Issue: Dove Accused of Retouching ‘Real Beauty’ Ads
Commentary by: David Vinjamuri

In Accidental Branding I write that brands need to ’sweat the details’ - meaning that paying attention to even small, innocuous details of the business that might not obviously affect the brand pays important dividends. A brewing scandal this week at Unilever with the Dove brand illustrates this. Dove has gotten into a mess because a profile of a professional photo retoucher in The New Yorker mentioned that he had worked on the ‘Real Beauty’ campaign - in which Dove explicitly argues against retouching reality. The details are complex, but Dove appears to have neglected to instruct a freelance photographer on the second iteration of the campaign in 2007 - the revered Annie Liebovitz - to avoid making any digital corrections to her photos.

The Dove Campaign for real beauty includes the following:

Original Print Campaign

Dove Pro-Age Print Campaign

Dove Evolution Video

Dove Onslaught Video

The campaign has been acclaimed for bringing body image issues to the fore. It has been criticized because Dove still sells products intended to beautify and because Unilever sells products like Axe that use the exact techniques that the Dove campaign criticizes.

Here are the facts in the unwinding mess:

Writing for the May 12th issue of The New Yorker, Lauren Collins profiled digital photo retouch artist Pascal Dangin. In her profile, Lauren writes:

To avoid such complaints, retouchers tend to practice semi-clandestinely. “It is known that everybody does it, but they protest,” Dangin said recently. “The people who complain about retouching are the first to say, ‘Get this thing off my arm.’ ” I mentioned the Dove ad campaign that proudly featured lumpier-than-usual “real women” in their undergarments. It turned out that it was a Dangin job. “Do you know how much retouching was on that?” he asked. “But it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone’s skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.”

This paragraph was noted last week by BusinessWeek blogger Burt Helm on May 7th in his Brand New Day blog. Then Jack Neff from AdAge picked up the BusinessWeek story.

Unilever responded quickly, denying the accusations. Unilever’s PR department issued the following statement from the photo retoucher Pascal Dangin who was profiled in the article:

The recent article published by The New Yorker incorrectly implies that I retouched the images in connection with the [2005] Dove ‘real women’ ad. I only worked on the [2007 Dove Pro-Age] campaign taken by Annie Leibovitz and was directed only to remove dust and do color correction — both the integrity of the photographs and the women’s natural beauty were maintained.

Unilever also released the following statement from Annie Liebovitz:

Let’s be perfectly clear — Pascal does all kinds of work — but he is primarily a printer — and only does retouching when asked to. The idea for Dove was very clear at the beginning. There was to be NO retouching, and there was not.

The New Yorker responded by standing by its story - only noting that the word “undergarments” was misplaced - meaning that they agreed Dangin might not have worked on the first campaign.

From this muddle, it is not clear whether Dangin made substantial alterations to the Liebowitz photographs. What is clear however, is that he did touch them and at a minimum made the “color corrections” that he claims in the statement delivered through Unilever. So it seems clear that Unilever and the Dove brand did not explicitly ensure that the Liebovitz photos were completely unaltered. It seems possible that the photos met the standard set for the brand - not altering the appearance of the women - but any retouching of the photos leaves the whiff of impropriety. For the brand, this is a disaster which could have been avoided with more attention to detail.

Branding Bottom Line:
Dove gets mascara all over the brand

Personality Not Included

Description:
Personality Not Included: Why Companies Lose their Authenticity and How Great Brands Get it Back is a new business book published last month by Rohit Bhargava, Senior VP of Digital Strategy and Marketing at Ogilvy PR. Bhargava is a first-time author, but confronts the publishing world with the experience of a new media expert. His Influential Marketing Blog is listed in the AdAge Power 150.

To market Personality Not Included, Bhargava drew from his blogging and new media PR experience to create a variety of attention-getting stunts, the largest of which was a simultaneous interview with 50 bloggers for the launch of the book (here’s one) which amplified the viral nature of his book launch. He also created a facebook add-on to a book signing event to increase turnout and a group blog called The Personality Project to complement the book’s website. Bhargava has a twelve month plan of activities to launch the site. Rohit is speaking in New York on Wednesday, May 14th.

What Works:
Marketing a business book can be a daunting task for a first-time author who is not a celebrity. Most publishers view new authors the same way that venture capitalists view start-up companies. They make a good number of small bets and then see which author manages to make their own work successful. So authors are left to their own devices to market their ideas.

Bhargava has done an excellent job of mining his expertise in new media, particularly social networking, to build a base for his book. He recognizes that a campaign of this nature is by definition a slow build, and that his chances of hitting a bestseller list are most likely a year or more down the road. He has cleverly co-opted the interest of bloggers and colleagues by creating event-driven online properties. The 50-blog simultaneous interview which he used to launch his book was particularly inventive, as it provided real sales momentum but a better artifact (in the form of a variety of interesting author interviews permanently archived by Google and a competition among bloggers to see who came up with the best questions) than the “social media bum rush” done for The Age of Conversation.

Bhargava has also strategically done a good job of positioning Personality Not Included against the anticipated book “Groundswell” by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff from Forrester. While that book handily outsells his at the moment, by positioning Personality Not Included as a new-media-aware branding book rather than the chronicle of a fundamental change in consumer behavior he has given his work a longer shelf life.

What Doesn’t:
This is a significant book and Bhargava may have lost an opportunity by not engaging professionals to help him get mainstream media reviews. This would have been tricky however, as he is a senior executive in a PR firm himself. However his expertise is in digital media and he does not have the same relationships with traditional print media as he does in the digital sphere. While there have been some very good examples of books launched entirely in the blogsphere, notably The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott, a gentle push from BusinessWeek or The New York Times can be invaluable for a new business book.

Branding Bottom Line:
Bhargava finds new ways to turn the web on its head. We would hire him.

BONUS: Interview with Rohit Bhargava

How did you come up with the idea for your 50-blog interview?
The nice thing about having your own book is that if you have an idea that you think works, you can do it. The idea for the blog interviews came out of my desire to do a promotion that bloggers would be interested in because they get something in return. For me, I wanted them to write about the concept of a book that they hadn’t read. For all the 55 bloggers that decided to ask me 5 questions about the book, they were getting good customized content for their blogs and the chance to win a prize (and fame) for having the best interview. I had the idea on a Sunday and launched it on a Tuesday, so sometimes when the right idea comes along, it just works.

What are the biggest challenges for a first time author marketing his own book?
The biggest challenge is to realize that all the marketing and publicity will fall on your own shoulders. I knew this going in because I had some great advice from other authors that I talked to, but you’re never quite ready for how much you actually have to do yourself. The other challenge for someone like me is that I still have my full time day job, which means much of my book efforts are in the after hours or not full time.

You talk about a slow build and a 12-month calendar. What are some of the things you have planned for the rest of the year?
Well, I have an overall strategy that I’m working towards which has lots of different elements but I can’t really say what is exactly going to happen over the next 12 months because some of the efforts I have not come up with yet. Right now I’m spending a lot of time talking about a new site I launched for the book that I am really excited about called The Personality Project (www.thepersonalityproject.com). I can tell you there are quite a few more activities that I have planned over the next few months that will likely duplicate the amount of buzz of the launch and hopefully eclipse it!

With thousands of business books published each year, what do you think the key to differentiation is?
I spent a lot of time on this - researching other books that could be considered “competitive” to my book. I think the answer is twofold. Part of the theory of the book is that personality sets companies apart, and to a degree the personality of my book sets it apart from others in the same space. In addition, I focused very much on writing a book that was fun and engaging to read, and ultimately useful. It was this focus on being actually useful that sets PNI apart as well, because so many books are written in a theoretical way instead of a practical way.

In your first few weeks what have the biggest surprises of new authorship been for you?
The single biggest surprise has got to be just how much weight people who organize events and conferences put on authorship. I always suspected that if the book became successful, I would start to get better speaking invitations for more prominent slots or keynotes instead of panels. I expected this would take some time, but it was almost overnight that this started to happen. That was surprising, as I don’t quite feel that the book has earned that for me yet … but I plan to try and make the most of the chances I’m given!

What has been your best use of social networking to promote your book?
So far, I’d have to say the launch interview idea was the biggest success because of the buzz it generated. There are a few other ideas that I will be launching (which I mentioned above) that should equal or better that buzz as I roll them out.

You launched at nearly the same time as an anticipated book in a similar area: GroundSwell. How do you compete with that marketing machine?
I am actually a great admirer of both Charlene and Josh, so when I made it to their launch party for the book a few weeks ago, we talked about this. I actually think it’s a great thing because our books are very complimentary. PNI is not a book about social media, but it does incorporate social media into it - so I could see many people getting very different things from both. What I realized after launching my book is that the real competition is other books that my publisher (McGraw-Hill) launched in the same timeframe because I am competing with marketing resources with those books. If I have competition to fight against, that’s where it really comes from.

Which did you enjoy more ˆ researching, writing or publicizing your book?
I love marketing and am really passionate about actually putting theory into ACTION, so I’d have to say the best time I’m having is right now with all the promotion for the book. The writing and researching, for me, is the hard work that got me to this point. When you’re actually marketing, that’s the fun part!

You have focused your launch efforts in San Francisco although you live in D.C. Why?
Focusing on SF was a deliberate choice because I have a lot of contacts through the Web2.0 crowd on the west coast and wanted to make the most of this community. In addition, during the weeks of the launch of the book, most of my speaking engagements were on the west coast, so it made logical sense to do the launch party there. I have lots planned for DC too, though, and will be in several other markets over the next few months before I start heading international as well.

What one piece of advice would you give to a first-time branding book author?
I would say, take an honest look at what your goals are and publish your book with that goal in mind. For me, PNI is a chance for me to make my reputation and share something useful with people who need to market something. The international component of the book and distribution was most important to me, so I went with the publisher that I did because they have a really strong distribution arm. That has turned out to be a great decision so far.

Brand

Description:
Heinz launched a promotional blitz in December of 2007 for a consumer-generated advertising contest called “Top This.” The challenge was to create a new television spot for Heinz. The winner would get $57,000 (the number taken from the ‘Heinz 57′ days) and would be aired on television. Runner ups would receive $5,700. Heinz promoted the contest on-pack with mentions on 57 million customized bottles and 200 million tailored packets with catchy taglines such as “Hungry for Fame?” and “Starving for the Spotlight?” Heinz also ran full-page ads in the New York Times and USA Today to promote the contest.

The winning ad was created by Chicagoland resident Matt Cozza, a Northwestern graduate, freelance cameraman and award-winning documentary filmmaker. The ad takes off from a personal experience of Cozza’s, where he sat down at a restaurant and found that Heinz ketchup was missing from his table, proceeded to swipe a bottle from another table and set off a chain reaction.  The ad will air on the Food Network.

What Works:
A win-win campaign for both Heinz and its consumers.  The 130-year-old brand pours some vitality into its creative efforts from outside the walls of agency-of-record Cramer-Krasselt.  Heinz consumers get to dream about creating a spot to air on national television and of winning a substantial prize.  Heinz builds momentum for the contest by picking the finalist videos from the thousands of entries itself, but allowing consumers to choose the winner.

This is all, of course, textbook script for a consumer-generated marketing campaign, but Heinz has been exceptionally savvy in the way it has managed the process.  The promotional efforts sound impressive and reach a huge number of consumers, but they’re also exceptionally thrifty.  On-pack advertising has virtually no incremental cost for Heinz and one-time insertions in two newspapers are small cost items done more for publicity than actual consumer awareness.  Heinz also creates a customized, low-cost forum to air these spots before a friendly audience (on the Food Network) and consider them for further exposure.

The announcement of the winner creates a big PR opportunity for Heinz and results in some national news media coverage including a Fox Business News segment.

The final benefit may be as important as the rest.  Without abandoning its agency of record, Heinz essentially gets thousands of fully produced concept ads for free.   And many of these are not handicam efforts.  The myth behind consumer-generated marketing  campaigns is that every Dick and Jane can win.  The reality is somewhat different.  These campaigns have become a resume-builder for talented film school grads and independent producers.  Just the sort of folks that brands have difficulty accessing directly.

What Doesn’t:
Brands rarely consider that a consumer-generated advertising contest will wind up putting a new tagline - and possibly a new brand positioning - on air nationally.  While it seems inevitable that consumers play an increasingly large role in positioning and marketing brands, this is something different.  The contest format is artificial and can result in a tug on the brand in a particular direction that is larger and less gradual than consumer co-creation would normally produce.

While the campaign winner was a very solid ad, it does not break new ground for Heinz, which as not yet found as compelling a positioning as it achieved with the iconic spot “Anticipation” of the late 70’s - fueled by the Carly Simon hit of the same name. “Now We Can Eat,” positions Heinz as “what goes with food” but the product-as-hero format features the bottle more than the Ketchup.  Heinz already owns the category - it needs to create more hungry people to expand the category.

Branding Bottom Line:
A better spot than 80% of what’s on television.  For $57,000.  Top that.

Brand

Description:
The newest in a series of intriguing online marketing initiatives for the Brooklyn Museum, Click! is an exhibition taking place from June 27 - August 10, 2008 which will be crowd-curated until May 23rd, 2008. A full description from the Brooklyn Museum Website:

Click! is a photography exhibition that invites Brooklyn Museum’s visitors, the online community, and the general public to participate in the exhibition process. Taking its inspiration from the critically acclaimed book The Wisdom of Crowds, in which New Yorker business and financial columnist James Surowiecki asserts that a diverse crowd is often wiser at making decisions than expert individuals, Click!  explores whether Surowiecki’s premise can be applied to the visual arts—is a diverse crowd just as “wise” at evaluating art as the trained experts? Click! is an exhibition in three consecutive parts. It begins with an open call—artists are asked to electronically submit a work of photography that responds to the exhibition’s theme, “Changing Faces of Brooklyn,” along with an artist statement.

After the conclusion of the open call, an online forum opens for audience evaluation of all submissions; as in other juried exhibitions, all works will be anonymous. As part of the evaluation, each visitor answers a series of questions about his/her knowledge of art and perceived expertise.

Click! culminates in an exhibition at the Museum, where the artworks are installed according to their relative ranking from the juried process. Visitors will also be able to see how different groups within the crowd evaluated the same works of art. The results will be analyzed and discussed by experts in the fields of art, online communities, and crowd theory.

Click! follows a series of other new media initiatives at the Brooklyn Museum, including the online exhibit Hiroshige’s One Hundred Views of Edo and the Graffiti Exhibit from 2006.

What Works:
Necessity begets creativity and so it is perhaps not surprising that one of the most creative series of new media marketing initiatives in recent memory comes from a budgetary-constrained arts institution, the venerable Brooklyn Museum. The Click! exhibit shows that meaningful online interactivity can be as simple as asking the public to choose the works for an upcoming exhibit, thus giving them a stake in the outcome and a good reason to visit.

This advertising blog does not give many five-star ratings, and this one is earned not just for the clever use of the online medium, timely jump onto a popular bandwagon (crowdsourcing) and strategic pandering to a popular author (James Surowiecki) but for the continuation of a two year series of clever, low-budget new media initiatives which have effectively served to position the Brooklyn Museum as a daring innovator among its peers.

Even better for students of new media, the museum has documented the journey along with its results in an excellent white paper. This type of sharing is rare in the private sector and much needed in an industry where most of the big advertisers are struggling to understand the online medium.

The best parts of the Brooklyn Museum’s approach to using new and emerging media is its focus on simplicity - from the cellphone tour to the crowd-curated exhibit. It is a refreshing change from some of the lavish but unnecessary innovations foisted on us by the Fortune 100.

What Doesn’t:
Although straightforward, the website for the Brooklyn Museum is not nearly as innovative and user friendly as the online exhibits.

Branding Bottom Line:
The Brooklyn Museum makes us wonder what we got for the last million we spent with our online agency.

[Image from NALIP.org]

In Accidental Branding, I write “Do Sweat the Details”. By this I mean that very small actions that do not at first seem to be related to our brands often have very big consequences for the brand. What I meant when I wrote this is that consumers often cue off of small details that are of no interest to brand marketers, like how the package opens, how customer service handles complaints or how business partners speak about our business.

This week, Wal-Mart has provided an excellent example of how decisions seemingly unrelated to marketing can affect our brands. It’s a big enough deal that I would call this Wal-Mart crisis a textbook example of “Brand Karma” - meaning that what you put out into the world eventually comes back to you. Wal-Mart has never had a great reputation among its suppliers. For years it has been accused of sourcing goods locally in new markets only as a competitive tactic to drive out other retail customers and then ending the relationship in order to bankrupt the local supplier.

This general attitude towards suppliers bit back recently as The Wall Street Journal reports. The company which Wal-Mart used to capture video of sales conferences and other internal meetings for thirty years, Flagler Productions Inc. was dismissed two years ago. It does not take much reading between the lines to suspect that this termination of a longtime relationship was not handled well. INstead of maintaining a fondness for Wal-Mart and seeking to regain the Wal-Mart business, Flagler has gone into the business of selling these candid and embarrassing videos of Wal-Mart events to the general public. It appears that in spite of Wal-Marts general legal rectitude, they never secured exclusive rights to this video.

It’s a brand disaster. The videos, as Gary McWilliams reports, contain:

A former executive vice president and board member challenges store managers in 2004 to continue his work opposing unionization. Male managers in drag lead thousands of co-workers in the company’s corporate cheer. In another meeting, managers mock foolish or dangerous use of a product sold in its stores.

I have written a lot about Wal-Mart in the past several years, and I don’t think it’s an evil company. Their basic goal of trying to reduce prices for average working families is a good one. They have made some good steps forward (along with Target) on trying to bring prescription drug prices down. They’ve also tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to bring down the horrible, predatory purveyors of pay-day loans with fair competition.

Where Wal-Mart seems to falter is that they have no corporate instinct for the integrity of their brand. A corporate obsessed with costs is bound to bruise a lot of “little guys” in the process. (See Wendy Bounds nice blog post for more on this.) And not shockingly, one with the ability to really hurt Wal-Mart has finally bitten back.

The lesson? Everything affects your brand. If the way you treat your employees, suppliers or customers is not consistent with your brand, they will become a cancer in your system. Brands may not practice Buddhism, but they should believe in Karma. It all does eventually catch up with you.

If anyone has links to the Wal-Mart videos, please feel free to post them in comments.

Accidental Branding has just been released in the U.S. and is available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders and Books-a-Million. If you have a group of 30 or more entrepreneurs or marketers and are willing to buy and read the book, I’ll be happy to speak to your group on the phone or in person for free during the months of May or June this year.

EXCERPT FROM ACCIDENTAL BRANDING: HOW ORDINARY PEOPLE BUILD EXTRAORDINARY BRANDS

CHAPTER 3 – THE STORYTELLER JOHN PETERMAN (J. PETERMAN)

“This is a single-action Colt 45 Peacemaker, the gun that tamed the West,” Peterman says, as he slides the long revolver out of his custom-made shoulder holster, flicks opens the cylinder, and loads .45 caliber bullets one by one. Then he hands me the gun. The sun hangs low in the Kentucky sky, pouring red light over Peterman’s ranch on this midsummer’s evening and making me squint as I inspect the Colt. It is a craftsman’s piece that looks like it has been hammered out of a single hunk of iron. The handle is inlaid with smooth Bakelite, which is cool in my hand. It is heavy, much more so than it looks, and as I extend my arms to aim it I feel gravity pulling it groundward. I hold the gun carefully with two hands and sight down the barrel. Then, releasing my breath, I gently squeeze the trigger. Nothing happens.

“Just ease back the hammer when you’re ready to fire,” Peterman says calmly, as if he has not even noticed my failed attempt. I nod and slowly thumb the hammer toward me until it clicks into place. Then I line the shot up and pull the trigger again. This time the Colt jumps in my hand. It is loud, much louder than gunshots in the movies. Peterman looks through binoculars at the can I’m aiming for, which is 40 feet away. “You’re down and to the left. Don’t flinch when you fire.” I hadn’t realized I’d flinched, but I notice it the next time, and the next. I continue firing through two reloads, shooting 18 rounds in total. My flinch gradually lessens, but although a stout poplar tree showers chips every time I fire, the can sitting in front of it does not seem to budge. Peterman is gracious with the limited supply of bullets. He gives himself a mere six shots. When we retrieve the coffee can, there are five holes in it. Peterman says, “Looks like you hit it a few times.” He is being polite. I am pretty sure I’ve missed the can altogether and he’s hit five of six.

The Peterman in question, the one I’ve come to central Kentucky to visit, is none other than that Peterman: John Peterman, the founder of the J. Peterman Company. He is the man who built his mail-order business to $70 million dollars in sales and reinvented the catalog as we know it. His name is familiar to over 40 million Americans. In 1991, Holly Brubach in the Sunday New York Times called Peterman a “merchant poet.” He is also famous because of the buffoonish caricature of him played by John O’Hurley on Seinfeld starting in 1995. Four years later, Peterman went spectacularly bankrupt at the height of his fame. And now he’s back, quietly rebuilding the empire he lost.

Peterman has invited me to spend two days with him in Lexington, where I will interview employees at the J. Peterman Company (including his wife, Audrey), sit in on merchandising meetings, and see how the business runs. I am not sure he realizes that my central goal for engineering the entire trip is to visit the ranch I’m now standing on. After spending four hours interviewing Peterman in New York City a few weeks earlier, I’ve become convinced that the ranch will explain some of the mysteries of the myth he so successfully created. Even before Seinfeld, people were telling stories about J. Peterman. He was the world traveler who had fought in three wars, who hobnobbed with sheiks and maharajas, who looked equally comfortable at a state reception or tending a farm in Provence. Peterman’s little Owner’s Manual was a secret handshake for a certain set of people.

Along the way, the J. Peterman Company attracted some incredibly loyal customers, loyal enough to see their beloved business go bankrupt and still return as consumers two years later when Peterman revived it. In Lexington, I hope to answer a simple but elusive question—how did Peterman build this myth that motivated so many fanatic customers? And I have become convinced that the answer lies hidden at the Peterman ranch.

Excerpted with permission of the publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. from Accidental Branding. Copyright (c) 2008 by David Vinjamuri. This book is available at all bookstores, online booksellers and from the Wiley web site at www.wiley.com, or call 1-800-225-5945

Today I suffered what might almost qualify as a repetitive-motion injury: I cut myself while trying to liberate a consumer product from its packaging. The offender is often the clamshell style of package.

This package can only be opened with sturdy scissors or - if you’re reckless - a knife

The offender today was actually a Zyliss Ice Cream Scoop which had a plastic band wound so tightly around the slender part of its handle that I briefly considered removing it with a soldering iron (which would have been safer). Instead, I used a pair of scissors which rebounded to nick my finger.

Other examples of this type of consumer-unfriendly packaging abound from CD and DVD jewel cases covered with that same clam-shell and clad in hard-to-tear plastic and sticky, sticky tape to pill bottles with shrink-wrapped plastic neck covers that defy tearing.

All of this is actually expense management at the cost of the brand. The problem is that the wrong people are in charge of elements that really affect the brand - either finance managers worried that packaging which is easy to open will invite pilferage or salespeople responding to pressure from retailers to make packaging which will be difficult to open and hard to shoplift.

But it’s a brand disaster. Why would any consumer product knowingly cause someone to bleed? It is unimaginable.

If you’re a brand manager, it is time to start examining your packaging closely. It might just be undercutting your brand message.

Issue

[Image from Church of the Customer]

Douglas Atkin, author of The Culting of Brands has a theory about people in the 21st century. We’ve mostly been torn from our hometowns. We don’t live with our grandparents or parents and may not even know our neighbors. We may share an income level with them but we might not share other core values or beliefs. Increasingly, we use brands as a short-hand to communicate our values to our neighbors and those we encounter socially. Driving a Volvo? I know you’re affluent, have kids and probably send them to private school. A Prius? We obviously are both Dems who share a passion for the environment. Wearing Ralph Lauren? You have money, like to make a nice impression but think fashion with a big “F” is vulgar.

The question brand marketers who see this are asking is: how will this translate to the online space? So we are all watching online communities very closely. With a few key exceptions, many online communities started by marketers are clunky, unusable affairs. We brand people are far too nervous about control to nurture communities well. Some good lessons come from urban planners. They have learned that tightly controlled or barren spaces actually attract ‘undesirables’ (drug addicts, homeless, vagrants, skateboarders) because they cannot be customized by the community. Thus, when Bryant Park was designed, over 1000 lightweight chairs were included, which were intended to be moved by park visitors. The park continues to be a safe and vibrant space.

There aren’t any definitive answers for brands with online communities, as the models are fast evolving. Sites like craigslist.org, FlyerTalk and TivoCommunity have created strong communities of interest, but they are not fully evolved social networks. Many social networks, like Facebook and MySpace are less efficient as brand havens (with the notable exception of the success of independent music on MySpace). Private label sites like NING allow brand marketers to create gated or single-interest communities, but are still in early stages of development.

The Church of the Consumer described an interesting framework (crediting Ray Bard for the visual reproduced above) for thinking about different types of online communities, or different stages in the development of an online community. Cliques are small, exclusive and anti-establishment. Networks are large and intended to facilitate introductions or the spread of information. Cults have rituals, belief systems and charismatic leaders. Finally, Nations are egalitarian, sovereign and committed to an all-consuming cause.

This leaves open the question of how a brand can create an online community. For this, I was happy to get a sneak peak at Forrester’s new report on Online Community Best Practices (thanks to Jeremiah Owyang and Tracy Sullivan). Forrester is careful to differentiate the different reasons that brands form online communities into Listening (an online standing focus group), Talking (get across a brand message), Energizing (nurturing brand enthusiasts), Support (allow brand users to support each other) and Embracing (involve brand faithful in developing the brand). The report goes on to describe some of the steps in creating an online community and - importantly - how to deal with different types of online troublemakers. At seventeen pages, it is still a brief summary, but very useful for those considering a plunge into the water.

Issue

We have been ranting for some time about companies that pursue business strategies that harm the brand. A Wall Street Journal front-page article yesterday highlights another such practice. Companies including The Home Depot, Wal-Mart and Lord & Taylor are hiring law firms to threaten or pursue civil litigation against suspected shoplifters to recover damages. They do this in addition to criminal proceedings.

If handled appropriately, this might not be a foolish practice for the brand. Recovering damages from those who have committed criminal acts against the brand lowers the cost for law-abiding consumers. Unfortunately, like many other practices administered by corporate financial people without any brand oversite, this one casts too wide a net with disastrous results.

In one case cited by the Wall Street Journal, a handyman in Miami named Glenn Rudge was detained at Home Depot after he checked out because a clerk observed a set of $8 drill bits poking from his shirt pocket. He was handcuffed in the store by a guard and the store refused to let him call home and ask his wife to bring the receipt for the drill bits in to the store. He was charged by prosecutors who then dropped the charges when he produced the receipt.

To add insult to injury, a month after the charges had been dropped, Rudge received a letter from the Palmer Reifler law firm demanding $3,000. That sum increased by another $3,000 when he ignored the letter. Mr. Rudge was threatened with a visit from the Sheriff’s office in the second letter. Fortunately, Mr. Rudge was doing handyman work for an attorney who filed suit for him and recovered undisclosed damages from Home Depot.

This example is one of many detailed by The Wall Street Journal and experienced by innocent consumers around the country. Retailers are combating a real problem - the estimated $40 billion annual cost of shrinkage (losses to theft, shoplifting and other consumer fraud) - but doing so in a manner that harms their brands and causes unmeasurable damage to their revenue.

This all stems from a very anti-brand attitude which assumes that consumers are all guilty until proven innocent. The price for this belief is huge reputation damage in word of mouth and negative publicity.

Retailers would be wise to adopt a more customer-friendly attitude towards potential theft. A few thoughts:

1. Approach customers politely - some of them will be innocent.
2. Do not forcibly detain customers - unless unambiguous evidence of a crime exists.
3. Allow customers to explain - accept reasonable explanations even if some may be false
4. Do not sue customers - who have been judged innocent in criminal court.
5. Add common sense to your shrinkage policy - why are customers purchasing hundreds of dollars being detained for $8 items?

It seems unlikely retailers will heed these warnings. In spite of repeated negative publicity, they continue to learn lessons from the music industry - suing their own customers until they have no business left.

Issue

The strike may be over, but the longterm effects of the Writer’s Strike are only just beginning. Chief among them is the question of how to develop new shows for network television. The old model - a pilot season where money is lavished on producing many shows which never see the light of day - is expensive and inefficient.

The answer to this question already exists though - and it’s in a place few are looking for examples these days - major league baseball. The major leagues understand that very few high school or college baseball players are ready to hit 100mph fastballs on day one. Instead of setting these guys up for failure, they send them to compete in leagues designed to develop their skills. Those who flourish get a chance to join the big show - the major leagues.

Network executives have already accidentally done this by promoting series like Showtime’s Dexter and USA Network’s Monk to prime time slots during the strike. Now they should consider a more serious and nuanced development plan.

Internet channels are crying out for content, for one thing. A series could be tested on iTunes, Joost, YouTube or a myriad of other places online. Three or four pilot episodes might be enough to pull together enough of an audience to justify a season-long run on a basic cable station. Then if the audience grows (in size and in passion) the series could make the jump to a broadcast network. This would also give each series a backstory - something for new fans to explore.

The writers’ strike has given television networks an unprecedented opportunity to change their business model. It would be a shame to waste it.

Issue

Political campaigns are usually the stuff of brand managers’ nightmares. The advertising is coarse, unsubtle and unconvincing. It argues with consumers. The media plans are absurd, bombarding consumers with spots so many times that they are as likely to revolt as be convinced.

In this year’s Democratic primary, however, a strange thing is happening: the candidates have constructed two very clear brand paradigms.

While the window dressing of the campaigns may have you believe that the campaign is about experience vs. youth (for Clinton) or change versus the status quo (for Obama), decoding the brand paradigms suggest that the real struggle is even older and more familiar for brand strategists.

It turns out that this primary is really about management versus leadership.

Why do we say this? Decoding the language Sen. Clinton uses to speak about her candidacy and the language of her advertising yields a classic trove of pro-management imagery. Clinton values experience, understands the mechanisms of power, knows the people who actually get things done. She promises to be ‘hands on,’ surrounds herself with party elders and speaks of herself as the safe choice. She unfailingly uses the first person “I” when speaking about her campaign - indicating she will take personal responsibility for the results and values accountability highly.

Sen. Obama speaks of the urgent need for political transformation and uses the language of movements rather than management. He suggests that creating a post-partisan administration and transcending “blue versus red state” mentalities is more important even than specific policy objectives. In spite of repeated attacks from his opposition, he continues to speak more about opportunity and to use his media to motivate rather than to specify. Sen. Obama rarely uses “I” and almost always uses the second person “we” to speak of his campaign as a movement.

This makes for a surprisingly substantive choice for voters. It’s not just flash and posturing - the two candidates are presenting two real alternatives to the question of how executive power is wielded. And they are using classic brand paradigms to do it.

Senator Clinton presents a rational argument for competent management being the most important quality for the next leader. She points to this as the greatest weakness in the current administration (failure to plan for the occupation of Iraq, poor follow-through in Afghanistan, mismanagement of disaster relief after Katrina, etc.). She suggests that only a great manager will be able to deal with the war on terrorism and work health care reform through Congress.

Senator Obama tells us that leadership rather than management will be necessary characteristic of the next President. While bad management may have gotten us mired in Iraq, only leadership will extract us. Rather than a President who can move the levers of power he suggests that we need a President who can inspire others to make fundamental changes.

These competing brand paradigms give us a stark, pragmatic choice. In Senator Clinton’s vision, the best way to avoid a terrorist plot being hatched in Munich, but bound for the United States is to have a President who can get the FBI and CIA to share intelligence, work smoothly with the German government and one who has put the right capabilities into place to stop the plot once uncovered.

Senator Obama suggests that changing the underlying mistrust of the United States in the eyes of foreign nationals (through visionary leadership) would more effectively foil the same plot by making the German Police more likely to trust their U.S. counterparts and share intelligence and also make ordinary citizens of both countries less fearful to cooperate if they were themselves Muslim.

These are two valid arguments and both need to be considered. And - although politics is not the usual place to find it - a good example of successful brand positioning.

Brand

Description:
Two Super Bowl spots for Coca-Cola, both of which broke for Super Bowl XLII. The first spot features Democrat Jim Carville and former Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist arguing on a talk show. They say the word “wrong” at the same time and Frist says, “jinx - buy me a Coke!” “Right now?” Carville asks and Frist says, “No talkin’ - jinx rules!” The two leave the show and walk outside to a hot dog cart where Carville buys Cokes. Frist sees a tour bus and says, “How ’bout it?” “Why not,” Carville shrugs and the two take a tour of Washington, D.C. where they rediscover their love of America (even riding on Segway scooters at one point). The spot ends with them having another Coke while sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, looking at the sun setting over the reflecting pool and Washington Monument.

The second spot starts with a tranquil aerial view of Central Park in New York City. Three floats for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Stewie (from The Family Guy), Underdog and a Coca-Cola Bottle (which we don’t recall seeing in the most recent parade) are being handled by their teams. Then a gust of wind takes the Coca-Cola bottle aloft and Stewie and Underdog immediately begin to fight for it. The battle continues over the streets and sidewalks of Manhattan until, unexpectedly, Charlie Brown catches the bottle over Central Park.

What Works:
The New York Giants may be going home with the rings, but from the brand manager’s perspective it looks like Coca-Cola won the Super Bowl. Although perennial favorite Budweiser won fan polls in such forums as Adbowl, Coca-Cola scored more points from a brand equity standpoint by surprising viewers with two strong messages about the brand - each of which place the brand itself (and not secondary brand equity props like the Budweiser Clydsdales) as the hero of the spot. In fact, the spots mark a remarkable turnaround year for Coca-Cola which has taken itself from the depths of advertising irrelevance (perhaps epitomized by the failed remake of the iconic 70’s spot “Hilltop” called “Chilltop” as an introduction for Coke Zero - an effort so profoundly bad that an online version cannot be found) to a fresh rediscovery of the brand in the hands of Wieden & Kennedy.

Coca-Cola as a brand is most successful when it used as a social catalyst - the profoundly unique element that brings people together. Even though Stewie and Underdog are fighting for a single bottle in the “It’s Mine” spot, the real story is all of the New Yorkers watching the proceedings in wonder, remembering their first trip to the Thanksgiving Day parade. On a small island, events can unite people quickly. Such is the message of this Coke spot. The Frist/Carville spot is expertly timed - coming as it does just a few days before the socalled “Typhoon Tuesday” when nearly one-half of the U.S. electorate goes to vote in primary elections. Speaking as it does of transcendent values that overwhelm partisan issues, it aligns Coke with an important cultural moment.

Taken together, these spots remind us of the profound impact of an iconic brand, one that has been easy to forget for more than a decade.

What Doesn’t:
The Atlanta beverage giant’s future fortunes may hinge more on water and non-carbonated drinks (as evidenced by the recent acquisition of the Vitamin Water brand) but Coca-Cola needs to remember that the equity of all of its brands is enhance by the goodwill that the Coca-Cola name generates. Other than a few noble efforts by Wieden & Kennedy (and Psyop who collaborated on the magical “Happiness Factory” campaign” ), Coca-Cola has significantly under-invested in a brand that drives much of its brand equity as well as employee and distributor morale.

Branding Bottom Line:
Squint and you’d think Coke just aired an Obama commercial and an outtake from Cloverfield. But it’s still a home run.

Brand

Description:
A series of online and TV spots that feature hidden camera footage of actual Burger King customers being told that the chain no longer serves Whoppers after ordering one. The spots document the range of reactions from the upset customers.

What Works:
This campaign works well because it borrows wisdom from one of the biggest marketing blunders of all time: Coca-Cola’s conversion to New Coke in 1985. Sergio Zyman, marketing chief at Coca-Cola at the time learned that although the flavor profile of the revised Coca-Cola formula was indeed preferred to the old version in blind taste tests, consumers had a strong emotional attachment to Coca-Cola. The surprising and unexpected consequence of the botched move to New Coke (which was eventually withdrawn from the market) was to boost share of Coca-Cola (renamed Coca-Cola Classic). Why? Because consumers threatened with losing something remember why they value it in the first place.

Crispin Porter & Bogusky, creators of “The King” (spots this advertising blog panned) has done an excellent job of translating this painful marketing lesson into an entertaining series of hidden-camera spots. The simple setup (tell a customer ordering a Whopper that Burger King no longer serves them, wait for the reaction, then deliver the burger after all) effectively makes the viewer focus on the emotional connection between BK customers and their whoppers.

A side benefit of this advertising is to reach customers that Burger King has been neglecting of late - adults and families. Although not the core audience for Burger King, these groups build loyalty among children who become the young men that drive fast food sales nationwide.

What Doesn’t:
Although The King - in his trademark plastic head - is not nearly as distracting and alarming in these spots as in previous versions, he still is a polarizing figure who may not help the Burger King brand in the long run.

Branding Bottom Line:
Finally something from Crispin Porter we can sink our teeth into.

Issue

Two news items today put a glaring light on the diminished fortunes of Starbucks. McDonalds announced that it would add baristas to its staff and serve cappuccinos, lattes and espresso as well as smoothies and frappes from stainless steel espresso machines.

Simultaneously, Starbucks announced that chairman Howard Schultz would replace Jim Donald as the company’s CEO. This amounted to an admission of very serious issues for the Seattle corporation. “We must address the challenges we face and we know what has to be done,” Mr. Schultz said in a statement.

Followers of Starbucks know that the challenges Mr. Schultz referred to have been reflected in the dismal stock performance - down 48% over the past year. The most commonly cited causes for the share performance are a decline in same store sales, saturation of the U.S. market and operational issues around new product lines.

Beneath this, however, lies a more serious branding crisis that Starbucks has faced and failed. And it may have started in the supermarket.

When Howard Schultz created the vision for Starbucks, he talked of creating a ‘third place.’ Like many creative entrepreneurs, he was synthesizing several very different trends he had observed in diverse arenas. One came from the old world - the cafe experience in Italy and the ability to find refuge in a small bar and sip a tiny cup of espresso for three hours as the world passed by. The second was from the U.S. itself. Borders and Barnes & Noble reinvented the bookstore by creating an environment where customers would feel more comfortable picking up and reading books - going so far as to put cafes into bookstore where customers were encouraged to bring books they had not yet purchased. This seemingly heretical thinking spurred sales as browsing customer turned into buyers.

Starbucks initially did a great job of creating this ‘third place.’ Baristas were well trained and well compensated. They memorized customer names and drink preferences. In urban areas, Starbucks became the preferred spot for impromptu business meetings or for students or writers whiling away a day.

But very early on, Starbucks made some fundamental decisions about brand extensions that weakened the brand. Those decisions led lesser brand leaders than Howard Schultz to take Starbucks in dangerous direction. The culprits? The frappuccino and the Starbucks cart.

The frappuccino itself was a wonderful invention, offering the Starbuck’s lover a new treat and the first blockbuster sub-brand within the Starbucks franchise. The decision to sell the Frappuccino in grocery stores under the Starbucks name, however, was a brand disaster. As was the decision to sell Starbucks coffee from carts, and later from drive-through windows. And to permit huge lines of walk-through Starbucks customers in Starbucks stores.

It would have been very difficult to argue this point a few years ago. The Frappuccino was a huge financial success and Starbucks ubiquity strategy made it a global brand. Bigger was better for Starbucks for a dozen or more years. The result, however, was to create exactly what Howard Schultz primarily despised - another fast food outlet. Year after year in small, barely noticeable ways, Starbucks retreated from being the ‘third place’ that Schultz had envisioned. It added more food, changing the atmosphere. Then other types of merchandise, from coffee mints to music, were promoted, each making Starbucks feel minutely more like a retail chain and less like a refuge. Catering to commuters further shifted the dynamic, as long lines inside the cafes made the morning an unappealing time to sit down for coffee. And the carts, supermarket items and even Starbucks coffee in hotel rooms and homes made the brand into a mass market commodity.

Starbucks points to the central difficulty with great branding in all public companies: investors want public companies to grow as quickly as possible while brands are more conservative and sensitive to change. By pursuing all opportunities, Starbucks fatally weakened its brand, and greatly diminished its unique cultural contribution.

Issue

As the Hollywood writer’s strike spins through the holiday season into 2008, the distinct possibility of a perfect storm for advertising in the 2008 US Presidential campaign season looms.  Could the combination of the strike with lavish television  advertising spending on the race waste millions in donated money?

If it lasts any longer, the Hollywood writer’s strike will have two significant victims: the fall TV lineup, and the presidential campaigns which already upend conventional advertising wisdom every four years with absurdly over-saturated media plans.  This all comes at a time when television advertising is already a dubious proposition: primetime television reached just half the households last year as it did in 1994, even though the U.S. has added 40 million residents.  In the same period, primetime CPM (the cost to reach 1000 prime time viewers) has spiked from $7.64 to over $20.

The effect of the Hollywood writer’s strike thus far has been modest, evidenced mostly from the emergence of questionable reality tv pilots and gameshows onto the prime time schedule (Battle of the Choirs, anyone?)  But the strike is already threatening the traditional winter/spring pilot season, when networks invest in producing test episodes for a host of potential new shows for the fall.  Even if this archaic system is restructured, a strike lasting into the Spring would wreak havoc on the fall television lineup.

Add to this the enormous and distorting effect of presidential campaign television spending.  The Wall Street Journal estimates that “candidates, political parties and issues groups are expected to spend $3 billion this election cycle.”  Most of this will be spent on television.  These will mostly be spot purchases in local markets, but they will have a tremendously distorting effect on an industry much in need of reform.  And television depends on high-visibility content from primetime to drive overall viewership.

So the likely result may be this: billions of dollars will be spent on clumsy, unsubtle television advertising.  In order to reach the least frequent television viewers, candidates and other political ad buyers will scrap conventional wisdom on ad wear out rates (how many times a person can see the same ad before it starts to wear out and have the opposite effect intended) and oversaturate the medium.

The shame of all of this is that campaigns seem to be ignoring a huge opportunity with new media.  There are more people than ever watching video on the web.  A number of advertisers, from Smirnoff Raw Tea to Brawny have demonstrated the ability to create appealing branded entertainment with video on the web.  And if the Hollywood writers strike continues, the audience for this type of programming may skyrocket.  In addition, there are a large number of talented writers currently idle, unable to work for studios or production companies, who could still be engaged directly by advertisers.  In spite of this, web campaign spending is below relative viewership rates of television to the Internet.  Ironically, politicians may be the ones getting sold a bill of goods in this election season.

Brand

Description:
A viral campaign in its second year, Elf Yourself from OfficeMax allows users to upload photos of friends and loved ones, crop them and then watch the results in a fun animation.

What Works:
One of the most successful viral campaigns in recent memory, Elf Yourself has reached Good Morning America as well as households across the nation.  From a execution standpoint, Elf Yourself works because it allow users to become part of the promotion and because the details work:  it’s easy to use and the results are extremely amusing.  The campaign does not work hard to be promotional, but does give some equity back to the OfficeMax brand.  The first year of the campaign generated over 36 million visits and this year promises to be stronger.

What Doesn’t:
The linkage to the OfficeMax brand is weak - because the elves really have nothing to do with OfficeMax.  In fact, Elf Yourself could have been created by virtually any brand.  On the other hand, this advertising blog finds it hard to imagine how an execution as clever as this could be tied more directly to the OfficeMax brand.

Branding Bottom Line:
Elf Yourself is fantastic - who did that again?

Issue

There’s something new, and distinctly odd, out there on the frontiers of the Internet.  The site Truemors aims to empower ordinary citizens to spread, well, rumor.  Ideally those that are true.  Anyone can contribute, and the rules are simple - write stuff that is actually true and don’t break the law.  The result is a very eclectic stream of information which users can rate, and thus sort.  What rises to the top is the stuff the most people believe - or like.

Whether Truemors will prosper remains to be seen. But the central idea behind it - that citizens can report information directly on a joint forum - is an intriguing step forward.  The success of blogs has proven that credible reporting need not come from the most established sources.  Even mainstream media like CNN and Fox have solicited and run video taken by eyewitnesses.  Truemors tries to take the process a step further, shoving the microphone directly into the hands of the average joe.
Part of the concept has already been proven.  Perhaps one of the most important developments on the Internet has been the rise of social bookmarking with sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, and Stumble Upon.  These sites allow ordinary people to organize the Internet by explicitly selecting and tagging sites they deem worthy.  It is a much stronger approach than Google search for finding contextual information when it works, and it is one of the core ideas behind the Web 2.0 concept.

Truemors, founded by entrepreneurial guru Guy Kawasaki (The Art of the Start)  along with Will Mayall and Kathryn Henkens faces a high hurdle (and indeed some initial skepticism from luminaries like Seth Godin).  The result of putting publishing power into the hands of absolutely everyone is chaotic (a recent scan of the homepage contrasted stories on Dora the Explorer and the Liberty bell with an expose on a couple charged in an identity theft case.

Beyond the marketing question of whether Truemors will catch on is the bigger question of whether unmoderated citizen journalism will degenerate into gossip and innuendo or whether a Wikipedia-like effect will raise the level of contributions.  Voting on posts creates a ‘greatest’ list which is placed above the running list of posts.  But ‘greatest’ may be more like ‘best of craigslist’ than a highly combed-over Wikipedia entry: it may be more about entertainment value than accuracy.

In truth, Truemors may have just reinvented the oldest network of all - the ancient marketplace where news, gossip, rumor and innuendo walked hand in hand.

Brand

Description:
A series of simple ads featuring a comparative taste test between Buckley’s and various awful alternatives including Spring Break Hot Tub Water, Snail Trail Accumulation, Used Mouthwash, Public Restroom Puddle (which is yellow),  Trash Bag Leakage,  Pig Tongue Scrapings and Cardio Workout Perspiration.  In each spot (shot on video and with a hum in the background to simulate a handicam),  the subject is shown drinking the second alternative (Buckley’s being the first) and commenting that it either tastes the same as or better than Buckley’s.

Accompanying the TV spots is a MySpace campaign including a consumer generated photo contest for the worst Buckley’s face.  There is also a contest for selecting a town to be crowned “The Capital of Bad Taste” between Buckley, Washington and Buckley, Illinois.  Both Mayors are featured showing their Buckley’s face.

What Works:
This advertising blog is not normally a fan of gross-out humor but it works well here.  Buckley (a Canadian company, founded in 1990, now owned by Novartis) borrowed the brand strategy which had been so successful for Listerine in the 1970’s.  Listerine had long struggled with it’s unpleasant mouth feel and finally hit on the idea that the bad taste could be used as proof that it was actually doing something (killing the bacteria that cause bad breath, in Listerine’s case).  Buckley took this strategy and made it more explicit with the “It Tastes Awful, And It Works” tagline and a campaign exaggerating the terrible taste of Buckley’s cough syrup.

The result is a clever and memorable campaign which creates an ownable brand positioning for Buckley’s as the ‘no frills’ cough syrup for people who just want to stop their cough.  This will be impossible for any other brand in this category to copy, and we expect the brand will do as well in the U.S. as it has done in Canada.

What Doesn’t:
Any campaign that uses exaggeration as a technique treads a fine line and Buckley’s is clearly on that line.  A step further and it will actually suppress sales - which is probably not the goal of the campaign.

Branding Bottom Line:
We’d like to say that Buckley’s left a bad taste in our mouth - but we’re not that brave.

This morning at 12:01 am, Hollywood writers went on strike for the first time since 1988. Most of the commentary around this strike has been focused on the earlier writers strike and its estimated $500mm cost to the industry.  Media critics and stock analysts are wondering how great the revenue loss to the industry will be and what burdens any eventual deal with the writers will place on the industry.

Instead of looking to the 1988 writers strike for historical lessons, pundits should reach a year further back, to the 1987 NFL strike.  In that strike, professional football players were replaced by scabs - mostly undrafted former college players willing to cross a picket line to be able to wear the uniform of an NFL team for a few weeks.  Although the interval was short - after a few games, pros began crossing the picket line and the season was not lost - those few weeks were interesting.  Fans saw a lower level of football, but also a lot of people playing for nothing more than passion.  Although most of the scabs disappeared immediately with the return of the regular season, a few joined the big league.

Hollywood is far too unionized for this scenario to play out on in the writers room for The Tonight Show, Desperate Housewives or Heroes.  But if the writers strike creates an extended dearth of new material on the big screen and televisions nationwide, new media may have its moment in the sun.  Sites like YouTube have already shown that American consumers are willing to watch consumer-created media.  If television content disappears - creating an extended summer break of sorts - the conditions might suddenly exist for a tipping point shift towards new media.

Hollywood knows that it has a lot to lose from the writers strike.  But the real loss could be much larger than anyone imagines.  When consumers become more expert at finding video on the web just as amateurs are getting better at delivering it, the advertising model behind network television, which depends heavily on the scale of the audience watching commercials, could vanish.  Then Hollywood writers could return to work and find the stadiums empty, the fans gone.

Brand

Description:
Two new campaigns from Apple feature real Apple consumers.  The new iPhone campaign features a variety of real consumers, from a businessman to an airline pilot.  Each explains how they use the iPhone to help them with real everyday problems while visually demonstrating on the iPhone.  The second campaign is for the new iPod Touch.  This campaign does not feature a consumer, but was created by a consumer from stock footage and gained a viewership on YouTube.  Apple began running this spot last weekend nationally as the launch spot for the iPod Touch.

What Works:
Apple has suffered from a series of missteps over the summer which showed the company to be somewhat removed from the everyday concerns of its core brand followers.  First was the $200 price drop on the iPhone.  In itself a good idea (a classic skim-pricing strategy), Apple neglected to consider the impact on those who had waited in long lines just a few months earlier to pay more for the new phone.  After some waffling, Steve Jobs announced a $100 consumer credit on the iPhone for early purchases.

The next misstep - also affecting the iPhone - was the strategy Apple initially adopted of keeping the phone locked from outside developers.  This may have resulted from Apple’s contract with AT&T, but it mirrors Apple’s general approach to design which is to tightly control all aspects of the final product.  In the case of the iPhone, this strategy proved unpopular as developers and consumers alike wanted to add functionality to the phone.  Compounding the issue, a number of users who had made unauthorized alterations to their iPhone - including unlocking it to use on other carriers than AT&T - found that installing phone updates disabled the phone entirely.  Apple eventually reversed course by allowing outside developers to design applications to run natively on the phone.

Beyond the specifics of the new spots for the iPhone and iPod Touch - which are both extremely well executed - there is a more important underlying theme for Apple which is a good sign for the company.  Pulling a video off of YouTube and blessing it as the launch spot for a major new product is a startling development for this close-lipped organization.  Spotlighting ordinary consumers is an old ad technique (the testimonial may pre-date even print advertising) but shows an engagement with real consumers that is a definite change for Apple.  In sum, we think Apple is starting to realize the power of the brand cult it has created beyond their usefulness in populating the churches they have built for the - the Apple Stores.

Allowing consumer to engage in co-creation with the Apple brand is a good sign for the brand as well as a sign of the times for marketing.

What Doesn’t:
Co-creation is a process that is difficult to stop once the lid is ripped off the top.  Apple needs to carefully map the path of its upcoming brand extensions to ensure it will continue to listen to and engage with consumers.

Branding Bottom Line:
The iPhone proves more useful than the U.S. national air traffic control system.  Scary.