The old rules of messaging and traditional media dictate that you want to try to reach as many people as possible.  Today, with the ability to hyper target your message or story, the barrage of so much content, and peoples’ short attention spans, it’s about quality and your own definition of ROI.  We learned about [...]

The big scary paradigm shift in technology, entertainment and advertising (don’t worry everything else is converging too) is akin to the implosion of the music industry. We spent years building up obstacles between the music and the fans and trying to ignore the fact that they were always in control. When the dust finally settles [...]

As we saw in Episode 3, there are several ways to track audience data.  You can find out, on a very granular level, who they are, where they like to play, and other important metrics that are required to make great content and distribute it strategically across the web.  In Episode 4 we find out [...]

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 [...]

In an effort to craft a brand idea or story custom made for the rabid audience, start focusing on the fans.  There are a variety of free platforms to test your ideas, story, and characters and get immediate feedback from the plethora of passion centers that already exist online.   Popular shows like AMC’s Mad Men [...]

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 [...]