Another bruise for Apple, but will it fester?

When your product is so hotly anticipated and your brand such an iconic and successful one – anything you do or say is bound to be criticised, as Apple is finding out.

The Apple iPhone, the most hotly anticipated technology launch of the past two years, has its first television ad campaign banned by the UK advertising watchdog for being misleading. Not exactly a good start considering the handset will set you back a hefty £240. It’s a lot of money for a product that can’t deliver on its advertising promise.

Further damage to the brand stems from a class action lawsuit that was lodged in America over misleading claims about the speed of iPhone services.

Some customers also claim problems with the 3G hardware, alleging that they have experienced missed calls and slow internet downloads and are trying to take the handsets back to where they bought them.

Apple is still struggling to fix problems around marquee products delivered at its product launch in July. The launch now looks to be one of the company’s most stumble-filled releases since the return of CEO Steve Jobs.

Apple is distributing a second software update to the iPhone 3G, but at least some users report it doesn’t fix the problems many users have reported, with dropped calls and slow data speeds.

Despite all this, Apple still managed to sell four million units worldwide in the first 20 days of it being available. But now the hype is over, can the brand withstand and overcome the array of bad press and problems?

Virgin Radio and Brand Strategy VIP gift giveaway competition

Brand Strategy wrote earlier this month about attending the V Festival. Now those lovely folks at Virgin Radio have kindly given us a selection of branded goodies from their corporate partners to give away to Brand Strategy Blog readers. We’ve already distributed a few of these goodies to our readers who send us regular feedback, including some Liz Earle skincare products, Jose Cuervo tequila, some Johnnie Loves Rosie hair items and James Brown hair products and a cheeky silver bullet from Ann Summers but we kept a few in reserve for our blog fans.

So what’s on offer?

• A cosmetics bag from make-up brand Ruby & Millie (it’s called Cosmetic Bag 01)….it’s small but perfectly formed in a lovely slightly silvery metallic white leather.

• A very attractive – and faintly raunchy – ‘Hope Babydoll’ nightdress in black from lingerie brand Knickerbox. It’s a size medium.

• A pair of Cushee chocolate/adriatic blue women’s flip-flops. These are recycled shoes made from PET plastic, textiles and hemp. They are good for the environment as well as being comfy. They are a US size 8, which is about around a women’s 6 in the UK or 39 in Europe.

You can win one these lovely prizes by sending an email to Ruth.Mortimer@centaur.co.uk with the subject line ‘Virgin Radio competition’ and the answer to the following question:

“Which band (recently reformed) were the top headliners on Sunday at the V Festival 2008 in Hylands Park?”

Please state which gift you’d like in order of preference. The gifts will be handed out on a first-come, first-serve basis so please let us know which one you would like if your first choice isn’t available. And when they’re all gone, they’re all gone, so sorry if you don’t get one!

Energy drinks continue to boom through the gloom

You’d be hard pushed to find a business or sector that hasn’t been affected by the credit crunch in some way – however, despite their high cost and premium labels energy drinks are soaring in popularity. Could it be all that extra work we’re doing because we can’t afford to do anything else?

Drinks are hot – even when its not a really hot summer. A recent report from research firm Mindbranch found that the UK has the largest European food and drink sales through convenience stores with a value of £21.9 billion.

Meanwhile, market research firm Mintel reports that the retail market for energy drinks is now valued at $4.8 billion (£2.4bn), a growth rate of over 400 per cent from 2003.

The number of “energy drinkers” is still growing briskly, according to Mintel. In 2003, only nine per cent of adult respondents to Mintel’s survey said they drank energy drinks, that figure has risen to 15 per cent in 2008.

Teens have embraced energy drinks even faster. Mintel’s latest survey of teenagers revealed 35 per cent regularly consume energy drinks, up from 19 per cent in 2003.

Could it be the Generation Y effect? Generation Y is known as the ‘hard workers’. Putting in, on average, more than 40 hours a week of work. They go to the gym, buy expensive technologies and are constantly on the go – energy drinks are the answer to keep them going.

Nostalgia products make a comeback in credit-crunch US?

We hear that what with all the doomy, gloomy recession stuff hanging over the US, nostalgia is coming back (ha!) in a big way. Now we hear via blog Gawker that in America, marketers are considering bringing back brands including:

Kellogg’s Hydrox, a type of biscuits competing with Oreos, discontinued in 2003

Eagle snacks, now set to appear in vending machines

But as yet, the report says the caffeine-free coffee substitute Postum which was discontinued last year after starting production in 1895 has yet to make a confirmed comeback….

For more on this area, read this New York Times article.

Breast Cancer Care: Allen Leighton, Stuart Rose, Jacqueline Gold and Val Gooding stand up for the charity

Breast Cancer Care has announced a Gala Dinner to raise funds with participation from some of the top brand leaders: Allan Leighton (Royal Mail), Sir Stuart Rose (Marks & Spencer), Jacqueline Gold (Ann Summers) and Val Gooding (BUPA).

The dinner takes place at London InterContinental Hotel, Park Lane, on Thursday 27 November. In their own no-nonsense words, all speakers will share their remarkable stories including the challenges, successes and setbacks they’ve faced to get to where they are today.

Single tickets are priced at £250 and tables of ten are priced at £2,250, meaning the tenth place is free at the London InterContinental Hotel, Park Lane. If you fancy it, contact Breast Cancer Care here.

Naked ambition – the rise of nude advertising

Perhaps its just us, but we’ve noticed a lot of brands baring all in their marketing campaigns. These campaigns are circulating the internet via the likes of YouTube and Facebook and have everyone talking, and watching.

The concept has certainly worked for sports giant Adidas, which sponsored American comedian Greg Johnson when he decided to embark on his own personal adventure this summer by running across the US coast to coast wearing only shoes and socks.

A new video on YouTube features a close up of the runner tying the laces on his patriotically coloured red white and blue pair of Adidas trainers before racing across New York’s Brooklyn Bridge.

Calvin Klein recently felt the heavy hand of the advertising watchdogs when its new advertisement starring a naked Eva Mendes rolling around a bed was banned from US television screens for exposing Eva’s nipple.

The ad may have been banned from TV screens, but it sure made up for the lack of air time in column inches all around the world – and YouTube views.

Eva has also joined a host of celebrities posing nude for animal rights group PETA in its “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” campaign. Christina Applegate and Alicia Silverstone have also appeared on the traffic stopping billboards for PETA.

Meanwhile, Australia’s sunshine state of Queensland recently launched a new tourism campaign that bikini-clad ladies and bathing suited boys in heavy coats flashing marketing messages to passers by on the busy streets of Melbourne and Sydney.

Managed by Brisbane-based agency, CumminsNitro, the trench coats were lined with a Queensland coastal backdrop, putting the flashing swimsuit clad models on the beach.

The flashers also handed out business cards, directing commuters to the Queensland Tourism website where they could win a winter holiday to the destination.

Apart from cutting costs on costume designers and expensive accessories, perhaps “nude” adverts are the way forward. Just think of the advantages, these ads are usually show stoppers and while they may be banned from being shown in traditional media, YouTube has made viewing these ads possible.

Not only that, users are sharing them, forwarding the links via email during their office lunch breaks or positing the video on their friends’ Facebook funwalls.

These ads have mass exposure, and most of all, which ever way you look at it – they are entertaining, though provoking and mesmerising.

Exclusive blog opinion piece: an eyewitness account of Beijing 2008’s Olympic marketing

Some of you may have noticed that there’s a fairly large sporting event taking place over in China at the moment. While the Brand Strategy team is sadly stuck in London at the moment working on our upcoming issue, we have asked our spies in Beijing to give us their personal diary-style experiences in the city holding the biggest marketing show on earth.

David Alexander, a director of consultancy Calacus, gives us this fascinating eyewitness account from Beijing 2008:

“Travelling around Beijing as I have done over the past couple of weeks, it’s impossible not to realise that the Olympic Games are being staged here. Everywhere you go, virtually every lamp-post is adorned with a Beijing Olympics 2008 flag, giant images of sport stars cover sides of skyscrapers and branded Beijing Olympics 2008 screens cover every unfinished building or potential eyesore.

Then of course, there are the volunteers at seemingly every turn, emblazoned in their adidas Beijing Olympics 2008 gear.

But beyond that? Surprisingly, the bombardment of worldwide sponsorship partners that one has come to expect at events of this size just hasn’t materialised.

Go into one of the official venues or hotels and, if you have run out of cash and don’t have a Visa card, you’ve got a problem. Thankfully, most of us do. Want a local mobile phone? China Mobile booths are all over the place and are thankfully quite cheap.

Outside the main IOC hotels is a seating area emblazoned in Coke paraphernalia and outside the Games venues are the unmistakeable McDonald’s golden arches. Not so inside, where the food is a mish-mash of drinks and snacks with no connection to Ronald McDonald.

At the stadium and official venues, Omega clocks are visible in all their grandeur. If you want to watch a replay, you do of course watch it on Panasonic-branded huge video screens. There are a number of similar screens around the city to encourage outside viewing of the events, which has been hindered by bad weather in China’s capital. Panasonic is also providing HD video of the Games.

Lenovo, the Chinese computer firm not particularly well known in the West [despite its purchase of IBM's PC division] has advertising and banners all over Beijing, but I had to look up what it did because nowhere is it particularly clear.

As for the rest? Certainly nothing that would justify the huge fees they will have paid in sponsorship to the IOC. Manulife, Johnson & Johnson, Kodak, Atos Origin and General Electric have done nothing to set them apart from the crowd, no discernible fan parks, entertainment zones or in-your-face initiatives.

Maybe they have taken the Olympic spirit too far and don’t consider promoting their association to be right and proper? One does wonder. Even the Beijing local partners have done little, apart from adidas, of course, whose logo is on the volunteers’ kit – and as I mentioned earlier, the volunteers are everywhere.

Strangely, the China competitors are clothed by Nike, so I’m not entirely sure how that strategy works. Liu Ziang, the former Olympic champion hurdler and darling of the Chinese, is occasionally seen on Nike ads as well, but with nothing like the promotion one has come to expect at football tournaments and finals.

Ironically, one of the brands that is seen everywhere isn’t even an official partner in any capacity. The official VIP vehicles are blacked-out Audi saloons – and yet the Beijing car partner is VW.

So it seems that sponsors have missed a trick at the greatest show on earth – and you can bet that things won’t be so low key in London in four years time.”

**********

Are you in Beijing? Do you agree or disagree? Let us know your views!

Beijing Olympics: The Lego version

We want to draw your attention to something pretty groovy – the Hong Kong Lego Users’ Group and its rendition of the Beijing Olympics in Lego. Since we already know that not everything in the Opening Ceremony was strictly as it appeared (girls miming songs and firework displays generated on computer for broadcast), we’d like to see some of these models being incorporated from now on. Come on, let’s have a few shots of the Lego stadiums instead of the real thing!

Brand Strategy goes to V Festival: our marketing roundup of the experience

Brand Strategy visited the 2008 V Festival in Chelmsford this weekend, thanks to Virgin Radio. We were there to check out the Virgin brand’s flagship music event and see what marketing initiatives we could pick up on at the site…….

V Festival brandwatch

Virgin Radio – as the lead sponsor of the VIP area, the Virgin Radio brand was held up as the festival’s most exclusive partner. We saw plenty of festival-goers hanging round the door of the VIP area, hoping to catch a glimpse of any famous faces and hear the special sets from bands such as Squeeze, taking place inside the tent there. Meanwhile, with locally-sourced food and plenty of free booze, many people seemed to find no reason to leave the VIP area once they’d found themselves inside.

BRAND STRATEGY FESTIVAL MARKETING RATING: 8.5/10. The local food was a nice touch and the area positioned Virgin Radio at the heart of the festival, with live radio broadcast by the presenters from a specially-adapted caravan inside. Not too heavy on the branding and marketing once inside, the area was mainly dedicated to broadcasting the radio brand’s image.

Sloggi – not content with doing some marketing, underwear brand Sloggi had a stage at the festival. It appeared to be pumping out dance music whenever the Brand Strategy team wandered by and occasionally showing off a range of the brand’s underwear on models. There was also an MC shouting a lot about the company’s competition ‘Show Me Your Sloggi’ which seemed to be about finding the best male and female bums.

BRAND STRATEGY FESTIVAL MARKETING RATING: 4/10. While it was good to see that Sloggi had decided to do something a bit more inventive than slapping its logo on some merchandise, the stage itself seemed a bit redundant. It was never playing any really inventive or interesting music (that we saw, anyway) so it was just a giant ad. However, we suspect that this view may be something to do with the Brand Strategy team being a bit older than the average V customer; we saw plenty of festival-goers enjoying a boogie to the dance music being blasted out even though the content wasn’t the most exciting stuff on offer.

Bond likes his products – will audiences?

The latest instalment of the James Bond franchise, Quantum of Solace, is tipped to have as many product placements as Casino Royale – maybe even more.

So far it has been announced that Ford KA will appear in the upcoming movie, as will Virgin Atlantic, Bollinger, Turnbull & Asser and Heineken.

The film is attracting many of the same brands as Casino Royale, which raked in £1.7 million on its opening day at the box office in 2006, including Smirnoff vodka, Omega watches and Sony electronics.

These brands all have products placed in the film and each will shell out tens of millions of dollars as a promotional partner of the film.

Daniel Craig, who reprises his role as 007, won’t be the sole face to promote the products. Bond girl Olga Kurylenko, who plays feisty 007 ally Camille in Quantum of Solace, is being used to push Heineken beer and the latest version of Ford’s small European car, the Ka.