After 51 pages of doom and gloom on the current economic crisis, the latest issue of BusinessWeek (September 29, 2008) gives us its “Best Global Brands” article. After covering what is perhaps the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, what is the article’s advice for building a top brand? Keep spending:
1) Bix, the restaurant we ate at last night with our friends from Allegiance Health and BrandActive. A jazzy supper club with an entrance tucked down an alley somewhere in downtown San Francisco, the food was excellent and the speak-easy ambiance perfect. I am the furthest thing from a food critic, but the Ceviche was unbelievable.
Coming at you live from the annual SHSMD conference in San Francisco, and the city by the bay looks as incredible as ever. It’s great to be in the center of the healthcare marketing universe for a week, running into old friends and meeting new ones. (Shout outs to Philip Guiliano, Tom Panion and the Beryl team, and Anthony Gardner, my initial run-ins.) This looks to be a great conference, and my team and I will be logging in with learnings, opinions and rants all week. So if you couldn’t make the trip out, we’ll try to give you a little flavor. First thought out of the gate - attendance. (more…)
Of all media outlets, I would expect Fast Company to get it. But alas, their latest issue features a cover story about ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky and its new client, Microsoft, with the headline, “Can this dude make Microsoft cool?” (referring to agency head Alex Bogusky). The article focuses on how one of the hottest ad agencies around will strive to save Microsoft with a new ad campaign launching this summer. To that I say, the best of luck. The problem, of course, is that advertising doesn’t make the brand; it’s the other way around.
Let’s give it up for respected management guru Ram Charan. The legendary consultant and author of such books as Execution (co-authored by Larry Bossidy), Charan has an article in the February 18 issue of Fortune titled “Ram’s Rules,” which gives his insights on how to manage a business in an economic downturn.
In the past we’ve used scientific studies comparing consumer preferences for Coke and Pepsi to show the impact of branding (see the post “Brains and branding”). Now a new study featuring consumers’ preference for wine makes the same case (and one that would be more fun to recreate at home, I would imagine). (more…)
So I was watching my Vikings destroy the Detroit Lions last weekend, and I saw an ad that has stuck in my craw all week. It was an ad for Miller Lite beer, and it was promoting the fact that Lite had won the top award for “American pilsner” in a European beer tasting contest for four years, the latest having been 2006. The point was that Miller Lite, in a blind taste test, had bested any number of European beers, which are better known for flavor. So here’s my question: who cares?
Yesterday, I spoke at the 2007 Spring Conference for ISHMPR (Iowa Society for Healthcare Marketing and Public Relations). A great group. And, since I grew up in Ames where the conference was held, I got to go back in time somewhat, even running into a friend who worked with me back in the day at Drug Town (yes, that was the name of a real store). (more…)
It was inevitable, I guess. The backlash against innovation is in full swing, and it’s not really a surprise. Every business trend starts as a fringe concept, builds momentum, grows into a phenomenon, then faces a storm of criticism from naysayers, latecomers and those who are just cranky in general. Of course, in most cases, those critics are right, because by the time the backlash is in full swing, whatever “it” is has been watered-down, misused, repurposed and twisted into all sorts of different shapes. This appears to be the case with the latest buzzword, Innovation, (capital ‘I’ intentional), at least according to two separate articles from BusinessWeek (the folks who brought us IN, a quarterly pub focused entirely on innovation, for goodness sakes). (more…)
Join a Minneapolis firm that’s building a national reputation for thought leadership in healthcare marketing and branding. GeigerBevolo offers competitive salaries and benefits package, and a collaborative environment where your ideas and contributions make a difference. We have two positions currently open: Account Coordinator and Designer. (more…)