April 30, 2007

Be The Brand

We were walking along a square in Florence and noticed a sign that said The Mercedes Store. There was a handsome Mercedes Benz in the window, and I figured this was a local car dealership.

Not at all. It was a store featuring all kinds of stuff with Mercedes Benz logos. It was all about extending the Mercedes brand beyond the cars. Stores like this featuring Ferrari merchandise are commonplace in Italy...but, Mercedes?

Fact is, everyone is stretching their brand across a larger landscape. Caroline Nuttall passed along an article today from the LA Times about companies creating activities linked to their products or services. For example, the Nike store in Portland has a running club that meets - you guessed it - in the store. And Whole Foods there hold a monthly "singles night" with wine tastings and snacks.

It's all about "experiential" branding...people meeting people with similar lifestyles.

We recently profiled customers of one of our clients by lifestyle, and now we're marketing to them in ways that connect with each respective lifestyle. It beats traditional demographic and psychographic profiling, because it relates more powerfully to how customers interact with your product or service.

How Fresh is Your Logo?

If you're so used to seeing it that you hardly notice it (yes, that can make sense!), maybe it's time to freshen it up. It's a painstaking and inevitably expensive process, but logos are so revealing.

Saks Fifth Avenue recently refreshed its logo, reaching back to the 1973 version and then slicing and dicing it (quite literally) many different ways, so that it can appear in numerous formats but still be recognizable. It's very clever and contemporizes the store that - like any department store - could easily have drifted into stodgy obscurity.

Moving Billboards

The presidential political season is heating up, and we're starting to see a bunch of bumper stickers around town. We used to call them "moving billboards." Consumers choose to display them (which is an interactive experience that strengthens the consumer's bond to their candidate), and they are seen around town (like billboards).

Since consumers select what they display, the presence of bumper stickers can tell you a lot about the mood of the electorate.

With that in mind, it's not surprising that in 2004 there were 4 million magnetic "Support Our Troops" ribbons sold by the leading manufacturer...while last year, only 48,000 were sold.