"Brand is shorthand for...

the collection of experiences and memories and expectations that people have for what it's going to be like to deal with you the next time."

Two business thought leaders I hold in very high esteem--Seth Godin and Tom Peters--express their views on what a brand is in today's networked world in this video.

Remote sensing

Picture this. An ad that you find terribly irritating appears on TV. You pick up the remote and switch channels immediately. The 'click' on your remote is captured and fed into a feedback system for the advertiser.

This is already happening in the US--albeit in a limited manner--thanks to Google's deal with EchoStar's Dish Network. Google's plans obviously go beyond just a feedback system. The Internet giant's foray into television advertising is a step towards changing the way TV ad inventories are bought and sold.

"Can Google Crack the TV Ad Market?", asks Brian Morrissey in a piece on Adweek.
[Pic credit: Michael König]

(Customer) Happiness is a state of being

"It's interesting to note that marketers trying to maintain market share have a lot of work to do in reminding us that we're happy," writes Seth Godin in a blogpost titled Destroying Happiness.

While this seems obvious, in reality there are very few companies who take the job of 'keeping existing customers happy' seriously. Take a look around you. New customers are getting better deals on home loans than the old, loyal ones. "Sales desks" and "Service desks" often present pictures of stark contrast. Many credit card companies promise lifetime free cards to new customers while happily billing annual fee to existing customers.

Companies often rely on ugly "pain of switching" tactics to keep their existing customers from straying, while they go on a wooing spree to get in new customers. For instance, loan providers do it by imposing a steep balance transfer foreclosure fee.

In today's connected world, there's no bigger advertising than referral by a happy customer. No amount of Marcom spin can match that. Keeping customers happy goes much beyond sending them mail-merged birthday greetings. It includes taking a hard look at your business processes to ensure that the existing customer gets more than she expects.

Do you want bad word-of-mouth to negate your advertising? Or positive word-of-mouth to take your advertising to the realm of believability? Take your pick. This or this.

Did you search for a saree?

I don't know about others, but this saree has definitely caught the attention of bloggers. The designer (Satya Paul?) could've put the sponsored links on the blouse :)

Idiot box gets smarter

Targeted ads are all set to hit the television. Not in India, not just yet, but in the US.

Six of the largest cable operators in the US have jointly launched a startup that will use customer data to beam targeted ads.

“The vision is to put dog food ads only in front of customers who have dogs and to give people the ability to push a button on their remotes and order a coupon or a brochure, or buy a product,” says the CEO of the new venture.

Red Herring has the details.

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.

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!"