Terry O'Reilly Interview

For the latest issue of Canadian Gaming Magazine, I interviewed Terry O'Reilly of Pirate and CBC's The Age of Persuasion. Terry spoke quite passionately about the need for any brand to do some brand advertising - in addition to what terry called "the tougher aspects of marketing."

Download the article here from Docstoc.

I had forgotten to post this article, but I was reminded about it, after writing my last post. What is the balance between the tougher aspects and branding? I work with a lot of small businesses, or brands with smaller budgets, and finding that balance is one of the bigger challenges. In the end, as Terry says, a good ad will make the cash register ring. But is it just one ad?

Great branding should create that happy association - elicit the consumer response of, "I like you."

Then, when you get to the tougher aspects, actually selling me a car for instance, I am open to the relationship, I have a sense of trust and I'm willing to deal with you. It doesn't give the brand carte blanche though. As I learned again in our losing pitch last week — you still need to give me something I want. The branding won't help if there's no value in it for me at the end.

Anyway, read the article, it's for Canadian Gaming Magazine so it does have a Casino focus, but the ideas are universal. Love to hear your comments. Except on the spelling. I don't know whether it was Canadian Gaming Business who made me look bad, or whether I rushed this article off without proper proofing—either way, cut me some slack!

Canadian Gaming Article

Here's my latest article for Canadian Gaming News. It's about being true to who you are, or as grandma says, Grow where you're planted!

The Atkins diet and new media

I believe in moderation. Too much of anything is, well... too much.

My radar goes off when someone tells me there is one solution to all that ails you. Diets are a great metaphor for what is being said about social media these days.

From a media perspective, there are very few people extolling the virtues of a well-rounded diet, and loads of people claiming that you need to go protein heavy or all social media. I don't think it's for everyone. And for most, it's best in small doses.

It's frustrating when the experts are insisting all the brands start conversations with their consumers. Connecting is important, and I applaud their passion. But I would add some words of caution.

Pamela Ross, VP of communications and CMO at Sunnybrook in Toronto wrote a great piece on this for Strategy in March. She quotes Mitch Joel as saying, "without a one-to-one connection of some kind, consumers won't care about a brand." Pamela then goes on to say, "Such a proclamation makes me think hard about my connections to brands I use. I think, for example, about the fact that I have no one-to-one connection with Tide, but it's the only laundry detergent I'll buy."

Does Pam want to have conversations with Tide? No. And I don't want a coversation with my phone company or my toothpaste.

If your product has fans in the real world, it will have fans online. Sports teams, bands, movie stars, TV shows and movies - they had fan clubs before the Internet. People wanted to read about them, learn about them and connect with them.

Now, we're being advised to create that relationship with nearly everything. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

I was in the check out at Safeway and greeted with the offer to Follow us on Facebook. Follow Safeway? Facebook is filled with brands that want you to become their fan. I shop at Safeway. In fact in my neighborhood, 13th Avenue Safeway is small and quite intimate. I feel connected to the store, but do I want to fan it on Facebook?

No. I don't want to have a one-to-one connection with the store. I know a few cashiers, and the pharmacists, and the shelf stackers, but do I follow them? That's getting weird.

And that's a store with which I have a pretty good brand relationship. Most of our untilities in Saskatchewan have FaceBook pages - The Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan has a FaceBook page. Is this what people do on FaceBook? Not in my experience. My experience has friends connecting with friends. They're playing scrabble, FarmVille and sharing photos and experiences. They aren't talking about brands.

For most brands FaceBook is not a strategy, it's wishful thinking.

So should we advise brands to pull money and resources away from mass media and into social media? Perhaps. For some it might be a very good strategy. But for most of the brands we have the privelege to work with I would argue that you have a better chance of reaching customers through their interests (sports teams, TV shows, movies...) then you would through FaceBook or Twitter.

U of R Branding released

The new U of R brand is starting to be rolled out. You can see some of the work on their home page www.uregina.ca. Catharine Bradbury is doing the work, but I'm not clear on exactly who's work they are doing. SEM Works, a North Carolina firm, did (and continues to do) some enrolment branding for the U of R, helping them determine their competitive advantage. I know the U of R wanted a local firm to execute the brand, but it's not clear to me whether that means starting from the brand promise, or starting from an actual design template.

Here's a look at their full page execution, Realize. It starts with you. being the theme througout all the pieces I've seen. There's also some transit in Regina. Haven't seen any online yet, but I suspect that it's out there!