Category Archives: branding

Five hour energy versus coffee

Five hour energy has never been accused of making particularly highbrow ads.  Previously they offered themselves as a midday boost, but now they’ve gone after the morning ritual of coffee.  Strategically they’ve moved from creating a new occasion for their … Continue reading

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When Brands go Social

These days it’s all about social media.  If you aren’t on Facebook, then you just aren’t marketing.  It’s created a rush of entry to create fan pages for brands, even more so during the land grab that was vanity naming.  … Continue reading

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Top Chef and Product Placement and much more

I’ll freely admit that I’m a devoted fan of Bravo’s Top Chef.  As a foodie it’s one of the more interesting shows over all.  However, as a marketer, it’s fascinating in terms of marketing opportunities. Product placement is one of … Continue reading

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More on how worthless free has become

After my recent post on the death of free, I attempted to run an ad on Yahoo’s network for our free dating site, downtoearth.com.  The ad was pretty simple.  It text in the ad read simply Online Dating.  100% Free. … Continue reading

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When competitors react. Questionable brand strategy?

Gatorade for years has dominated the sports drink category.  The product itself was the stuff of legends.  The brand became an icon.  Who can forget “Be like mike?”  It’s orange lightning bolt is instantly recognizable.  Decades of research, including a … Continue reading

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The buzz and PR strategy of a rejected ad

The NFL and the super bowl have recently been the targets of an agressive buzz strategy that works quite well, unfortunately.   Submit an ad that gets rejected, but follows all of the listed rules.  GoDaddy went from just another web … Continue reading

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Black Hat Marketing and why it is bad

It wasn’t that long ago that I read this post by Max Kalehoff on SEO and Comment spam.  My blog gets hit by this mess quite frequently so I read it with fervent interest.  Max puts it simply: attention is … Continue reading

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Perfect Product Placement in 10 items or less?

Last night TBS aired an interesting experiment in blatant product placement last night with the new comedy 10 items or less.  The show was presented commercial free and with out interruptions.   The show was supported instead by two sponsors that … Continue reading

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The Brands of the Big 3 Automakers

Watching the plight of GM, Chrysler and Ford over the past several years has been a pretty depressing state of affairs.  Inevitably, people will say one of two things about the American automakers.  The first is that they no longer … Continue reading

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The PR value of management decisions

The CEO’s of the big 3 automakers recently got plenty of flack when they flew to Washington to beg for a bailout in their private jets.  When they came back a second time, they all drove hybrids.  Neither was a … Continue reading

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