Slide Share got it right

If you’re looking for an excellent example of everything a good tagline does for a company, look at Slide Share. Theirs is Present Yourself.

Good taglines say what you do, what you do for me and they make me go hmmmm. This one says what their feature attraction is. You can upload your presentations that you have probably given a hundred times all by yourself.

The benefit is that as you share them, you are also present yourself in the best light you can as an expert in that field or profession. Your expertise comes through. The double meaning is a tagline standard. More meanings are more better.

This gets a warm reception from the Burning Bush.

Not all Brands are Cool

Just because Old Spice was able to turn something fairly mundane into something half way cool doesn’t mean everyone can or should try to do the same thing. Miracle Whip, I’m talking to you. I just had the pleasure of watching a You Tube ad for your product in front of my @Ke$ha video. Thanks for the bearded dude trying to talk hip/candidly about his love for the mayo. I didn’t like it, but it was well done, so keep the campaign ads coming in the new IAB format, and we’ll see what’s next and how that comes off.

Cool is different from like. You are trying to get people to like you because you’re cool. But you’re not cool. You’re mayo.

Sorry.

Liven up your Logo w Motion Graphics

It’s a great time to be in advertising and marketing. Brands can come alive like never before. With the Internet being what it is, and the Apple forcing everyone to go with HTML5, now is the time to take a look at that most essential visual element you own – your logo. Is it just sitting there? Yes? Then kick it’s feet off the couch and get it to move.

In the next brand meeting you have (yeah right) invite the motion graphics guy in and ask him how he or she would like to animate the logo for your online use. A few years ago, I realized that those companies that produced TV commercials always walked away with a little something extra: a fun logo that came alive on screen. But you don’t need to do a TV spot to bring your logo to life. Being online is reason enough.

Brands aren’t flat these days and your logo doesn’t need to be either – at least not all the time. On paper, of course, but online, bring it to life. Brands need to be fully rounded out, 360 degrees. A logo that rotates, shines, flashes, grows, or somehow reveals itself (your designer will figure that out so that it makes sense) will help bring out all the sides of your brand characteristics.

RIP USP. All hail the OEQ.

One of the age-old requirements for the sales funnel model, AIDA, was the unique selling/value proposition. The USP is the key to what makes you different. Simple enough. Don’t have one, invent one. Go further into a niche and own a category. And so from there, branding and advertising companies would build strategies and Trojan horses to try and ransack market share.

In a recent @TheCMOSite on @LinkedIn, “It’s Time To Bury The Marketing Funnel: Marketers Must Embrace The Customer Life Cycle” by
Steven Noble, he makes the claim that the sales funnel needs to be re-branded. He offers a very good new way of thinking about the branding life cycle that includes the constant and almost sexy way that brands touch people all over all the time. I agree, but wondered: Isn’t it time for the USP to go, too?

If only for new age comfort sake, I’m willing to call the one nugget that a company needs to stand out and create their own space as a “One Endearing Quality.” Softening the edge and move into more of a @guykawasaki vibe, the One Endearing Quality, not @Enchanted, will open up these emotion-based touch points that consumers are getting more and more comfortable with these days. Endear yourself to them over and over again, and they will reciprocate. Right Guy?

So I’m going to keep thinking about it and make it better. What do you think your own new USP should be called?

Branding miscue as easy as ABC.

ABC Television last night put on a brand display that was more than a head-scratcher. It demonstrated immense disregard for the two different audiences that got caught up in their mindless programming. The image went from sweet and adorable to S&M selling sex. Wow.

My daughter and I watched as ABC”s programming switched from the annual finale of America’s Funniest Home video – a very sweet video with an equally charming family of 6 winning. Their grand prize was five years worth of Disney vacations. The cross selling was almost illegal I would have thought, but the point is a great video won and the family was right out of Central Casting.

But then they went right into the opening number of the #BillboardAwards show with @rihanna opening up with her latest hit, oh, and opening up her legs as well. Not more than :45 seconds into the show she gave us all a white leather crotch shot. What? Where did that come from and why? @ABCTV went from family to late night entertainment at 8am. Then that lush @britneyspears showed up.

Plus the director blew the reveal shot when Brit took off her mask. Like the comatose dance moves didn’t give her away. Bad news ABC.You’re brand too a hit last night.

“Because” I said so. Uh, no.

Because it works. That’s the new campaign tagline for Weight Watchers. And I remembered it because it doesn’t work. Not for a tagline anyway, not sure about the product. Jennifer Hudson looks good so maybe it does. (Probably easier when you’re a celebrity whose job it is to look good.)

Why the because starter set for taglines doesn’t work will sound like the same old critique of mine: laziness. I can picture the scene now, two people concepting about the tag asking themselves the wrong question: “Why should people  use our product?”

After about a half hour, one of them said the tagline, they wrote it down, but hopefully knew it wasn’t really anything anyone else couldn’t or wouldn’t say, but they put it on the list and whammo – another crappy tagline fills some space.

This goes for all the taglines I’ve seen that do the Because thing. It’s cliche, hackneyed and I know I could do a better job given the resources, so don’t be lazy and give us something that excites us instead of a parent’s admonishment.

Hey pwc, how and what are you?

It is becoming clear that I like golf, and this weekend there was a big tournament. Really good coverage, at least a lot if it, I’m not a media critic, and it had an exciting and heartbreaking finish all around.

But there was one company that seemed to be nice guys sponsoring some feel-good stuff. The problem was, I had no idea who they were. And I watched lots of commercials and PSAs with their logo on them.

The company was PriceWaterhouseCooper. The name change was a good idea. Too long to begin with and they’re associated with scandal. Tyco and them. But if I didn’t get my face right up into the TV (or was it my phone?) and seek it out, I never would have known.

Bad advertising fail. Maybe the plan is to run under the radar with it? The financial industry is filled with a big bunch of rats, from Wall Street to Main Street. Informed Americans know this, but if you’re going to sponsor a major sporting event, at least don’t anger your viewers by not telling us who you are. We still won’t like  you, but we’ll know who you are at least.

Mike Rowe: A dirty lesson in branding

Mike Rowe’s recent testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation is funny, smart and above all, a lesson in how great brands are born. Read that again, the word is born.

Mike Rowe was born to do the job he has now because it runs in his family, according to him. His natural passion for the subject matter comes across the screen.  He constantly translates that essence of his brand and that’s the reason he’s so popular. You know what you’re gonna get with this guy every time. Is your brand as reliable or as well defined?

I’m not usually a fan of co-branding, but Mr. Rowe is the perfect Ford motor car spokesperson. Their brand wants to project what’s in his circle of core values.  Mike Rowe is hard-working, gets dirty and loves his Mama. Celerity spokespeople don’t always work, but this one is. His brand is that good.

Killing the Al Qaeda brand

Now that the CEO is dead and we can maybe find the rest of their CXO suite and kill them, a harder job is at our feet: killing the brand. It is so ingrained across the world, especially in the places where it can find more “followers’. The question is how do we kill it? What models can we leap from that have been successful? Soviet Union Premier Khrushchev attempts to erase Stalin’s image from the Soviet Union didn’t really take. Castro and Che Guevara were rival leaders and one had to go. That didn’t work for Castro, but his situation isn’t exactly the same as our. New Yorker magazine drew some comparisons about the burials of Che and bin Laden that make good reading. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/05/burial-lessons-from-che-to-bin-laden.html  Interesting that both wanted to sap the strength of America by drawing it into multiple theater wars. Only Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were dumb enough to take the bait and line their own pockets with blood money, but I digress. Switching gears, the artist formerly known as Prince is now Prince again.

The brand is strong for a few reasons, and defeating these is almost impossible. It has strong emotional ties, stronger than the intellectual side for sure. That makes for a strong brand. The brand is strong also because bin Laden articulated a strong mission statement: Bankrupt America. Kill Americans anywhere is the underlying call to action there. Another aspect to their strong brand hit me while watching Frontline  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/fighting-for-bin-laden/  last Sunday. On that side of the world, if they could, they would hit the “like” button for bin Laden on their version of Facebook. In that report, in the middle of nowhere Afghanistan (redundant), a no name tribal leader claimed to be Al Qaeda even though he clearly was not. He wanted to be part of the brand, so he is.

Killing the Al Qaeda brand is a big job, bigger than stopping terrorists. There is no screening to catch brand devotion. No airport pat down that we can use. We need to create a greater emotional power that can overwhelm what that brand stands for. I would suggest a grass-roots effort that make America more likeable. As we would say at my old job, whaddaya got?

Killer Biography Channel branding icon

One of my Linked In branding discussion groups asked a question about what you look for in new designer hires. I answered one that can give me branding icons with legs. Not the logo mark, but something inside the mark that is versatile. Last night it hit me how strong the Bio channel brand was and it is their little red dot that makes it so. Check it out here: http://www.biography.com

Graphically, the put it to good use in their show promos and in their bug at the bottom of the screen. They have a really good brand heirarchy with the name and the nick name. Their show line up jumps off this platform and it supports them well. I admit I’m a biography fan. They are to this day still my favorite category of book.

Do you have any other branding icons that you think are as good or better than the Bio red dot? Please let me know. Thanks.