Introduction

In 1841, the Scottish journalist Charles Mackay published an essay entitled “Extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds”. It is in fact a popular belief that people usually get dumb when they gather into crowds. James Surowiecki’s book discusses several situations where this is absolutely wrong, and collective perception, behaviour, or problem-solving can in fact outperform any given individual. He further stresses that, for such a “wisdom of crowds” to happen, certain conditions must be met. (more…)

The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding

1. The Law of Expansion: The power of a brand is inversely proportional to its scope. Trying to be all things to all people undermines the power of the brand. The strength of brands lies in becoming synony-mous with a single category. Brands that spread themselves across categories lose brand focus, identity, and ultimately market share.

2. The Law of Contraction: A brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus. By narrowing the focus to a single category, a brand can achieve extraordinary success. Starbucks, Subway and Dominos Pizza became category killers when they narrowed their focus.

3. The Law of Publicity: The birth of a brand is achieved with publicity, not advertising. A new brand must be capable of generating favorable public-ity in the media or it won’t have a chance in the marketplace. Anita Roddick built the Body Shop into a global brand with no advertising, but with massive amounts of publicity. On the other hand, Miller Brewing spent $50 million in advertising to launch a brand called Miller Regular. The brand generated no publicity and very little sales. (more…)

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How consumers from different countries perceive global brands such as Coca Cola and Nike? When talking about global brands we could have a tendency to remember the last Mc Donalds that was wrecked by some anti-globalization activists. However the fact is that Mc Donalds feeds 52 million people in more than 100 countries each day. Therefore it doesn’t seem that global brands have any trouble to export their values. Here are some of the strengths of global brands. (more…)

A cool table viewed on the Kolbrenerusa.com

I found out a new marketing term: pinko marketing. What a strange term. The big idea is that we are coming back to the roots of commerce which is communication. The contact and the building of trust between community members are back at the core of commerce. In fact pinko marketing is not well defined but here are some elements that characterize pinko marketing: (more…)

Brands that achieve the status of icons succeed because they forge a deep connection with the culture. In essence, they compete for culture share. The strategic focus is on what the brand stands for, and not how the brand performs. Icons are valued because, through them, people get to experience powerful myths. (more…)

A new brand world

#1 All aboard the brandwagon
Relying on brand awareness has become marketing fool’s gold

A brand is the result of a synaptic process in the brain. (more…)