Posted by Rahna on February 23, 2009 under Branding | 
Tropicana's New Packaging-Scrapped!
Have you seen the Tropicana packaging recently? OMG. It’s horrible—generic, hard to distinguish between SKUs—just bad all-around. My husband does all the grocery shopping in our household and when he first brought it home, I thought, “Geez, John really must be trying to save money if we are reduced to private label orange juice!”
But it wasn’t private label; it was just bad design. For further discussion, see a related article here.
Fortunately, the bad design is going away. Pepsi announced that it would return to its iconic “straw in the orange” visuals and abandon this dreadful, generic design from the Arnell Group.
It just makes me wonder if they did any research on this design before going to market. I cannot imagine the new design winning in any seriously significant way with loyal consumers.
Note to self (and to the marketers at Pepsi and Arnell): ALWAYS test things out before making such a very big, very public branding statement!
Posted by Rahna on February 19, 2009 under Consumer Research |
This week is the International Toy Fair in New York City, and this year, the news media is reporting not only about the new toys but also about how LEGO is one of the companies that is thriving in this economy. I know why.
Why do I know this?
For several reasons:
First, I know because I just did some research for them that explored exactly what was going right for the company—in their marketing efforts, in their product offerings, in everything. We used a systematic method of primary research to pinpoint their strengths. Along the way, we also uncovered a whole bunch of opportunity areas for them as well! As you can understand, due to client confidentiality, I’m sorry to say that the information uncovered cannot be shared with you. But the mindset can be shared … you should learn from them and discover what YOU do well … which leads me to the next point.
Secondly, I know because I know the mindset of this company, that is, a mindset of marketing diligence, fierce product development and quality standards, and consumer prioritization. This is a company that is tapped into the consumer. They are prioritizing consumer research, getting (and staying!) with the heart of the consumer.
Are you?
Posted by Rahna on February 16, 2009 under General |
Happy President’s Day!
What is this day, anyway? I’m not certain, although another small busienss owner and I were joking that it is called President’s Day because the ONLY people who are working are the presidents of small companies. If you call a small business today, it’s likely that the President will answer the phone! 
Regardless, I wanted to let you know about another blog that I have started to contribute to regularly: WebSavvyMarketers. I meet lots of people in similar industries whose skill sets complement my own in a different way. WebSavvyMarketers is a group of four marketing professionals who have joined together to explore and comment on digital and on-line marketing. We each have a unique passion that drives our individual careers and as savvy marketers we recognize the power of strategic alliance and collaboration. I encourage you to check out the WebSavvyMarketers.
Posted by Rahna on February 12, 2009 under Branding |
When I was in third grade, I won a blue ribbon for the Dixie Classic Fair in Winston –Salem in the mid-70’s. I remember how I created the artwork. I sat under our crabapple tree, took out a black crayon and scribbled with broad sweeping loops on a large piece of paper. Then, I colored in the loops using every crayon in my Crayola 64-pack.
I was so proud to have the ribbon…but I also felt a little guilty. I didn’t really feel like I deserved it. I wasn’t a REAL artist. I was a fake. It didn’t take artistic talent just to scribble on a page! That’s not real art! That’s just an organized, colorful mess.
That’s what I thought of as I read the Design Brief done by the Arnell Group on behalf of Pepsi… a bunch of scribbling done to justify “art” (or, in this case, design).
So much has been written about this, but I simply have to add my two cents worth. I have worked with some of the greatest branding agencies in the world, evolving some of the world’s greatest brands, so I feel qualified to participate in this discussion.
It’s not always easy to update a classic. It’s a serious project that requires a respect for the past and a vision for the future.
But here’s my reaction to the Pepsi Design Document: Oh my stars! Talk about getting caught up in your underwear!!!! The brief goes through huge gyrations (literally) in justification for Pepsi’s new logo, complete with discussions about the Golden Ratio, Greek design, magnetic fields around the earth, and emoticons.
Now, some have said that the Arnell Group just tried to rape Pepsi of millions of dollars with hucksterism, trying to sell toilet water as magical healing elixir. I don’t agree. I think they put forth a study that someone probably really believed in. And that’s what is so scary. The problem is, someone should have stopped them ten minutes into the study in order to save them…from themselves.
Certainly design should be grounded in strong, timeless principles. And I can applaud the design group for wanting to “ground” the design in looking at where Pepsi has come from (its historical design work). And innovation and freshness should be brought to bear for any package trying to remain relevant.
But this document goes beyond the pale. Its outrageous conclusions are so many scribblings with a black Crayola.
Aside from the ridiculous discussion contained within its 27 pages, I am appalled at what is NOT in the document: Consumers. There doesn’t seem to be a thought put forward as to what the consumer would or wouldn’t think about Pepsi, its color scheme, design history, or even of fashion and design trends in general.
Where’s the consumer in all of this!
MARKETING LESSON #1: START WITH THE CONSUMER!
Posted by Rahna on February 9, 2009 under Branding, Personal Branding |
There are some social media “experts” who are disdainful of personal branding. It puzzles me why that is the case. They scoff at the idea of social media helping personal branding. From the way others talk about it, it seems as though they sees personal branding as a personae that you can adopt, a cloak you can put on and take off at will. If that were the case, I would completely agree … But that’s not what true personal branding is.
Your personal brand emanates from within.
Authentic personal branding is being true to who you are, then setting a plan in place to shine a spotlight on what you are all about so that others can ore clearly recognize your personal brand. Blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn and other web 2.0 tools are simply modern-day vehicles to convey that brand!
The disdain that some have for personal branding stems from the practice of manipulating one’s online image in an inauthentic manner. Being true to your brand is not a new concept. A mentor of mine once told me that the quickest way to kill a bad product is to advertise it. The same holds true with people. If you are one way online and another way in person, you will be found out—at the speed of the internet.
So those who curl their lips at personal branding conversations should re-think what they are deriding… It’s really a lack of authenticity that causes the sneer, not personal branding as a concept.
Posted by Rahna on February 5, 2009 under Digital Branding, Social Media |
I gave a talk a few weeks ago about the Top Ten Secrets of Digital Branding, which was then written up in the local newspaper (follow the hyperlink to see the full article).
I want to clarify something pointed out in the article that may be misleading. Many of the people in attendance were not very knowledgeable about the blogosphere and had some questions about why they should blog and how commenting works. In the article, I am quoted as saying that you can edit the comments and pick and choose which ones get posted. While that is technically true, I want to be clear that I do not think that you should only publish positive comments. In general, you should publish all comments, as long as they are relevant to the discussion. The article is not clear that I was talking about spam comments or something off-color or outright offensive. Those are the ones that should be screened.
If you missed the talk but would like to have the information, check out our new FREE downloadable e-book on the Top Ten Secrets of Digital Branding.
Enjoy!
Posted by Rahna on February 2, 2009 under Strategy |
At last week’s Women of Innovation awards, the keynote speaker was Dr Gina Colarelli O’Connor, Associate Professor of Marketing at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Lally School of Management & Technology. Dr. O’Connor talked about some work she had done over the years to study how innovation happens. She spoke about fostering an environment of continual innovation.
She is an author of Radical Innovation: How Mature Firms Can Outsmart Upstarts and Grabbling Lightning: Building a Capability for Breakthrough Innovation and is part of a research group that studied innovative product development at more than 30 companies over a
10 year period. What she found became the basis for the two books. She talked about 3 major areas of innovation.
The first is Discovery: allowing someone to think about something differently, explore options, fail, try again, and look for a new way. Is your company empowering that?
The second phase she referred to was Incubation. Once the seed of an idea has been planted, is it given rich, fertile ground in which to grow? There’s a incubation period that is needed to let the idea marinate and grow and develop and expand and contract, often times businesses are so eager to bring something to market, that they don’t look at the full marketing potential or application that some piece of innovation can bring to something that is outside of the current scope of services or core competencies.
The third area, Acceleration, has to do with quickly being able to monetize something, to make it large enough and impactful enough to make a difference in the marketplace. Resources are needed to make this happen, and she talked about companies who excel at innovation and deal with all 3 of those aspects.
She also talked about the senior management skills need for each of those phases of innovation, and how certain skills are needed in Discovery that may not be needed for Acceleration and what is needed during the Incubation phase would be different from the other 2 phases.
It’s an interesting look at innovation and how it is fostered in companies. It made me wonder about other companies. The audience tonight was a highly technical innovative audience. Those attending have full-time jobs engaged entirely in discovering something new, bringing to market something innovative, something different. That may not be your full-time job, but how do you instill those qualities of innovation into your company every day? Do you foster an environment that encourages discovery? If someone does have a good idea, do you nurture that idea? Do you allow it to incubate? And are you making resources available for good ideas to come to market in strong, impactful ways?
