Brandplay Blog

Achtung! New Blog!

Stacey — Fri, 04 May 2007 17:19:39 +0000

We've started another blog in support of a new venture called Undercurrent. Start reading, start believing...

www.iwasborndigital.com

Consumer-generated content means famous people get to have fun too...

Stacey — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 00:04:36 +0000

This is brilliant social commentary (if you're aware of The Black Eyed Peas and their song "My Humps"). Made possible by YouTube. Traditional MTV would never play this. Why not?

Targeted marketing is scary... and cool

Stacey — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:58:12 +0000

Had the latest Carl's Jr. Spicy Buffalo Chicken Sandwich viral web promotion emailed to me a few days ago. Had a couple thoughts. First off, try it out, it's pretty fascinating stuff in the vein of subservient chicken. What's interesting about it is that it begins to show you how technology will enable us to customize brand messages for each consumer. How long until your TV commercials start saying your name (assuming TV commercials still exist in 10 years)? How long until it's not just which ads I see, but which versions? And then, the ability to track results based on ad content ("oh, this guy actually buys things when there's a pretty blonde in the ad")...

Also, the women in my life were upset that this ad didn't come in a "hunk" version. I hear ya. Unfortunately, Carl's Jr. is going after that same Burger King consumer - the 17 year-old male. Eating machines, every one of them.

Before and after

Stacey — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 21:14:11 +0000

Brilliant post on Creating Passionate Users included this picture, which just slays me.

Pontification vs. reaction

Stacey — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 20:33:42 +0000

Some people pontificate. They sit in their Aeron chairs and think of ideas they want to share with the world. To some extent lately, I've felt more reactionary. I have a great time conversing with people about their specific challenges or needs. To that end, if you can frame your question or challenge in 2-3 sentences, I'll try to address it here in the blog amidst the regular pontification. And now on to more of that:

If you're not uncomfortable, you're not doing anything all that interesting. It's a simple idea, but let's face it - most people in senior management at established companies are fairly comfortable. Or at least, they're a lot more comfortable than the guy starting the next YouTube right now. Instead of always looking for the feeling of hitting a homerun, of banging on all cylinders, look for the feeling that's one step closer than that. The feeling of risk. Do something that makes you uncomfortable every day (use some common sense here) and see what happens.

Webinar.

Stacey — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 05:21:46 +0000

I love the word webinar. It's fun to say. Sometimes, they're fun to watch. Our friends over at Umbria promise that this one will be worth it:

Webinar on Mining the Blogosphere for Brand Insight

Umbria, a market intelligence company that specializes in blog research and consumer generated media for market insight, is sponsoring an American Marketing Association (AMA) webinar, "Look Who's Blogging: Tapping into the Blogosphere for Brand Insight” on February 22 at 1 pm EST.

More information about the webinar can be found by visiting the Umbria homepage at http://www.UmbriaListens.com or enrolling at the AMA website: http://www.marketingpower.com/webcast334.php

Got my letter.

Stacey — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 05:14:39 +0000

As a former JetBlue customer, I got my letter today... my apology letter. JetBlue had some trouble this week. Big time. So, am I going to kick them off the list? No. Why? Because I got an apology letter, and a good one at that. I actually believe poor David. I think he's really shaken up about this whole thing, mostly because it's so unlike them to get this far off track without a plan. Here's the letter:

Dear JetBlue Customers,

We are sorry and embarrassed. But most of all, we are deeply sorry.

Last week was the worst operational week in JetBlue's seven year history. Following the severe winter ice storm in the Northeast, we subjected our customers to unacceptable delays, flight cancellations, lost baggage, and other major inconveniences. The storm disrupted the movement of aircraft, and, more importantly, disrupted the movement of JetBlue's pilot and inflight crewmembers who were depending on those planes to get them to the airports where they were scheduled to serve you. With the busy President's Day weekend upon us, rebooking opportunities were scarce and hold times at 1-800-JETBLUE were unacceptably long or not even available, further hindering our recovery efforts.

Words cannot express how truly sorry we are for the anxiety, frustration and inconvenience that we caused. This is especially saddening because JetBlue was founded on the promise of bringing humanity back to air travel and making the experience of flying happier and easier for everyone who chooses to fly with us. We know we failed to deliver on this promise last week.

We are committed to you, our valued customers, and are taking immediate corrective steps to regain your confidence in us. We have begun putting a comprehensive plan in place to provide better and more timely information to you, more tools and resources for our crewmembers and improved procedures for handling operational difficulties in the future. We are confident, as a result of these actions, that JetBlue will emerge as a more reliable and even more customer responsive airline than ever before.

Most importantly, we have published the JetBlue Airways Customer Bill of Rights—our official commitment to you of how we will handle operational interruptions going forward—including details of compensation. I have a video message to share with you about this industry leading action.

You deserved better—a lot better—from us last week. Nothing is more important than regaining your trust and all of us here hope you will give us the opportunity to welcome you onboard again soon and provide you the positive JetBlue Experience you have come to expect from us.

Sincerely,

David Neeleman
Founder and CEO
JetBlue Airways

Hey, at least they're trying. That's one of my new soapboxes - are you even trying to not be evil?

the Idea Collector

Stacey — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 22:35:59 +0000

A long time ago, I wrote a post recommending that brands create an "idea collector" - a person whose job it was to listen and respond to consumer ideas for product innovation and improvement. Not so much for negative feedback (although that's important), but for those great ideas just waiting out there. Thanks to Josh Spear, I found out today that Dell (and others) are doing this in a digital way. Check it out.

They go left you go right.

Stacey — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 19:14:00 +0000

In Zoolander, Ben Stiller's character can't turn left. In many industries, it's the same with the competition - they only know how to do things one way... the current way. This year at fashion week, an up and coming brand called Trovata turned heads when instead of paying to produce a show, they created two fictional characters that attended all the other shows in Trovata clothing. Read the WSJ article about it here. So good. What I like about this is it speaks the whole casual Trovata lifestyle. They're party crashers. They're too cool for school. I love it.

ITDataHouse is the worst business on earth.

Stacey — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 17:48:37 +0000

There is a company spamming my blog right now, in an attempt to grow their business. This is not uncommon, but today I've decided to give them some publicity. I think my title says it all. When will people learn that to get real buzz, you have to do something interesting, something remarkable? You absolutely can't buy it, or fake it.