In Episode 5 we find out why it’s so important to have all the elements of the conversation in place in order to encourage audience participation and build a loyal following.  This week we take a closer look at crafting an authentic message.  You don’t always have to be good, but you do have to [...]

Technology: A Driving Force Behind Transmedia

In Part I of our series, we took a brief look at the basic elements of how Transmedia is growing in popularity around the world.  Entertainment and branding are evolving and technology is helping to usher us into this new paradigm faster every day.  For the first time in [...]

The brand police are knocking at the door.  You can run but you can’t hide!
In today’s Ad Age, Jack Neff writes about Good Guide, a consumer brand rating site that has already put their scale of 1-10 on over 75,000 products.  While consumer watchdogs have been around a long, long time, this more recent entry [...]

Hold on to your hat!  Are you sitting down?  You know the long forgotten “old” people outside the 18-34 demo?  The ones who have always been the afterthought when it comes to brand messaging?  Guess what, they count.  As I noted in several prior posts, the notion that retailers, especially teen and youth product and [...]

Your audience has always been in control of your messaging, but now they are equipped with the digital tools to demand everything be completely on their terms.  Understanding your audience, the way they speak, the terms they use and places they like to interact with each other is as important as a solid story structure.  [...]

Everyone knows their TV and Internet are on a crash course with each other and when these worlds collide, the way we experience entertainment will never be the same. It won’t be too much longer before we’ll all be checking our Facebook, and other time sucking web accounts, for photos and video messages from our [...]

Brand integration in web series?  Wait, I thought that was dead.  Didn’t every brand get a good clock cleaning earlier this decade by investing in this very same format?  Certainly.  However, as we have said for some time now, that too has passed. The opportunity for organic and effective branding in web series is here, we’ve learned [...]

One of the key components of our company’s branding mantra is the need for personal engagement through authentic messaging.  Our formula always stresses (1) specific and personal = loyal and (2) keep it real.  In other words, no brand is going to earn consumer attention and loyalty without delivering something of real value (content) that [...]

When we are trying to explain our approach to branding  and digital marketing.  We always start with our equation GREAT CONTENT + STRATEGIC DISTRIBUTION = LOYAL PARTICIPANTS WHO LIVE YOUR BRAND.  Of course, there are many sub-components here.  Great Content starts it all.  One of the key elements of great content is that it must [...]

In a prior post, I discussed the budget slashing reaction most brands had to the economic calamity.  I queried how long brands could stay in crisis mode and refuse to spend on branding and marketing despite that being a mainstay of their business.  I guess things are starting to turn and brands are coming out [...]