Giving Brands a New Lease on Life
Media Post / Marketing Daily News

The last few years have brought us the concept of businesses deemed Too Big to Fail. What about brands? Is there such a thing as a brand Too Good to Fail? I believe there is. We all know that in the intangibles economy a brand name may represent enormous, often incalculable, value.

Allowing the brand to fade away, even under the most adverse of circumstances, could prove a far costlier proposition than whatever might be required to invest it with new life and purpose. In The Creative Business Idea Book, my colleagues address the issue of brand fatigue—and brand mortality—and offer up proven ways to bring a brand back among the living.

A good starting point is to rethink the business the brand is in, a tactic we employ across categories. A decade ago, a new client, a mattress manufacturer, was hurting. The company had been selling its revolutionary air-system mattress for years via direct marketing ads on late-night television. The pitch couldn't have been simpler: The adjustable mattress alleviates back pain. But the product's primary audience was simply not buying enough beds to keep the company afloat. The newly arrived CEO challenged us to come up with a campaign that would turn the business around.

Old Navy to Sell College Team Gear
Wall Street Journal

College athletic departments are getting more aggressive about profiting from their teams' brand names.

The goal is to move merchandising efforts beyond students and alumni to reach more casual fans and consumers. Next week, more than 70 of the country's largest college athletics programs will team up with Gap Inc. to sell branded clothes and accessories in its roughly 1,000 Old Navy stores across the U.S.

The move comes as schools look for ways to close the gap between what their sports programs bring in and what they cost, an issue that could grow more pressing, given the tightening of state budgets.

"There's an opportunity to reach a different consumer here and get more exposure for the brand," said Craig Westemeier, assistant athletic director at the University of Texas at Austin.

Ad Agencies Register Concern on Economy
Ad Week

On an "are-you-worried-about-the-economy" scale of 1 to 10 (10 being a repeat of the 2008 meltdown), agency chiefs are more worried than not that the glitchy economy will hurt their business through the rest of this year and into the early quarters in 2012.

So far, agency CEO and top media buyers are closely watching market indicators, specifically unemployment, consumer spending and confidence, and corporate profits. And while there’s much not to like about many of those benchmarks—on Friday, consumer sentiment hit a 31-year low, capping a week that saw the stock market lurch violently up and down—agency executives dismissed talk that the ad business was in any immediate jeopardy. The general read is that, unlike the great recession of 2008, which ripped a massive hole in the advertising economy, the recent volatility is not being caused by big banking juggling toxic assets, and therefore not as life threatening. Still…

Decoded: How Many Readers Really Use Magazine Ads’2-D Barcodes
AdAge

As quickly as interactive 2-D barcodes and symbols have spread through magazines -- check out Glamour's September issue, where you can scan Social SnapTags to "like" an advertiser on Facebook and get special offers—it's been hard to tell how many readers actually use the things.

It's fairly easy to find success stories, of course, such as Allure's "Free Stuff" issue, whose readers recently scanned Microsoft Tags more than 200,000 times in just three days. But what about the tech in general? Do readers get it? Do they want it?

New research is finally offering a better view of magazines and 2-D barcodes.

Four percent of magazine readers who noted ads with 2-D barcodes in the first half of this year actually took out their phones and snapped a picture at least once, according to GfK MRI Starch Advertising Research.

Many ads did better, of course: a Porsche ad in Men's Journal, a Microsoft Office ad in Working Mother and a bedding ad in Hemispheres, the in-flight magazine, all made GfK MRI Starch's list of the best-performing ads with 2-D barcodes. Among the people who saw the Porsche ad in Men's Journal, for example, 17% took a picture of its code.

Chrysler Takes SRT On The Road
Marketing Daily News

Chrysler Group is bringing performance cars and drivers to events around the country to get the word out about its SRT (Street and Racing Technology) sub-brand. The road show, called “SRT High Performance Tour” features four drivers, and the 2012 Dodge Charger SRT8, Dodge Challenger SRT8, Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8 and Chrysler 300 SRT8.

The cars and SUVs will visit over 40 clubs and events in the next four months starting on Aug. 12 at the Walter P. Chrysler Museum in Auburn Hills, Mich., and ending in November at the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) show in Las Vegas.

Data Hygiene: Crucial To Your Brand
Marketing Daily News

These days, marketers and brand owners pay good money to reach their target audiences through list marketing. Indeed, they often pay an outside vendor as much as $500 CPM impressions to reach what they expect to be their target audience. Depending on how targeted or "clean" the list actually is, this type of campaign could reap great ROI. Unfortunately, not all vendors keep clean lists, which can cause some undue harm to your brand.

However helpless marketers and brand owners may feel to make a difference in the industry, the truth is that they can, in fact, help turn list marketing around. By outsourcing to only trustworthy list-rental vendors, they have the power to set new industry standards for clean data. Specifically, they should look for list owners that offer permission-based lists, so the recipients will be more likely targets. Alternatively, they can contract with a platform that offers good data hygiene practices and has the capability to remove bad or invalid email addresses and non-permissioned addresses and spam traps. (In addition, clients of these companies get the added bonus of more targeted results.)

Making sure records are clean before a campaign is executed means a higher level of in-box delivery and increased open-and-click rates. Recent data from Harte-Hanks also supports this. According to its Postfuture Index, overall delivery rates across all industry sectors increased from 93% in 2009 to 95% in 2010, and bounce rates averaged only 5%, compared with 7% in 2009. The company attributes these numbers partly to list owners maintaining clean data.

All is not lost, but to ensure list marketing is not the downfall of your brand, marketers and brand owners must demand cleaner lists. For their part, vendors must commit to the cleanest data practices possible. With these steps clearly outlined and followed, the list marketing industry will return to its former luster, and subsequently ensure a stellar brand reputation remains intact.