Brand Promiscuity: In the Hartford Courant today, Marian Salzman, chief marketing officer for JWT Worldwide is quoted as saying that the ‘brand slut’ is a growing retail phenomenon that is contributing to the way we shop and the way brands are marketed to us. “Long, monogamous relationships” with particular brands are dying; “consumers with no sense of fidelity are on the rise,” she said. Young Brand Manager Advice: As usual Marian is spot on here as far as explaining the finicky consumer and she’s trying to help us all understand what lies ahead for the future of branding. What is the average agency brand manager to think now today that alongside realizing that media vehicles are proliferating and atomizing, that the consumer is now becoming less brand loyal? And even more promiscuous? It almost seems that an agency pitch to a brand marketer client would now entail an ad agency backing up the defeatist theories outlined in the chaos and disorder oriented new book “A Perfect Mess“. But there may be a solution to the coming threat. And among this chaos it could be the services agencies provide. As brands look to agencies to help make consumers more brand loyal to them, “brand loyalty” appears to be being replaced by “brand trust” – that brands matter, but only when they promise to do what they say they will. Coincidentally this backs up the Ries’ theory in the “Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR” back in 2003 where they claim that the third party earned media endorsement (brand trust) would soon outweigh the paid side of messaging (brand loyalty building). Best to buy Marian’s new book for further insight. Trends for 2007 – the “Starbucking” of the business world continues along at a strong pace. Revisiting Marian Salzman, we find in her new book “NextNow” she predicts that Coffee bars will be more populated by workers because they are among the “in-between spaces” where telecommuters can work and hold meetings away from home. Matter of fact, I’m having one of these Starbucks meeting myself tonight at 6 PM in Union Square. It’s a meeting space I rent for about $3.42 (Cafe Mocha) for an hour. Small Business/Startup Advice: with instant messaging, Skype, laptops, Vonage and Basecamp, maybe it’s time to ask your angel investor/venture capital folks to buy you a Starbucks gift card instead of a desk in the office park. (No one goes public anymore – God Save the IPO – it’s about private equity.)
Big Brands Lack Key Ingredients on MySpace– Says Netconcepts founder Stephan Spencer, “Within the MySpace ecosystem exist marketers. But most are clueless. One would expect sophisticated MySpace presences from big brand marketers. However, that is usually not the case. And generally those that are present, like Blockbuster UK, 7Eleven, and Meijer, lack key ingredients for MySpace success—like an impressive number of “Friends.” Marketing Advice to Big Brand Marketers on MySpace: Like gaining earned media offline via public relations endorsements, best for brand marketers online to move away from mere sponsorships of content areas and gain the “earned” endorsement of MySpace users – yes, gaining friends retail one by one like a politician knocking on doors. How to do this? Brand blogging. What’s that? It’s giving individual consumers the opportunity to talk back, an individual voice in the contruction of your business and your brand. Ask users to be a part of your marketing. This is not a difficult idea, it’s just that famed marketers since the Positioning Era have been engraining us with controlling the message. Now as the new era of “co-control marketing” dawns it’s not that the old folks (like me) can’t “co-control” market, it’s that the young folks already “get it” – but the young folks aren’t typically at the dashboard of the big brand marketing budget. Yet!