The taste of brand... shaken, not stirred

Good Freakonomics post on why there are so many new competing brands of vodkas compared to other liquors. The consensus among the comments is that it's about brand and marketing vs. taste, since vodka is supposed to be as tasteless as possible.

Which makes for an interesting question for a marketing class somewhere: how do you differentiate a product that is supposed to be, well... perfectly un-different.

The answer, of course, is brand. When Absolut began its wonderful print campaign, they were in the relative basement of vodkas, to say nothing about booze preference in general. Within a couple years of that campaign's launch, they had not only increased their own sales immensely, but had increased the marketshare of vodkas across the board by 30%. Best of both worlds: they grew the pie and their piece of it.

It makes for a good way of starting one part of a branding brainstorm conversation. How would we brand this product if there was abolutely (ha ha) no product or service difference between us and the other guys? What role in customers' stories do we want our stuff to play? What kind of prop is it? How does it fit into their lives? What does our brand taste like?

Somebody at Playboy gets it

I read Freakonomics (WorldCat, Amazon) a few years back (as an eBook, btw), and really enjoyed it. Because of that experience, I now RSS the Freakonomics Blog (now owned by the NYT). In their most recent entry, Playboy editor Chris Napolitano answered questions from Freakonomics Blog readers: 36 questions. According to the blog's authors, that was all the questions he was asked.

I don't really care that it's Playboy, really. I never read the magazine, just bought it for the pictures of the naked women. What is great, though, is that Napolitano completely engaged the blog medium and has now, I would imagine, really impressed the hell out of at least 37 people (the folks who asked questions, and me).

If it had been 807 questions... well, that would be absurd. But 36 is within the range of "doable." And responding personally to that many questions, though obviously more time consuming than cherry picking (ahem) 3-5, really shows that he's using the forum the way it was intended at its best.

Worst blog footer ever

So I'm doing link jumping from a post on BoingBoing to a story about how "The Secret" is crap, and just generally glorifying in feeling mui superioso to those who write, market and spank this garbage. I got no beef with the poor people who buy these books; we all have to try lots of stupid stuff before we find something that actually has, well... any reality in it. The path to success, as The Beginner's Mind will show, is paved with stones of failure. So fail on! hopeful "The Secret" readers... the fact that you're trying is at least a step in the right direction (on a particularly obnoxious stone of failure).

Anyway... while doing so, I was checking out the writings and blogs of some of the people in what some of the lovely skeptical writers call the "New Wage Movement." Classic. One of these blogs -- the posts of which are almost all about the author's books, tapes, etc. and filled with links to his other sites -- had the following footer at the bottom of EVERY post:
 

All writings here are copyrighted by John Doe. You may not use them without written permission but you may link to the posts or give out a link to the posts.

 

If you like the free articles on this blog, let John know by buying him his all-time favorite gift - an Amazon gift certificate. His email is xxx@xxx.com Click here

Wow. I mean, just... wow. First of all, I hope I'm not in trouble for "using" his footer without his permission. I did remove his name (it's not John Doe) and email address, as I don't want to give the site any more link love. But for a guy who's selling good-feeling, happy-happy new age drivel... having a copyright notice on every single post is, well... Not so touchy-feely. And a request to send him an Amazon gift certificate if you like the "free articles on this blog" is... well, I'm speechless. 

It's super that he gives us the right, though, to "link to the posts or give out a link." 'Cause, you know... if you don't say that, it's like, a violation of IP law to link to stuff. I bet you didn't know that. You may also not have known that anything you write is automatically copyrighted, even without a statement like that. On every post.

From a marketing standpoint, what does the above say about the author? Well, first it says, "I don't know much about copyright." Also, to me, it says, "I expect you to rip off my stuff, so... watch out!" Third, it says he don't know diddly about how people who actually do stuff on the Internet use links. Fourth, it says that he doesn't get what blogs are about, if he's asking for gifts for the enjoyment of same. Since he's hyper-rich, too, it's weird that he's begging for Amazon-bucks.

All in all, I just found this creepy bad.

This is where...

... all those "other socks" go when you lose one of them in the dryer.

Link, by way of Infocult.

Amberanime

Most excellent gaming blogger Amber Night gets animated at GU Comics. Way to go Amber! Next step: action figure with kung-fu typing skillz.

Badvertising

I teach history of advertising. One of the things we do is look for good and bad examples of various advertising concepts throughout history. I can't find a clip of a recent ad for the Heineken Draught Keg, but it goes into my book as an example of "badvertising."

If you haven't seen the ad, it's because you haven't been watching cable TV for the last two weeks. At all. I think I've seen the ad twice a day at least. And I don't watch that much tube.

Short version: A green-skinned, robotic, hot-pants-wearing cutie with a page-boy haircut does a kind of robot dance onto the screen. She does a couple mechanical "vogue" poses, then opens up her thorax, exposing some advanced, cybernetic innards that contain a Heineken Draught Keg. Video below:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-NfrBgYIEQ[/youtube]

Yep. Green, robot stripper girl with a mini-keg fridge where her heart, lungs, etc. would be. All to the beat of some indecipherable techno-tronics. Smiling the whole time as she opens herself up for our beer-drinking pleasure.

It is, frankly, horrifying. And horrifyingly bad.

I don't mind sexy ads. Or funky ads. And even if I don't like an ad, that doesn't mean I'll label it badvertising without a reason. But this one... yeegadz. List of things that are wrong with this:

1. High-tech and beer don't go together. Beer is primal. Beer is low-tech. Beer is the reason we invented pottery, not the reason we go into space, create better garage-door openers, and splice genes.


2. Beer goes from the outside of us to the inside. Seeing a very lifelike creature take beer from her inside, and bring it to the outside has two possible subconscious roots: urinating or vomiting. I do not want beer that has already been inside something/one else.


3. Woman as objectified sex object is fine. Well, not fine... but it ain't going away. A beautiful woman bringing you a beer is as much a staple of American advertising culture as "shiny cars go vroom." But woman as beer container? Or fridge? Keg-support-system with great gams? It pushes the limits of even my caveman appreciation for reducing a person to an object.


4. Green skin bad. Green skin sick skin. Maybe dead skin. Green skin goblin skin.


5. Robot dancing bad. Robot dancing sick dancing. Maybe dead dancing. Robot dancing late 80's dancing.


6. Robots can't get drunk.


7. Sexy, fit fembots would kick your ass if you got drunk and tried to play them.

Heineken's brand is (or has been) very nicely handled in their previous ads where people do funny and/or slightly tawdry things to keep ahold of their Heinies. None of that here. No link to the old ads at all. Which isn't always bad. But in this case, well... The old ads conveyed a brand that was about a higher-quality beer; something to be relished and coveted. If I could pick one word that they seemed to be aiming at, it would be "premium." The ads were also quite funny.

The new ad isn't funny. I don't think it's meant to be, either. So no points off for bad humor execution, just for letting go something that was working for something that doesn't. The new ad doesn't convey a sense of quality... just... gimmickry. Which I had never associated with Heineken. Until now.

The 7 Deadly Sins of Blogging

A friend of mine loves wikis but hates blogs. Wikis are for getting things done. Blogs are for self-involved blather. So I was greatly pleased that she, while joking around last month, inadvertently provided me a topic for a post: The Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging. Here we go.

Lust: Thou desirest link love at all costs. Not for the righteous joy of having pleased another with thy writing, but solely for the inbound traffic. Trackbacks also thou have left like chocolate and flowers on the mantel of thy desire for page views.

Gluttony: The lady doth posteth too much, methinks. Worthy thy words may be, but in excess flow they become as so much trifling spew. A picture is worth 1000 words; but the picture that your 1,000 words is worth may be this.

Greed: Thy blog's otherwise lovely face is marred by the gross, green eyes of Google Ads. You get less traffic than Bea Arthur immitators! You have 12 regular readers and 1 comment on your last 25 posts! Rid thyself of the false hope of making beer money from thy blog!

Sloth: Thou hast not posted in three months. We have given up on thee. Thou art banished from our RSS feeds.

Wrath: It is thy blog, indeed. But venting they spleen openly over; thy ex-girlfriend, ex-boss, job interviews, least-favorite WoW class, political enemies, or Disney musical is just pissy and (even worse) boring. Thou soundeth small and whiny, as the target of they wrath pro'ly ain't gonna comment on your stupid, %$#@! blog, you maggot.

Envy: If thou findest a good link elsewhere, and do not give credit, thou art a turd. Failure to give credit is a sign of blog envy, for thou wishest, clearly, that thy brain was as big as the originator of thy pilfered post. Downright plagiarism? For that, thou shalt get thee to hell.

Pride: Father of all sins. Guess what? Nobody cares about thy blog. If thou thinkest that blogging makes thee the shiznit, thou art a loon. Blog because it makes you a better writer, helps you keep track of your days, brings you a few Web buddies. Blog to get it off your chest (without wrath, please). Blog for your own enjoyment. But blog in humility.