Friday 16 May 2008

Hip, Innovative, Madonna, Airline, Atlantic...

Apparently these are some of the words that are most associated with the brand Virgin.


An online project by Noah Brier tries to capture brand perception by having people like you and me tag brands with words/phrases that pop up in our heads when we hear the brandname.

Some of the things you can do on the site are:

  • View the words/phrases that people have associated with popular brands

  • Tag brands with your word/phrase association

  • Guess the brand by looking at its tags
Go, have some fun at Brand Tags.

Monday 12 May 2008

Make big promises; overdeliver

"If you can define great marketing in fewer words than that, you win," says Seth Godin.

This is something we Marcom professionals struggle with almost every day. If there is some obvious promise in a product/service, we shout it out from the rooftops. We often end up highlighting the shiny parts of the promise, cleverly 'hiding' the jagged edges using asterisks, fineprint or some such. The result is dangerous--trusting customers turn into cynics, love turns into mistrust and topline turns southward.

Marketeers often think of their roles as getting the customers to the purchase point and nothing beyond. "Our job is to get the horse to the water but we cannot make it drink." The fact is if the horse doesn't drink, everybody will perish.

Real marketing is all about telling believable but remarkable stories and then delivering an experience that takes the story to a new realm of believability. Easier said than done, or as Seth Godin puts it, "Just because it's only four words doesn't mean it's easy!"