Sex: part of the oldest profession and one of the most powerful forces of human nature. Unsurprisingly, sex is used extensively in communications and advertising. The day after Hugh Hefner passed away, Grain director Madelyn Postman discussed the Playboy brand on BBC’s Talking Business with Aaron Heslehurst. Here’s the segment, and an analysis of how Playboy branded sex itself. Whether men really think about sex…
1. How do we position ourselves to get maximum benefits from the merger? First and foremost, further education colleges (which mostly serve learners aged 16-18) need students and so a merged college needs a brand that is memorable and attractive. Existing students need to welcome and identify with the new identity, but it is also vitally important to reach new audiences and attract students who…
Psychographic targeting threatens a dark future. I read an interesting article recently on how a large proportion of marketing professionals think they are spending too much on their digital marketing and are unsure of the returns but are still planning to invest more next year. It sounds like madness but of course this is true of many aspects of marketing communications spend. We’ve come a…
TEDxLondon “Throw those curtains wide. One day like this a year will See me right,” we sing. Hugh Montgomery The Earth will survive But we, foolish humankind Have hit self-destruct. Emily Milan Rea Iron willed teenager Leaves behind a hundred no’s To find the one yes. Ndidi Okezie Teach First: achieving equality for children in education. Shapla Salique Britain-Bangladesh: Harmonium and guitar, Vocals, folk and…
Square. Slack. Sea. These words could soon mean a lot more to you than their literal meaning. They are all on Interbrand’s 2017 list of Breakthrough Brands, the companies that are rising head and shoulders above their peers and breaking through to the level where they are soon to become household names. The 40 companies that have made it onto the list have some factors…
Brand “Easter” – is it really Christian? Every year, for the past ten years, Cadbury and the National Trust have teamed up to run a joint chocolate egg hunt promotion over the school Easter holidays. A great idea that until this year was called the “Easter Egg Trail”. But after 10 years, a rebrand to keep things fresh and reposition to a wider target market…
You can’t tick a box saying “exclude terrorist sympathisers” but you can exclude websites that are not aimed at your target market. For a company that built its billions by ranking search results, it’s surprising that Google and its subsidiary YouTube have not been able to properly rank their content providers according to how safe it is to advertise with them. Following an investigation started…
Names – as Waitrose has just discovered – can be unintentionally misleading. Waitrose has found itself on the end of negative publicity from both the National Farmers’ Union and customers for calling its range of ready meals “British”. Waitrose chose the name to reflect the origin of the recipes, for example lamb hotpot and shepherd’s pie. However, other people interpreted the label to mean British…
The National Federation of Property Professionals (NFoPP) has rebranded and repositioned as the umbrella brand Propertymark and the changes, developed by Grain Creative, are aiming to significantly disrupt the estate and letting agency market in the UK. Through its membership associations, the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) and the Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA), the new Propertymark brand has over 4,000 member branches…
Relations between Iceland the country and Iceland the supermarket chain have been frosty for quite some time. And the cold war warmed up in November as the country announced it was going to legally challenge the use of the company’s trademark, arguing that while the supermarket has attempted to freeze them out from using the word Iceland, it has benefitted from positive media coverage about the…
There are very few brands that are quite as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde as Marks & Spencer. The marketing management must go through exceptional highs and lows during focus groups. First the moderator asks about M&S Food and Wine and hears the consumer perceptions of innovation, aspiration, quality and reliability, but when the questions move on to clothing they find hostility and indifference to ranges…
The Rio Olympics Creates a Rash of Sponsorship Campaigns Global brands pay big money to sponsor the Olympic games. They will all have their own specific objectives for this activity which will include metrics such as engendering employee pride, building brand awareness and positive brand engagement, increasing customer loyalty and, if they’ve played their cards right, an uplift in sales. Whatever their specific targets, they…
Why Farming Out Branding Is A Good Idea If you go back to the 1960s and 1970s, supermarket own label brands were almost universally the equivalent of today’s value brands and the Tesco Delamare and Golden Ring brands were seen as relatively poor quality but very low cost. A reflection of the Jack Cohen “pile it high sell it cheap” ethos. Since then, Tesco have…
In a perfect world most companies would never need to rebrand because they got it so comprehensively right first time. The logo, colours and typefaces would start out fresh and exciting – the epitome of the new brand’s values – and by the end of the brand’s life they would be classic icons where the brand’s look and feel has become the generic of their…
Savse: how would you pronounce this? ‘Sav-say’ or ‘sav-see’ or ‘saves’? This nutritious and tasty drinks brand has spent quite a lot of money to clarify exactly this. Not only is it a waste of their time, money and effort when they should be focusing on promoting the brand, it also creates confusion. On this billboard, the pronunciation guide ‘sav-say’ is actually larger than the brand name Savse!…