The Attention Deficit: Step away from your Facebook!

Are we too attached to our mobile devices? This television ad from Thailand says it all with very few words. The point is not that mobile devices and content are bad, it’s more about what experiences you are missing, by being glued to the stuff that doesn’t matter. The most powerful social content is the amazing real life events experiences you have to share with your friends, not mundane everyday tweets…Nobody really cares if you checked in at a restaurant unless it’s all about an amazing experience. Social content about true fun, discovery and people living a real life. This is what activates social media. Everything else is a waste of time, because it’s taking away from the experiences you could be having.

Are you watching The Apprentice?

If not, you should, because if you know what happened on the show, you could win a trip for 2 to NYC & a tour of NBC Studios! The Apprentice airs 10 ET/PT on Thursdays on NBC. Then visit att-mobiletv.com/apprentice to play AT&T Mobile TV “Watch and Win”.

Free Tequila on Cinco de Mayo!

Is there any other day to launch a Tequila brand? Tequilador will make it’s U.S. debut at RS Lounge at 35 East 21st Street
between Broadway and Park. With a short window of opportunity between FDA approval and Cinco de Mayo, Luis Enrique Tappan, president of Let’s Import NYC, decided to take advantage of an empty club undergoing renovations and to use social media to make the May 5th date. Foodies and press are invited to taste the first bottles of the 100% Agave Tequila just off the trucks from Mexico from between 6:30pm and 7:30pm. There will also be a hearty appetizer menu to complement the Tequila which is very smooth.

The Yankees are doing more than just cleaning up on the field!

Event marketers should spend an evening at the new Yankee Stadium to witness some real innovations with in-venue marketing. While what they have now is pretty impressive, this is just the tip of the iceberg as fans interact more and more with their mobile devices.

Anxiously awaiting to see if I got the Body Magic account!

Seriously, I actually did have a meeting last week for a women’s undergarment distributer in New Jersey. The place was perhaps even more ‘MadMenesque than this illustration, in a restaurant called Hell’s Kitchen which has a sort of strip club decor, complete with retro pin-ups. The place was a random selection but but arguably a perfect venue to discuss a body slimming undergarment! Anybody up for a three martini lunch?

Location! Location! Location!

 Location marketing  is becoming more and  more appealing to advertisers who need to  sell everything from food to fuel and oh  yes, real estate. Just pull out your iPhone  and  download the free app from realtors  like  Trulia.com and drive around to see  what’s  available. The app will not only  show a list  with pictures and asking  prices, the  agent’s name , phone number  and email, but also GPS navigation and a  link to their  website (with more details  about the  property if you can tolerate  zooming in). This type of  marketing is  changing  the way we sell  many things.  Dealing with  real estate brokers and auto  dealers will involve less haggling, schlepping and handholding and more discovery and deal making. Strategic branding will replace what we’ve known mostly as brand advertising. Example: Auto dealers and their strategic branding partners will discover new locations to park their showroom vehicles to get more than just a little visual exposure. Realtors will have multiple open house tours and promotions featuring wine tastings etc. to literally drive traffic (or should I say, “have traffic drive itself”) to multiple locations experiencing homes staged for optimal ambiance. Why reach a customer when they are kicking back and watching the super bowl when you can reach them on location and in the act of looking for your products and services?

iBranding without the album artwork?

 

 

The iTunes model is emerging as a dominant approach to marketing everything from movies to restaurants on smart phones, but in rushing to get many of these ventures up and running a key component is missing. Album art found on iTunes is a rich, visually evocative representation of the music and the bands contained within. To truly tap into the success of iTunes, companies making a foray into the mobile space should consider the visual opportunities to engage lift and separate their brands.

The Art of Branding. Have We Lost It?

1929 Poster for Quick Drying Paint

 
 Other people have paintings in their living room, I have classic advertising posters. The one above is actually a self portrait of the artist, Leonetto Cappiello who painted the same scene on the paint can he is holding. A Poster can be a powerful branding device. It can communicate a mood or product attribute in seconds visually crossing language barriers words often stumble upon. In a world of royalty free stock images and cliché headlines, posters can still be very distinctive. Considering not many people put the art into posters the way they should, there’s a huge opportunity to stand out and perhaps be framed and hang on a wall for years. Not something media people talk about often, but when thirty seconds can still sell for thousands or even millions of dollars a poster can be used in many other formats such as a postcard, a t-shirt, an email, on a cell phone, on a coffee mug, on a train, in an airport and framed on a wall for years for far less. Famous restaurants like Chez Panisse in Berkeley California have used posters for marketing purposes for years and in fact sell them…Yes you heard me correctly, they SELL their marketing communications on their website. Now that’s strategic branding! The next time you talk to a media professional have them do the math on that one. Full color posters can often be folded and inserted into newspapers like the L.A. Times for far less than the actual page rate. The poster above is now probably worth more than Nitrolian’s entire marketing budget in1929! Posters that are framed are posters that are loved and achieve a following brands often set out to do, but too often miserably fail at.

Introducing the iPost. Say Goodbye to The Post Office!

Can a sophisticated Kindle like device actually replace the US Postal Service? Probably it will take Apple to come up with this, but think of all the time, natural resources and money it will save. Also the global market potential for such a device. We already know Apple will probably introduce a tablet device soon, but giving it a simple purpose like delivering the mail would make it surpass the iPod. Think of all the catalogs that could be delivered digitally and not printed at all saving millions of trees. Then there’s the millions of pounds of freight that would not require all that jet fuel and gasoline to deliver. And because like many Apple devices it would be made of aluminum and other highly recyclable components, we’re talking about one killer device environmentalists will love. Letters and books can be scribed and put to press the way they should be. The look of letterpress and fountain pens on parchment would bring back at least the look and feel of the lost art of fine letter writing and book publishing. The big innovation would be the ability to control the junk so you opt-in only to the things you want. Elderly people who need larger type to read, just adjust their settings. The visually impaired  have an audio feature they can turn on that makes their lives easier. The iPost is FREE. Who pays for it? Stamps. Yes, we keep the postage rates intact, just make the whole postal system a lot more efficient, user friendly and environmentally friendly.

Re-Branding The American Auto Industry

Almost anyone living outside of Detroit would agree the American auto industry has way too many brands. Brands like Mercury and GMC are not well differentiated while Jeep, Corvette and Hummer remain quite distinctive. This begs the question: “If we’re going to save the American auto industry, which brands are worth saving?” Somehow I can’t see Fiat making a decent Jeep. If it were my task I would get rid of the holding companies and save the brands. Let’s just call it United Auto Works, put Alan Mulally in charge, since he’s been doing a decent job at Ford and give some ownership stakes to the union workers who have survived. I’d keep the union and push to level the playing field with other global automakers with how their workers are compensated. When Americans get passionate about their cars it’s not a Ford, GM or Chrysler it’s a Corvette, Camaro, Jeep, Mustang. These are some of the brands that deserve to live on and to go on to a brighter future. Brands like Mercury, Pontiac and Dodge would not be a huge loss.