The Legal Paradox of too much Marketing Success

In the world of branding, it is often that the ultimate goal that marketing wants to pull off is to turn their product brands into a ubiquitous household name. To some extent, a number of brands have managed to pull this off. Firms like Google, Photoshop and Xerox come to mind as they have been so well-known. These well known names have even become verbs with the meaning "to search online", "to manipulate digitally" and "to make copies". In fact, there is an online database filled with examples of such proprietary eponyms.

However, at the same time, the legal teams of these companies are freaking out as they see this as an improper usages of their trademarks. possibly detrimental to their brandname's integrity? They are beginning to set guidelines for the proper usage of their brand names, like Adobe is doing for their Photoshop product. A blog post regarding Google's trademark also appeared in the The Official Google Blog. From the legal perspective, the danger lies in that if the brand name becomes to generic and becomes accepted by people in such a manner, it would cause them to become generic names that are not owned by anyone. In order to avoid losing their multi-million dollar trademarks in this manner, companies have to show that they are actuvely trying to to stop their trademarks from gradually becoming generic and some possible avenues are to run advertisement campaigns to stregthen their brand names or to urge the public at large and sometimes writers specifically to make use of trademarks properly.

But, there is some doubt as to the effectiveness of such guidelines on external parties. Within these companies, it would be sensible and very possible for them set protective rules on how these elements of their corporate identity ( like logos and taglines) to present a coherent and consistent image of the company. A sensible first step which any company should take.

So, paradoxically, what is probably the greatest measure of marketing success for companies may in fact turn out to be a great legal problem for them.

[ Also : Digg - The Photoshop trademark must never be used as a Verb ]

Cool Advertising

In the crowded advertising arena these days, marketeers often try all ways and means to created eye-grabbing ad campaigns while the consumers typically have grown to filter these ads out of their minds.

So why not break the fourth wall and have some fun with the consumer? I'm sure most people enjoy a good chuckle...

This was probably do for it's ability to get the "huh" from guys walking past.


This I believe was a campaign for plastic surgery (read: nose jobs). Don't see how most people will get the alignment right though it is a pretty fun idea.


This ad turns unsuspecting commuters into Afro-headed music listeners of their music station!


I don't see how we will ever see this in Singapore but this one does make a humorous statement!


The world needs more of these kind of ads!


[via : would you believe it - spam mail from friends!]

Top 100 World Brands and why I think they are there.

Great, this year's Interbrand rankings for the 100 most valuable brand names are out here.

Branding has always been something of an interest for me because it is the art of how companies shape themselves in the eyes of their consumers. An important skill for a firm to have in both good times and bad.

Not surprisingly, the top of the board are ruled by huge multi-nationals whom have spend decades on bringing their brand name and values around the globe. I'm pretty sure that many of those top contenders such as Coca-cola and Nokia have spend a substantial amount of advertising dollars into both the traditional media as well as experimenting with new avenues that the Internet offers.

Top mover (in terms of percentage increase) on the list is Internet Behemoth - Google (46%). With its rapidly expanding range of products and services coupled its strong business fundamentals in such a volatile industry, its brand value has managed to outpace its closest competitor, Yahoo (15%) , by almost 3 times. Also notable is eBay's 18% increase in brand value, notching it 7 steps higher this year. These are the only 3 Internet Firms on this list and I'm would think that the nature of their business would allow them to increase brand value fairly rapidly over the foreseeable future.

Amongst the top ten, its interesting to see that only non-US companies, Nokia (#6) and Toyota (#7) , have seen double-digit brand value increases of 14% and 12% respectively. Perhaps this could be attributed to the fact that both companies are driving hard into project their brands into the emerging markets of Asia while developing their interests in North America at the same time. Nokia's strength may derive from its aggressive expansion in the Asia markets, most notably China. Toyota may also be doing well in the States as more consumers are ditching their SUVs other gas guzzlers in favour of the more efficient Japanese Automobiles in the face of rising gas prices.

Its going to be interesting to see how these movers and shakers will be evolving to capture more brand value and mind share this year.

Top 100 Global Brands List [via : Digg ]

Great McDonald’s Billdboard Ad

Pretty creative to make a billboard ad into a helluva big sundial. No idea why we aren’t seeing more of this kind of creativity over here though.

[via : Chicago Business ]

Telling the world you are different

Differentiating from the rest is something that many strive to achieve and few actually get. So sometimes, keeping things simple and with a dash of humor goes a long way as the video below shows :

Unique Selling Point

This is an article inspired after reading BL's "What makes you different" in sgentrepreneurs

Let's face it, there are tons of companies offering products (when I mention product, read as "products and service" ) in the market out there. In the world of entrepreneurs and investors, it's pretty important for anyone looking to startup to fully understand where they stand on the competitive radar in their industry.

Below is a kind of list on some of the pointers I gleaned over interacting with successful entrepreneurs, investors and from doing good ol' reading:

1. What is my Unique Selling Point (USP) ?
   This is what sets you aside from the rest. In existing industries, one useful technique from the book Blue Ocean Strategy is to examine all the factors that make up your product, cut back on those which are not important and find new factors which can push you to another playing field.
   
2. Are there competitors with the same USP?
   If so, go check up the word "unique" in the dictionary and try from No. 1 again.
3. I can't seem to find competitors!
   If you hit this, be very very afraid. Because it means that either you haven't dug deep enough in your research or you are trying to meet a non-existent demand. Try harder.
   
4. VC - "But I have seen this exact idea crash before!"
   In this scenario, you would hope to have already done your homework on that failure as case study or be able to explain how your USP is different and will substain and scale your idea.
   
5. How do I continue to stay ahead of the pack with my USP?
   This is a pretty good question and it seems so far that the only answer to this one is to continue to innovate and evolve. Case in point, just think of how far Google would have gone if they only stuck to perfecting their search engine?
6. Most importantly - Does your USP make a difference to your consumers?
   Back to the product-centric VS customer-centric argument. The best product in the world, packed with a gazillion features, that does not have a demand makes for a pretty lousy business idea.
   

Definitely not a complete listing so do drop me a comment if you think anything's missing!


(PS: Guy Kawasaki has a good post on Cialdini's Influence on his blog)

Simplicity in Branding

When it comes to branding and marketing, you don't want to tell your users when, what, how, where and who to use your products. If you do, congratulations on cutting down your user base on those factors.

Nothing beats the power of simplicity. 'nuff said

[via romph on youTube ]

2005 Technology Brand Scorecard

This report just in from Forrester Research - 2005 Technology Brand Scorecard.

The survey was done on 2 scales of "Brand Potential" and "Brand Trust amongst regular users". And boy are the results interesting.

Bose, Dell and Apple seem to widely recognised as winners in the combination of these factors and their individual branding efforts have paid off in their beoming well-known and trusted brands. In terms of potential, seems like the gold medal goes to Bose and Dell. Personally, I think Bose managed to build some scarcity around it and niched it as a high-end audio device maker. Dell may rank highly also due to the unique scalability of their business model as well as the recently announced takeover of Alienware, signalling their break into the high-end computer gaming market.

On the other end of the spectrum lies big-boy Microsoft. Their marketing executives should be feeling the heat now with popular distrust amongst their users. Their brand potential also scored on the low end, proving the theory that "whatever goes up must come down". Seems like the repeated delays for Vista and the annoucement of their new OS subscription model are not sitting too well with us end users.

[via: arstechnica ]