Ged Carroll

Category: branding | 品牌推廣 | 브랜드 마케팅 | ブランディング

The dictionary definition of branding is the promotion of a particular product or company by means of advertising and distinctive design.

I have covered many different things in branding including:

  • Genesis – the luxury Korean automotive brand
  • Life Bread – the iconic Hong Kong bread brand that would be equivalent of wonder loaf in the US
  • Virgil Abloh and the brand collaborations that he was involved in
  • Luxury streetwear brands
  • Burger King campaigns with Crispin Porter Bogusky
  • Dettol #washtocare and ‘back to work’ campaigns
  • Volkswagen ‘see the unseen’ campaign for its Taureg off road vehicle
  • SAS Airline – What is truly Scandinavian?
  • Brand advertising during Chinese New Year (across China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia)
  • Lovemarks as a perspective on branding
  • BMW NEXTGen event and Legend of Old McLanden campaign
  • Procter & Gamble’s Gillette toxic masculinity ads
  • Kraft Mother’s Day campaign
  • Kraft Heinz brand destruction
  • Porsche Design in the smartphone space
  • Ermenegildo Zegna
  • Nike’s work with Colin Kaepernick
  • Counterfeit brands on Instagram, Alibaba and Amazon
  • Gaytime Indonesian ice cream
  • Western Digital
  • Louis Vuitton collaboration with Supreme
  • Nokia
  • Nike Korea’s ‘Be Heard’ campaign
  • Mercedes SLS coupe campaign
  • Brand collaborations in Hong Kong
  • Beats headphones
  • Apple
  • Henrion Ludlow Schmidt’s considerations of branding
  • Cathay Pacific
  • Bosch
  • Mitt Romney’s failed presidential bid
  • Microsoft Surface launch
  • Oreo Korean campaign
  • Chain coffee shop brands and branding
  • Samsung’s corporate brand
  • North Face’s brand overeach in South Korea
  • Mr Pizza Korean pizza restaurant and delivery service brand
  • Amoy Hong Kong food brand
  • Chevrolet Corvette ‘roar’ campaign promoting a build your own car service

  • Western Digital + more news

    How to Make Enemies and Lose Influence in the Chip Business – Bloomberg – not only Toshiba but Apple, Dell and SK Hynix – Western Digital will likely have to fall on the good graces of Samsung at a steep price discount. It will be interesting to see how Western Digital shapes out in the longer term. More technology related content here

    Consumer behaviour

    ‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn!’ The story behind the song sweeping Glastonbury – It all started in Birkenhead on a balmy evening in late May. The Libertines were due to play a gig at Prenton Park, home of Tranmere Rovers FC, when Corbyn took to the stage to say a few words about austerity and the NHS – important stuff, for sure, but not, perhaps, what the crowd had paid to see. “Thank you for giving me a few minutes,” Corbyn shouted. “And remember, this election IS. ABOUT. YOU!” And that’s when it happened, the crowd spontaneously erupted into the chant. Football fans have been using the not wholly complex compositional framework (“Oh + five-syllable name”) for years but this seems to be have been the first time Jeremy Corbyn’s name was used

    Ideas

    Does the UK’s ‘government-in-waiting’ really plan a robot tax?  – the current state of infrastructure as described is really bad

    Luxury

    Luxury Brands Must Act Or Be Digitally Disenfranchised From Savvy Luxury Consumers · Forrester – Forrester’s understanding of luxury brands is behind the curve

    China Sees More Luxury Stores Close Than Any Other Country | Jing Daily – multiple reasons for it. British heritage brands Burberry and Dunhill got a kicking. E-tailing has come up fast and better understanding of market sizing once we’d got through the gift culture changes driven by government corruption clamp down

    Media

    The FT warns advertisers after discovering high levels of domain spoofing – Digiday – This is crazy

    Online

    YouTube tightens rules around videos with external links – The Verge – Alphabet aren’t exactly winning friends with this move

    Security

    China’s Weibo Hires 1000 ‘Supervisors’ to Censor Content | The Diplomat – is this really that different to people Facebook deploy except that there is more of them? Also raises cost of doing business online in China providing a slight ding on market attractiveness

    Software

    Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella: AI should be open like PCs, not closed like the App Store | Business Insider – I guess not closed like Windows hidden APIs against Borland, Lotus etc might be a better analogy… Bit of future gazing. A lot of whitewashing the past

    Is AI Riding a One-Trick Pony? MIT Technology Review – expect another AI winter sooner rather than later

    Technology

    Apple is really bad at design | The Outline – provocative title, interesting op-ed points. I thought the MacBook Pro touch bar was a better example

    Apple Working on an ARM based MacBook isn’t Surprising because the Competition is Forcing their Hand – Patently Apple – ARM still doesn’t have the computational power of MIPS according to people like the Chinese government…

    Web of no web

    Varjo Raises $8.2M Investment to Further Develop “Human Eye-resolution” Headsets | Road To VR – There is a softness to VR that almost reminds me of the ‘fog’ of watching old VCR cassettes on a standard definition CRT Equipped TV set

    Wireless

    WeChat messaging trends

  • Vaping

    What in the world has China ever done for us? Vaping – a China invention designed originally to help smokers reduce risks from tobacco. My exposure to electronic cigarettes (or vapes) was with seasoned smokers looking for a healthier opportunity, or a path to help wean themselves off nicotine all together. I had seen some research that suggested teen trial of vaping was growing – this was from E-Cigarettes: Youth and Trends in Vaping – Journal of Pediatric Health Care, volume 29, issue 6, pages 555 – 557 (November – December 2015)

    Among youth in the United States, e-cigarette use rose from 3.3% in 2011 to 6.8% in 2012 (Grana, Benowitz, & Glantz., 2014). This increase resulted in an estimated 1.78 million middle and high school students having used e-cigarettes (CDC, 2013). The trial and use of e-cigarettes have been higher among youth in Europe and Asia. A recent study on Korean youth found the trial use of e-cigarettes rose from 0.5% in 2008 to 9.4% in 2011 (Lee, Grana, & Glantz., 2014), and among youth 10 to 15 years of age in Poland the rate of those who had ever used e-cigarettes was 62% in 2014 (Hanewinkel & Isensee, 2015).

    Now what I don’t know is how good the research quoted actually was, or the factors in ‘trialling’.

    You also have to remember that there is a big health research grant eco-system that depends on tobacco control which has sprung up over the past 40 years which will affect the framing of the data.

    I am not saying tobacco isn’t harmful, but it is useful to understand the likely factors framing the presentation of information.

    I was surprised by this video from the Shanghai Vap Expo in China. It was more like going to a skateboarding convention back in the day:

    • Lots of independent resellers from around the world for vaping liquid – mirroring the variety of skateboard parts makers. Many of the formulations on sale had no tobacco
    • Vaping tricks and demonstrations
    • Clear tying of vaping to sub-cultures: hip-hop, race-girl type outfits. Pretty much any ancillary activity would expect around a Red Bull event or the X-Games

    Vaping is clearly being positioned as a central part of a youth sub-culture in China. But it hasn’t stopped Chinese courts shutting US provider Jul out of the Chinese market. This is stark contrast to the US where the government views vapes as an ascendant health threat. And in the videos vaping didn’t involve nicotine, again an interesting development. More related posts here.

  • Mick Jagger + more things

    It’s quite rare for someone who has had as as long a career as Mick Jagger to still do relevant material. His double A side single featuring England’s Lost is an exceptionally political track featuring Skepta. The last track from similar artist would likely be Pink Floyd’s The Wall. This Mick Jagger song wouldn’t sound out of step with The Stone Roses or The Charlatans and the video with Luke Evans performance is amazing.

    Omega seem to have spent most of the summer dwelling on the NASA Apollo programme heritage of the Omega Speedmaster with launches happening around the world including PR people in faux spacesuits for photo shoots and socialite cocktail parties.  The excuse is the 60th anniversary of the Omega Speedmaster’s launch in 1957. They’ve supported it with a scripted film using brand spokesperson George Clooney talking with Buzz Aldrin. Aldrin as ever is awesome.

    60 years of production makes the Speedmaster a design classic. At the time of the Speedmaster’s launch Omega would have been a more bankable name than Rolex. That seems surprising now given Omega’s move more towards the fashion end of the market. There is a great interview at The Peak Magazine; with Peter Chow the recently retired veteran salesman at The Hour Glass in Singapore. The Hour Glass is a famous watch retailer that has attracted the world’s richest customers.

    “You could buy a manual mechanical watch with a fine Swiss movement for S$20 plus,” Mr Chong says. The well-known brands then were Titoni, Titus, Movado and Cyma. “Omega was the best, not Rolex.” Mr Chong quit his job in 1959 and with S$6000 from savings and loans, opened a shop in Bukit Panjang. But within three years, poor sales drove him out of business.

    Omega was the best was something I heard from my parents, though I had partly put this down to both of them having had Omegas – which they bought for each other when they got married. This piece of wisdom had been passed down to my Mum from my Grandad who owned neither brand. In fact I don’t think he owned any kind of watch at all.

    Northampton’s most famous son, author Alan Moore Interviewed by Greg Wilson and Kermit – real name Paul Leveridge from the Ruthless Rap Assassins and Black Grape. Interesting dissection of modern counterculture and the general sense of ennui.

    I am addicted to videos about mesmerising manufacturing processes and vinyl records. This video combines both of them. The hipster movement has done more than drive up the cost of avocados and gentrification. We’ve seen vinyl manufacturing plants revived and thrive. Over time the machinery has needed to be modernised, this has meant modern manufacturing techniques (like SCADA controllers) have been melted to post-war industrial technology. Anyway enough of my blathering check it out.

    My week was soundtracked by this epic mix of Herbie Hancock tracks.

  • What does a great email look like?

    I often end up with my head in the data and need to check myself to ensure that the basics are happening. This was a deck that I pulled together on what does a great email look like?

    Why email marketing? Because it still works and provides relatively good value in terms of marketing spend. We might be getting ever lower open rates over time in aggregate, but that means as marketers we need to be more focused on what makes a great email.

    So what does success look like, what constitutes great? If you work in digital marketing you probably have heuristics in the back of your mind based on an article you’ve read or how previous projects have turned out.  The reality is that it changes by country and by industrial sector.

    What does success look like

    There are some interesting variations, such as the US / Canada or UK / Canada click to open rates for email.

    What does churn look like

    Or the comparatively high of churn rate in the UK vis-a-vis the US and Canada.

    Getting to open

    There are a number of factors that can aid getting to open. Some of them will be hygiene when the General Data Protection Regulations kick in across the EU next year.

    Before opening

    A lot of the basics seem obvious, yet there is a lot of unpersonalised, unrequested, irrelevant mail is still sent out. For business-to-business relationships in particular having a phone and online double opt-in is desirable. For consumer marketing an online opt-in followed by a confirmation email and opt-in link.

    Before opening

    In some ways we have gone back to the early web. Lean download sizes for email are really important. There have been so many times I have been deleting marketing email on the tube, as the mobile device and spotty wifi can’t download the image heavy communication in a timely manner. For some reason clothing and shoe e-tailers are really bad on this.

    Preview

    Back when I started in digital marketing, people laboured long-and-hard over crafting highly clickable message subject lines, but preview is as important now; especially in ‘three pane’ email clients like Outlook or Mail.app on Mac and iPad.

    Design

    Design is a key part of getting an email viewed. The design needs to be responsive because of the variation in possible device display sizes and the foibles between email clients, web email clients, web browsers and mail providers. Previously one would have worried about not being black listed (still important), plain text and HTML options. Business to business marketers used to get stressed over will the email work on Lotus Notes (historically no, unless it was in plain text).

    Inverted pyramid approach

    When you are thinking about content and design layout the inverted pyramid approach is a good place to start from. With the call to action what kind of behavioural cues would work best? This is where A/B testing can be employed. Marketers aren’t great at intuitively picking these.

    Here are some examples of effective email design, notice the vertical alignment that makes them mobile friendly

    Effective design examples

    And here are some examples of effective personalisation (in both these cases based on previous behaviour on-site).

    Effective personalisation examples

    The biggest mistake that organisations fail to do is internalise learnings from previous campaigns. This isn’t just about improving numbers over time but learning what has, and hasn’t worked. Often this knowledge will disappear when the marketer responsible moves on, or when the agency responsible has a similar change on their side.

    Constant learning

    Thanks for making this far, here are my details if you want to find out more.

    About me

    You can find this presentation on Slideshare.

  • eSports discussion

    The rise of eSports as a form of entertainment is a popular discussion area in both media and technology. Brandon Beck is the co-founder of Riot Games (best known for League of Legends) on the rise of eSports from a cultural and business perspectives.  His ideas what online gaming future looks like; are interesting, if a little self-serving.

    eSports takeouts:

    • Interesting that Riot are trying to give players a better base to build their careers. How will this affect teams over individual player talent?  How long is their professional life? When do they burn out? What does post-eSports athlete life look like?
    • They acknowledge that competitive gaming will have a long runway to adoption rather than the hockey stick models predicted by financiers in this area. Traditional sports management professionals see eSports as a new opportunity.
    • Professional athletes come out of second and third generation gamers and parents who pursued traditional sports at a competitive level
    •  The new nature of competitive gaming has an exclusively young audience. The vast majority of content is streaming. The audience is cable cutters, which implies that they didn’t have traditional sports as a substitute content
    • Player access and the Asian ‘idol’ phenomenon seems to be very similar with ‘around game’ content. There is an immediacy to it. There is also a grey zone between the athlete and online influencers, I could see a crossover
    • I found it concerning that it revolves so much around China, given the rule by law approach to things that the Communist Party of China takes. It would take nothing to crush competitive gaming in China. Comments on the negative social impact of gaming doesn’t bode well

    More on professional online gaming here and more on Riot Games here. It will be interesting to see how Riot Games continues to develop under the ownership of Chinese technology company Tencent.