and innocent of the seaside scenery urban Australians take for granted, deprived of shopping and entertainment venues, ostensibly devoid of interesting outlooks (both the scenic and imaginative varieties), and far, far away from any other population centre, the place seemed to be a hotbed of social malaise.

But, very quickly, it became clear to me the people living in this town were incredibly happy. And they were incredibly happy not because of the town itself, but because of the community that composed it. The atmosphere of support, helpfulness, and neighbourly good cheer that prevailed was so positive the happy milieu approached fairytale proportions. In short, I came to the obvious conclusion that social commentators must take as a given: that what makes a city great is its community, its people, and its social cohesion.

So, what has this to do with branding?

I'm sure the justification for my analogy is obvious: I believe the creation of a feeling of community around a brand can make all the difference. Why? Because, it's important to remember, a brand is not a factory creation. It's created in the minds of customers and in the collective mentality of the community of which those customers are part. In e-tailing and branding terms, we're way past automatically generated greetings, behavioural-prediction programs, and automatically generated emails. These techniques hold no persuasive power for the educated customer base. Let's face it. We all take that stuff for granted. But what we don't take for granted are meaningful indications of the presence of real human beings -- true interaction. Gimmicks and tricks just don't cut it. Let me give you an example from my experience as a customer.

I once chose to fly with an airline that was reputedly unique in the facilities it could offer its patrons: fully reclining beds, interactive entertainment systems, and even on-board Internet access. I just had to try that! But, as is so often the case, my preconc-eptions didn't match the reality. Sure, the airline had all those great electronic features on board, but the personal interaction was nonexistent. Had I not spilled my drink in my seat, I'd havenever gotten a smile from any of the flight attendants. On the way back, I chose to fly with another company, a company without all the fancy equipment, but one, which rightly boasted of impressive staff courtesy and care.

Which brand do you think I'd choose again? The latter, of course! It happens that since I had these two experiences, almost every European and Asian airline has started offering the fancy technical features provided by the former airline. And guess what. None of them seem to be offering the smiles I remember so happily from my return flight.

So, where does this get us? The importance of involving your customers in everything you do. And I don't just mean setting up chat rooms. Jones Soda, a well-known soda producer, surprised me with a sponsorship program in which it supports ordinary people doing special things. Visit the company's site and you'll see that more than 10,000 people have created a "Jones Soda Label." The result is you can find labels created by the product's own customers. The Jones Soda brand is no longer owned by Jones Soda but by its customers, a fact that inevitably has had a substantial influence on the company's decisions, image, and attitude.

That last word is crucial. Brands that really want to survive need to sell more than nice products. They need to sell attitude! They need to sell opinions and feelings. When I drink a Jones Soda, I don't drink what's inside the bottle; I drink the label. And I drink what I see on the company's site and in stores. Sure, a brand's spirit might be reflected on bulletin boards, chat rooms, chain email letters, peer-to-peer programs, and general creative thinking. But what's common among truly successful brands is a strong idea. Jones Soda's marketing execs haven't established a chat room just because the marketing manual prescribes it. They haven't done anything just because of any formula.

They've created and fostered a strong idea that's gained potency from a community of understanding among the brand's customers. Only then have they used chat rooms, bulletin boards, and peer-to-peer programs to fortify and promulgate the solidly founded brand idea.

I still remember Jones Soda, not because of its taste (because, if I have to be honest, I barely remember what it was like), but because of its attitude. There's the crux. That's exactly what's behind long-term customer loyalty to brands: sharing feelings with users by revealing the real people and ideas that compose the brand's community.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Unity Fraternity Loyalty.pdf Useful techniques Did you know that close to 80 per cent of all brands purchased by parents – is controlled by their children? You may be surprised to learn that a whopping 67 per cent of all car purchases is also determined by the children of the home – not by the parents. Tweens (8- 14 year-olds) are an increasingly powerful and smart consumer group which last year alone spent and influenced an astounding €1.88 trillion.

TweenSpeak

Actually almost every aspect of what we have learned about generation tweens has been unforeseen. One of the most surprising findings has been the appearance of what we call TweenSpeak, the first global language ever. From the BRANDchild study we have learned that close to 20 per cent of all tweens across the globe communicate with other tweens in other countries on a daily basis! Close to 2/3 of all tweens across the world in fact change their language when either texting or chatting with their friends. 1/3 states the reason why is because it’s more cool. IN short what we have learned is that the classic grammar is about to die – at least according to the tweens. The research from the BRANDchild study shows that grammatically correct sentences in ads, on TV or on the Internet – is seen as outdated – according to the tweens. They in stead prefer a language reflecting what they are used to when texting with their friends.

And talking about texting, 30 per cent of the worlds tween population text each other several times a day – however the most shocking findings from BRANDchild is that close to 15 per cent of all tweens across the globe prefer to communicate with their friends via the net or mobile phone in stead of in person – and this is even if they are sitting just next to them. Situation Placement

Tweens is a fascinating audience as this is the first interactive generation ever a generation, which in many ways will reflect future generations, their media preferences, and shopping behaviour, and not to forget relationship with brands.

New ways of communication tools will most likely replace the traditional channels we know today. In fact 1/3 of all tweens prefer to surf the Internet than watching TV. Close to fifty percent of all tweens prefer to play computer games instead of watching TV. Having these figures in mind it’s clear that advertising no longer can survive by just belonging to the TV screen or banner ads. Product placement – or situation placement is soon going to dominate the primary expositor towards this audience – as this in simple terms will be the only way to reach a audience which in average spend 2 1/2 hours a day in front of the computer screen playing games across the globe.

Contextual Branding I call the phenomena Contextual Branding – the ability to place the right message, at the right time for the right audience - optimizing the value of advertising spends.

Combining this knowledge with the fact that every brand in the future will have to be interactive, will have to reflect a new, and slightly revised language – and not to forget – use channels – and product placement methodologies never seen before this is indeed a very challenging audience to communicate to…. however knowing that this generation as well represent close to Europe 2 trillion in spend or influence a spend a year – as well as pointing us in a direction indicating how future generations most likely are going to look like – we have no choice but to join the crowd and adapt to the new world of tweens.

The figures quoted in this article are from project BRANDchild – the world’s largest study on kids and their relationship with brands on a global scale. The study is conducted by international recognized brand guru Martin Lindstrom in partnership with Millward Brown. More than 600 people has over one year worked on the study spanning across 15 countries taking in 70 cities which has resulted in the book BRANDchild. For more information visit MartinLindstrom.com or BRANDchild.com

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Tweenspeak.pdf Contextual branding P2P marketing is hardly a new phenomenon, however it is a phenomena that is about to be leveraged to unprecedented heights using our next generation of kids. During my "BRANDchild" research, one of the brands that impressed me most was U.S.-based Jones Soda. The product itself is hardly different from any other soda. What distinguishes it from the pack is it's created a persona that draws kids to it like a magnet.

Jones Soda identified an alternative distribution strategy. Instead of going the supermarket-drugstore route, it placed the product in clothing stores, primarily in skate and surf shops. These are not usually associated with drink sales. The unique move gained the attention and respect of a young audience.

But Jones Soda went a step further, introducing personalized labels. By logging onto its Web site, tweens could design their own labels and potentially see them on bottles. Thousands of labels have been produced, all gloriously created by the user group.

Where's the P2P element? It became clear when personalized labels were introduced. Unique talent emerged from individual surfers, skaters, cyclists, and wake boarders. Jones Soda began to sponsor these emerging riders. Not stopping there, it began producing a merchandising line around the individuals, turning its own customers into brands and brand advocates simultaneously.

I met a skater on a beach outside Sydney, Australia, who proudly told me, "I have my own sponsor and marketing plan. I know exactly who to target." The kid had just turned 9 years old!

Companies such as Jones Soda succeed with a P2P strategy because they clearly identify and engage their own audiences, turning them into true advocates. Their customers help them develop their marketing plans and build in the flexibility to instantly change the plan as trends dictate. During my research, I realized companies increasingly employ tweens to promote their brands in chat rooms. These tweens are paid to chat up brands or position them in their daily conversations, ensuring the right attention is put on certain brands.

However we view this, its clear P2P marketing involves much more than relying on word of mouth. It's now a subtle, sophisticated technique involving tweens across many facets. It often places them in charge of building in the requisite flexibility in campaign planning.

P2P strategies work well for an audience that’s ever demanding and flexible and expect instant gratification. The commitment works both ways. When done properly, it creates a solid loyal following in a fickle marketplace.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Turn Customers into Marketers.pdf Optimizing sales Sorry, but this is for your own good. Open wide. Say, "Uniqueness, consistency, consumer focus." Well, say what you like, so long as you use your brand's distinctive voice, use terms that are recognizably your brands, and speak from your customer's point of view.

I'm checking how well you handle your online brand presence. Thing is, if you're stuck with the same thing all day, every day, you tend not to notice the obvious. You don't see the forest for the trees. This exercise may be both obvious and painful. In the end, you'll agree that by facing up to the examination, you'll help yourself help your brand.

Test One: Can you smash your site to pieces and still recognize it from the fragments?

Some time ago, I reflected on the genesis of the Coca-Cola bottle. It was intentionally designed in such way even if a bottle was broken into shards, you'd still recognize the pieces as having once been part of a Coke bottle. You'd still see brand identity in a single fragment piece. Use this as an analogy for assessing your brand's Web site integrity.

What if the logo is removed from the site? Would a visitor still know which brand hosts it? Would your brand's voice still be heard in the copy? Does your site use language in a unique way that's clearly reflective of the brand? Does it use terms people immediately associate with your brand, which cannot be mistaken as belonging to another? Are the graphics distinctly your brands? What about navigation? Does it bear your brand's signature? Is it consistent with your offline approach? Does it also reflect your brand's unique personality? Do your site's icons reflect the nature of the brand?

Test Two: Do your communication materials have synergy?

If I looked at 10 random pages from your site, 10 pages from your corporate brochure, 10 of your latest ads, 10 pieces of other promotional material, and your letterhead, would I discern synergy between all these elements? Is the font consistent? Are colour, picture style, spacing, and graphics consistent across all media? Or would I simply see a mess of haphazard materials?

Test Three: Does your site talk to your marketing department or your customers?

Does your Web site discuss "benefits" instead of "added value"? What's the difference? Benefits address concrete technical advantages (think of a stereo system). But benefits don't communicate the all-embracing, high-quality surround sound that will impress friends, do justice to a favourite opera, and create just the right ambience. Benefits don't answer "What's in it for me?" Added value, on the other hand, speaks to the consumer's self-interest.

Every sentence, phrase, and sales argument on your site must bear the consumer in mind, not the tech department or whoever else is in charge of developing your product or services. Added value is what I'll gain as a result of using the product. Will it make me more relaxed? Increase my happiness? Make my work more effective? Save me money?

Many companies forget communication is about getting consumers to see brand benefits for themselves. To get this across, a brand must speak from the consumers' point of view, not the marketing departments. Remove all those meaningless benefits from your site and other communications materials. Replace them with the added customer value you know customers are after.

How well did score in your brand checkups? I'd be impressed if you passed all three tests. If you did, relax -- for now. Next week, expect a slightly more difficult test. If you couldn't meet these simple criteria, work fast.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Three Step Brand Check Up.pdf Optimizing sales Situation placement creates a brand image in the consumer's mind around an initial product, and then builds follow-up products around the constructed notion. The technique makes brands the raison d'être of those follow-up products. Your product becomes the hero, enhancing a story rather than simply appearing as an added element without any effect on the plot, as is the function of product placement. But how do you engineer this for your own brand? How do you secure space for your brand in a computer game? How do you manage to have your brand featured in a popular song or placed centre stage in a hit movie?

Before embarking on such an enterprise, you need to consider and understand what you want to get out of it. In contrast to traditional "above the line" marketing, it's almost impossible to measure the effect of the situation placement approach -- at least in the short term.

The good news about situation placement is it still, despite having been around for some time, is considered to be a new idea. Marketers still don't know how to handle it, and film studios, composers, and particularly game developers still see situation placement as a revenue-generating product-placement exercise.

There are no fixed prices for this, either. Fees for brand appearances are decided on an ad-hoc basis. It's all pretty immeasurable. Tell me what price you'd pay to have your brand sponsor the equipment handed out in "The Matrix" games? Tricky, eh? No one really knows, so it's possible to get good value out of this type of marketing effort.

My experience tells me if your brand is one that appeals to kids or tweens, at least 10 to 15 percent of your budget should be dedicated to "underground" branding with situation placement as one of the main activities. Focus less on the result, as it's almost impossible to assess, and jump on this opportunity very quickly by securing a fabulous price for the situation placement.

Your next step is to determine where and how to place your brand and brand message. Again, the approach is slightly different to what you might be accustomed. Try to think of your brand as the hero by extending its characteristics and benefits into a story. For example, Red Bull, which gives you energy, also earns you extra points in the game in which it features. Nike might be the hero by optimizing players' skills and vanquishing other competitors.

Identify the unique characteristics and advantages of your brand, and then place your brand in a story that allows it to emerge as the hero, the helper, and a focus point of some type. Forget online banner ads or logos on walls... viewers forget that stuff. What people don't forget is the personality your brand takes on at the centre of a logically composed situation. People remember if your brand is the chief protagonist of a story, game, or event, one that makes the story more relevant, helps you win the game, or is the reason for the event.

Finally, think outside the box. Contact game suppliers, even if they're based in Japan or Korea. Often, the farther away your potential partner is from your own territory, the better price you can secure. Think about ways of placing your product no one's come up with before. There are so many opportunities in situation placement, and the more creative you are, the lower the costs will be.

The success of a situation-placement campaign is determined by your ability to leverage the space you have dedicated to it. But the space is not limitless, and the demand for its creative use is increasing. So you'd better be quick -- before the game is over.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/The Situation Placement Game.pdf Product placement I have some figures at my fingertips I think will astound you.

Did you know a full 67 per cent of families buying a new car base their purchasing decision on advice given by their children -- who are too young to drive? That 62 percent of mobile phones and 65 percent of clothing brands are bought by parents under the influence of their kids' opinions?

We're not talking only about American kids, but kids across the globe, in countries as diverse as India, Japan, Brazil, Spain, Turkey, Germany, Thailand and Denmark. The power this young generation wields over their parents has been shown to be nothing less than mind blowing.

The data comes from the world's largest study on kids and their relationship with brands. It was conducted for BRANDchild, the book I just co-authored with Patricia Seybold. I call this emerging generation the tweens. They fall, roughly, between the ages of 8 and 14.

Research institute Millward Brown interviewed thousands of kids in 14 countries and 70 cities for the study. Among many startling findings that emerged, overwhelming evidence shows brand purchase decisions are increasingly being made by the children of the household. This is true across the board, in almost every product category from snacks and soft drinks to cosmetics and house wares.

In light of these findings, every message targeting the adult market must be reconceived and reframed. Marketers will increasingly have to consider how to capture the attention of two very distinct audiences in one message. They must appeal to the adult purchaser, as well as to the kid who influences them.

What does all this mean for your online strategy? As it's becoming increasingly clear you ignore this young audience at your peril, it's vital you structure your message to appeal to both markets. This will be challenging, but it must be part of your site. Obviously, some features appeal more to parents, others to their kids. The challenge is to determine what appeals to each age group, then let your site reflect this something-for-everyone. At the same time, maintain the integrity of your core message.

One method would be to build in a separate section where kids can explore your products in a more dynamic way. Language would be kid-friendly and graphically appropriate to secure their full attention.

The BRANDchild survey shows that combining a structured product presentation appeals to the adult segment, whereas a product presented in its environment appeals more to tweens. If your brand belongs the 80 per cent of all product categories heavily influenced by tweens, your site should combine both product presentations. If you sell cars, you'll need to place the car in its 'natural' environment, as well as in a more 'clinical' space where you can demonstrate the technical facts and features. The same applies to selling home decorations.

Use of color is critical. The BRANDchild study found some colors are more appealing than others. This is dependent on what product category is offered, as well as the context in which the brand is presented. Colors you select should appeal to both audiences. It would be a mistake to think in greys.

This dual marketing is breaking through. Year after year, Toyota in Australia has maintained a top-selling position using chicks, puppies and kittens in commercials. Strange as it may sound, it works. Remember bunches of balloons waving in front of car dealerships? A small example, but fairly obvious once you're faced with the statistics of how children influence parents' purchase decisions.

Marketing to kids is so much more than simply pestering them (and their parents). It's about achieving balance. Be totally honest. Completely fulfill whatever it is you promise to deliver. This generation can detect 'phony' from miles away. Youth deserves the highest ethical standards you can deliver. They're our future -- and your future brand customers!

Over the next three weeks I'll take you through some of the fascinating findings from the BRANDchild study -- stay tuned -- as it is far from child's play. http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/The Real Decision Makers.pdf Online strategy At a British Airways counter recently, I noticed an elegantly attired man trying to squeeze his over-large hand luggage into one of those luggage size-indicator frames. The man gave up trying to make the bag fit, and abandoned his reading of the lengthy note of legal caution above the frame. He directed his anger at the check-in staff whose manner was as frosty and ill humoured as that of the signage. No natural repartee; no human connection. This has been replaced by the corporate standard.

Corporate standards are killing brands. So are the brand manuals that specify those standards and the logo-obsessive behaviour that they prompt. Legal jargon is packed into every email and into the smallest website. Just for the fun of it – try printing any legal section on any site and your printer will soon run out of paper. The legal jargon in every communication has rarely helped anyone survive the machinations by which the jargon promises to protect the company at the cost of the client. This artificial sense of protection amounts to seeking a divorce before you’re married. It’s like saying to the consumer ‘I don’t know you yet but, hell, (Clare- I prefer not to swear in my articles) I don’t trust you anyhow.’ And from that point on, a brand’s unconsummated relationship with its potential customer is on the steady slope to oblivion. Rules don’t generally respond to the vagaries of the human condition. And that’s disastrous for brands which, if they’re treated well, are human themselves.

Compare the check-in experience at British Airways with a parallel one I witnessed at the Virgin Blue counter. I’m sure this younger passenger had a shorter temper than the reserved British Airways traveller. Yet he managed to simply smile when he realized his bag was too large for the cabin. Unlike the British Airways’ luggage frame and attendant legalese, the Virgin Blue luggage signage snap-happily advised, “You can bring an ego of any size on board – but only a bag this size.” The humorous, human touch dissipated any potential for anger. Check out Virgin Blue’s sister company: Virgin Atlantic which greets you on their site with the headline: “Hello Gorgeous!” A phrase setting the tone of voice for the Virgin brand in air, on ground and online.

Similarly, Puccino’s, a café concept born in London, makes an art of converting every detail into an amusing brand experience. Where Starbucks have taken the corporate brand manual tack, like British Airways, by simply and superficially adhering the logo to countless millions of cups, Puccino’s has put individual messages on each of its cups. Messages like “Take my top off” refer to the cups’ plastic lids. The sugar packets are embellished with: “Serving suggestion: – pour in cup and shut up”. Compare that with your last impression of Starbucks. It’s a boring, impersonal brand these days. Its rapport with the customer has been seemingly constrained by a corporate style manual.

But how do you achieve brand personality? And how do you allow the brand to grow without killing it with conventions? British Airways and Starbucks are just like the rest of the top brands: their branding has gone onto autopilot. They’ve lost their individual, responsive touch. Why? Because the brands were converted by their own brand manuals - documents created by committees full of rules that leave nothing to opportunity.

The best brand manuals are people, not books. A dynamic, humorous, human brand is dynamic, humorous and human because of one single person who’s running the brand, owning the brand, and setting the vision for the brand.

Instead of spending thousands of dollars on brand manuals that prescribe action, spend the money on a living brand manual. A person, whose role is to live and breath the brand. He or she should be the brand’s evangelist, growing with the brand, and ensuring that it never gets into any situations, which drain it of its spirit. The living brand manual should be prepared to change rules, shift guidelines and adjust the vision. Some might reckon this is a scary scenario. What if that individual leaves? for example. Well, people do move on. But the brand-manual-contrived British Airways scenario is scarier. For such companies, the brand has turned to stone – immutable, self-justifying and impervious to its relationship with customers.

The living brand manual - a brand custodian - is someone who holds the brand baton. The role needs to be accompanied by an exit strategy so that, when he leaves, there are tactics in place to ensure that the baton is passed on smoothly to the next custodian. The handover needn’t be artificially smooth, but it needs to be achieved without the baton being dropped. The point is that a real human being is in charge of a consequently humanised brand. Identified and training the right person takes time. But once you’ve secured the position, your brand will achieve its own healthy life.

So give up trying to resuscitate that dry, lifeless brand manual and begin searching for a living, breathing, human version instead.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/The living brand manual.pdf Brand vision Over the years, promotional tools have become oft-used weapons in the brand marketer's arsenal, employed by thousands of brands to attract and retain customers. Last year alone, more than 20 percent of total marketing expenditure went to promotional activities. Analysts predict that, by 2003, 50 to 70 percent of Internet marketing budgets will be spent on promotions.

One of the major benefits of running promotions has been the window such efforts can open on consumer behaviour. Brand builders can monitor the effect of promotions by soliciting action from consumers -- getting them to complete coupons, enter competitions, return product labels, you name it. The response to these gimmicks then stands as a clear indicator of the success or otherwise of a campaign. Compare the measurability of this strategy with that of, say, pure TV advertising, which affords brand builders scant consumer analysis in the short term.

But what are you measuring? It's one thing to monitor the number of coupons being returned by customers, but it's another to ensure the marketer's message was understood. The case might very well be that the consumer acted on the coupon, completing and returning it, without ever having understood the brand message behind the promotion. You can understand my pleasure, then, in noting the recent debut of several companies that offer what I would call second-generation online promotion. These start-ups are using the Internet's interactive capacity in new marketing tools -- tools that enable marketers to monitor their online campaigns and enhance their promotions by measuring the consumer's demonstrated understanding of the brand message. One example is

YouWinTrivia.com, a Florida-based site owned by YouWinIt.com that has, over the past four years, created a small but very lucrative niche for itself and gathered a very attractive audience. The company has developed a new form of brand advertising and ad analysis, called Mind Share Marketing. The idea is that consumers choose subject areas that interest them, then play a trivia game based on those interests. But before they play, they're exposed to an ad -- and the game includes questions about the ad.

Now, the difference between this and other online promotional concepts I've seen over the past months is that Mind Share Marketing uses incentive-based marketing to get consumers to read and, more important, understand the marketing message being presented to them. What I find fascinating is that, behind the scenes, the players' (or consumers') answers demonstrate to marketers which messages they remember, which they forgot, and which they misunderstood. And, the marketer only pays when an individual plays the promotional game, which means seeing and answering questions about the ad.

Matthew Mariani, YouWinTrivia's marketing coordinator for Mind Share, draws this analogy: "It's comparable to running a commercial on TV but being able to stop after the ad runs and ask the consumer, 'Repeat back to me what our message is. What did you like about our offer?'" The approach is appealing because it allows marketers to constantly adjust their messages in response to the observable effect they're having on consumers. Additionally, marketers are constantly aware of the promotion's success (or lack thereof). Of course, this type of product only appeals to a certain audience -- people who have the patience to engage in online promotion. But, looking around at the huge number of people who spend time on lotteries, at casinos, filling out coupons, and participating at home in TV game shows, the audience can hardly be called a small one, even on the Internet.

Including online promotion tactics in your marketing strategy is not necessarily the solution to overcoming your competition, but offline promotions are certainly still going strong -- and they have the potential to be translated online. It's a potential that, thus far, not many companies have explored. Only a few have created promotional campaigns that truly listen to consumer response and can be adjusted according to consumer reaction. And here's the potential bonus:

Tests show that online marketing promotions cost less than 1 percent of what offline promotions cost.

So if you happen to have an audience to which gaming promotions appeal, ask yourself if you're still working in the dark. Do you know if your brand's message works? Perhaps you should be considering making a move into the second phase of online promotion, in which guessing has been replaced with concrete facts.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Stop Guessing.pdf Optimizing budget Some years a go a British real-estate chain decided to go the totally reverse way when selling houses and apartments. We all know the usual real-estate jargon using words like breathtaking, stunning and exquisite in every sentence when describing even the most miserable apartment using sentences like: “This stunning apartment, presenting an excusive panorama view of a breathtaking backyard in the central city is a must see…”

The interesting fact is that we all know the description hardly reflected the reality but only some real estates fascinating writing talent. Well this real-estate agency went the totally opposite way by describing the reality as it was … yes you read it right – as it is!

Gone were the clichés replaced with realistic snapshots of the real apartments of houses of the streets of London. “This bump of a house needs more than love to turn it into something anyone can live in. The hall is less attractive than the worst you possible can imagine in Bangladesh – the walls are flooded with water and the floors are hardly visible due to the dirt spread across the whole house.”

Yes this was in fact the way the ads looked like. Would you dare this strategy? The real-estate chain did – and the success was enormous – suddenly people actually began reading the ads, they were infact so motived by this new writing style that people were looking forward to read the ads, sometime as good entertainment but in most cases as they were real and honest. Words which few real estate agents have learned about (if you happened to be a real-estate agent – sorry for offending you – you are naturally excepted). But the most interesting fact from this campaigning was that the sales increased, the real estate agents in fact loved it, as they didn’t have to lie and pretend something, which wasn’t there. The customers loved it as they were not wasting their time and the clients loved it, as the people visiting the properties were real customers – not customers lured to visit the property because of some fancy copywriters talent.

I receive about 500 spam emails a day in my public email address inbox – most of the headlines are lies – trying to attract my attention – and every time I or my assistants are lied to – to secure our attention – it downgrades our perception of the sender. No need to say that more and more emails are lying to attract attention -most likely 80 percent does!

But no brand has failed so far by being honest – I’m not asking you to down sell your proposition – but to he terrifying honest – tell it like it is – and to add it with a twist of humour when relevant and required.

Do you know what – it builds trust. It actually makes people believe you if not everything you tell people is picture perfect – but realistic. Tell it like it is. Tell the consumer if the battery time in your cell phone is 2 hours – and don’t say 3. If the delivery time is 14 days don’t say 10 days. If you come back with more information within 24 hours – do it – or else tell the customer the realistic truth.

I’d rather downgrade the consumers expectation – and make them positive surprised than disappoint them – and make them enemy of my brand for life. The Internet has become a media for lies – just like the real-estate industry and the used-cars salesmen. If you intend to differentiate your brand from the rest of the online content – stick to the honest truth – I promise you – you will never regret it.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Tell the truth.pdf Optimizing sales Back in 1915 Earl R. Dean, who was working at the Root Glass Company, was given a brief to design a bottle, which firstly could be recognized in the dark. And then, even if broken, a person could tell at first glance what it was.

Taking his inspiration from the pod of the cocoa bean, Dean produced a bottle with ridged contours.

He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. This led to the Coca-Cola Company’s contourization strategy, which used the shape to emphasize the very brand. The bottle he designed was the classic Coke bottle, which has become one of the most famous glass icons ever. The bottle is still in service, still recognizable, and been passing the smash test for every generation over the last 80 years.

The Coke bottle story reveals a fascinating aspect from a brand-building perspective, because in theory all brands should be able to pass this sort of test. So if you removed the logo from your brand, would it still be recognizable? Would the copy stand up to it? Would the colours, graphics and images standing alone pass the text?

Can your brand survive being smashed? It is an interesting exercise, which removes a logo-fixated mindset and brings you closer to a philosophy valuing all elements that create the brand that it is. Two black ears from a well-known mouse are instantly recognizable as Disney. A Singapore girl suggests Singapore Airlines. These are only components of the brand, and yet they’re unmistakable.

The trick is to create each element so that it’s so strong, so able to stand alone, yet at the same time so integrated and synergistic that it can take the brand to a whole new level of familiarity.

To place too great an emphasis on a brand’s logo carries risks. Least of all there is a danger of neglecting all the other potential brand-building opportunities. If paid due attention, there are many other aspects that become recognizable in their own right. Colour, navigation, texture, sound, shape. Even blindfolded, you’d know you’re holding a classic Coke bottle.

It’s time to kill your logo

Remove your logo, and what do you have left? This is a very important question because a brand is so much bigger than its logo. Are the remaining components easily identifiable as yours? If not, it’s time to Smash Your Brand.

The Smash Your Brand philosophy considers every possible consumer touch point with a view to build or maintaining the image of the brand. The images, the sounds, the tactile feelings and the text all need to become fully integrated components in the branding platform. Each aspect playing a role as vital as the logo itself.

Knowing what you’re known for

Advertising messages are increasingly cluttering our airwaves and print media. The average consumer is bombarded with an astonishing 3,000 brand messages a day. As each brand fights to be heard in this cacophony of the commercial world, it’s vital that they strike the perfect note to stand out. Our use of media itself has become more sporadic. Media plays on in the background of our busy lives, we have developed internal filtering systems that help us switch off.

This fragmentation of attention, requires advertising develop a totally integrated brand message, optimising every brand signal in such a way that the brand becomes instantly recognizable. This presents the advertiser with enormous challenges. As many as 20 per cent of the tween generation own their own cell phone, and there's every indication that this number is increasing on an annual basis. A large proportion of these phones are the basic variety with non-colour screens, less-sophisticated graphics and minimal visual effects. How would your brand fare on this match-box-sized canvas?

The situation of media fragmentation is further complicated by brand alliances. A large number – close to 56 per cent– of all Fortune 500 companies have formed alliances in their communications. This fact alone requires an even larger need for the implementation of a Smash Your Brand strategy, because when two brands share one space, the need to convey separate values and commercial messages in a limited 30-second spot, two logos alone simply won’t do the job.

There are only a few brands that would pass the Smash Your Brand test today. Take a moment to consider it. If you were to remove your logo and any other textual reference to your brand name, would your customers still recognize the product as yours? Chances are that you will find that without the logo and name, your brand loses its meaning. In order to reverse logo dependency, all other elements – colours, pictures, sound, design and signage – must be fully integrated.

Smash Your Brand – piece by piece

Smash Your Brand into 12 different pieces. Each piece should work independently of one another, although each is still essential in the process of establishing and maintaining a truly smash-able brand. The synergies created across the pieces will be essential for your brand’s success.

Smash your picture

Everything can be smashed – even your picture. Since its beginnings in 1965, the United Colours of Benetton has consistently developed a consistent brand style identifiable in any size, in any country and in any context. It was Benetton’s intention to develop its own unique personality. They consider their clothing to be “An expression of our time”. Their strategy in maintaining this integrity has been to generate all their own images. Luciano Benetton explains, “Communication should never be commissioned from outside the company, but conceived from within its heart”. Benetton is a brand that would survive smashing. The image and the design is its own statement and is part and parcel of the Benetton “heart”.

Smash your shape

Shape is one of the most overlooked branding components, even though certain shapes clearly speak of their particular brand. Think of the bottle shapes of Coke, Galliano or Chanel No. 5. Particular shapes have become synonymous with certain brands. The Golden Arches refer to McDonald’s trademark, and they’re consistently present at every outlet in every country all over the world.

Since 1981 the shape of the Absolut vodka bottle has been the primary component in every aspect of the brand and its communication. From fashion showsto ice hotels, footprints on the beach or Northern lights, Absolut’s inventive ads are all based on the shape of the bottle. The shape of the bottle is the shape of the brand.

Smash your name

Or what about smashing your name…? When the Porsche 911 was introduced in Frankfurt in 1963 the model was called 901. The brochures were printed, the marketing material was all in place but everything had to be urgently changed. Much to Porsche’s dismay, they discovered that Peugeot owned the rights to all three-digit model numbers of any combination with a zero in the middle, and this was non-negotiable. Fortunately only 13 models got through the production line with the 901 insignia, thereafter it became known as the 911.

Peugeot has held the numeric name rights for cars since 1963. The middle zero gives them a distinction that automatically identifies their models as Peugeot – even if you’re not able to conjure up a mental picture of a 204, or a 504.

Smashing your language

Disney, Kellogg’s and Gillette are three completely different brands with one thing in common. Over the past decade they’ve established a branded language. The irony of this is that they may not even be aware of it. Whether coincidentally or purposefully, our studies shows that 74 per cent of today’s consumers associate the word “crunch” with Kellogg’s. Another 59 per cent consider the word “masculine” and Gillette one and the same. Americans formed the strongest associations of masculinity and Gillette – by an astounding 84 per cent.

Every component of your brand can be smashed, your language, colours, shapes, tactile feeling – even your sound or pictures. Smashing these leads to much more than a characteristic brand – it creates a point of differentiation – impossible to copy by your competitors. Remember branding is everything but a logo – it’s a way to add a characteristic personality to your brand including every component creating a true point of difference.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Smashing your brand.pdf Brand alliances Back in 1915 Earl R. Dean, who was working at the Root Glass Company, was given a brief to design a bottle, which firstly could be recognized in the dark. And then, even if broken, a person could tell at first glance what it was. Taking his inspiration from the pod of the cocoa bean, Dean produced a bottle with ridged contours.

He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. This led to the Coca-Cola Company’s contourization strategy, which used the shape to emphasize the very brand. The bottle he designed was the classic Coke bottle, which has become one of the most famous glass icons ever. The bottle is still in service, still recognizable, and been passing the smash test for every generation over the last 80 years.

The Coke bottle story reveals a fascinating aspect from a brand-building perspective, because in theory all brands should be able to pass this sort of test. So if you removed the logo from your brand, would it still be recognizable? Would the copy stand up to it? Would the colours, graphics and images standing alone pass the text?

Can your navigation survive being smashed? It is an interesting exercise, which removes a logo-fixated mindset and brings you closer to a philosophy valuing all elements that create the brand that it is. Ask any Nokia user and they’ll agree that one of the primary reason why they love their Nokia is not because of all its features, better reach or battery time – its something as simple – yet important as the navigation. Once you’ve used the Nokia cell phone a couple of times you’re hooked on the Nokia way of navigating. In fact most Nokia users loyalty with the brand is not with the brand but with the navigation making you wonder how important less traditional branding components like the navigation in fact is to generate a loyal audience. We are all victims of habits – once you’ve gotten used to a certain way of shopping, driving, surfing … you name it that becomes one of the strongest loyalty generating factors. If you happen to be among those which at some point changed from Apple to PC – you would notice your frustrations learning a whole new way of navigating, just pick up any laptop and most represent a priority navigation technique like the trackball. Once you’ve gotten used to it you can never use anything else – as the trackball is a trademarked navigation technique – it could in many ways be seen as a branded loyalty as well.

But all this counts for websites too – can I in fact smash your website and still be able to recognize your site just by the way it is structured – the way the navigation works consistently not only across your many pages but also across channels like from web to wireless to PDA? Have you in fact developed a branded navigation – navigation?

Amazon.com has – with their trademarked 1-Click ordering – concept which several times has been copied – and sued because this in fact is the Amazon way of navigating. The big question what is your 1-Click ordering, trackball or Nokia way of navigation? What are the navigational components on your site – and across all your interactive channels which is consistently used time- after-time which the user has come to know you for, and love you for – which is just as associated with you as your logo? Anything at all? If not – it might be time to re-consider your navigation strategy – and see this a just as important brand ingredients as your colours, fonts and logo

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Smash your navigation.pdf Wireless strategy It's a familiar phenomenon: the biggest brands, like Pepsi and Coca-Cola, spending hundreds of millions of dollars in brand building and brand maintenance. Daily, we're inundated with TV, radio and print messages that account for much of that brand building investment. Americans see close to 30,000 TV commercials a year, on average.

Let's think about this for a moment. "Watch" doesn't necessarily mean, "see." Not every marketing campaign benefits from reflexively pouring millions of dollars into TV advertising. You shouldn't despair if your own marketing budget comes in at a couple of hundred thousand dollars...or less.

Thanks to changing consumer media habits, a whole range of communications channels are opening to marketers. Broadcast and traditional media channels are starting to feel the pinch of competition for time and attention. Sure, we still watch TV, read the paper and listen to the radio. But the menu of other communications options is widening. What's more, content has never been more commercial than it is now. Once-pure editorial and commercial brand messages now often merge, making it harder for marketers to define their brand's unique tone-of-voice.

The alternative is, well, alternative. Alternative thinking, alternative ideas and alternative channels. An Australian entrepreneur recently demonstrated the power of alternative thinking necessitated by small budget marketing when introducing a juice brand, Nudie.

The product is fresh juice, without additives. It tastes fantastic, but so what? The product's success is hinged on much more than its ingredients. It lies in alternative thinking and a personal approach.

The Web site introduces the brand's owner as "Tall Tim," who generates dialogue with individuals. Tall Tim invites people to show up at his home at a certain time for breakfast and juice, a freebie you qualify for as long as you show up at the exact, and I mean exact, time. The gesture couples the person behind the brand with the brand itself. That, in turn, promotes interaction between the humanized brand and the consumer. The site urges visitors to get into the act of pushing Nudie's distribution by offering a standard letter that interested parties can download, sign, and forward to their local stores. It's a simple strategy that works for the brand because individual customers have cachet and credibility in their neighbourhood store. The owners know their customers, and they listen to them.

The letter reads:

Dear (insert name of favourite store) I've recently had the pleasure of tasting a Nudie -- a new kind of juice with absolutely nothing added. (Yeah, I know, you've heard that line before about nothing added, but the people at Nudie really mean it!) Anyway, the point of this letter is to see if you'd be kind enough to consider stocking Nudie. If you do stock Nudie, I would be eternally grateful and I would buy at least (insert number) Nudies every week! To get your fridge fully stocked with Nudie today (or the next business day if you're reading this letter after hours) call now on 1-800-GO-NUDIE. Call takers are standing by...

Tall Tim turned his distribution channels into branding channels by getting consumers in on the act, and by putting a fleet of cute, purple, distinctively Nudie delivery cars on the road all over the country. Tall Tim has managed to treat every imaginable communication channel in an alternative fashion. His small budget would probably surprise you.

Within five months, Nudie has become the fastest-growing juice brand in Australia, ever. Tall Tim achieved this without any TV, radio, print or direct mail advertising. He tackled the project on a personal level. He used human communication channels creatively and directly. Nudie is not the only brand out there proving branding can be successful without spending millions of dollars on traditional media campaigns. But it offers a great working example of what can be done on a small budget.

I remember hearing information technologists would never be fired for choosing IBM. I suppose you could once have said the same of marketers who combined the traditional media channels in their plans. But things are changing. The IT guys probably still won't be fired for recommending IBM, but marketers with plans based on traditional channels and old school thinking shouldn't get too comfortable.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Small Spending - Big Branding.pdf Optimizing budget Last week we spoke about how product placement has turned into become situation placement – the question is however “How in earth do you create such plan”. How do you secure space in a computer game, manage to be mentioned in a song or shown in a movie? That’s what this weeks article is all about.

Before even considering going along this track you need to consider what you want to get out of it. In contract to traditional “above the line” marketing – it’s almost impossible to measure the effect of this approach – at least on a short-term basis.

The good news about product placement – or situation placement as I call it, situation placement meaning that you in fact ensure that your product becomes the hero – enhancing the story – in stead of a ad-on element without any affect on the story, is that it still, despite having been around for some time is still considered being very new. Marketeers still don’t know how to handle this, film studios, musicians and in particular game developers still see this as a quick revenue generating exercise – without any fixed prices – helping you to decide the price on a ad-hoc basic.

Tell me what’s the price of sponsoring the equipment handed out in the Matrix or Doom game? Who knows? No one really knows and therefore you can in many cases set the standard and secure an extremely high value out of this type of marketing effort.

My experience is that if you happen to be a brand appealing to kids or tweens at least 10 if not 15 per cent of your budget should be dedicated to “underground” branding – with situation placement as one of the main activities.

My advice to you therefore is to ensure a less focus on the result as it’s almost impossible to prove… which by the way is the reason why you most likely can secure a fabulous price.

Next step for you is to determine where and how to place your brand and brand message. Again the approach is slightly different from what you might be use to. Try to think of your brand as the hero – now tell me how can it become the hero. Like in the example with Red Bull – giving you energy – and therefore extra points – you need to extract the benefits of your brand into the story. If you are Nike your brand might optimize your skills – beating your competitors. Ensure to identify the unique skills of your brand – and then to place your brand in a story where your brand turns out to be the hero, the helper or the focus point.

Forget about online banner ads, logo’s placed on walls. … Yes even clouds I’ve seen examples of. People forget it.

What people don’t forget is if your brand was the hero of the story, the game or the event – making their life easier, making the story more relevant or helping the hero in the movie.

The third and last step is to think out side the box. Contact game suppliers, even if they happen to be based out of Japan and Korea. The further away – often the better price you can secure. Think about ways of placing your product no one really have thought about. And yes there are a lot of opportunities – the more creative, the lower price. I guarantee you.

A truly successful situation placement campaign is determined on your ability to leverage the space you have dedicated. If you identify it your self- you most likely will succeed – however it’s a very limited space and the demand is increasingly growing – so be fast – before it’s game over.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/The Situation placement Part 2.pdf Product placement 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.

Some are getting the hang of sensory appeal. Some supermarkets in Northern Europe are connected to bakeries by hundreds of meters of pipeline. The pipes carry the aroma of fresh bread to the stores' entrances. The strategy works. Passers-by are struck with hunger and drawn inside the shop. A major British bank introduced freshly brewed coffee to its branches with the intention of making customers feel at home. The familiar smell relaxes the bank's customers, not an emotion you'd normally associate with such an establishment.

Let's not forget hearing and touch. Sound evokes memory and emotion. A familiar birdsong floods you with impressions of home; a hit song from your youth brings back the excitement and anxiety of your teens. AOL stepped up to the plate by using a voice familiar to many young Web users. Brittney fans discovered they could hear their idol not only when experiencing CDs and videos but also when launching AOL. Brittney lets you know, "You've got mail." Kellogg's has also invested in the power of auditory stimulus, testing the crunching of cereals in a Danish sound lab to upgrade their product's "sound quality."

Touch? One major reason online clothes shopping never took off is -- you guessed it -- people couldn't touch the product. Amazon avoided this problem because people don't attach so much importance to the feel of a book as they do to its content. Clothes, on the other hand, must be felt and tried on for size, colour, texture, and so on. Physical proximity to product is elemental to purchase decisions. Shopping behaviour depends on it.

If you agree so far, then tell me why it's so difficult to find brands that promote themselves by appealing to all five senses. The only example of integrated sensory marketing I'm aware of comes from Singapore Airlines. The airline has demonstrated an understanding of the psychological importance of the senses in establishing and maintaining customer impressions. By appealing to all senses (music, fragrance, manner, and demeanour mingle in the cabin to evoke the airlines image), the airline has created a branded flying experience.

So how can you appeal to all five senses on the Internet? Well, you can't get them all. But you can optimize the tools available to you, one of the most neglected being sound. Why do you reckon you hear that familiar sound of fizzing Coke being poured into an ice-filled glass when you visit the Coca-Cola site and the sound of brewing coffee on the Starbucks site? Meaningful sound is a cheap but very effective way of appealing to another of your visitor's senses and of powerfully enhancing your brand's message. Sensory perceptions are unique to each of us, as memories are. We experience powerful stimulations from them. How come marketers aren't appealing to our senses more? The opportunity of brand building by leveraging the five senses is wide open. Brands are hovering in the wings, as an audience of our highly receptive senses sits in a darkened theatre, anticipating a marketing show that hasn't yet begun. Few companies have integrated their brand-building strategies to appeal to all the senses. This is probably the case for two reasons: not all media channels are able to connect with each of the five senses, and we really don't know how to handle the phenomenon of total sensory appeal.

Rome wasn't built in a day. I'm sure we'll get there. The question is how long you can afford to wait? The rewards can be enormous.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Sensory Branding.pdf Wireless strategy Before you can tell people what you want them to think about you, you must know clearly who you are. A quick review of most corporate sites reveals a disappointing lack of unique brand visions and distinctive corporate identities. Though some company executives devote time to thinking about and defining who they are and where they want to go, the vast majority seems to come up with impotent copy-and-paste statements, redolent with empty clichés and nebulous objectives.

Take a look at this excerpt from one company's vision statement: "We will be seen in all our markets as the quality leader among international airlines. This will be achieved by:

• Mobilizing our joint talents, know-how and skills • Inspiring all staff to support our persistent effort to improve quality • Placing quality first in everything we do • Setting an annual target of measurable improvement • Doing things right the first time • Providing both our external and internal customers with a reliable and punctual product and careful and friendly service."

Now, tell me, which airline is this? American Airlines? British Airways? United Airlines? Well, in fact, it could be any of them, couldn't it? This was taken from KLM's vision statement but, demonstrably, most corporate vision statements read the same. They're largely cut-and-paste jobs, with the only difference being in the company name.

I'm not criticizing the way people run their companies. But I am flagging such vision statements with huge question marks. What value do companies gain from such statements? What value do companies gain from probably spending thousands of hours and millions of dollars on articulating a supposed mission? Could it be that these "company visions" are nothing more than pieces of verbal livery that are nice to have and are obligatory on corporate Web sites? Or are the management teams really using these vision statements as guidelines for their work? As Gary Hamel and K.C. Prahalad stated in "Competing for the Future," "At most companies, employees focus on short-term performance, like improving profitability or process. These are important challenges, but people won't go the extra mile unless they know where they're going." A thoughtful, substantial, meaningful vision statement can communicate direction.

Personally, I'd love to see a company's personality reflected in its stated vision. Why do these statements have to be the same? I'd like to see some managerial courage reflected in a vision statement. You could think about an airline's vision like this: "It's not fair that only birds should experience the pleasure of flying." Or, "Humanity should be free of the burdens of distance because any movement limitation is a waste of time." Perhaps these sound more facetious than I intend, but I want to illustrate the value of injecting some provocativeness into the corporate vision, some quality that communicates the corporate personality through a meaningful vision statement and thus differentiates its brand from that of competitors.

Vision statements should be distinctive and strong so that anyone within the company's target group can identify the associated brand. Consider this vision statement: "Man is the creator of change in this world. As such he should be above systems and structures, and not subordinate to them." Can you identify what corporation might have expressed this? You guessed right: Apple. This vision was articulated decades ago, but it holds true for Apple today and is compatible with its "Think Different" campaign. What about this vision statement: "One can embrace either a static or a dynamic way of seeing the world." And this is followed by the brand's "company ambition," which is "to be the catalyst of change for a whole generation." Any guesses? You got it: Pepsi! A vision expresses a brand's place in its world. It articulates a brand's reason for being. For some reason most corporate "visions" are disturbingly similar. Perhaps that reflects the fact that most companies' objectives and most brands' purposes are similar. Or perhaps that reflects the fact that courage is lacking, or nonexistent, in the business world.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/See Your Brand Vision.pdf Brand vision 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…

Recently Nestle and L’Oreal teamed up – why – to create an alliance helping the brands to develop healthy food – not only for your body but also for your skin to. In fact every research study shows that the value of brand alliances almost in every case turns out to be positive – opening up a raft of opportunities for you to secure stronger visibility and latterly sharing the cost with someone else. My question is – which brands would you hate for your competitor to team up with? Use this list of names as your future list of potential brand alliances and start part one of your brand awareness campaign for half the price.

Optimize your free signals Branding has little to do with your logo and everything to do with all the signals your brand sends to its customers and consumers every time they happen to be in touch with you. The problem is that most companies time after time forget the value of brand signal optimization. Let me give you an example. Nokia cell phones are all installed with a default ringing tone – in fact close to 200 million Nokia phones across the globe rings in average 12 times a day using the default Nokia tune. This equals more than 9 hours of branded tunes each consumer listens to – every year! And the cost for Nokia – zero! I bet your brand represents the similar untapped branding potential – easy to optimize – and yet another way to establish your brand free of charge.

Leverage your country of origin.

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. Benchmarketing Country branding means much more than adding a "Made In" label to a product. A product's country of origin constitutes an important piece of branding that, in many cases, can be so influential it overtakes the brand's other reputation builders. My question to you is how much do you in fact leverage your country or even state origin? Some states within the U.S. are well known for certain qualities, U.S. international is well know for other qualities depending on your export markets – qualities which all are free of charge to leverage if done right.

For decades communication agencies have been doing their best to avoid the most critical of questions: What is the return on their marketing investment? Why the avoidance? Because it has been almost impossible to measure the results of long-term branding campaigns that are often run over several years and across multiple channels, handled by multiple agencies, and managed by multiple departments. With no means of objective measurement, most marketers fall back in desperation on well-tested media channels, such as TV, radio, and print. Communication strategies employing these media have worked for years, and it's unlikely anyone would be fired for choosing them. Needless to say there are tons of alternative ways to build your brand – only the creativity sets the limit.

Paying millions of dollars for a branding campaign is easy to do – the tricky job is to pay next to nothing and still build your brand. ROI Branding is all about thinking different and identifying alternative opportunities helping to build your brands. So far no one has regretted using alternative techniques building their brand – well perhaps with expectation of the bank managers.

Benchmarketing

For decades communication agencies have been doing their best to avoid the most critical of questions: What is the return on their marketing investment? Why the avoidance? Because it has been almost impossible to measure the results of long-term branding campaigns that are often run over several years and across multiple channels, handled by multiple agencies, and managed by multiple departments. With no means of objective measurement, most marketers fall back in desperation on well-tested media channels, such as TV, radio, and print. Communication strategies employing these media have worked for years, and it's unlikely anyone would be fired for choosing them.

But as most corporations across the globe decrease their marketing budgets and go through the tough process of deciding what to keep and what to cut, that fundamental question of return on investment (ROI) must be asked. Now that digital media hasbecome more focused not only on monitoring consumers' online behaviour but also on accurately predicting behaviour, we're closer than we've ever been to being able to answer the ROI questions we dared not ask just five years ago.

So, how do you document your ROI? And how do you determine which medium -- which communication strategy -- is able to move products over the counter most effectively?

In this and the next two articles, I'll discuss the ways you can assess your return on investment, and I'll introduce tools for answering some of your trickiest ROI questions.

Let's start with two classic assessment points: Does your online advertising generate sales? And can you measure the success of your online brand building?

Does online advertising generate sales?

Unless you're a pure dot-com e-commerce player, this question has been a difficult one. Or has it? A response form that enables you to track consumer behaviour, right from the point at which the consumer’s attention was harnessed, should accompany every activity you run. But do me a favour: Don't stop halfway. BrightStreet.com offers consumers online coupons that can be redeemed in the store. The result of the coupon strategy is BrightStreet.com's amazing ability to track consumer conversion rates: Consumer activity can be observed from the time a banner ad is clicked to the point of actual purchase of the promoted product in the store.

The technique is simple. Ensure you're with your consumer the whole way. Every link -- from the ad to the promotion site, from the promotion site to the real site, from the real site to the store, from the store to the cash register -- has the potential to reduce the conversion rate. So, optimizing each of these consumer touch points is the obvious solution.

But how can you possibly achieve this without a comprehensive picture of the consumer's behaviour patterns? If you can optimize your consumer touch points and track conversion rates, you're so much closer to forming a clear picture of the level of actual sales generated by your online advertising. And, conversely, you can analyse why your online advertising is not achieving desirable conversion rates. Can you measure the success of your online brand building?

First, let's define online brand building. Theoretically, it's a systematic means of establishing and strengthening a relationship between your brand and your consumer. The aim is that the relationship becomes so successful that the price factor is eliminated as the chief reason for your consumer purchasing the product.

Online brand building encompasses a complex of aims, duties, and choices. But there are two vital issues: conversion and retention. Your brand building must be able to convert new customers to your brand, and it must retain your existing customers, cultivating their brand loyalty. Is it possible to measure these vital online brand-building elements simply by adopting a new way of using your site? Fundamental to this is that you know where your consumers have come from before arriving at your site and where they go after visiting your site. Hitwise was one of the first companies to offer a measurement service that enables you to form a picture of your key competitors and your consumers' loyalty to your brand. Imagine that you're a car manufacturer and most of your visitors come from insurance sites. Would this affect your Web strategy? Or imagine that you're a financial institution and most of your visitors head off to an insurance company's site after leaving yours. Would this behaviour signal any potential to you? You should know who your competitors are, and you need to learn of new business opportunities before they erode.

Alternative techniques enabling marketers to effectively monitor and predict their sites' ROI have newly appeared on the Web scene so stay tuned.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/ROI Branding.pdf Optimizing sales My father always said not to talk about religion, politics and money. So right here and now I’m going to break the first rule by revealing some of my most fascinating revelations by placing branding in dare I say, a religious context.

How can a brand hope to achieve the ultimate? Just two weeks ago, on the streets of Tokyo I got the answer. Walking down the road were two girls dressed from top to toe in Hello Kitty items. Nothing was left “unbranded”. Apart from their dresses, shoes and handbags, they had Hello Kitty nails and Hello Kitty earrings, and Hello Kitty phones.

This form of brand admiration taken to the max has emerged over the past decade. The first time I encountered it was in a pub in Sydney where I met a man with a Gucci barcode tattooed on his neck. I described the meeting in BRAND sense my latest book. We got talking, and introduced ourselves. When I asked what made him get the tattoo, he told me, “I simply love the brand.”

This left me pondering… What makes people go that far? What are the ingredients that make up such an extreme brand obsession? And ultimately, what can the world of advertising learn from this when setting out to build a brand?

The best answer to these tough questions seemed could be found in the controversial topic of religion. I embarked on a fascinating journey in an attempt to discover what is it about religion that creates such staunch devotees. I also wanted to know what are the ingredients that create steadfast and strong religious faith.

The exploration resulted in a list of 10 powerful criteria. As I was writing BRAND sense, I wanted to call this list the Ten Commandments, but my publisher felt that this was pushing it a little too far. What’s interesting about this list however is that the parallels between it and the world of branding are surprisingly strong.

Don’t get me wrong. I do not wish to imply that religion has learnt anything from branding, but branding has definitely been inspired by the world of religion. These were the 10 components that I found:

1. A sense of belonging

Think Weight Watchers, and you’ll know what I’m talking about. This amazing community of more than two million consumers is run almost exclusively on peer advice and support. Without a peer community Weight Watchers would not exist. Needless to say that sense of belonging is always a strong component of any religion.

2. A clear vision

Steve Job’s powerful vision for the Apple Company dates back to the mid-1980s. He said, “Man is the creator of change in this world. As such he should be above systems and structures, and not subordinate to them.” This vision was referring to computers, but 20 years later and a few billion iPods later; it still applies, and will probably still be relevant in 20 years’ time.

3. Power from the enemy

If we play a game of association and I say Coke, more than likely you’ll say Pepsi. The rivalries gone on for so long, that it’s legendary. A former executive at Coke once stated that going to work was like going to war. In fact the chances are that Coke would not be what it is today if there was no Pepsi. The rivalry has forced both brands to grow and perpetually challenge one another for market leadership.

4. Authenticity

Authenticity is hard to define. Is Las Vegas or canned laughter authentic? Without thinking you may initially answer no, but a reconsidered answer might just be yes. Are the Olympics authentic? This answer to this is unambiguously yes, because it contains the four defining components of authenticity. It’s real, it’s relevant, and it has rituals and is part of a story. More and more brands are required to be authentic – just like religion

5. Consistency

In world where everything is changing so quickly, consistency is the king. You know how to operate your Nokia phone; you know how to order a sandwich at Subway and how to navigate your Apple Mac. It has all become a branded routine, which, if changed, is likely to hurt the brand more than if the logo was to disappear. The fact is that more and more brands realize the importance of brand consistency, not only in terms of its graphics, but also in terms of every aspect that represents the brand.

6. Perfection

Google Harley-Davidson on the Internet and you’ll find 521 websites dedicated solely to the fine art of how to polish the engine. For most outsiders this would sound rather pedantic but for the true Harley-Davidson fan, this is a must. Perfection is the brand, just as Apple’s fine sense for details or Louis Vuitton’s extreme focus on quality has made the brands what they are today.

7. Symbols

As the market place becomes more and more crowded simple yet powerful symbols are taking over – a global language – an instant language. Apple was first to design the famous trash can, and the greeting smiley when the computer was turned on. Every single Apple icons passes the ultimate test of being singularly associated with Apple, even when they stand-alone.

8. Mystery

Have heard about KFC’s 11 secret spices? What about the secret Coca-Cola recipe? Are these stories true, or not? Regardless of the truth, these are good stories that create mystery, and add yet another dimension to the products.

9. Rituals

If you remove certain rituals from a small group of powerful brands you’ll soon notice their power disappearing. Take for example Corona beer and the lime in the bottleneck. How would the Olympic games fare without the flaming torch relay? The fact is not many brands leverage the power of ritual, yet so much of religion’s power is based on this very aspect.

10. Sensory appeal

Imagine for a moment walking into a temple, a church, a synagogue or a mosque. Each one offers a unique sensory experience. There is incense and bells, incantations and candles. The world of branding can learn a lot from this. Some brands get it right. A visit to Disney Land can quickly draw you in to another world. As flagship stores become more commonplace, the sensory appeal is becoming more prominent.

Whether we love it, or hat it, the world of branding is becoming increasingly inspired by the world of religion. Religion offer a powerful roadmap for how branding can evolve over the years to come. All it needs to do is look to the ancient ingredients that make up religious followings. In some cases this is so powerful that the brand becomes more than a brand, and it becomes a way of life.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Religious_branding.pdf Brand vision If I scroll through your media plan I’m sure it will contain all the usual and well-known media options, TV and Radio ads, the print ads and the outdoor. We’ve all picked these options for years well in fact decades because we knew you would never be fired on choosing them. Just like an IT guy wouldn’t be fired for installing an IBM solution for your company. But soon these days are long gone – soon you will be fired to choose these options.

Today the size of the computer gaming market is double of the revenue generated by the movie industry. ACNielsen predicts the movie industry will be one third of the computer gaming industry within only four years leaving me wondering where the enormous power once placed in the hands of Hollywood is about to go. Is it about to go online? And if it is – where are you?

It is fascinating to think about that almost every media you can think of has a price, which you at a click at Google would be able to find in seconds. It’s a fixed and well-known price. All this except one channel – the computer game. Quick – tell me what’s the price of placing a commercial message in a computer game and I’m sure you’ll have no clue. Is it $1 per user? One million up front? One cent per second? Who knows – no fixed model exist, no media agency really has (yet) specialized in booking space in computer games like in any other industry – in fact this is virgin area – which often means virgin prices. Low prices.

Let’s do the math – research from my latest book BRANDchild showed that kids now, for good or worse, spend almost the same time in front of the computer games as they do in front of the TV. These numbers will soon revert – showing the computer game in the lead. The only difference is just that where your TV commercial probably secures some 30 seconds with the consumer – the computer game very likely may spend hours.

No wonder why Red Bull – the energy drink was claimed to secure its success due to it’s appearance in one of the first Playstation games – stating: Want more energy?” Do I need to tell you what the answer was?

If you belong to the IBM gang – going with the secure solution – don’t continue reading. However if you like me believe that TV no longer is the one and only path to brand success – you should already now consider your role in the wonderful world of computer games. The prices are still low, as this is still an unexplored territory. The results are still high – as the clutter is limited. But all is already going full steam into the computer gaming world. Sims Online – one of the worlds best established computer games – no longer will take place in a non-branded world – but in a world where players in the game will be able to buy a McDonald's kiosk and sell the company's branded food products, earning "simoleans," the game's currency. Eating that food will also improve their standing within the game.

It’s another way of building brands. Where brands in the past never interacted with its customers or in any way engaged them in their philosophies – the role is about to change. The brands are about to learn that creating an engaged consumer is all about … engaging them. Surprise! All this kick starts a wave of brands moving from the passive world of branding to a world where brands to a substantial stronger degree needs constantly to interact with the consumer. Taking onboard a role, playing the role and constantly giving the consumer feedback. A brave new world of branding has yet again written a new chapter – this time online – I hope you are part of the story.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Playing the Brand game.pdf Gaming box Imagine you went down to your local bank, the one just around the corner, to discuss retirement plans. Imagine you did so because you'd been receiving letters from your bank manager for the past 21 years. He's a great guy. He knows you and your family's finances better than you do yourself.

I agree - let's stop right there. It's too far-fetched. I can't imagine it, either.

First of all, you probably never receive real letters from your bank anymore. Second, there's no longer a bank just around the corner. Third, your bank manager has evaporated and been supplanted by a call centre. That call centre makes anonymity into a fine art by adding that special, impersonal touch. Every time you call and put in the requisite time on hold, you eventually speak with some new person who deals inadequately with your apparently stupid questions and who ensures everything you discuss is forgotten the minute you hang up.

OK, that's over the top. But not by much. Back to the point: branding.

Recently, I received an e-mail from Citibank. It said the bank was updating my client data and asking me to help it do this. Not unusual. I receive such automatic business card update requests almost daily. Being sceptical, I checked out the Citibank e-mail carefully. It seemed perfectly OK. So was the e-mail address, the sender, and the link to the Web site.

In the good old brick-and-mortar world, even in the old click-and-mortar one, you'd know if an e-mail was authentic or not. You'd at least have known the person sending it. If you weren't certain, you'd have called that person at the bank. Let's be frank. The bank would never have sent an e-mail. It'd have sent a real letter. A fake one would have been easy to spot, and you'd be unlikely to pass on your confidential data to some unscrupulous charlatan.

Alas, this is no longer the case. The only way I could ascertain whether the e-mail was from a genuine sender or not was to judge its looks. Thank heavens I didn't comply and reply with all my details, because this e-mail was, of course, an example of brand phishing.

Spammers employ this technique by assuming an identity to extract valuable data from unsuspecting consumers. They then hack into victims' bank or credit card accounts to transfer money to their own accounts.

So how would I know if this e-mail was genuine? I put this question to a top programmer who confirmed there's no way to really know whether an e-mail message is authentic. Major financial institutions outsource their direct e-mail to vendors. Most bear names consumers have never heard of. Sure, the address might look right, but who knows about the sender?

This leads to the issue of superficiality. As things stand right now, most consumers base their assumptions of credibility and authenticity on an e-mail's looks and logo.

Phishing is the fastest-growing scam in the world. It's made possible because of a small, but crucial, fact: We've taught consumers to evaluate brands simply on looks alone, the superficial image. We've forgotten the value of the handshake, eye contact, branch offices, real letters, and real addresses. We've systematically denuded brands of authenticity, left them with no protective features, and made them vulnerable to brand phishers in the process.

New technologies will solve the problem, and new scams will emerge to replace this one. One thing's certain: Online fraud and scams will never disappear. We must strive to communicate what our brands stand for without compromising authenticity in the interests of cost savings. That's difficult to achieve.

If, for example, the branch office was your brand's real point of differentiation, don't get rid of it. Think how Starbucks has made its cafés its real point of identity, with those couches and comfy chairs. If having a real name on your e-mail and real people on the phone differentiates your brand, stay that way.

You might very well save money in the short term by cutting everything down to a logo. Consider whether it's worth it in the long run.

I often dream of the good old days, when I knew my bank manager. If I'm ever contacted by a bank that promises the personal, face-to-face scenario described above, I'll happily open an account -- even if I have to write them letters rather than e-mail.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Phishing for Brand Value.pdf New technologies Is perfect branding really the best way of building brands? Up until recently this might have been true. Asking Martha Stewart fans they would have agreed with me. Year after year the ever-perfect Martha have been dishing up one perfect decoration advice after another. And yes they were really perfect – but repeating this session decade after decade made one mistake look so much more dramatic than if the brand Martha would have conducted mistakes, purposely or not, through the years just like us “ordinary” human beings.

And this brings me to the point. I’m a big believer in the fact that the ultimate brand is like a real person. Needless to say no brand hardly reaches a stage where people perceive it as being a real person, but the fact is, that the more human components we associate a brand with, typically the stronger the brand is.

The times where I’ve been most amazed about a brand have often been where it did something human. Where the service was extraordinary good – and had a “real” human touch. The cases where the emails I received as a reply on my question sent either in anger or just in curiosity – reflected that a real person, of real human blood – actually were answering my email. But not only that – that the writing – reflected that this person had the authority to be a true individual, either in the tone-of-voice, the writing style…you name it. You see as customers we expect a brand to deliver on expectations. It’s a minimum standard to expect a brand to answer back, often within 24 hours. But if the reply is everything but standard, if it had that special “glimpse in the eye” it added extra brand equity to my brand – perhaps making it my favourite brand.

But making this possible requires a human behaviour. And a human behaviour is often reflected by mistakes. I don’t need to tell you that neither you nor I are perfect. We do mistakes – well I guess its mantra that we do this now and then, but it also creates our personality. Brands should do the same. No – don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about messing up your account status, filling your emails and letters with spelling errors – but talking about making a brands behaviour real. You see – a too perfect behaviour creates a distance, as we know no one is perfect. When I look at these huge banks on the main street, dressed in steel and glass, with a huge corporate logo and people dressed in corporate black – it makes me feel like nothing. Corporations don’t need to go along that path; in fact I sometimes believe this is more a reflection of insecurity in senior management, creating these self-promoting statues – than actually a desire to create a stronger customer relationship.

And all this brings me back to Martha and her perfect image. Imagine Martha one day had pulled out her pudding from the oven and it collapsed. Imagine that the paintings she was framing were not hanging perfect above the sofa or imagine that she one day said she had a terrible hangover because she had a birthday party yesterday. That would have created empathy with her and her brand arming her for … well the day where a real mistake would have happened.

Remember one thing – the more perfect image we want to project our image towards the world – the more perfect the world expect us to be, However this is not necessary our benefit. So before you go ahead designing your website, your TV programs or commercials, your store decoration or whatever is generating traffic and revenue – think about the level of perfectionism you want to reflect – perhaps the being perfect is not as perfect as we all think it is.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Perfect Brand.pdf Generating traffic 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.

I bet you’ll never forget this story – neither do I. But the case is that the extra $20 the hotel decided to spend on my account makes me spread the story – just like now. Would you still claim this wasn’t worth the investment … hardly!

The story is very much in line with another experience taking place in a Louis Vuitton store, the maker of luxury leather goods, which explicitly does not offer a lifetime warranty on its products. In fact, the company's documentation states a charge will be applied for repairs. The salesperson to whom you return your faulty product further reiterates this when you take it in for repair. But when you come back to collect your item, you'll almost never pay for the service. The salesperson assures you this was done especially for you.

The over deliver and under promise builds your brand in ways which few can imagine – as it reflects a brand which cares about you – rather than a brand which traditionally only cares about it’s shareholders. It’s a story, which stays with you for life – and not only keeps you as a loyal customer – it makes you spread the rumour. If you don’t believe me ask any kid about how many bricks there is in any box of LEGO –and the answer would be – “there are always too many bricks in the box”. I remember as a kid I always noticed the pleasant surprise – which always made me think this was a special gift for me. Many years later, when visiting the factory I realized, other factors were the true reason for this generosity – still the story stays with me forever.

I’m certain that my Peninsula, the Louis Vuitton or LEGO experience isn’t written down in some manual – still it has time after time shown to be consistent every time I’ve been spending time with these brands.. But how? The reason might be found on the very top of the 70 year old Sydney Harbour Bridge, an icon, which some years ago was opened to the public for what is called a Bridge Walk. The walk takes you through a 4-hour tour on top of the arches of the very bridge – allowing you to view the entire Sydney harbour.

The surprising bit wasn’t the bridge walk – but the motivation showed by the guides which time after time seemed to keep up an amazing spirit – despite having walked up-and-down the bridge several hundred times in all sorts of weather…. I asked Adam, my guide and was told an amazing explanation.

Prior to the first as a practicing guide – they go through a 4-month education program. The first months is packed with lesions about how to handle people with panic attacks. You know fear of heights. The second months is dedicated to learning how to memorize the visitor’s names – as well as presentation techniques. You should think that the last two months would be dedicated to learning about the bridge and Sydney and its harbour – but wrong! In stead the soon-to-be-guides were left alone with the assignment of creating their own presentation – a two months assignment – ensuring an amazing ownership of the story, the topic and energy.

But what does all this have to do with the Peninsula or Louis Vuitton story, and my mantra about over delivering and under promising? It’s simple – leaving it all to comprehensive brand manuals won’t do it. You can’t program a surprise – but you can however instead secure an understanding about the fundamental components creating a true surprise and hand over the execution to the members of your team. Today in a world where cost cutting has become the rule of every product or service – consumers are left in a world where surprises are more surprising than ever – and unfortunately only for the negative. Far to seldom-true positive surprises arrises – but when they do – they are spread like wild fire between consumers because they tells a story we all would like to experience. I’m sure both Louis Vuitton, Peninsula or LEGO would all agree with me that the cost of such experience isn’t overwhelming – in fact it is only our extreme cost focus which keeps us away from this way of thinking.

Who doesn’t love giving something away?

It not only spreads the rumours and generates happy customers – it also builds a staff motivation which probably – converted into education and staff motivation programs – would be far cheaper and far more sincere. And that’s what branding is all about – building sincere human brands – which we all instantly can relate to.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Over deliver.pdf Optimizing sales Have you ever hears about a brand rejecting customers? Probably not – every brand we know are desperate to attract more customers - and the customers know it – so when finally a brand follows the opposite trend, there might be something in it.

Some years ago I developed the concept for a relaunch of the Pepsi website. The big question was – how do you create a website which goal is to promote a sticky soft drink – which at the same time had to be cool, relevant and make you drink even more? As easy as it might sound for some – just as difficult it is – without abusing the usual advertising solutions like games, screensavers and music news. It’s kind of overdone – and hardly builds the brand…well unless you happen to be in the gaming or music industry.

Any kid loves challenges – which created the basis for a highly unusual brief – aiming to reject the Pepsi customers instead of bidding everyone welcome. Entering the site any visitor simply had to pass by an intelligent test. If your answers weren’t clever enough, quick enough or simply just failed to answer correctly – you were rejected to visit the site. It might be relevant to state that the first price was a trip out in space … yep a real one – shared with 6 other people.

This was the day I learned that reverse marketing something isn’t that bad anyway. Thousands of kids tried daily to enter the site – and thousands of the rejected visitors – started to spread rumours on how to enter the site – by bypassing the test. It became a instant hit – where the Pepsi challenge – suddenly was to challenge the customers – and probably the first time in a corporate brands history – reject most of them to enter the commercial site.

Through the whole site the truth was the catching point. If you were doing well – you would slowly be rewarded – if you failed during the stay at the site – the risk would be for you to be kicked out – or at least be told that you were uttermost dumb.

However this story is not about Pepsi but about how branding which rejects being political correct often not only catch the attention of the audience but create loyal customers. You see non of us are political correct, now and then a piece of personality shines through – making us laugh, listen or debate. Unfortunately the corporate world of branding has reached a point were we are desperately afraid of telling the truth. Of showing political in-correct opinions, advertising with personality and attitude. But isn’t that what human beings are all about – having attitude – at least I hate when talking with people without any opinions, which always agree with me and in general avoid any heated discussion.

And this is exactly what the future brand trends are going to be all about. Branding with attitude – brands that leaves the world of bland branding – and starts to show opinions on the home page, in ads and on TV.

Sounds easy? Hardly – you see today most of the corporate decision making process is formed in such way that any opinionated branding campaign is creamed out – and rejected. However the problem is that they all are leaving only nice, boring but very correct campaigns left. But isn’t branding about creating strong brand personalities, identifiable, and memorable for life? If you happen to agree – reject – the reject rules and let the future brand show its true personality.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Opinionated branding.pdf Gaming box What do United Airlines and Starbucks coffee have in common? Take one of United's U.S. flights, and you'll find out.

On every domestic flight, you're no longer served coffee. You're served Starbucks coffee. In fact, the deal between the two companies requires flight attendants to say "Starbucks Coffee" when offering in-flight beverages.

What we're seeing is the trend toward brand alliances. Brands that are mutually complementary team up with each other and with their partners' brand missions. A quick look at several major U.S. supermarkets reveals they offer Starbucks coffee. Starbucks cafés are situated in the stores. Starbucks analysed its traffic flow and concluded people are in the mood for a cup of something while waiting around. Successfully selling coffee to such customers optimises revenue flow for both the coffee chain and host establishments. Thus, brand alliances are born that benefit both the consumer and the bottom line.

What's this got to do with online branding? Brand alliances, as we know them, are in the midst of an interesting change. Some years ago, most brand builders would have been aghast at the thought of their brands being seen alongside other brands. Brands should be perceived in exclusivity, they believed. That theory is no longer applicable. It's impossible to be the best in each and every way. That's why complementary companies need each other. Brand builders must identify the best companies within fields/disciplines/product categories that are complementary to their own and team up with them.

The potential for creative thinking in this type of cooperative brand building is massive. Key to its success is to ensure the values and brand propositions of potential brand alliance partners bear clear, relevant relationships with each other.

Australia's national airline, Qantas, built a brand alliance with Hertz. Through it, the airline secures a referral fee and ostensibly offers customers an enhanced service. The World Health Organization (WHO) teamed with British Airways to collect money for its cause.

Be prepared to see some innovative and interesting brand combinations in the future. Expect to see the trend mirrored online. The strategy ensures consumers are exposed to favoured brands in new contexts, their product knowledge expands, and their brand use becomes more versatile.

Think through every aspect of your brand's use. Determine how to fit your customers' current product utilization into new contexts. If you sell flowers, team up with a vase manufacturer, teddy bear supplier, or balloon merchant. If you sell computers, get together with an education provider and offer educational programs to help customers learn more about their computers. Think intuitively. What makes sense to your customers? Identify a potential use area for your brand, select a brand whose values marry well with your brands, and propose a branding partnership.

Brand alliances are set to become a dominant marketing approach. Brand alliances are cheap and effective and work in the mutual interests of brands and their customers. A well structured, sensibly conceived brand alliance won't dilute your brand. Be clear about what your brand stands for and what your partner brand's values are. With a logical and meaningful relationship between the values of each partner brand, consumers will find cooperative promotions informative, expanding, and useful.

Walk yourself through your customers' experiences. Identify product categories they select; identify brands that represent those categories; then compare your brand's values and proposition with those of likely partner brands. The number of unallied, interesting brands is diminishing as the brand alliance game continues. Quick! Partner up before the number of potential partners shrinks, and, with it, your revenue.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Online Dating For Brands.pdf Brand alliances We're spending more and more on marketing and securing fewer and fewer results. Last year, marketing budgets increased 7 percent. But effectiveness decreased 2 percent! We need something else. Fancier TV spots, snappier graphics, and more frequent e-mail won't do the trick.

Something's missing.

Let's step back and think about who we are: sentient beings. Do we make the most of the five senses? How can we strategically use them to build brands?

I've been working for the past two years on what has become the largest study ever conducted on our five senses. BRAND sense, also the title of my latest book, is an analysis I conducted in partnership with research institute Millward Brown on the importance of the five senses to brand building.

The power lies in details. Most of us have heard Nokia's classic ring tone. It's installed in every Nokia phone. It's become such a regular feature of everyday life; it's now featured in mainstream movies, such as "Love Actually." BRAND sense research reveals Nokia's ring tone has become one of the most well known in the world. An astounding 74 percent of Europeans and 46 percent of American consumers recognize it and associate the tone with the brand.

Do the math. Every Nokia cell phone is set to ring with Nokia's ring tone when it leaves the factory. A fair percentage of Nokia users aren't technically minded, meaning over 20 percent never change the ring tone. Nokia's signature rings on. To date, Nokia has produced some 400 million-cell phones. The average cell phone rings 11 times per day. This means about 80 million people hear over seven hours of the Nokia tone each year. Every time these phones ring, Nokia touts its brand.

Last year, Intel spent over $100 million promoting its brand and tune. The BRAND sense survey reveals a 56 percent awareness of the Intel tune worldwide. Nokia didn't spend a penny, but its results are about the same.

Use of sound online is still in its infancy. Just as it took a decade to get the hang of effectively using graphics and navigation, we'll probably have to wait another 5 to 10 years before sound is integrated naturally in the online environment. But hear this: The question isn't whether it'll appear, but when. And inspiration for the potent use of sound will come from the offline world.

We now take for granted the Microsoft tune that plays every time we start Windows. BRAND sense analysis tells us more than 60 percent of consumers across the world recognize that tune. Day in, day out, close to 1 billion people hear it and expect to hear it -- a phenomenon that gives us a glimpse of what's to come.

Soon, sound will be a natural part of the experience as we navigate a brand's Web site. The welcome tune will be just one part of the repertoire. There'll be a confirmation sound when you purchase a product, sounds to accompany activation of icons and downloading files. Integrated, functional, useful branded tunes will become meaningful signifiers of action, as natural as the click and whir of a camera, the turn indicator in a car, and the error signal on an Apple computer.

The challenge won't be to integrate sound on the site. Instead, it'll be to leverage the benefit of sound so it not only helps a user navigate but also establishes a branded experience, securing as much recognition as Nokia's and Microsoft's notes have achieved.

It's early yet, but so it was when Microsoft and Nokia, some 10 years ago, first released their tunes. Now, these brands are reaping the rewards of having secured ownership of a sound known throughout the world, all virtually free of charge.

Listen up! You better get going and find your aural signature. Identify your branded sound. It makes sense.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Now Hear This.pdf Optimizing budget Imagine you were offered a choice to purchase two different cars. Nothing was said about the cars, not even the price. The only information you have would be the country of origin. The first car is produced in Turkey – the second in Switzerland. Which one would you choose? Most people wouldn't hesitate. They'd select the Swiss car, because Switzerland has established a reputation for products that are high quality, precise, secure and of good design.

A country brand is everything. It's a factor in attracting tourists, trade agreements and consumers' perception that earns respect. This respect extends to its citizens, and the way they are treated the world over.

Depending on the image your country intends to establish, so the branding strategy will vary vastly. If increasing tourism takes priority on the agenda, then the branding strategy will look different to the branding strategy of a country that wishes to foster export industries and cement trade relationships with the rest of the world.

In a small two-year time frame, New Zealand increased its tourist traffic by an astounding 56 per cent. They never offered cheap airfares, and one might say that the '100 per cent New Zealand' campaign left its mark, but in reality a good 55 per cent of this increase can be attributed to a movie, or three. Lord of the Rings did it. A coincidence? Hardly. Since the mid 1990s, countries like New Zealand and Australia have actively sought to expose their landscapes in big-budget movies. Mission Impossible II and Finding Nemo were largely set against an Australian landscape.

The New Zealand government encouraged the production team behind Lord of the Ring by offering special government grants and tax incentives. Likewise, Australia does the same. Movies are just one tool in a country's branding tool-kit. International tournaments and global sporting events are instrumental in building a country's image. Cast your mind back to the Sydney Olympics in 2000. In a carefully managed and well-planned branding strategy, almost every event that was televised managed to include a few views of Sydney.

Increasing export markets might be another important point on the agenda. Over several decades, countries like France and Germany have consistently pushed their country's image. You will notice that in almost every commercial that appears for Audi outside of Germany, the car manufacturer uses a tagline written in German. Similarly, Louis Vuitton writes “Made in France” in large type on most of their products. Their corporate communication charmingly combines French words with the language they're using, thus Frenchifying the message. The result – 80 per cent of all Louis Vuitton products are sold in Japan, Ironically 67 per cent of young Japanese women dream of honeymooning in Paris. These dreams are intertwined with the country and its brands.

In many respects, countries are just like brands. They offer products and services, and have distinct personalities. It takes time to build a strong country brand but it most definitely can be done. Look at Japan, Finland, China, UAE or India. Each is growing in strength from being totally unknown, or worse, known for cheap quality. It took Nokia five years to turn Finland into the master of wireless technology. Japan's reputation went from a producer of cheap, low quality goods to being a leading innovator associated with brands like Sony and Lexus. And China, UAE and India are all transforming their somewhat dodgy images into progressive, efficient places where their goods and services can be relied upon. It's a process, which doesn't happen over night, but can take less than five years to achieve.

Patience is required – but the results pay off. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Made in.pdf Brand alliances 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.

Between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. yesterday I was exposed to Harry Potter more than 20 times. Of course, magazines and newspapers accounted for most of the exposure. But the thing that concerned me was the character's insistent presence in places such as the supermarket, the local burger bar, the kiosk on the corner, the gas station, the dentist, the bank, the hairdresser, the toy store, and, naturally, the book store.

Now, I've been in the brand business for more than a decade, and I can't recall another brand that was so widely exposed so quickly and so intensely. Never. Not even Coca-Cola, Disney, or Microsoft has achieved such powerful visibility in the retailing environment across the globe. The really scary part of the story is that I saw exactly the same situation two weeks ago in Japan as I did this week on Australia's Gold Coast.

I pay all respect to the author. Who wouldn't respect a person who can create a character that captivates a generation of children (and their parents) and inspires them all to discover the joy of reading? But is there too much hype? Is Harry in danger of dying prematurely? I remember the son of LEGO's founder observing that his father never wanted LEGO to become a fashionable toy, because as soon as it did it would be out of date in a summer. I am still, to this very day, convinced that he was right. Just think about Pokémon and a whole bunch of other brands that reached dizzyingly high popularity -- brands that became crazes in a way the world never had seen before. But they disappeared as quickly as they bloomed. Ironically, LEGO is one of the three toy manufacturers producing Harry Potter toys.

As well-planned and successful as Harry Potter's global launch has been, the very success that's propelling the brand toward its huge potential is likely to drive it toward catastrophe. It seems as though after Warner Bros. purchased the rights to the brand name, it instantly began milking the brand for every potential cent. And this rapacity is despite Rowling's clever embargo against Coca-Cola using Harry Potter's or any of his companions' images on Coke bottles. The author's conditions were that Coca-Cola's multi-million-dollar sponsorship should come with a global obligation to teach kids to read. But the fact is, when I last saw a Harry Potter Coke bottle, I didn't even notice that Harry's face was missing. I realized the trick days after I'd seen the bottle. Simply displaying the brand name persuaded me to believe that Harry's face was on the bottle. A great fairy tale, eh? Amazing branding.

But is all the publicity and promotion the best way to use the Harry Potter brand? By the time the fourth movie is scripted, will the brand be overused and fatigued, or even dead? Would a slower market launch secure the Harry Potter brand a more permanent place? Would a more tempered strategy help ensure the longevity of the brand, granting it the type of endurance enjoyed by Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, or any other decades-old Disney figure? Is it possible to engage in a more moderate brand launch without sacrificing an opportunity? Or will the revenue that's currently pouring in dry up in two years' time, when Harry has evaporated from the minds of youngsters and been replaced by the next brand sensation?

I am inclined to think the latter may be the case. No matter how much I love Harry Potter, admire Rowling, and am amazed by the fascination the books have engendered all over the world, I fear that the Harry Potter brand is on its way to committing suicide. Not today, not tomorrow, but in two years. That is, unless Rowling can conjure up some magic again.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Is Harry Committing Suiside.pdf Wireless strategy Some years ago, an Australian takeout pizza place used the Internet in an attempt to boost sales. Traffic was slow. Hardly anyone visited the site. The need for an increase in traffic was urgent.

If traditional online media planning had been used, banners and links would have been purchased and the URL added to the shop's phone-book entry. It might even have invested in some traditional ads.

The pizza place went a different route. Instead of spreading money between off- and online ads, it spent the entire budget on radio. The spots were simple but extremely effective. So effective, the restaurant's increased business caused most of the local competition to shut down.

How'd it do it?

Instead of offering discounts or merely promoting its URL, the pizza place's radio ads asked listeners to tear out all the pizza-restaurant pages from their yellow pages and bring them in. In return for the pages, customers received a free pizza of their choice and a sticker with the restaurant's URL.

Very clever!

Because the contact information for all the other pizza joints in town disappeared from customers' primary reference source, only one set of contact details was left in households that complied: the URL for the restaurant that dreamed up the promotion. That single outlet is now a franchise.

Creating traffic is not necessarily a matter of buying ads or taking a traditional approach. Of course, there's always room for traditional thinking. It works and always will. But if you really want to build effective traffic and branding, go one step further. That is, unless you're a Microsoft with an almost unlimited marketing budget.

Generating traffic combines traditional thinking with three idea-based elements. The idea is crucial. First, create the idea as the local pizza place did. Develop an idea that not only generates attention but also generates appropriate attention -- attention that enables people to remember the information that engaged them and to act on it.

You'll never forget the pizza story, right? The idea (removing the pizza pages from the yellow pages) is simple, clever, cheap, and audacious. Second, promote the idea via traditional off- and online channels and via new channels. The effectiveness of every piece of your communication is increased tenfold if each promotes that pivotal idea rather than simply touting some special offer, new taste sensation, or new product. Third, optimize any channel you use and ensure the message points in your direction.

I don't need to remind you more than half of today's brands have yet to optimize the way search engines secure consumer awareness of their existence. A quarter of the world's brands have not incorporated their URLs into the message customers hear on the phone while on hold. Nor have they added standard signature lines to emails that include the company URL. These details amount to free branding.

What's more important: the chicken or the egg? Both. Far too many brand builders believe traffic is secondary to site development. Wrong. Unless you have an unlimited budget, you can't afford not to think creatively. You risk ending up like all those vanquished pizza competitors.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/How to rip out the competition in one go.pdf Generating traffic Last week I discussed the value of real life branding — the important role staff play as branding channels themselves and the importance of carefully considering how your company can identify new, smart and cost-effective branding opportunities — in creating your brand’s clear point of difference. Here now is a story that exemplifies the value of “real life branding”.

Two or three years ago, in the Mediterranean Turkish city of Antalya, a luxury resort was being built. It so happened that the biggest economic crisis in Turkish history struck, making it difficult for such an enterprise to kick off.

Just as the hotel was being prepared for its grand opening, the Russian submarine, the “Kursk”, sank in the northern Arctic Sea. Its entire crew perished, as I’m sure you remember. Anxious to offer help in the wake of this tragedy, the CEO of the hotel company contacted the Russian Embassy and arranged one-week vacations for the families of the lost submariners. A TV channel learned of the gesture and produced a story about it.

Today, the hotel is thriving. It has turned out to be a phenomenal investment, not because the local Turkish population adore the resort, but because Russian holidaymakers flock there. Clearly touched by the hotel’s response to the “Kursk” disaster, Russians have remained loyal to the company and constitute the largest proportion of the hotel’s guests. They’ve helped turn the hotel into one of the most successful resorts in Turkey.

Clearly, the right move at the right time can result in positive financial growth as well as helping a worthy cause. So how can you make the most of your role as a responsible corporate citizen?

First, appoint a small think-tank made up of people who know your customers and your products really well. Ask them for ideas about changing the “outside world’s” perception of your brand and prioritize them.

Next, define some loose rules to guide these cause-related branding ideas, like how frequently you should engage in charitable causes. Your guidelines should include success scenarios: what benefits do you expect your brand to accrue as a by-product of helping a good cause. What type of PR would you be looking for? How can you leverage relatively cheap tools to offer cause related help like the Internet or even the cell phone?

Then involve the whole company in the principle of civic awareness and corporate responsibility. Set up an Intranet (Clare this word is spelled correct) page enabling members of the staff or even customers to upload interesting ideas or stories. Keep everyone interested in current affairs and encourage everyone to keep a company-related eye on local and world events every day.

Involve your company in a case every month — one that you believe makes sense and which, in the process, will shed a favourable light on your company. Run a PR program around the part you’re playing to ensure that the “outside world” and you staff are aware of the company’s involvement in assisting a good cause. The Internet is ideal to communicate cause related campaigns as it allows the world to explore the different aspects of the story and gives journalists the chance to download photos, statistical data and quotations from the people involved. Often this type of campaigns even turn into a viral activity, if the story is solid and amazing enough, speaking via emails across the globe in hours. Run a PR program around the part you’re playing to ensure that the “outside world” and you staff are aware of the company’s involvement in assisting a good cause.

The result could be as brilliant as the Qantas and British Airways’ employee’s now-universal idea: to relieve passengers of all their heavy and unexchangeable coins by passing them on, through the airline, to UNICEF. The “Change for Good” program is a stunningly simple, practical idea that nets contributions for the children’s fund and enables airline companies to play a civically responsible role. Today, several airlines supply envelopes to collect coins for various aid organizations and are able to present million-dollar donations every year at virtually no cost.

And, guess what: they've created goodwill onboard and impressed passengers with a responsible brand image. And that was the result of a well-run, structured internal company brainstorm. Gives you something to think about, doesn’t it.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/goodwill - Goodthinking.pdf Viral branding Social values redolent of the '50s, '60s, and even '70s are quietly being readopted by brands. These values are becoming more strongly expressed in the communications of brands plugged into the trend.

Why is this happening? How can you leverage this? Why is simple. As the global community endures crisis after crisis -- the SARS epidemic, an ever-present threat of political instability, shadows of war, and continual damage to already fragile economies -- humans long for stability. We're united in a need for something we can trust, rely on, and think about with joy.

Aside from the macro situation of global instability, there's the micro situation of individual uncertainty. Close to 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. The strong family unit celebrated in earlier decades' wholesome sitcoms and movies seems an anachronism. Nostalgia encourages parents and kids alike to think about the past in romantic terms. The past is an icon of stability.

How does this affect your Web site? Well, forget about innovative, flash graphics hearkening to 2010. Personally, I'm convinced most consumers are repelled rather than attracted to a sci-fi, futuristic approach. Go the opposite direction. Contribute stability to your customers' lives by evoking the past in your communications.

If your brand is an old, familiar favourite, dig out some promotional material from the archives. Look at those old graphics and catchphrases and try to integrate them in current communications.

I'm not saying you should ignore the contemporary realities that have guided your communications. But I'm definitely suggesting you exploit elements from your brand's past that reflect the values of stable, prosperous times. The power of association is useful. Classic branding, uncomplicated by contemporary slickness, might draw customers into a warmer relationship with your brand. Reference to past decades' branding will create the aura of a brand that's been around for ages and will - take note - stay around for ages.

In inconstant times, consumers desperately want security. Trust and stability are attributes of a secure environment. Consumers are hardly in the mood for another dot-com bubble company, Enron scandal, Swissair debacle, or Arthur Andersen controversy. Consumers now favour companies that reflect stability and honest endeavour. The criteria for gauging trustworthiness are based on individual gut feeling and instinct.

If you're lucky enough to be caretaker of a brand that's been around for a long time, leverage the fact. If you're promoting a new brand, establish a style that appeals to consumers' sense the past. Use nostalgia to create "classic" or traditional appeal. Manufacture the feeling the brand has been around forever. I'm not suggesting you lie; but I am encouraging you to note and be sensitive to social circumstances and transmit a sense of stability, reliability, and longevity to your brand. Encourage the sense your brand doesn't intend to be a flash on the horizon.

Now, more than ever, make consumers trust your brand will be around tomorrow. If possible, let your brand speak for itself, using signals from its own past. It may sound old-fashioned, but old is new again.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Good Old Fashioned Online Brands.pdf Innovating techniques Marketing isn’t what it used to be. In 2003, advertising spending across the world increased on average by 3.6% - however the returns from that spend decreased by 3.4%. Not a surprising fact considering that the average consumer who’s reached the ripe old age of 65 in Britain would have been exposed to at least one million television commercials. And the number in the U.S. and Australia is even higher. When you stop and do the sums, this equates to watching television commercials for eight hours every day, seven days a week for a mind-boggling three years!

Given the low return on advertising investment, we are forced to conclude that advertising, as we know it, no longer works. Something new is required. I’m suggesting three new pathways.

Sensory Branding

The world of advertising needs to go back to basics. Today 99% of all communication is based on what we see and what we hear. One may ask about what we smell, taste and feel – particularly in light of the fact that 75% of our emotions are connected to what we smell rather than what we see and hear. Marketing seems to have generally neglected this very important sense at its own peril considering that branding is all about building emotional relationships between a product and the consumer.

I call this concept of appealing to all the senses Sensory Branding – a topic you’ll hear much more about in the CIM March 2005 issue where we explore this exciting and amazing world based on the world’s largest study ever conducted on brands and our five senses as part of project BRAND sense. The results are nothing short of startling, and for the first time they offer proof that in order to survive, branding has to expand its two-dimension approach and become a five-dimensional concept.

Brand communities

Think Tupperware, Atkins or Weight Watchers. They all have one thing in common. Brand communities support these three enormously successful brands.

In a world where advertising is losing credibility, consumers are looking for other sources of trust – communities provide an answer. Friendship is one of the strongest bonds of trust. We trust our friends’ recommendations, advice and experience. Think about the last movie you saw, restaurant you ate at or book that you read. Chances are a friend recommended them, and you may very likely recommend them to another.

Brand communities have always existed, but as traditional marketing loses its strength, focusing on the brand community has proved to be an effective strategy. The future of those brands who take their market seriously and question the influence of traditional above-the-line advertising, will be considering establishing a brand community where word-of-mouth will do the talking. These personal testimonials will guarantee the results, and media money will be spent on people rather than on creating ads and commercials. It will require more than a website to achieve this, and a consistent well thought-through approach will be essential for success.

Situation placement Close to 60% of the tween population in the UK play a computer game every day according to the BRANDchild. The numbers are astounding. The Hollywood movie-making machine is only half as big as the computer gaming industry. But in a mere three years time, it’s predicted to be a third. The future power of the computer gaming industry is set to become an extremely important channel for advertisers.

No wonder companies like Toyota, LEGO and McDonald’s have begun integrating commercial messages into games. It also comes as no surprise that energy drinks like Red Bull have succeeded after placing their first commercial message – “Need More Energy” in Play Station 1.

This is not an easy game. Where do you go? Who do you ask for advice? There’s not much of an infrastructure that can help you. No media agencies to book space. No advertising agencies to secure placement. And things are changing quickly. If you are smart – you can be first. The prices of securing space in the virtual world are quite low. The value is high. Brands in a virtual world are still as rare as seats on a space flight.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Future of Marketing.pdf Gaming box Have you ever noticed the way you head straight for your usual brand on the supermarket shelf, without even considering the others? It’s almost like default behaviour. In fact, you might even know that a change in brand might for one reason or another be even better, but have dismissed it with a what-the-heck sort of shrug and decided to deal with it next time…

I would claim that a lot of brand loyalty is due to laziness and a why-bother attitude. This then becomes a brand’s greatest ally. The lack of solid and trustworthy inspiration at the moment the purchase decision is made, still keeps last-minute brand changes to a minimum – well that’s until now.

For one reason or another we sometimes just change our minds and pick a peculiar brand out of the blue. We don’t give it much thought. It may seem to be a coincidence, but a new trend is emerging that may explain this sudden brand change. There is a new marketing strategy designed to lure people into changing their minds.

It happened to me. Much to my own surprise I found myself suddenly changing my mind about two different brands. It happened instantaneously, and twice within the same month!

I was standing in the supermarket aisle looking for my usual toothpaste brand, when I was joined by a young woman who was presumably stocking up on her own toothpaste brand. She casually asked me if I’d ever tried the new mint Aquafresh brand. I had to answer “No”. She confided that like her, I probably had been using the same toothpaste for years, but how recently a friend had recommended this new brand, and she loved it. What with her coffee habit, much to her surprise Aquafresh had really solved her coffee-breath problem.

Surprising as this conversation might sound, the encounter seemed completely genuine. Her advice seemed as honest as any conversation two strangers may have. There was nothing suspicious about it. It was from one human being to another. We tend to trust these encounters.

Without giving this another thought, I went home with my Aquafresh. Then about three weeks later I pulled into the gas station to fill up, and a young guy approached me. He commented on the similarities of our car, asked about its performance, and the exchange took on the characteristics of strangers in the same boat. He then began telling me that this new version of Optimax was amazing, and how it had improved the drive and consumed less fuel. To be honest, I don’t have any gasoline preferences, so any advice would strike a chord and so, I went with Optimax.

And for a moment each day my teeth seemed whiter, and my car performed better. The advice left my mind, but I continued using Aquafresh and Optimax.

But on examining my behaviour, I’ve never changed my mind about two brands in such a short time frame. But this past December seemed to be different. December? Was there a link? I realized that the reason for this sudden friendly wave of consumers who willingly shared their brand experiences with me was not coincidental. This was a strategy, and “consumers” were paid to be brand ambassadors. To spread their cheer for the brands with the wider population they would receive a discount. If I had known, and asked them, they would more than likely have revealed their true relationship with the brand – and of course their bonus too.

The over-satisfied customer concept is just the next facet of “reality branding” – branding which is placed in a real context – blending in with the real world. Product placement has been around for years, recently overtaken by Situation Placement which I explored a couple of articles ago. Situation placement even moved into the world of computer games, and Hollywood learned from it – designing their promotions along the same lines.

Visit any chat room and you’ll realize that several of the messages seems to be overly friendly towards you – squeezing in some sort of brand recommendation down the track. Check fashion and gardening magazines in the U.S. and you’ll realize how many articles are in fact advertorials. The blend between branding and the real world is in fifth gear – and whether we like it or not, it is bound to continue until our filtering systems naturally block yet another friendly real-life message.

Yet until we reach this level, the trend is interesting, fascinating and scary too. I don’t advocate it, yet I believe it will be hard to avoid. It may be very appealing for some, but before you consider taking this path, evaluate the consequences. In the same way you will be playing with your consumers, you will be playing with your brand too.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Fake Branding.pdf Product placement A couple days ago, I was in a Scandinavian airplane on my way to Los Angeles. Ignoring the airline food, I noticed a cute little branding experiment on the tray. A small notice was printed on an item. It declared, "Pepper has been called the gift of the East." (I overlooked the fact "gift" means poison in my native Danish.)

The statement aptly communicates the airline's Scandinavian values: among them the Northern European delight in thoughtful detail, appropriate explanation, and historical attribution.

Why would I call this branding at all? Because taken together, the smallest of onboard details conspire to build a total airline brand picture. Normally, I can barely distinguish one airline's food tray from the next. Sure, the cutlery may carry the company logo. So what? A logo is a given. It doesn't make you think about, act on, or consider the brand. But the Scandinavian airline's pepper packet did.

Branding creates attachments between consumers and your brand. The stronger the attachment, the better the branding. So, let me ask you this: Is it possible to create human attachments between, say, stereo equipment manufacturers and their customers? If so, how would you achieve it?

If you're drawing a mental blank, visit the Bang and Olufsen Web site. The experience is an interesting take on branding through emotional attachment. Besides all the hi-tech talk you'd expect, the site has extra finesse: a story element.

The flat-screen product section offers the story of the flat-screen -- how it was invented and conceived. A Flash intro transports you through the designer's ideas and inspiration sources. Who knew the designer's inspiration was found in not-yet-hung paintings, propped up against a gallery wall?

The story changed my impression of the product. The flat-screen TV is no longer just a TV, but a piece of history. Now, whenever I pass flat-screen TVs in a store window, I'm instantly transported into the mind of the designer. I'm able to see the appliances as the outcome of inspiration. Thus, an emotional link between the brand and me.

The people you do business with -- regardless of whether you're business-to-consumer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B) -- are human beings. We all have emotions our attachments are built upon. The more emotional the ties attached to products, the stronger the brand loyalty you can generate.

At every opportunity, wrap your products in a history. Make the story tangible, thereby liberating your product or service from its putative existence as just another factory-generated commodity. Make sure your audience gets to know who's behind the product: the designer, your call-centre operators, and the salespeople who stand behind your online and offline counters. Make it personal. Remove the assumption no real people are behind or involved with your product. Try to avoid making your site too corporate. Avoid over-slick perfection.

A former ambassador to Japan recently told me a story I'd like to share in closing. While visiting an extremely rich Japanese person who lived outside Tokyo, the former ambassador noticed a member of his host's household staff sweeping the huge driveway leading to the house. It took the chap hours to remove every last leaf. When at last he'd cleared every leaf from the drive, he made certain to finish the job by artfully placing a few leaves back on the roadway.

The baffled ambassador asked why. His host replied, "Because, of course, it must look natural."

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Emotional Ties.pdf Optimizing sales I'll bet you've called some corporation, been connected to the call centre, and been put on hold. After what seems like hours of waiting, you're told your call is very important. You're a very valuable customer. All this adulation is expressed by some automated voice. Great consolation! Not.

Once you are finally connected with a live person, you realize the operator has no authority. Next, you're transferred; put on hold, flattered again by that automated voice, connected, and transferred again. Finally, you hang up, no better off than you were an hour ago when the phone odyssey began.

Internet contact companies have probably not been more helpful. Maybe you've had an inquiry to make and invested a substantial amount of time in explaining your request, only to receive an auto response assuring you of your importance and of the imminent likelihood of someone getting back to you. A month later, you're still be waiting for that reply to your query.

We've all been there. These experiences are symptomatic of rampant customer-relations malaise. Customers recognize this as the customer disservice it is, reject the brand in disgust, and turn to other suppliers in the hope of receiving a modicum of service.

Basic customer servicing is an important branding component. Mismanagement leads to customer frustration, causing customers to abandon a brand and discuss their dissatisfaction in the office, over coffee, and at dinner parties. The brand-damaging perceptions spread virally in ever-widening circles.

Ensure your brand's service doesn't degenerate into a transparent revenue-generator. Microsoft's pay-for-support program once offered helpful service via discrete channels: One was free, with general advice that often referred customers to self-help Web pages; the other level was a paid service in which technicians helped individual queries. The system worked, offering customers choices and options. In time, the service became a money-generating activity. It was outsourced to operators with limited knowledge. A stopwatch ticked up the dollars in the background. The result was even deeper user frustration.

What can you do to achieve brand-building rather than brand-damaging customer service? Don't fool yourself or your customers. Brand-builders control elements of these systems. I'd be surprised if you didn't have a say in how a database was built, a newsletter was composed, call centre procedures were compiled, or customer services worked. Each element is part of branding's second face. Each provides an opportunity for intimate contact between the brand and the outside world.

Have you ever tried, anonymously, to be your own company's customer? If you haven't, I urge you to do so. Now. Be analytical when you do get hold of a correspondent. What language does your brand's representatives use? How helpful are they in directing a query to the proper department? Your customers don't understand in-house jargon, and they don't know whom they're meant to seek help from. They rely on your brand to act responsibly and deliver satisfaction.

Following an anonymous visit to your company's customer service site, compare the results of your inquiry with your brand's image and vision. What expectations have you established among customers? Are they met? How does customer service reflect your brand's philosophy? Do you provide customers and your brand a disservice?

Plastering a toll-free number on your Web site is not enough. What's behind those digits is what counts. Go behind them incognito. Look at your brand from a customer's point of view. Pretend you're that customer, go online, and hope you don't have a long wait.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Do You Provide Customer Disservice.pdf Brand vision 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.

The problem is that consumers haven't yet found a way to increase the number of hours in the day. So the likelihood is that as more media channels land on the plate, the consumer has less time to deal with them. And, consequently, facilitating their use is becoming more complicated for professional communicators and brand builders.

Ten years ago, a media, or point-of-contact, plan was rather simple to comprehend and construct. If human interaction was required, only two media channels were available: face-to-face or phone contact. In addition, of course, there were the monologic, one-way media: not as few in number but just as simple to quickly comprehend.

Well, the world has changed. Outdoor media channels are no longer confined to posters and billboards. They can include everything from mobile phones, PDAs, WAP, iMode, and short message service (SMS) as well as billboards. Dialogic, two-way interaction is no longer limited to face-to-face visits or phone calls: It encompasses almost every personal communication tool.

So given this complex communications fact, my question is: Have you optimized all your consumer touch points, or are your touch points relying on haphazard coincidence? In other words, what's your channel strategy?

Just as airlines deploy "yield management" to optimize the value of every seat, your channel management strategy should be built on yield-management principles. There is one "but" to this parallel. Optimized channel management reflects two principles: cost-effectiveness and branding. By "branding" I don't mean a company's ability to vociferate its name as many times as possible; I mean a company's ability to create the strongest possible relationship with the consumer while exposing its identity.

And that's the tricky bit. You might claim that any interactionbetween the consumer and the brand would be a fine way to create brand loyalty. This may be possible for some brands and for some consumers but certainly not for all brands and all consumers. And this is where your channel strategy justifies itself.

Let me give you an example from Charles Schwab, arguably the world's largest discount broker. It has been a pioneer in managing and optimizing consumer touch points. When other companies were closing down their branch offices in favour of online trading, Schwab established storefronts. And the results were amazing: 80 percent of all new accounts were opened face to face, in Charles Schwab offices. Havingestablished that contact, 70 percent of these new customers were comfortable with having their accounts managed via the Internet -- from their very next contact with the company.

You see, it was important for these customers to make initial contact with the company via a real face. Human interaction with a real person in a real store established requisite consumer trust. This trust, developed early on, then enabled Internet transactions to take place right away; the trust made the convenience and cost- and time-effectiveness of the online medium mutually beneficial to the consumer and Charles Schwab.

This isn't the solution for every company. Company-consumer communication is a dynamic process that demands change according to target group, time, mutual objectives, and a host of other variables. Some target markets might do anything to avoid human contact; others crave it; others still need a mixture of communication channels.

And, for any group, preferences established at one point in time are likely to change with altering circumstances and with consumers' increasing knowledge of alternative media channels. I remember when I used to prefer dealing with a real person when checking on my bank details. For me, those days are long gone.

The benefits of online communication are clear: It enables companies to track consumer behaviour cost- and time-effectively. Not surprisingly, face-to-face dialogue is more cost and time-consuming and is harder to track than interaction generated online. Tracking communications established via the screen achieves great cost savings.

But the moral of this story is that establishing consumer touch points isn't just about cost. Personal interaction is a splendid channel for establishing loyalty and building brands simultaneously.

So why haven't you created a channel strategy yet? It might channel more consumers to your brand than you could ever imagine.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Cross Channel Branding.pdf Wireless strategy Some years ago, an Australian takeout pizza place used an untraditional channel in an attempt to boost sales. Traffic was slow. Hardly anyone visited the site. The need for an increase in traffic was urgent.

If traditional media planning had been used, print ads or direct mail would have been purchased and the phone number added to the shop's phone-book entry. It might even have invested in some online ads.

The pizza place went a different route. Instead of spreading money between off- and online ads, it spent the entire budget on radio. The spots were simple but extremely effective. So effective, the restaurant's increased business caused most of the local competition to shut down.

How'd it do it? Instead of offering discounts or merely promoting its phone number, the pizza place's radio ads asked listeners to tear out all the pizza-restaurant pages from their yellow pages and bring them in. In return for the pages, customers received a free pizza of their choice and a sticker with the restaurant's phone number to put next to their phone – or on top of the Yellow Pages.

Very clever!

Because the contact information for all the other pizza joints in town disappeared from customers' primary reference source, only one set of contact details was left in households that complied: the phone number and URL for the restaurant that dreamed up the promotion. That single outlet is now a major franchise across Australia.

The alternative is, well, alternative. Alternative thinking, alternative ideas and alternative channels. An Australian entrepreneur, and a good friend of mine, recently demonstrated the power of alternative thinking necessitated by small budget marketing when introducing a juice brand, Nudie. The product is fresh juice, without additives. It tastes fantastic, but so what? The product's success is hinged on much more than its ingredients. It lies in alternative thinking and a personal approach.

The Web site introduces the brand's owner as "Tall Tim," who generates dialogue with individuals. Tall Tim invites people to show up at his home at a certain time for breakfast and juice, a freebie you qualify for as long as you show up at the exact, and I mean exact, time. The gesture couples the person behind the brand with the brand itself. That, in turn, promotes interaction between the humanized brand and the consumer. The site urges visitors to get into the act of pushing Nudie's distribution by offering a standard letter that interested parties can download, sign, and forward to their local stores. It's a simple strategy that works for the brand because individual customers have cachet and credibility in their neighbourhood store. The owners know their customers, and they listen to them.

The letter reads:

Dear (insert name of favourite store) I've recently had the pleasure of tasting a Nudie (www.nudie.com.au) - a new kind of juice with absolutely nothing added. (Yeah, I know, you've heard that line before about nothing added, but the people at Nudie really mean it!) Anyway, the point of this letter is to see if you'd be kind enough to consider stocking Nudie. If you do stock Nudie, I would be eternally grateful and I would buy at least (insert number) Nudies every week! To get your fridge fully stocked with Nudie today (or the next business day if you're reading this letter after hours) call now on 1-800-GO-NUDIE. Call takers are standing by...

Tall Tim turned his distribution channels into branding channels by getting consumers in on the act, and by putting a fleet of cute, purple, distinctively Nudie delivery cars on the road all over the country. Tall Tim has managed to treat every imaginable communication channel in an alternative fashion. His small budget would probably surprise you.

Within five months, Nudie has become the fastest-growing juice brand in Australia, ever. Tall Tim achieved this without any TV, radio, print or direct mail advertising. He tackled the project on a personal level. He used human communication channels creatively and directly. Nudie is not the only brand out there proving branding can be successful without spending millions of dollars on traditional media campaigns. But it offers a great working example of what can be done on a small budget.

Creating traffic is not necessarily a matter of buying ads or taking a traditional approach. Of course, there's always room for traditional thinking. It works and always will. But if you really want to build effective traffic and branding, go one step further. That is, unless you're a Microsoft with an almost unlimited marketing budget.

You'll never forget the pizza story, right? The idea is simple, clever, cheap, and audacious. Second, promote the idea via traditional off- and online channels and via new channels. The effectiveness of every piece of your communication is increased tenfold if each promotes that pivotal idea rather than simply touting some special offer, new taste sensation, or new product. Third, optimize any channel you use and ensure the message points in your direction.

I remember hearing information technologists would never be fired for choosing IBM. I suppose you could once have said the same of marketers who combined the traditional media channels in their plans. But things are changing. The IT guys probably still won't be fired for recommending IBM, but marketers with plans based on traditional channels and old school thinking shouldn't get too comfortable

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Creative Thinking is Required.pdf Optimizing sales 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.

Country branding means much more than adding a "Made In" label to a product. A product's country of origin constitutes an important piece of branding that, in many cases, can be so influential it overtakes the brand's other reputation builders.

If I were to tell you that the next supercar was to come from Germany, you probably wouldn't be surprised. You would probably be immediately curious about it, expecting the fictional vehicle to be of superb engineering and design quality, expensive, and solid. Now imagine I surprised you by revealing that the forthcoming supercar was actually a product of Greece. Your impression of the car would be totally different, your assumptions inspired by the apparent personality the country of origin communicates to your perceptions.

Have you ever wondered why some perfume bottles are accompanied by packaging that bears something along the lines of "Paris 7 Milan 7 New York 7 Rome 7 London"? I'm sure you don't really think the perfume is produced in all of those places. Now imagine if instead the packaging read as follows: "Prague - Helsinki - Melbourne - Seattle - Auckland." I guarantee your first impression of the perfume would be affected by the suppositions you made about the national affiliations. This is quite ironic considering none of us believe for a minute that any of the cited locales have anything to do with the product's manufacture. I can't stop thinking about how valuable some countries are for their manufacturers. A high-tech brand coming from Japan seems logical for most of us. I'm convinced that promoting a high-tech brand in, say, the U.S.A., would be substantially easier if the product hailed from Japan than it would be if the product hailed from Iceland. Why? Because the product's country of origin -- in this case, Japan -- has a reputation for producing superior high-tech products. Thus, the country establishes the brand's initial reputation.

Conversely, brands themselves can create countries' reputations. Consider Finland. If I asked you to respond to the notion of Finland 10 years ago, you'd probably have said things like "cold," "midnight sun," and so on. Today, you're likely to think of high-tech mobile-phone technology when you think of Finland. And this huge mind shift is purely thanks to Nokia (which, by the way, was a chainsaw manufacturer just 20 years ago).

So you can claim that brands create countries' reputations and that countries create brands' reputations. This is a very interesting theory to keep in mind the next time you have an opportunity to create a new brand from scratch. The theory should not only make you consider what values your brand should stand for, but also where it should be manufactured and where it should be perceived as being manufactured.

Having the wrong country label on your package won't destroy your brand, but I'm convinced that having the right "Made in" label will save you a substantial amount of marketing money.

Rome wasn't built in a day. I'm sure we'll get there. The question is how long you can afford to wait? The rewards can be enormous.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Country of Origin as a Branding Statement.pdf Wireless strategy While the whole world was celebrating New Years Eve one country had another point on the agenda – to leverage those pressures seconds after the clock had turned twelve to brand it self. Australia among many countries has developed a highly sophisticated branding program with one focus – to attract the world’s eyes on their beautiful country. Turning in some eyes the disadvantage of being on the other side of the world – far away from Europe and the U.S. – the country has ever since 2000 spend tons of millions of dollars establish a fire work – which conveniently is leveraging the time zones and is beamed to the rest of the world in time for the news reports and all the chaos when the time is reaching twelve in Europe and the U.S.

But this is only the beginning of the story. The Olympic games was just one ingredient in a cocktail of activities counting the world’s first sport science institute using the most advanced technologies in the world identifying and training athletics in being the best by inventing calculated methods in the best NASA style. Or what about the Australian actors school – which since it’s foundation has spon out famous people from Nicole Kidmann, Russel Crowe, Guy Pierce and Heath Leather (pls. check spelling) or not to forget the ever going Neighbours machine – the worlds most seen TV series – creating such stars as Tina Arena and Kylie Minogue.

But what does all this have to do with branding – a lot. Selling a country is everything but playing a couple of stunning ads on CNN – in fact you’ll have huge difficulties ever finding an ad for Australia on CNN – where you’ll find Australia is when the country instead persuaded Tom Cruise to film his Mission Impossible 2 in Australia only. 1 hour and 30 minutes of TV commercial for a country – endorsed by a Hollywood star – that’s indeed branding.

A coincidence – no – not at all – for several years Australia has consistently worked on getting on the map in a world where the Australian continent seemed further and further away – did it work? Tourism numbers have boomed – as have the number of foreign investments – and even the number of students seeking Australian soil from Asia to get an education.

Country branding seems to be the hit of the century – pick almost any country and they’ve discovered that the reputation of a country hardly can be left to the coincidences. Event the country of branding – United States of America has turned to strategic branding to change its fading image – by officially yet unofficially planting positive stories of the country in the world press – hoping to get the country image back on track again. And the little kingdom of Denmark has realized that such small detail as being present on CNN’s weather map was essential enough to approach the head of CNN on his visit to Denmark to secure that Denmark has a weather too – when the worlds viewers are exposed for the ups and downs in the temperature.

Branding once belonged only to the world of traditional products pumping out of the factory – tangible stuff, sold at a fixed price and attached an instruction manual. The migration of branding to encompass everything – and I mean everything – looking at my own portfolio of jobs including branding not only countries but also personalities, the very concept of the diamond and even royal families.

Yet ironic as it may seem – branding countries might infact benefit much more than boosting the tourism and business environment – it might infact help the very sales of products.

And that completes the ecosystem of branding. You see products from countries respected in the worlds public eye tends to do better than brands spinning out of no-where-land. I bet you that you wont hesitate purchasing a totally new cell phone brand – when hearing it’s from Finland, Or an owner from Germany or what about water from Norway or chocolate from Switzerland? Some countries have even become so aware of this that they do whatever they can to protect their very brand before abused in a traditional product branding sense. First in line was Champagne – securing a trademark of the bubbly wine – but non-branded-brands like Parma, Prosciutto or Port, which still are struggling, with securing its identity. It is claimed that even the Italian government has gone that far that they are planning to protect the concept of Italian Pizzerias – by employing an army of people identifying and seeking out claimed to be Italian Pizzerias across the globe to seek out the authenticity of these – and close them down if their identity happens to a bit too stretched from Italy.

So just as a country can benefit from strong brands – just think about Coca-Cola, Rolex, Champagne and Disney – and I’m sure the products of origin has added another positive dimension to their home markets – just as well as the home markets has helped the brands to become even stronger.

Branding therefore no longer can be seen in isolation – in many way it’s a cycles which every government, should be just as aware of as every marketeer. Leveraging the heritage just as much as the products of the heritage.

So think twice before you discard the value of “made in” whether you happen to be a government or a manufacture or a person claiming the branding only belongs to the supermarket shelfs.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Country Branding.pdf Optimizing sales 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.

I wonder if I'm the only user in the world behaving like this. Hard to tell because, according to Digitas, less than 1% of larger sites compile meaningful profiles on their customers. And, as a result of this lack of consumer behaviour data, even fewer manage to situate their messages in within appropriate, interest-compelling contexts.

You might have occasion to claim that a great offer on a respected brand compels consumer attention. But the reality is that such opportunities are rare. In fact, according to another study conducted by AC Nielsen in Northern Europe, less than 0.05% of banner ads' messages are blessed with the uniqueness that harnesses the attention of consumers beyond the ads' main target groups.

Maybe m-commerce will solve this problem: the Japanese I-Mode phones can you that a friend is in your vicinity and about to pass by, and can then offer an online coupon which you redeem by taking the passing friend to a nearby coffee shop; a bookstore will inform you that the book you've been searching for is available in-store, at the very minute you're passing by the shop. But even though technology like this in Europe and Japan is miles ahead of that in the USA, the fact is that m-commerce represented less than 0.002% of the e-commerce that took place over the last year.

This fact leads me back to the premise which prompted this article: the urgent need for a revision of the way we serve our message, the timing of the message and … you guessed it — context.

Contextual Branding is simple. It's about how, when and where you serve your message to achieve the best possible result. It's not a surprise that Amazon.com’s business model is based on retaining each customer for a significant number of years — Up to an astonishing twelve years according to some analysts' forecasts. Why is this possible? Because every year a customer is with you, the more you learn. The more you learn, the more value you can squeeze out of your marketing dollars.

I want to see every piece of communication doing what JandJ’s Tylenol banner ads for headache reliever is doing. The Tylenol banner ad appears on e-broker’s sites whenever the stock market falls by more than 100 points. Or how about what Unilever’s mobile recipe book is about to do, a concept, which is available on digital mobile phones in Europe. Intended for use while shopping, the mobile tool suggests receipts and breaks them down into their requisite ingredients, identifying, wherever possible, Unilever products. I'd like to see American Airlines alert their customers to flight delays when I'm about to leave for the airport, rather than once I'm there.

Let’s be straight. What I'd like is to see advertisers become more creative. To see them think through their consumers' behaviour and figure out when the need for their products is at its peak. Put your brand in context by understanding consumer behaviour and need.

Contextual Branding is what professional marketers have been doing for decades. But brands now need another push to get them even closer to their consumers' recognition of need. This can only happen by using three ingredients: knowledge of and insight into consumer behaviour, an understanding of what technology is available to get as close as possible to the consumer (without interfering with privacy), and tireless creativity.

At least, that's my contextual branding cocktail. How will you make yours?

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Contextual Branding.pdf Wireless strategy How many times did you hear the name "Evian" in the news last week? The stories in which you heard the name mentioned weren't about the brand Evian but the G8 summit held in Evian, France.

Coincidence? Who knows? But one thing's for sure. The concept of product placement is expanding, and use of new contexts is climbing. Get ready for a fascinating new marketing ploy that makes use of the most unexpected places: situation placement.

Do you count yourself among the millions of "Matrix" fans? If you do, I assume you've already seen the sequel, "The Matrix: Reloaded," and had a look at the game. But something you're possibly not aware of is the film crew spent several extra weeks in Sydney to capture footage you won't see in the movie. This footage was for that computer game; a piece of merchandising that creates an unprecedented link between brands and movies. It's no ordinary game. It demonstrates a trend that became clear to me when I was writing my recent book, "BRANDchild." Product placement is out. Situation placement is in.

"The Matrix" game is packed with ads, advertising messages, and brand-building statements. The usual merchandising route was abandoned and instead revenue generates from product placement in a computer game. Red Bull, which years ago placed its brand in the first Playstation game, first practiced the tactic.

It's just beginning. Movies such as "Spider-Man" pioneered the practice of starting with merchandising and product placement, then following up with a movie. Yes, you read correctly. A movie created around the brand image built in a wider communications environment.

Situation placement differs from product placement because the brand is the centre of the story. Product placement interjects the brand peripherally into an existing vehicle, like a movie.

The fascinating (perhaps scary) part of this story is increasingly more advertising will manifest itself as situation placement. Brands will appear at well-planned times, targeting well-planned audiences with well-planned, relevant messages. Computer games are a natural environment for situation placements. Game manufacturers flocked around "The Matrix" because it's an ideal situation placement forum. Stories and brands can be built around each other.

Forget banner ads and pop-ups. They just don't coalesce with the medium. They're irritating, irrational, and free of any logical context. What you will soon produce are well-planned, well-timed, highly contextualized media plans that allow you to situate your brand's message in just the right environment.

Intimidating. But so is "The Matrix’s view of the future. The difference is the film's world is about a century from now. Your world, and its demands, are here and now

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Center Stage Branding.pdf Product placement Back in 1915, Earl R. Dean, who was working at the Root Glass Company, was asked to design a bottle. The brief required that Mr Dean produce a design which could not only be recognized in the dark, but which, even broken into many pieces, could be identified at a glance.

Taking his inspiration from the pod of the cocoa bean, Dean produced a bottle with ridged contours. And the design he came up with fulfilled the brief beyond all expectations. The Coca-Cola Company’s distinctive bottle had been born and the contours that defined it became synonymous with the brand. The contouring became a design strategy, which spoke for Coca-Cola’s identity, and the bottle became a design icon. Still in service and still recognizable, the bottle has been passing the dark test and the smash test for over 80 years.

This design story is revealing from a brand-building perspective because, in theory, all brand identifiers and vehicles should be able to pass these sorts of tests.

Let’s consider this proposition in the most literal of terms. If you removed the logo from your brand identifiers and vehicles – livery, stationary, products, vehicles, signage, and so on - would people still recognize those items as being representatives of your brand? Let’s look at your packaging. What’s left once the logo disappears. Copy: would it speak for your brand? Colours: would they invoke recognition of your brand? How about your design – graphics, font, spacing – would they convey your brand’s identity?

Now let’s consider this proposition in terms of your website. Remove the logo entirely and you’ll embark on an interesting and instructive exercise which relieves you of any logo-fixations you may still have lurking in your mind and which forces you into brand-building: an operational and managerial philosophy that values the part every communication element plays in defining a brand’s identity. Think copy again, colour, graphics, space…is your brand immediately evident in these elements?

As in all analytical exercises, you need to take cues from your findings and explore their meaning ever more deeply. So far, we’ve considered the two-dimensional tools you’ve got at your brand-building disposal. You might have gone a mile wide with this analysis, but so far, we’re just an inch deep. Online there’s the asset, for brand-builders, of interactivity.

How does your brand use this property to express itself? Take away the logo; take away a few other design elements – would your brand’s personality speak?

I’m talking about your navigation. Can your navigation survive the dark test and the smash test?

Nokia users, whether they’re aware of it or not, love their Nokia cell phones because they love Nokia’s navigation. As simple, yet as important, as that. Of course, they might notice positives in battery time, features and signal range. But once a person has used a Nokia phone a couple of times, they’re hooked on Nokia’s way of navigating. In fact, most Nokia users’ brand loyalty lies in their attraction to the navigation, rather than with the brand itself. They like the way it works. But the way it works is uniquely Nokia.
<>br It’s a fact that should make us think about how we use the unobvious elements in our products’ lives for brand-building gain. Navigation is an inescapable part of any transaction, on- and offline. Use it as a brand-building asset.
<>br But we’re all victims of habit. Once you become used to a certain way of shopping, driving, surfing … you name it, that method becomes our own and we like it. Your favoured, most habitual methods build your loyalty to a certain store, or driving route, or beach. Your navigation becomes an accidental part of a brand’s attraction for you. There’s powerful brand building inherent in harnessing habits. But people can be persuaded to change their habits. People are adaptable and undeviating navigational choice is rarely an obsessive fixation.
<>br If you happen to be amongst those who at some point changed from Apple to PC, you’ll remember your frustration over learning a new way of navigating. But once you’re used to that new environment, you think you couldn’t use anything else. Just use any laptop – you’ll have a proprietary navigation technique, the trackball, at your fingertips. You see the trackball is a trademarked navigation technique. It too is a means of harnessing brand loyalty.
<>br And this premise goes for websites. If I ‘smashed your website’, could I still tell it was yours by what was left - its structuring? Could I recognize your brand in the way the navigation works? And could I recognize that navigational style not only across your many web pages, but consistently also across channels, from web to wireless to PDA?
<>br Have you, in fact, developed branded navigation?
<>br Amazon.com has, with the trademarked ‘1-Click’ ordering concept. Others have tried to copy this, and been sued for their efforts. The big question is do you have a ‘1-Click’ ordering, trackball or Nokia way of navigation? What are the navigational components on your site, and across all your interactive channels? Are they used consistently? Is your navigation so readily appreciated by your customers, who know what to expect and how to handle your service through its happily consistent nature, that it’s that operational facility that they know your brand for? Do they recognize your navigation as easily as they do your logo?
<>br If not, it might be time to reconsider your navigation strategy and to see it as just as important a part of your brand recipe as your colours, fonts and logo.
<>br http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Brand your navigation.pdf Wireless strategy 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.

1. Offer more value for the same price.

We see this technique in action every day. It isn’t perceived as a price reduction, rather as adding customer value. For example, Pepsi might offer 25% more cola in its already gigantic bottles for the usual price. Interestingly, and this is a fact, consumption increases. And consumer perception doesn’t ascribe a price reduction, and consequential downgrading of the brand, to the offer. Instead, customers perceive the offer as being a nice gesture on the brand’s part.

Offering greater value is a versatile strategy that can be adopted in a variety of ways. You could offer extra long warranties, special updates on product improvements… you name it. Get creative about how you can increase your brand’s value to your customers without altering the price. Research shows that, far from downgrading the customer’s estimation of the brand, the technique increases customer incentive to purchase the product.

2. Wrap your product in more than just product features.

Recently I sat myself in the driver’s seat of a BMW. To my irritation I found I had to turn my body around 180 degrees to reach the seat belt. The feature seemed an inconsiderate rather than beneficial one. But, as BMW explained to me, the reason for the body-turning stretch was for safety. By obliging the car’s occupants to turn around to get the seatbelt, the design ensures they notice what’s happening on the sidewalk, see any approaching cyclists, check for any oncoming impediment to the safe removal of the car into the carriageway. Suddenly a small feature became a valuable piece of brand information, building my opinion of the BMW brand and strengthening my loyalty to it.

So, features of your brand you may have considered negligible can be used to give consumers another reason to choose your brand. I’m sure your product or service includes facilities and potential attractions not yet discovered or understood by your customers. But, as you can see from the BMW example, these can be extremely valuable loyalty-enhancers. You simply have to demonstrate and interpret then for your customers.

3. Humanize your brand.

That interpretation can become a story that makes a brand unique. The Diners Club story is one example. Once upon a time a lawyer took some of his most important clients out to dinner. The restaurant was a special one, the menu studded with high prices. To the host’s alarm, he received a bill at the end of the night with an amount greater than he’d anticipated. He couldn’t cover it with the cash he had with him. To avoid this embarrassment in the future, he resolved to invent a means of paying cash without needing to carry any money. And so the Diners Club credit card, the world’s first, was born. Such a story could well be used to strengthen ties between the card’s customers and the Diners Club brand. The story is memorable because it’s about people and, because of this simple fact; it reflects values we can relate to; Needless to say that the importance of you ensuring that your online brand is humanized is essential for your success. Still today, 8 years after the first appearance of the World Wide Web, peoplestill feel that offline brands are more human than online brands. Naturally the history has a lot to do with this fact – what has been around for a long time – often is more natural to us. Finding the human story for your online brand is therefore essential for you to build even stronger brand bonds.

The common denominator between the above three loyalty-generating techniques is their avoidance of a price focus. Think rational; think emotional; increase perceived value and humanize your brand. You’ll generate sales and build bonds between consumers and your brand.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Brand survival.pdf Optimizing sales Some might ask them selves what went wrong when Heinz released a new ketchup – not in the traditional red colour – but in blue! The official statement from the company stated that the release of this new blue Heinz ketchup was a move to secure attention among a younger audience – but is this really what kids want?

Recently I happened to purchase a bag of candy in Los Angeles – it was named: Garbage Candy – and looked like any other bag of candy we purchase frequently in the local store. However when opening and tasting the candy it had one major difference from any other candy I’ve tasted so far – it was simply disgusting. I personally managed to keep the candy in my mouth for less than 5 seconds – which I later on could conclude, from reading the back of the bag – meant I was an absolutely chicken. A friend, which no longer is a friend after this test trail, told me that this was the worst experience she ever have had so far – she managed to keep the candy in her mouth for 3 seconds in total! The instructions on the back of the bag told the user that keeping the candy in the mouth for 60 seconds would make you to the hero of the day!

And the price of this bag of candy was even higher than any other candy I’ve purchased over my life so far – despite this Garbage Candy has turned in to be come one of the most successful candy names in the U.S. over the past year.

But what makes kids adore products like green ketchup and Garbage Candy … is our next generation colour or taste blind, is it the group pressure making them distinct different from any other generation or is it just pure coincidence?

Based on the worlds largest study on kids and their relationship with kids called BRANDchild, a research study creating the basis for my latest book of the same name. From the BRANDchild study I’ve had a sneak preview into the true world of tweens. What do turn them on – and off for that matter?

We can see that six core values today are driving kids and not to forget kids communication in a way we never have seen before.

These six values are: Mastery, Fear, Love, Stability, Humour and Fantasy.

In case you forgotten to warn your parents about ingredients like this – the humour side of this naturally would be as present as ever. In particular due to our current unstable world situation you would see that values like Fear and Stability more than ever are strongly present in any kids mind. In fact 96 per cent of all kids across the globe are afraid of terrorism the BRANDchild study reveilles making it obvious to conclude that more and more kids communication over the next months and years most likely will be based on conquering these fearful values.

However Mastery and Humour might be the two values describing why Ketchup is turning blue and candy is turning sour – as you show the world – and your friends that you among anyone is mater enough to conquer a un-eatable candy – by leaving it in the mount for 60 seconds or eating ketchup with the colour blue.

In case you forgotten to warn your parents about ingredients like this – the humour side of this naturally would be as present as ever.

In addition to the six core values mentioned above an additional 3 key drivers are driving todays and the future world of kid’s brands. They are called Collection Values, Mirror effect and Gaming ability. Just think about it – today you can collect almost any game, it all began with Microsoft upgrading its software version year by year with a number. Some computer games today represents its tenth generation – in fact any clever boy would never purchase a brand today without knowing its current version number – and the next likely release.

From a brand perspective this clearly means thatbrands most likely in the future will turn into up-gradable brands. You could even imagine that any brand with respect for it selves will be supported by a version number – making kids aware of its current status in the world.

The two other values, mirror effect and gaming ability is interesting. No need to say more than Barbie or Match Box cars and we can all agree to that “mirror effect” is an essential element in almost any successful kids brands platform. However the gaming has turned kids into become gamers – across almost every product category. A success can no longer be measured in feelings – like “I like this” but in a concrete rational decision – like “keep this candy in your mouth for 50 seconds – and you will become a hero”.

From the BRANDchild study it is clear to conclude that any brand appealing to kids in the future would need to include at least 2 if not three of the core 9 values in its marketing strategy to secure ongoing loyalty. In fact we can see that almost all kids brands today are appealing to at least 3 values – probably explaining why Blue ketchup might be a strategic move not totally off the track.

Will all this mean that healthy “normal” food is forever un-fashionable? Probably yes – unless this doesn’t manage to base it selves on the above 9 values. In fact it has become clearer and clearer for me that the taste of a product has become less and less important – what counts is the packaging and branding of the product - at least when we talk about kids.

A Danish candy brand was based on a rather un-traditional naming strategy turning the product into one of the best selling products in Scandinavia. Names like Dog Farts, Seagull Droppings, Big Boobs and Duckweed turned a rather traditional candy into a bestseller in weeks. If you happened to ask the kids about the taste of this product – I’m sure they wouldn’t remember – what they remembered though were the unusual names – breaking the limits, provoking, and not to forget – making peers laugh.

More than ever we can see from the BRANDchild study the label on the product has become more prominent and important in the kids mind that the content. Yes the content needs to represent a high and good level of quality – however that said – in most cases the value of the actual product – beside the quality factor might only count for 1/3 of the total experience. The brand has turned into just being a nice logo to be a totally experience – for whom the kids find essential when picking their brand and bonding with future brands. Sad trend – yes for some – but if you happened to ask the kids I’m sure they would argue against you at any point – and if you still disagree they might even place one of these Garbage Candy in your mouth – and I promise you – this will make you shut up for a while!

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Brand republic.pdf Securing attention Will the recent alliance between Proctor and Gamble and Gillette succeed? Well some years ago, the American Marketing Association produced a study with an interesting result. In a consumer survey on co-branding, 80 percent of respondents said they would be likely to buy a digital-imaging product co-branded by Sony and Eastman Kodak. However, only 20 percent of respondents claimed they would buy the product if it were branded by Kodak alone, and only 20 percent said they would buy the product if it carried only the Sony brand.

Unfortunately, not all examples are as promising as the Kodak/Sony one. Take ATandT and British Telecom's alliance, Concert. Launched on July 26, 1998, it was backed by $10 billion and two of the world's most respected Telco’s. The alliance failed in less than two years and closed only months ago, leaving everyone doubtful about the value of co-branding and alliance ventures.

Over 90 percent of co-branding ventures fail. Half go under because three simple rules were not observed. If you're considering a co-branding relationship, take heed of these three ground rules.

Equal Value for All Parties

If the potential relationship doesn't represent clear value for both parties, forget it. What's more, forget everything about trying to fashion a better deal out of the arrangement than your partner's deal. No relationship in which one of the two parties has a better deal has survived. This doesn't mean one brand can't be very well known and the other totally unknown. It means the benefit to both parties from the relationship must be equal.

Recently Samsonite released a new bag based on a new brand alliance with Philippe Starck. No surprise there, as Samsonite is the world's largest luggage manufacturer. Philippe Starck, one of the worlds leading household names in design.

Brand combinations are indeed often surprising. These days, I often notice alliances I'd never have predicted but as long as they represent equal value for all parties – they’re on track.

Brand Value Match

The idea of two brands working together might seem perfect at the board meeting, but the reality may be impossible to implement if the participating brands don't share values with each other. A co-branding partnership representing brands that are too different, that have no values in common, or that contradict each other’s brand images will be over before it's started.

Bearing this in mind, let's consider the ATandT/British Telecom alliance. Do you understand what that alliance was all about? I don't. Was t a way to create new global products, such as global phone numbers? The answers you receive to your question would depend on whom you asked. Everyone will have a different take on the alliance's purpose. The reality, however, was that only a few products ever appeared on the global scene that would have indicated what the alliance was all about.

Easy to Understand

The brand relationship must be easily understood by you and by customers. If you can't explain the value of the relationship in two lines, forget it. How would a customer understand the relationship if you can't explain it simply?

Nestlé and L'Oréal some years ago announced a relationship. What do these two brands have in common? Anything? Yes indeed according to the two companies. Nestlé's aim is to produce food that's healthy, not only for the insides of our bodies, but for our skin as well. Who's the global market leader in skin care? You got it: L'Oréal. The question however is – did the consumer get it? The alliance still exists but is struggling – perhaps the alliance wasn’t as “easy to understand” by the consumer as first anticipated by the two companies.

Co-branding might sound simple, but the wedding of successful brands doesn't necessarily guarantee that the partnership will grow as a successful marriage. In many ways, brands are like people: They represent values and viewpoints. You know from the real world how difficult it is for married couples to reconcile their values and viewpoints and to stay together. Half of the world's marriages break down, and all but 10 percent of brands fail to maintain their co-branding partnerships. So, without any doubt, there's space for substantial improvement. And, needless to say, you'll see substantial savings in your marketing budget if you marry the right brand the first time.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Brand plus brand.pdf Brand alliances As the Far East seems to move closer and closer to the west, and its two billion people open their wallets to brands, it might be valuable to seek some inspiration from oriental culture. At least, from one part of the Far East, which is as culturally diverse as Europe’s thirty-plus countries are, and as varied as the cultures of North America’s states.

For western brands that are about to hit any part of Asia, you need a culturally aware Asian brand strategy to avoid a negative response to the culture shock you and your brand might experience. Even if you have no plans to enter Asian markets, there’s lots to learn from comparing culturally derived attitudes which all have lessons for brands and business.

For example, let’s look at sake, Japan’s traditional rice wine. When you’re in Japan, you’ll observe a gesture that’s typical in the hospitality of the country. It’s a gesture that has relevance to branding and business in general. The eggcup-sized sake cup will be placed in front of you, sitting in a receptacle of some kind – an elegant cherrywood box, an everyday saucer. When your host or companion pours your sake the cup will be filled to overflowing, the receptacle it sits in receiving the overflow and itself being filled to the brim. This over serving expresses the generosity of the host, restaurant or bar. It’s a gesture to show gratitude for your presence. And it exhibits a desire to give you more that you expect. You’ll agree that this vignette opens vistas of meaning – brands must over-deliver and exceed customer expectations. Yet, so often, brands simply meet expectations. I’ll never forget my first sake. Such gestures of abundance, hospitality and respect will be associated by your customers with your brand, creating an invaluable emotional tie between them.

Another lesson I’ve learnt from Japan occurred when I was visiting a picturesque little village near Kyoto, in the beautiful Kansai region.

I had ordered some handcrafted knives and was told that the finishing process would take approximately half-an-hour. So, I left the store and explored the village, bathed in the rosy glow cast by the springtime cherry blossoms. I returned to the knife maker exactly half-an-hour later. To my surprise, and contrary to my previous experience of Japanese punctuality and exactitude, the knives were not ready. Two men were still hard at work on them and remained so for fifteen minutes longer than expected. I decided to wait and observe these craftsmen in action. In the western world, I wouldn’t have been too surprised to see the men expressing irritation at the extra work time. Here, though, the men’s demeanours expressed passion, exquisite care, and tireless professionalism invested in every manoeuvre that produced the amazing tools. These knives were unique pieces, the antithesis of a tool I’d collect at random from WallMart. Later I realized that my wait was not unexpected. This observation time was built into the transaction as part of the handover process from vendor to buyer. The intentional fifteen-minute interval was an exercise in demonstrative dedication, to show me the care that went into my knives. Again, this is a memory I will have for life. It has made those knives into a whole story of dedication to a product.

In the world of branding, such passion tends to disappear along with the founder’s resignation. I’m sure there is a ton of passion behind the scenes when ordering a book on Amazon.com or any other online retailer. But online buying hasPassion, Dedication and Care: Branding Inspiration translated the customer-retailer relationship into one of collusive silence and distance. And that distance, between me and the brands I buy is widening. When I receive emails from Amazon, they’re from the “customer service team”. If an individual’s name appears in front of this retailer’s sealed membrane, it disappears quickly again, severing the promise of a sense of real connection. I’m not saying that we should let customers wait for service. I’m saying that demonstrative dedication, shown by the knife craftsmen, is missing in our brand building. Branding is all about creating an emotional engagement between the consumer and the brand. We need to see the passion that lies behind every brand, the real people that make it happen. This human dimension not only bonds customers with brands, it raises customers’ empathy levels, making them more patient and understanding when things do go wrong.

Recently I was in India as part of my global BRAND sense Symposiums (www.brandsense.com). I’m introduced to hundreds of brands every day, and in India this was no different. But one particular brand stands out. Liijat is a company that has as it vision statement: A unique organization of the women, by the women for the women. For decades the company has outsourced their entire production of bread to thousands of homes across India. Liijat was one of the first true community-based brands and women produce bread for the company every day, following strict guidelines set by the brand. So, when you choose Liijat bread from the supermarket shelf, you’re not purchasing machine-made bread. You’re buying bread made by an individual, with care and love and dedication. And that knowledge makes a true branding difference. Even better, the reason why Liijat is the best-known bread brand in India is that it’s not only produced by India’s women, it’s owned by them, not by a corporation.

Just like the real world, the Internet is all about communities. Yet brands tend to neglect this very important aspect. In fact many companies still express irritation at communication from consumers, rather than as brand-building opportunities. Leveraging the concept of communities, and of the loyalty that can arise from the comradeship and common interests shared by them, can create your brand difference, one of emotional engagement which defies replication.

Asian culture, vast and varied, holds thousands of unique, small and useful stories, which any brand can leverage when growing. What each and every story has in common is passion – passion for people, for materials, for the product. What each and every great brand is based on is exactly the same. So, remember the three small stories I’ve told you today when you’re next looking for your brand’s point of difference.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Brand inspirations from the Far East.pdf Brand vision Recently – well it feels like that – a dear friend of mine, Tim Pethick approached me with a great idea. Well he felt it was great I – to be perfectly frank – felt it was rather trivia. The idea was to develop another juice brand. If you happen to live in Australia you would know one thing – that is that Australia hardly need another juice brand – in fact if you happen to visit any major grocery store they display at least 10 meters of juice in the fridge – minimum. Another juice brand I said and looked rather sceptical – yes he answered knowing what my feedback already would turn out to be.

But I was wrong – and he was right. Today – less than two years later his juice brand turned out to be the biggest success in recent Australian business history. In fact – his brand – was voted Australia Asia’s forth strongest brand – ranking up there with Coca-Cola, Qantas and Nike – and his juice brand is today number one in almost every Asian country. How did he do it – well here’s a rather alternative story. The alternative is, well, alternative. Alternative thinking, alternative ideas and alternative channels. Shortly after we split that evening back in 2003 the product was named, Nudie – a name you hardly forget and which offers a range of opportunities hanging interesting communication on. The product is fresh juice, without additives. It tastes fantastic, but so what? The product's success is hinged on much more than its ingredients. It lies in alternative thinking and a personal approach, which exactly was the reason why Tim did so well.

The Web site (www.nudie.com.au) introduces the brand's owner as "Tall Tim," who generates dialogue with individuals. Tall Tim invites people to show up at his home at a certain time for breakfast and juice, a freebie you qualify for as long as you show up at the exact, and I mean exact, time. The gesture couples the person behind the brand with the brand itself. That, in turn, promotes interaction between the humanized brand and the consumer. The site urges visitors to get into the act of pushing Nudie's distribution by offering a standard letter that interested parties can download, sign, and forward to their local stores. It's a simple strategy that works for the brand because individual customers have cachet and credibility in their neighbourhood store. The owners know their customers, and they listen to them.

The letter reads:

Dear (insert name of favourite store) I've recently had the pleasure of tasting a Nudie -- a new kind of juice with absolutely nothing added. (Yeah, I know, you've heard that line before about nothing added, but the people at Nudie really mean it!) Anyway, the point of this letter is to see if you'd be kind enough to consider stocking Nudie. If you do stock Nudie, I would be eternally grateful and I would buy at least (insert number) Nudies every week! To get your fridge fully stocked with Nudie today (or the next business day if you're reading this letter after hours) call now on 1-800-GO-NUDIE. Call takers are standing by...

Tall Tim turned his distribution channels into branding channels by getting consumers in on the act, and by putting a fleet of cute, purple, distinctively Nudie delivery cars on the road all over the country. Tall Tim has managed to treat every imaginable communication channel in an alternative fashion.

His small budget would probably surprise you. Within five months, Nudie became the fastest-growing juice brand in Australia, ever. Tall Tim achieved this without any TV, radio,print or direct mail advertising. He tackled the project on a personal level. He used human communication channels creatively and directly. Nudie is not the only brand out there proving branding can be successful without spending millions of dollars on traditional media campaigns. But it offers a great working example of what can be done on a small budget.

Let’s be frank – any product can turn out to become a major success if branded right – and if (and this is essential) the product won’t disappoint the consumer. However it all requires a risk adverse attitude – you need to dare taking chances, identify and build strong personalities and leverage alternative communication channels.

Going the traditional way probably won’t work anymore unless you are prepared to spend a gazillion on marketing and branding – knowing that half of the budget will work – the other half won’t – only problem you won’t know which one of the two half’s will turn out to be working.

Building new brands today is all about being dramatically different, being human and daring to have a strong opinion about life. A Canadian brand called Jones Soda managed to create one point of difference by offering consumers to design the label them selves on the Internet. In return the company guaranteed to print and distribute this on bottles across North America – well sort of – they would distribute the bottles yes – but would not tell you where to find it. Can you imagine how engaged consumes would be in finding their own bottle?

Nudie is human – each of the bottles has its own individual label – with an individual fun story about the bottle and the content. They’re so funny that close to 70 percent of all consumers have read the labels – as they’re so funny. Why – because they’re human – human and humour is very closely related.

However a brand as well needs to dare taking chances. Through history many brands has hit a success by being different, just think about United Colours of Beneton, Diesel or Virgin – they’re all human, contains humour and dares to say their opinion about the world.

I remember hearing information technologists would never be fired for choosing IBM. I suppose you could once have said the same of marketers who combined the traditional media channels in their plans. But things are changing. The IT guys probably still won't be fired for recommending IBM, but marketers with plans based on traditional channels and old school thinking shouldn't get too comfortable.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Brand Different.pdf Optimizing budget 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.

The solution was extracted from a simple proposition: Kids love challenges. It became the basis for a highly unusual approach that aimed to reject Pepsi site visitors rather than embrace them.

To enter the site, visitors were required to pass an intelligence test. If their answers weren't clever enough, quick enough, or simply correct, the site rejected them. If visitors succeeded in getting in, there were prizes. First prize was... a trip into outer space! Yes, a real one, shared by six lucky people.

The assignment taught me reverse marketing isn't such a bad thing. Thousands of kids tried to enter the site every day. And thousands of rejected visitors spread rumours about "backdoors" into the site that allowed users to bypass the test.

The site was an instant hit.

The "Pepsi challenge" was turned on its head. Suddenly, it was directed at the brand's customers instead of its competitors. Probably for the first time in corporate brand history, the challenge defeated and rejected most aspiring visitors.

The key to the site's success was that its operation was based on truth. If visitors did well on the tests, the site slowly rewarded them. If entrants failed the test, the site wouldn't pander to them with second chances or using a near-enough-is-good-enough approach. It would be direct and truthful in its appraisal and kick them out.

Truth and directness have an advantage over politically correct indirectness. Often, branding that rejects political correctness not only catches audience attention, but also creates loyal customers. No one is politically correct all the time. Now and then, slivers of our personalities expose themselves in our laughter or debate.

Unfortunately, corporate branding has reached a point where it's desperately afraid of telling the truth, of revealing opinions that might exhibit personality and attitude.

Human beings are all about attitude and opinion. You can't converse with someone with no opinions or who agrees with you to avoid heated discussion. That's not conversation at all. Attitude will characterize branding's future. Branding will escapes blandness. It will jump off the fence it's been sitting on to reveal opinions on home pages, in advertising, and in broadcasting.

It won't be easy. Most corporate decision-making is "committed" into blandness. Branding opinions are corrected out of existence, bringing only inoffensive and politically correct campaigns to the public's jaded gaze.

Branding is about creating strong brand personalities that are identifiable, memorable, and recognizable for life. Branding should engage a viewer; converse with customers; provoke scrutiny. With no opinions, there are no conversations. Reject the rules that have been rejecting your brand's recourse to opinion. Let your brand establish its identity, strut its attitude, and show its own personality.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Brand Building not Bland Building.pdf Useful techniques I'll bet that, more than once in your career, you've pondered the risk of teaming up with some other brand in a co-branding deal. The deal probably looked good; the conditions were perfect; but the brand... would it damage your own?

It would be an exaggeration to claim that a number of studies have examined co-branding. But, luckily enough, I've managed to get hold of one study that might help us shed light on the issue.

The Journal of Consumer Marketing published the study I’m referring to in 2000. It reveals a lot of interesting data and highlights facts of which we are possibly instinctively aware -- by confirming them empirically. The study was based on potato chips and dips. By offering various combinations, the tests helped the research team determine how human beings value brand alliances.

Now, here's the interesting fact. It turned out that, according to this survey, if you teamed up two high-equity potato chip and dip brands, the prior-to-tasting score was 4.63 out of 7. After trial tasting, the score was 5.06. In other words, approval ratings demonstrated only a slight increase after trial tastings. But when the researchers teamed up two low-equity potato chip and dip brands (in fact, two fictional brands that no one had, of course, ever heard of), the prior-to-tasting score was 3.98 and the post-tasting score was 4.51. The surprise? The products used in both tests -- the high- and low-equity brand tests -- were the same! But, clearly, the subjects not only perceived a difference between the specimens, they comprehended "better value" in the low-equity brand combination.

We learn from this study that high-quality brands that team up with other high-quality brands can expect to gain from the co-branding partnership -- but it will be limited. However, if you happen to represent a low-equity brand, this study indicates it might be a good idea to team up with another low-equity brand.

What about a high-equity brand teaming up with a low-equity brand? Well, according to this and other surveys, such a venture has value and limited risk. If the products in question deliver what they promise, the risks to each of them are minimized further -- even when a high-equity brand teams up with an obscure one.

So, if you happen to represent a high-equity brand, worry not: Teaming up with low-equity brands won't damage your reputation, as long as you keep a constant eye on that brand's product or service quality.

Needless to say, if you represent a low-equity brand and you co-brand with a high-equity brand, not only will you increase sales but the association will help you dramatically improve your brand's image, too.

What I find fascinating from all the surveys I've seen over the years is that consumers actually love brand alliances. People want guidance through the overwhelming plethora of brands out there. Most consumers currently see brand alliances as being beneficial to them. Consumers perceive the strategy as a promotion created for them -- rather than for the marketeers aiming to increase brand sales.

So, the conclusion is clear. Brand alliances have the potential to boost your brand's sales, improve its image, and communicate benefits to consumers. Consumers see brand alliances as being beneficial to them. What more could you ask for? And, by the way, what's holding you back? There are more than enough brands for you to team up with at the moment!

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Brand Alliances Put to the Test.pdf Optimizing sales You can’t avoid them – the blogs. They’re so plentiful that the opinions they offer are forming part of news reports. Given the evident potency of blogs, therefore, the question is should blogs remain within their current sphere of influence, helping individuals to share their personal opinions on with the world, or should they be adopted by brands as communication tools?

The fact is that the marriage between blogs and brands is no longer a vision. Personality brands, like Seth Godin or Tom Peters, already blog the net. And brands like Weight watchers, LEGO, Apple or Harley Davidson already appear on a frequent basis, not on behalf of their brand-builders, but promoted by their fans.

This raises a potential danger: gradually the control over brand messages is being drawn away from brand builders and being redirected by consumers. So should brands begin investing in posting their own frequent blogs on the net, representing their points of view and personalities? Could you imagine Disney blogging its fans about its characters, Nokia about its latest products or Microsoft about its virus issues? Yes, I’ll bet you can. The action would probably help brands get closer to their consumers by reaching right into those core communities of fans. But exploiting this avenue takes commitment.

In fact, the problem would not be for companies to write the blogs, but to write useful blogs. To achieve this, you have to be flexible and able to react promptly. Companies are simply not armed with the flexibility and quick response time required to run a relevant, interactive and engaging blog. The medium would pose a risk of producing small one-page press releases rather than interactive, current points of view.

However the prospect raises an interesting question. Brands of the future will need to handle this discipline effectively – the discipline of quick action. They’ll need to dare to exhibit opinions fearlessly and share them with the world, avoiding litigation and unhampered by the risk of it. But, as we know, companies tend to avoid political issues. Corporate entities feel obliged to clear their opinions with every quarter, eliminating all risk of offending any sensibilities, and thus, sanitizing their points of view into meaninglessness. This sterilisation is death to achieving the momentum needed to sustain and inject value into a blog.

Tomorrow’s brands will need to be able to transgress current inhibitions. In many ways, this could be the ultimate test for brands, reflecting organizations’ confidence and coherence, demonstrating brand self-esteem and ownership that unhesitatingly speaks for itself, promotes opinions and shares them in hours rather than in weeks or months. Just as manufacturers and retailers learned the “just in time” thinking in the nineties, brands will need to adopt another “just in time” dimension to their self-management: the ability to share information, just in time, with their consumers.

In contrast, if brands don’t make this evolutionary leap soon, companies will be left behind a consumer population which expects timely email responses, prompt fulfilment of orders, and brand blogs in minutes. A phenomenon which, in my latest book, BRAND sense (www.brandsense.com), call HSP (Holistic Selling Proposition) brands will need to emerge with coherence in order to deal with consumers holistically, becoming part of the individual’s minute-by-minute experience of everyday life.

However, companies are far from this point. To establish an organization that enables true HSP branding, brands, which could handle the blog challenge, requires dramatic structural, systemic and communications changes. Stay tuned. In my next column I’ll give you the hints you need to prepare your company for the branding future – a future in which effective, ‘just in time’ blogs are as natural and easy a part of communication as press releases are today.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Blogs.pdf Brand vision 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.

So it’s not surprising that research from the BRANDchild study indicates that on average, kids are 40 per cent more difficult to communicate with than adults. The challenge then becomes how to cut through the clutter in order to gain the attention of this generation, while at the same time ensuring that your message is perceived as relevant, honest and on the right side of the law.

1. For you and me, there are three communication channels: offline, online and wireless. For kids there is only one – a combination of all. Kids don’t distinguish between chatting online, text messaging on the phone or watching television – it’s one and the same thing. It is important to bear this in mind when you develop your direct strategy Direct shouldn’t be seen as classic direct mail or just magazines, it should include every channel which creates a direct relationship with kids – covering everything from chat rooms to product placement in computer games.

2. Why? Because today’s kids expect to see an integrated flow across all channels. The BRANDchild study clearly shows that brands, which only use one, channel – or maybe use several channels but don’t create a synergy in the message between the multiple channels will lose. I call this Domino Branding. If all the bricks are correctly in place, they will lead to a chain effect of events. Each one an independent entity although totally dependent on the whole. Leaving out one brick may destroy the total outcome. So forget a strategy, which repeats the same story over and over across various channels. This form of communication is no longer relevant. However, in order to create a meaningful synergy, you need to tell a story that takes on a new dimension with each new communication channel. The story that is told on television will take on a different form when being relayed on the Internet, and is again retold in a different form on an SMS message on the mobile phone.

3. When the concept is there, and relayed across the many channels that have been created it’s vital that it passes the legal test. Quite understandably regulations that exist on children’s programming are very tough – at least compared to traditional messages aimed at adults. But this is only one side of the story. Another equally important aspect of this is to involve parents while at the same time including kids. Statistics from the BRANDchild survey reveals that privacy is one of the biggest concerns kids have today – in fact they are more concerned about privacy than their parents. Your message runs the risk of turning into a full-scale disaster if you fail to test the waters and determine whether your message has been understood. You cannot be seen to be breaking the “unwritten” laws of privacy required by parents and children alike.

4. Direct means instant – at least according to kids. Instant means immediate access tobrands – day and night, – 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Forget the good old days where brands were only available from nine to five. These days, if a brand closes down at five, it’s rendered non-existent in the world of kids. This is the first generation born and raised with a mouse in their hands. They are in fact the world’s first truly interactive generation. They expect every brand to have an online presence at a minimum – with a preference for wireless access. What this means for your brand is that in theory, you cannot close down while you’re running a campaign. For example, when the US election was reaching its peak, there was a bus that drove across the country 24/7 and perpetually adjusted its target message to cater for each region. Your marketing department when running a campaign should adopt a similar strategy. The reality of this would be to monitor chat rooms, Internet Web sites and constantly keep an eye on the competitor’s move – prepared to change or adjust the strategy if it looks like its reaching a blind end.

5. As stated earlier on in this article – this is a multiple channel exercise. Don’t think one dimensional – think multi dimensional. Each channel needs to work together to form a synergy, and most importantly, create a viral effect. Today’s kids act in groups. In fact the BRANDchild study shows that more than 90 per cent of all kids across the globe prefer to be in a group. These days, there is not just one decision maker rather each group has many decision makers, establishing what we call the peer-to-peer effect. Therefore your campaign should take the focus off marketing a product, and emphasise every aspect that will create a dialogue between kids, making them curious enough to purchase your brand.

Recently Coca-Cola ran their Heatwave campaign in Australia. If the temperature rose above 25 degrees, kids passing a selected shop would receive and SMS message offering them a special two-for-the-price-of-one discount on Coke. Upon entering the store they were asked to sign up giving their details to an online terminal, allowing for an ongoing dialogue via email. All this was supported with POS materials in the stores, and television and radio messages. The campaign worked because it managed to combine all channels in a seamlessly – creating a sound domino effect without repeating the same message. They added a new dimension to the Coke story, and needless to say the tweens loved it!

It is clear that the way we build brands and communicate with future generations is dramatically different from what has been currently practiced. The main reason for this success can be boiled down to a single element – interactivity.

Monologues as a form of communication is dead, and now every aspect of communication needs to be based on dialogue. Brands have to become interactive. If they fail this crucial test, your brand will not be able to interact with any kids in the future.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/BANDchild.pdf Wireless strategy 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, "You make my heart spin."

Keep in mind: This is a rolling bearings and seals company I'm talking about. Not Lewis, or Diesel, or Nike... but SKF! Why must business-to-business (B2B) branding be as boring as the companies they represent? Why is B2B considered second-tier branding, requiring cursory, dubious management?

Companies are recognizing that their value doesn't lie only in turnover, assets, and new products, but also on the strength of their brands. They're responding to this realization by dedicating energy to annual reports and press releases. Hey, hang on. Are annual reports and press releases the alpha and omega of brand exposure? Far from it, as well you know. For some reason, most companies still favor these over the extensive menu of branding tools that are available.

A pure "business" person no longer exists. We -- you and I -- are all private people with emotions and feelings that allow us to be just as affected by branding when we're at home as when we're at work.

If you have a bad experience with a company at home or hear something negative about it when talking to your neighbor, would you forget the information as soon as you got to work? I doubt it. We're all subject to information intake across a range of social strata and within countless emotional contexts. This human factor opens the door for B2B branding.

Know what? I'm not in the market for rolling bearings, but if I were to become a decision maker in this area, I'd choose SKF products. Why? Because the company engages in human communication. It doesn't treat me like a boring businessman. It treats me like a person, using personal and relevant communications with twists of humor. I don't need to ask you to consider how boring SKF's site could be (you'd fall asleep before finishing this column). Just visit SKF's competitors (or 90 percent of the rest of B2B brands on the Internet, for that matter), and you'll fall asleep before you've scrolled past the pictures of their factories, CEO mug shots, and archives of their last 400 press releases.

That's not brand building. SKF's tactics are. SKF's communication not only reaches my brain, it touches my heart. That's what branding's all about, even if you're communicating with consumers who are wearing suits.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/B2Branding.pdf Wireless strategy Disney, Kellogg's, and Gillette are three completely different brands with one commonality. Over the past decade, they've established a branded language, whether they know it or not. In my latest book, we found 74 percent of today's consumers associate the word "crunch" with Kellogg's. Another 59 percent consider the word "masculine" and Gillette as one and the same. Americans formed the strongest association of masculinity to Gillette, by an astounding 84 percent.

Disney scored higher in purloined language than any other brand. This brand welcomes you to its kingdom of fantasy, dreams, promises, and magic. If you've stayed at a Disney resort, taken a Disney cruise, or eaten in a Disney restaurant, it doesn't take long to hear "cast members" greeting guests with, "Have a magical day!"

For over half a century, Disney has consistently built its brand on a foundation much larger than its logo. A substantial chunk relies on songs and voiceovers that almost always include Disney-branded words. Associating words with brands comes at no extra cost. Disney's manages to "own" six of them: "dreams," "creativity, "fantasy," "smiles," "magic," and "generation."

Our BRAND sense study shows over 80 percent of the world's population directly associates these generic words with Disney.

The keywords are repeated over and over in Disney's advertising copy, song lyrics, and story lines and on Disney Channel. The words cross all media channels, from TV to the Internet, with ease and fluidity. No opportunity is wasted in making strong connections between Disney and "magic," Disney and "fantasy," Disney and "dreams," and so on.

What's more, Disney's language survives what I call the smash test. Pick a word, sentence, or column from any Disney publication, remove each brand reference, and -- voilà! -- The brand's still recognizable.

To create a truly smashable brand requires consistency and patience. This is difficult, in a corporate world where the only constant is ever changing branding strategies and CMOs. Add to this a fluctuating financial market that demands instant results, and the brand message becomes just another bit of brand information in an overcrowded field. With annual reports, TV commercials, and Web sites often handled by different divisions, you loose any opportunity for language synergy.

It takes years for words, phrases, and sentences to be identified and accepted as belonging to specific brands.

The first step to integrate specific language into your brand is to identify the words you want to own. Select them based on those words that best reflect your brand's personality. Choose words that are easy to integrate in many different kinds of sentences and are the most flexible.

There's no mistaking Absolut Vodka's language. Its "Absolut Home" page lets you jump to "Absolut Reality," "Absolut Pictures," "Absolut Generations," and other "Absolut" destinations. Should you wish to contact the company, go to "Absolut Contact." Everything on the site is consistent with Absolut's advertising campaign, which has been running for over 20 years. The campaign's based on continuity and variety; 1,400 ads have been produced since 1980, all related to the original vision that launched Absolut Perfection.

The key to forming a smashable language is to integrate it into every piece of communication your company is responsible for, including all internal communications.

Evaluate your branded language, and determine the words you would like to own. It costs nothing and might lead to free advertising in your national dictionary.

http://www.martinlindstrom.com/pdf/articles/Absolut Branded Language.pdf Brand vision Sydney, Australia: What makes a guy travel around the world to visit a store opening? In the case of Apple fans, it’s a combination of brand loyalty and love and a competitive streak. When Apple opened its Sydney store, hundreds of brand aficionados flocked to the city in hopes of being first in line to enter the sparkling new store when it opened. Driven by dedication and admiration for the brand’s personality and values as much as its products, these self-motivated brand fans are united in a common language of love for the brand. Is this akin to religious fervor? Join Martin Lindstrom to examine the parallels between brands, cult and religion. http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__106 Video Blog Bogota, Colombia: We perceive and comprehend the world through all our five senses, but few brands build communication between all of them. Some brands are even unaware of the valuable sensory signatures they own. Crayola is one. Having built ownership of the crayons’ distinctive smell over decades, the brand seems to have expelled the scent from its products. Smell is a powerful branding tool, able to key into memory and emotion while bypassing rational assessment. What sensory signals does your brand own, and how can you make the most of them? http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__107 Video Blog Above western Europe: While airlines in the U.S. are cutting staff and grounding flights, overcome by the pressures exerted by the oil crisis, Singapore Airlines is maintaining its characteristic calm. The brand has cultivated the Singapore Girl icon for over thirty years and matched this hallmark of style, grace and finesse with a range of signature brand expressions which include innovation and overt customer focus. The branding efforts have been consistent and on-message, upholding an unswerving and high-flying global perception of Singapore Airlines as a luxury brand of choice, rather than grounding the brand image as just another carrier. http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__108 Video Blog Trondheim, Norway: These days, every consumer is a broadcaster. No longer is the brand in sole control of its representation. One email entreating motorists to patronize small gas stations rather than the corporate giants was sent, supposedly, to a million recipients throughout Scandinavia. Anecdotally, it seems to have had an effect. While Shell Oil and others deny any diminution in trade, forecourts seem less busy than usual. How would your brand respond? What crisis management strategies do you have in place? http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__110 Video Blog London, United Kingdom: How well does product placement really work? Coca-Cola spent a fortune as the key sponsor of the Beijing Olympics, yet most Chinese citizens were under the impression that Pepsi was the chief support. Martin Lindstrom’s Project Buyology tested product placement, examining the brains of over 2,000 consumers around the world with fMRI technology. The shocking findings are that product placement, as we know it, is a massive waste of advertisers’ money. http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__112 Video Blog London, United Kingdom: It’s true that advertising history can offer examples of stunningly successful product placement campaigns. Sales of Reese’s Pieces went up 30% during the ‘E.T.’ era, when Steven Spielberg’s little alien enjoyed them. But product placement overload has diminished the technique’s influence on consumers, and increased our suspicions of it. The latest Sylvester Stallone Rambo movie purportedly contains around 110 product placements – about one a minute. Martin Lindstrom’s global neuromarketing study, Buyology, proves, for the first time, that not only is uncontextualised product placement unable to find a place in our long-term memory – our brains actually delete any awareness of the brand. http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__113 Video Blog London, United Kingdom: Are you superstitious? It’s likely you claim not to be. But Project Buyology, the largest neuromarketing study ever conducted, confirms that our brains are hardwired to be seduced by superstition as a form of ritual. All over the world, car accidents increase on Friday the 13th. Building floors jump from number 12 to 14. American Airlines planes have no row 13. The seduction of superstition and ritual is used cleverly by marketers. Guinness and Corona beer and Magners cider are just three products whose popularity has been partly secured by the consumption ‘rituals’ that accompany them. http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__114 Video Blog Tokyo, Japan: @cosme started life online, as a web based cosmetics store. Now it’s thriving offline, having established its first retail store. And it seems all 6 million of its online customers are making their way to the bricks-and-mortar location. As it does online, the store sells leading cosmetics and ranks them according to customer evaluation. Customers try the products and happily provide feedback, forging a lasting relationship between consumers and @cosme, and spreading invaluble brand awareness by word of mouth. http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__115 Video Blog Tokyo, Japan: au by KDDI customer outlets are giving us a glimpse of the retail future. The cell phone brand’s flagship store is stocked with futuristic brand concepts and communication products for today. No cash changes hands - the store is a meeting place for ideas, and for consumers to become intrigued by them. Dialogue continues online at the au by KDDI website which provides a forum, for example, for adidas fans to compare notes on training and on their mobile training device, the ‘au x adidas’. The store of the future is about products in context, building a fan base, and perpetuating invaluable viral marketing. http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__116 Video Blog Detroit, U.S.A.: 2008 marks General Motors’ centenary. It’s a landmark that’s accompanied by mounting financial loss and a host of oil-price challenges and environmental issues. Having led the market for decades, GM is now struggling to stay ahead of its rival, Toyota. GM is looking ahead to releasing a battery-powered vehicle in 2010, but will that be too late to resurrect the brand? Too many products and too many unremarkable retail outlets area marketing obstacles that no amount of money can conquer. GM will need to find a new focus to negotiate the next century. http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__117 Video Blog New York City, U.S.A.: Ripley’s Believe It Or Not is 90 years old. The brand has been through some quiet years but is making a comeback. Capitalising on the potential of the brand’s own TV show to promulgate the brand, Ripley’s is about to launch ‘Ripley’s Relic Chasers’. The brand will own and operate content the show’s content and broadcast via TV, broadband and wireless. Ripley’s believe the three-pronged approach will maximize brand awareness and revenue generation for the marketing investment. http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__118 Video Blog HELSINKI, FINLAND: This week, Martin Lindstrom is in conversation with Stefan Lindfors, the designer of a bottle that’s revolutionising packaging design – and the attitudes of retailers to it. Plup is a Finnish company which directs much of its profits towards environmental work. Lindfors has designed a doughnut-shaped bottle made from HDPE, a recyclable and durable plastic. Reusability is a key feature of this highly practical design. Stackable, easy to arrange on tables, the bottle satisfies the functional needs of store shelves and restaurant tables while offering itself as an easy-to-carry drink bottle for ongoing use. PLUP donates 10 euro cents from very bottle sold to the effort to clean up the Baltic Sea and the company supports environmental projects in every market of which the bottle is a part. A small company with a big mission and a brand to achieve it. http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__119 Video Blog TOKYO, JAPAN: This week, Martin Lindstrom explores the epicenter for luxury brands worldwide, here in Tokyo, and how they will survive in this recession. Even in Japan, the ‘cheap generation’ is forming, opting for discount brands over luxury brands. The reason for the decline in sales of the luxury stores is due to the changing nature of societies perception of fashion, that is it is no longer fashionable to buy and show off luxury items. http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__120 Video Blog TOKYO, JAPAN: Is the environment just another fad? Will the recession lead to the destruction of ecomarketing and the environment debate that has been so prevalent over the boom times? This week, Martin is at one of Tokyo’s largest toy stores, Hakuhinkan, whose loyalty to the environment, expressed with its new brand line The one and only Earth, could keep them liquid; as well as keeping the environment debate open. http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__121 Video Blog NEW YORK, USA: Recently, the NBC’s Today Show teamed up with Martin Lindstrom to undergo an experiment, testing the theory on our buying behaviour. The subject, Kelly, was suited up with an electrode cap and sent through a supermarket aisle twice. The first time there was no promotional material to grab Kelly’s attention; and the second time there was. The results proved that promotion actually works, Kelly is overcome with the prospect of ‘getting a deal’. To watch the NBC footage please go to our News Page. This week’s video blog goes behind the scenes of the experiment; Martin giving exclusive insight into what this means to us as consumers and marketers alike. http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__122 Video Blog NEW YORK, USA: Earth Hour 2009 was held on Saturday March 28, 2009 between 8.30pm and 9.30pm local time around the world. Cities around the world switched off their power to support the annual Earth Hour initiative. This week Martin is in Time Square to find out if consumers really care about the environment? Would they pay extra for green goods and services? How about brands, do they care about the environment? Also, are brands using the initiatives like earth hour in an advantageous way? See it from the perspective of Time Square as Martin finds new and innovative ways to build your brand. http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__123 Video Blog SANTIAGO, CHILE: This week, Martin Lindstrom is in Chile to show us a very unusual but highly effective way of marketing a product. A brand of dog food, called Master Dog, cleverly placed its canine into the plotline of a popular television show, so it would become a well known cultural icon. The dog in fact became the hero of the show ensuring everyone would remember the dog and thus the brand; showing how placing your main brand image in context in a plotline really does work. This type of advertising is thus referred to as doggy placement. http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__124 Video Blog LAGOS, NIGERIA: This week Martin Lindstrom is in Nigeria to check out how an outdoor campaign has attracted people’s attention. A number of palm trees are really radio towers for a local telecommunication operator, and has changed a normally bad looking traditional tele transmitter into a good looking tree, by using a well known symbol and a sense of humour. He refers also to a well remembered IKEA-campaign in Copenhagen and Richard Branson’s airship stunt over the center of London towards British Airways – it certainly doesn’t have to be boring to be in charge of an outdoor marketing thrust. http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__125 Video Blog ISTANBUL, TURKEY: In the borderline between Europe and Asia new methods are taken in use to keep up revenue. Construction sites are changed into big artificial castles with the product name all over it, and an insurance company is using man-size dolls dressed like burglars on the balcony’s of buildings to create attention to the idea of getting an insurance against theft. Martin Lindstrom talks about taking chances, running on the edge and using provocative ways of drawing attention to the product, both offline and online, to secure a dialogue between costumer and company. Change the usual commercial into an unusual with a different angle – and watch what happens! http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__126 Video Blog NICOSIA, CYPRUS: How can a flag be used to expose a country? In the divided Cyprus in the Mediterranean the Turk people has decided to put a big Turkish flag on a hillside on the Greek part of the island. It is lid up by thousands of light balls to send a friendly regard to their neighbours on the other side. Martin Lindstrom explains how several ways of underground branding can be used to put a country in the eye of the international tourists. He gives an example of how the Oscar winning movie “Slumdog Millionaire” is supposed to increase the number of visitors to India by more that 8 % next year, and other ways of making the global audience draw attention to the qualities of your country. http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__127 Video Blog SAN FRANCISCO, USA: Martin Lindstrom reports from the west coast of the USA, where he gives advices on how to tempt more costumers in to the stores, in spite of the actual economical crisis. Could it be an idea to appeal to the more practical sides of your product? Could the possible weakness of a product be turned into a strength? The example is of how the producers of the South Korean car Hyundai offers a special buy-back-guarantee to new costumers, in case their job situation changes in an unfavourable direction. Finally Martin suggest to look for opportunities to set up strategic alliances, as well among the brands on the global scene as between stores next door to each other on the local marketplace in any small town. http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__128 Video Blog TEL AVIV, ISRAEL: In this video Martin Lindstrom interviews one of the directors behind the Apple movie, to understand the connection between the Apple brand and the consumers. The Apple community shows a very high loyalty towards the brand and its CEO, Steve Jobs. One of the secrets behind the strong Apple brand is partly its ability to innovate new products like the iPod and the iPhone, and partly their way of keeping a great deal of mystery around their product developments that has resulted in millions of fan blogs and websites just waiting for new things for them to look forward to. Based on these facts Lindstrom has some good points in general, concerning involving the community and nursing the fans of the brand, to be at the forefront of rumours and comments on the brand on the internet to prevent “bad standing” in the market and finally to realise that the true power of the brand is in the hands of the consumers – they in the end decide whether a brands popularity is increasing or decreasing. http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__129 Video Blog HONG KONG, CHINA: Martin Lindstrom this time focuses on the new generation of product placement at it takes place om the internet in China, where youngsters spend more time on the net than on watching TV. In the succesful net-series "Lucys diary" the consumers are participating in deciding what Lucy is going to do every dag, and in this case the brand Clinique from Estée Lauder has a leading role. The story is tailored to the brand, and in that way linked to the audience as well. He underlines that the brand is taking the lead - the product is in the center and the show is designed around it. If the brand makes sense in context to the story, the connection to the interactive consumers is allready made. This is how the future of brand-building is materializing: through a net-show where show and brand establish a relation to the consumer. He predicts that more of these interactive shows is to come in the near future, containing this much more smart product placement standard. Just wait and see...... http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__130 Video Blog From the international fair of luxury furniture in Milan, Italy, Martin Lindstrom is explaining how the fashion brands more and more team up with the furniture business. With Armani starting their so called casa-concept Diesel is next in line to take over the baton by releasing a whole new line of everyday furniture, appealing to ordinary people. The purpose is clearly to grasp a part of the enormous 12 billion euro furniture market and branding Diesel even further in the eyes of the costumers. Besides earning more money using the convergence strategy the idea is to bring more people close to what they really want, even if they do not have a lot of money to spend – Lindstrom underlines the strength in offering a lot more people the air of luxury for a modest investment http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__131 Video Blog Martin Lindstrom is telling about the brilliant single-serving-concept, introduced in the Philippines capitol by the Swiss Nestlé company a few decades ago. The whole idea is to offer small amounts of various products like coffee, tea, perfume, chocolate and so on for the costumers to buy, even if they have only little money in the pocket. The estimate is, that between 30 to 50 percent of the market across the Asian Pacific is in the hands of single-serving-products. Big is not so beautiful anymore, small is suitable! He informs you about Hyundai's buy-back-guarantee, a concept for car producer to stand up against the economical crisis and finally Lindstrom encourages to come closer to the audience in order to understand more about how they change their willingness to buy - the purpose is to be at front edge and in this way adapt the brands to the different costumer behaviour in the market http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__132 Video Blog Martin Lindstrom interviewes Seth Godin, the bestselling author of "The purple cow", "Sunday meatball" a.o., about the nature of charity. Godin gives os something to consider, for instance the fact that a lot of people are allmost proud of not donating anything to charity at all. Another point is that there are numerous individual reasons for people to give away money without considering having anything in return. For that reason, says Godin, it is allmost imposssible to wrap a charity concept around a brand, so perhaps it is not necessary to try and do so. Bottomline is, according to Seth Godin, that we will still be cheated and lied to by cynical producers, but in the end, when a company really stand up for a good cause like the climate and connects with people who care, it will almost certain become a success. http://www.martinlindstrom.com/site_files/main_content/blog_player.php/id__133 Video Blog