SCHMITTblog

BRITE Rocked

...and now you can rock, too.

Go to the BRITE Conference homepage to check out the content from the event.

Coca Cola Turning Red Square Red

On a recent trip to Russia, I stopped by the Red Square, known for rock concerts by Paul McCartney and Shakira (and a little bit of Russian history). to witness Coca-Cola's Red Square activities for the upcoming World Cup.

Watch how Coca Cola turned Red Square red.

Experience Conference in Belgium

I attended a conference on experiential marketing in Belgium, in the lovely city of Ghent.  After my keynote, there were several great speakers following, talking about Starbucks entering the Belgium market and the launch (sorry, the birth) of a baby elephant in the Antwerp zoo. (I also attended a performance of Don Carlo at the Antwerp Opera, in which the autodafe scene was performed not on stage but in the foyer.)

Watch the interviews I shot with the organizer of the conference, Pascal Libyn, and one with John Deprez who runs a new media agency in Belgium.

New Tiger Woods Playlist

Just launched The Daily Tiger (Woods) playlist on my YouTube Channel. The first video is up! More on his brand to come...

I will blog daily on the Tiger Woods brand until "the crisis" is over, the brand resurrected or destroyed, or until I can't stand philosophizing about it anymore.

Hope this is useful as a case study of personal branding.

9/9/99 Ten Years Later

9/9/99 was the date of the experiential kick-off event for the Center on Global Brand Leadership. We have done many events and conferences, bringing together academics and practitioners. We have created communities.  And we are part of a network of centers in Munich, Barcelona, Seoul, Singapore and Shanghai, all united by the same objective: to research and understand brands.

Looking back over the last ten years ...

much has changed, and much has remained the same.  Brand strategy is still a major focus in organizations.  Back then, experience was a radical idea; now it is mainstream. In 1999, nobody was concerned about internal branding; now it is a hot topic.

I wonder what's in for the next ten years. Will value branding become a trend, or is it just the recession? Will branding become more and more entertaining, or will there be a backlash to such fake marketing? Will global brands still flourish, or will "local" be the "next global"?

GOMOT ("Gagging On My Own Tackiness").

Luxury and Recession

The other day, in Hong Kong, I was wondering whether the old rule that luxury is recession proof still holds. Miles and miles of empty shopping malls in Central, Pacific Mall, and, across the harbor, in Kowloon convinced me that this time consumers have changed: this time they are  counting their pennies.

Or have the excesses of the luxury industry gone too far this time, irrespective of the recession? Consider casual fashion lines. Half a year ago, designer jeans for around a thousand US dollars were piled up at Lane Crawford’s and at Joyce.  Every designer was moving into athletic shoes at a huge price premium beyond Puma’s and Adidas’ (some of those shoes were running around USD600-800). Luxury makers were dancing on the volcano; and now they are getting buried under the fire.

Obama-Clinton: Battle of the Brands

For years, political campaigns have taken the best ideas of consumer marketing and put them to work in the battle for voters’ preference. Just as marketing has evolved from the traditional focus on unique selling propositions to brands and customer experiences, political campaigning has kept pace.

The ongoing battle for the Democratic nomination illustrates the three keys to brand success today: a great experience, consistent messaging, and an emotional appeal.

Just like the bottled water and tissue paper categories, there is little differentiation to be found among the candidates’ product features (tax policy, education, the economy, etc).  So, experiential qualities will hold sway:  leadership, consistency, inspiration. As the race continues across the country, voters are enjoying the ride – not only showing up in throngs to vote, but to take part, live, in the experience.  (The voting booth as destination store!)

Barack Obama had to build a new brand from scratch, so he was forced to be extremely disciplined in his message (commentators have even commented on the consistent use of his signature font). Hillary Clinton started with high brand awareness, but in trying to modify her established image, she had to deploy a variety of messages, which her critics took to be brand confusion (e.g. a New York Times op-ed listed “Soft Hillary, Hard Hillary, Misty Hillary… Let’s-Get-Down-in-the-Dirt-and-Fight-Like-Dogs Hillary”).

Clinton’s latest comeback shows that her brand has done best when it’s had an emotional appeal – whether her coffee-shop moment in New Hampshire, or her Ohio advertisement that set her familiar argument of foreign-policy credentials in starkly emotional terms (the sleeping child straight out of a Nyquil commercial).  Obama’s brand has generated strong emotional resonance by tapping into voters’ dreams and aspirations.

Where is this battle of the brands headed?  Possibly to an eventual co-branded merger, with the dominant brand at the top of the ticket.  Which brings up a classic question of brand architecture: would the consumer be swayed by the synergy of two brands?  Or opt for the purity of an un-diluted brand: John McCain?

- Bernd Schmitt and David Rogers

BRITE conference (this week)

I will be speaking this week on Big Think, and leading an interactive session for CMOs on sourcing big ideas, as part of the BRITE '08 conference and CMO summit on branding, innovation, and technology, at Columbia Business School, this Thursday and Friday, Feb 7-8th.

BRITE '08 is part of a major initiative by my Center on Global Brand Leadership at the school.  The event will bring together big thinkers from business, technology, media, and marketing to discuss how technology and innovation are transforming the ways that companies build and sustain great brands.

Topics include: social networks, user-generated content, viral campaigns, B2B branding, driving innovation inside and outside the organization, ROI for online marketing, TV 2.0, online content platforms, brands that thought big in 2007

Fellow speakers include:
    * Marty Homlish (Global Chief Marketing Officer, SAP)
    * Craig Newmark (Founder, Craigslist)
    * Patia McGrath (Global Director of Innovation, GE)
    * Bob Greenberg (Global Chief Creative Officer, R/GA)
    * Andrew Miller (CEO, Quattro Wireless)
(full speaker list)

Conference registration is here.  There is also a BRITE blog, wiki, and more fun things to explore.

I hope you can join us!

-Schmitt

Super Bowl Ads Go Online – or do they?

Many in my family tuned into the Super Bowl on Sunday to watch football.  But I fall into the reported 36% of Super Bowl fans who tune in each year primarily to watch the advertisements.

This year, advertisers paid $2.7 million for each 30 second slice of air time, but you didn’t have to turn on your TV for a minute to catch them.  YouTube, AOL, and MySpace provided online sites where you could watch the entire roster of ads and vote on them.  I’m sure SCHMITT wasn’t the only marketing guru to cancel their annual Super Bowl party this year as a result (Schmitt went to a classical music concert, and caught the ads online, like me).

But did the Super Bowl ads really make the transition online – to the new world of networking sites, user content, and interactive media?  Leading up to the game, there was much buzz about how advertisers were “exploring new ways to bring their ads online… to make [their] steep investment go further.” (Wall Street Journal)

But almost without exception, the advertisers failed to use their TV ad as a jumping off point for an online experience – one that could be more interactive, engaging, and potentially sales-driving.  (A notable exception was the super-tacky GoDaddy.com, which created a “censored ad” that you had to go to their site to watch.) Even user-generated ads were on the decline, with a single Doritos spot.

Instead, the ad agencies fell back to their old habits of telling 30 second “stories” about a brand, hoping that a tale of goofy cavemen, noble clydesdales, or aphrodisiac peanuts would make you think their brand was “funny,” “inspiring,” or “irresistable.”

We’ll continue the discussion this week as part of the BRITE ’08 conference and CMO summit on branding, innovation, and technology at Columbia, February 7-8th.  Bob and other marketing leaders from G.E., SAP, Fox, and more, will be discussing what the new models are for building brands in an age of interactive media.

For now, I’d give the Super Bowl ad line up a B+ on creativity, and a D- on catching the new media paradigm.

- David Rogers

New Schmitt website launched

The recent design of my flagship web site meetschmitt.com dates back eight years. Now, with the launch of my new book “Big Think Strategy,” it is time for a change. Big Think Strategy is a break in my writing -- moving from work on the customer experience to full-fledged work on business strategy.

The new web site reflects this transition. In addition, you will find a much fresher look. Of course, I will keep some of the classics (yes, the video “Schmitt gets a haircut” will still be there), but there will also be lots of new information. Take a look!