New-look Brand Strategy: OUT NOW!!!!

Brand Strategy is a publication with a long and interesting history. We’ve been around for 12 years, carrying on through the good times of big ad budgets and the bad times of credit crunches. We’ve evolved from a thin little yellow newsletter to a proper full-colour magazine.

With all that experience and heritage, we thought it was time we gave ourselves a more up-to-date look to take us forward for the next few years. We believe that in a recession, brands and strategies are more vital than ever; only the strongest marques will continue to survive and thrive.

So we hope you will apply for a sample copy if you’re not already a subscriber (you can do that here) and see for yourself what’s new. We’re also working on evolving our online services to suit a modern magazine; we want to be as interactive as possible. For us, having our readers engage with us and build a community around a magazine devoted to their needs is very important. It’ll take us a while to get there, so please be patient, but it’s all underway.

So for now, we hope you enjoy the new look being unveiled today and naturally, we welcome any feedback….

Brand Strategy

You can change the world with Oxfam

You are in charge for the marketing of one of world’s largest charity’s – Oxfam.

Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to upload your own slogan onto a series of massive digital billboards around London.

Your slogan, yes your very own personal message, will help entice the British public to assist you in saving the world from poverty.  

Should you be chosen as one of the most creative slogan writers for tackling poverty, your slogan will be shown across eight special billboards – which are situated in prime locations throughout central London.

If your idea makes the cut, Oxfam will notify you in advance so that you can your world changing masterpiece of publicity in person.

Nick Futcher, brand manager for Oxfam wants people to tell Oxfam how they think the world needs to change.

The adverts offer a blank canvas for the public to express that as creatively and publicly as possible.

The ads are part of Oxfam’s “Be Humankind” campaign, devised by advertising agency RKCR.

The campaign has already been highly praised for its innovative TV, online and billboard advertisements – and you could be apart it.

Anyone wanting to write an advertising slogan for Oxfam can upload their ideas onto the website.

 

 

Barclaycard is the calm, but warm, banking brand

Despite the demise of banking and investment firms HBOS and Lehman Brothers, Barclay’s is doing remarkably well and its even launching a new identity for it’s credit card offering Barclaycard – calm, but warm.

A new logo is to be incorporated in a bid to communicate the brand’s vision to revolutionise the way we pay for every day goods and services.

The new identity, developed in conjunction with The Brand Union, depicts a world that is calm and confident on the outside, while warm and vibrant on the inside.

It’s left us wondering if Barclay’s is oblivious to the actual state of the world in a turbulent economy.

A survey from professional networking site LinkedIn recently revealed that professionals in the financial sector were among the most worried about the stability of their jobs.

Financial professionals are turning to the professional networking site in a bid to make ‘connections’ and look for new positions as they stress over the current financial crisis.

In the past two weeks, LinkedIn has increased in members by 17 per cent to 28 million active users.

Members joining from investment banking have more than doubled over the past seven weeks.

A recent LinkedIn poll, run in conjunction with news partner CNBC, found that 42 per cent of members felt that the current economic climate made their jobs less secure.

Kevin Eyres, managing director of LinkedIn, Europe, said: “The results reveal an overwhelmingly strong concern amongst professionals for the safety of their jobs within the current economic climate,” “However, with sites such as LinkedIn easily accessible to professionals in every industry, executives are in a better position to take matters into their own hands and manage their career, reputation and business prospects online.”

But Barclay’s needn’t worry. They’ve got a new identity and everything, just to give people the impression that they’re not too worried. After all, the banking brand did just acquire Lehman Brothers’ North American operations, offering 10,000 former employees their jobs back. Maybe they really are  warm and friendly. 

Air China best Chinese airline brand – how its Olympic sponsorship paid off

 

 

Air China has been named the Best China Airline in the Annual Business Traveller Asia-Pacific Awards, on the back of its Beijing Olympics Sponsorship.

The airline has scooped the prize for the third year in a row and is the only Chinese airline to be named as a ‘top brand’ worldwide.

Air China currently operates 5,090 flights each week worldwide and is also the 18th largest airline in the world by fleet size. The airline’s network covers 285 domestic and international routes and is aiming to increase the brand’s reach internationally.

The airline has improved on its service quality in the past few years which has also seen its brand value increased by RMB6.6 million (£533m) to RMB30.2 billion (£2.4bn).

Air China has also been named by World Brand Lab as “China Top 500 most valuable brands” and “World Top 500 Most Valuable brands” on June 2 and July 11, 2008 respectively.

The airline was ranked first among China airlines and the 26th among the top 500 brands in China. Meanwhile, Air China was ranked the 419th among top 500 brands worldwide in 2008.

This was the second time that Air China was listed in the world top 500 brands since 2007 with its ranking moving up 42 positions compared to last year.

The flag carrier is now eyeing high-end passengers in a bid to counter challenges posed by growing fuel costs and a slowing global economy.

Foreign airlines are usually more attractive to international business travellers because they offer better flight connections and richer frequent-flier benefits. Being the sole passenger-airline partner of the Olympics forced Air China to improve its performance and thus made it more confident it can compete with foreign rivals. Another excellent example of how sponsoring the Olympics really does pay off. 

James Bond boosts Aston Martin’s coolness

Aston Martin has been named Britain’s coolest brand for the third year in a row, thanks to its coolest customer – James Bond of course.

The car brand has been starring in the 007 spy movies since 1964 when it debuted in Goldfinger, starring Sean Connery.  

The iconic status car will is soon to star in the eagerly anticipated Quantum of Solace – which will also mark Daniel Craig’s second appearance as the sexy spy.

The CoolBrand’s annual list of the most-iconic UK brands rated the iPhone as the second coolest brand, followed by its maker and owner – Apple.

YouTube was voted in the fifth spot while its owner, search engine giant Google, came in the sixth spot.

Ferrari and Lamborghini also made the top 20, coming in at the 13th and 20th spot respectively. But what sets the Aston Martin apart from the rest?

The secret of the 7th Syndikate is out!

A group of rookie secret agents recruited online over the past few weeks have discovered the exercise was actually part of a promotional campaign for the V&A design museum in London.

The campaign for the Cold War Modern: Design 1945-70 autumn exhibition, involved a collaboration with online word of mouth agency 1000 Heads.

The agency managed to entice a network of bloggers with an interest in design to stimulate online discussions about the exhibition.

Over the past few weeks selected bloggers have been receiving instructions through covert coded messages from the 7th Syndikate – a pseudonym set up by 1000 Heads especially for the campaign.

The ‘secret agents’ who cracked the codes and solved the clues followed a trail that invited them to a secret rendezvous point at the Albert Memorial in South Kensington where they would discover what the trail was all about.

Jane Rosier, head of marketing at the V&A, said, “We wanted to do something different to reach a new online audience. The subject of the exhibition offered us the perfect opportunity to work creatively with themes of espionage and coded communications. There has been a great online response and we hope it will lead to many new Museum visitors.”

Informed that their mark would be there in a long trench coat and bowler hat at 18.45, around 35 bloggers dressed as secret agents followed the mark to an exclusive after-hours preview of the exhibition at the V&A.

It was only then that they learned the Cold War Modern exhibition was the secret that the 7th Syndikate had led them to discover.

Some comments from the targeted bloggers:

“It’s great that the V&A entered into the Cold War spirit by running such a cool campaign.”

 “I thought I’d worked out what was going on, but in the end it came as a complete surprise. I couldn’t believe it when we ended up at the V&A. They really had me fooled.”

 

MTV EMAs 2008: the countdown begins!

The nominations for the MTV Europe awards in Liverpool this November were announced over the weekend. In the run up to the EMAs each year, we like to bring you all the info about the branded entertainment event. So watch out for posts on goodie bags, sponsors and more….

NOMINATIONS

Album Of The Year
• Alicia Keys – As I Am
• Britney Spears – Blackout
• Coldplay – Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends
• Duffy – Rockferry
• Leona Lewis – Spirit

Headliner
• Foo Fighters
• Linkin’ Park
• Metallica
• The Cure
• Tokio Hotel

Most Addictive Track
• Coldplay – Viva La Vida
• Duffy – Mercy
• Katy Perry – I Kissed A Girl
• Kid Rock – All Summer Long
• P!nk – So What

New Act
• Duffy
• Jonas Brothers
• Katy Perry
• Miley Cyrus
• One Republic

Act of 2008
• Amy Winehouse
• Britney Spears
• Coldplay
• Leona Lewis
• Rihanna

Ultimate Urban
• Alicia Keys
• Beyoncé
• Chris Brown
• Kanye West
• Lil Wayne

Rock Out
• 30 Seconds to Mars
• Linkin’ Park
• Metallica
• Paramore
• Slipknot

You can cast votes at the dedicated MTV EMA website here, get the chance to live like a popstar with sponsor edc and even win the opportunity to become a reporter on the red carpet on behalf of sponsor Dell! (You can read more about Dell’s sponsorship of the awards in our previous post on the awards here.)

Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool FC – brands?

Football is a million dollar industry. The sport has a long heritage in UK and has the most prestigious premiership in the world and has attracted players from all four corners of the globe. Most importantly, football inspires passion and the ‘big four’, Chelsea Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool FC, are among the most valuable brands in the country. How has a little white ball and a green field inspired the most successful brand principles that has led to true brand engagement – but is football an actual brand?  

The concept of a sport being a brand may sound a little ridiculous at first, but the figures don’t lie. In 2005, a Brand Finance survey revealed that Manchester United at a brand value of £197m, Liverpool a value of 156m, Chelsea £137m and Arsenal a brand value of £115m.

Brands profit from revenue generated by added values, increased awareness, and faster adoption rates. They also benefit from cost savings gained from loyal customers and lower advertising.

Firstly, brands are people. People make friends with people when they have things in common, want to spend time together, and find something special in the relationship. Football has millions of followers every year that will wear the merchandise, watch the games, talk about it with their friends and probably know the teams chant (theme song).  

Brands make friends with people in exactly the same way – they send out offers by email, football teams send out scores and direct fans to their dedicated websites.

Premierleague.com, the official site of the FA Barclays Premier League, attracted an average of 1.2 million UK visitors per month during the 2007/08 season. The website of Premiership Champions Manchester United, Manutd.com, ranked as the most popular club site with an average of 912,000 visitors per month. Liverpoolfc.tv ranked second with 887,000 visitors, followed by Arsenal.com (718,000 visitors), and Chelseafc.com (402,000 visitors).

Charles Leadbetter talks about collaboration: is the future about working together?

PSFK has posted an interesting review of Charles Leadbeater’s speech at Picnic 08 (read it here). As Brand Strategy has been lucky enough to see Charles in action a few times, we know that he’s always good at summing up complex ideas with many strands in easy-to-understand ways.

In this speech, Charles talked about the media environment that might emerge over the next 10 years. He called large, traditional media companies ‘boulders’ and suggested they might disappear in favour of smaller content contributions from many people or ‘pebbles’. These pebbles will take the form of video clips, encyclopedia entries and blog posts.

But while all these pebbles are interesting, Charles says that it is the resulting content and its usefulness that will really matter. They need to help create something, whether this is open-source gaming, encyclopedias or other resources. He gave the example of the ‘I love bees’ game (see the official website here) to promote Halo 2 where 600,000 people tried to solve a puzzle together as an example of really sophisticated collaboration.

Leadbetter then went on to talk about how science and the way that scientists collaborate is a guide to the future of media. He explained how young scientists are using collaborative techniques on a daily basis to run experiments, share data and simulate outcomes. When their papers are published, they often end up being hosted digitally so the information can be easily transfered between people.

Do you think that collaboration is the future? How do you see it working? Let us know. (And thank you, PSFK, for tipping us off about this….).

Aussie underwear brands just love controversy

You wouldn’t think that Australia was the country responsible for Elle, Kylie or Pat Rafter – they have all rebelled against the coutnry’s prudish nature starring in some very racy lingerie and jocks ads. But at the end of the day, attitudes take decades to change.

Australia’s sunshine capital of Brisbane has banned a series of underwear adverts on its bus sides. An ad for men’s underwear label Van Heusen has been slammed as “too racy” for Brisbvegas buses, however, it has been cleared for use in other state capitals.

However the ad, for menswear label Van Heusen, is acceptable for Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth travellers who will be enjoying the eye candy all over their buses and trams from this Sunday.

Underwear is to be heard but not seen

A couple of years ago there’s was a huge uproar aimed at department store chain K-Mart when it launched a series of in-store ads for underwear brand Bonds. The star of the ad, tennis ace Pat Rafter, was seen only in his Bonds trunks. The complaint? The buldge in his lower region was too big, too provocative and worse still – children might see it. The ad was toned down a bit but it didn’t stop this one slipping through the net elsewhere (see below).

And what about that shocking campaign from Antz Pantz, which sees a young women enjoying an army of red ants crawling over her knickers? Yep, it too was banned.