Must read : how solid is your brand?

Came across this article in the BusinessWeek and I thought it was very well written. Do read this article : How Solid Is Your Brand?

And if you like the article read this related one as well : Building a Better Brand.

Bad Creative Critics

Came across this one, just after finishing a meeting with the brand manager. Thought all of you will enjoy this one. :-)

Yahoo rewamps its search logic.

Yahoo is trying to catch up with Google on lost ground related to “SEARCH”, and is using innovative methods to re-design its search logic and is calling it the biggest "consumer experience improvement" ever. The new methods will have an impact on SEO to a large extent and SEM to some extent.

Lets see if this works for them and if they are able to recover. Will review & research the impact on a regular basis and update it on this blog.

Watch this report here.

Consumer & the Brand : The break up

I thought this was a classic interpretation of the relationship (or lack of it) between the consumer and the brand. While I think it is entirely applicable to any one sided brand communication, it is also applicable to the patchy and ill-conceived 1-on-1 marketing campaigns.

Interesting that it had to come to us from Microsoft!!

Watch the video here.

Here more on the BTL trend.

In a recent meeting in Hong Kong, about 10 days back, my friend and colleague Conrad Chiu, floored me with some of the charts which he shared with us, in his trademark simplistic manner. Conrad has years of experience on the Asian market not only from a BTL prespective, but he runs a hugely successful 360 offering of BatesAsia in Hong Kong. I thought it would a sensible thing to share the information in its original format with all the readers of this blog.

While it reinforced the fact that BTL spends were increasing, the interesting part was to look at the where the growth is coming from. While the source of data here was different (refer to earlier posts), the trend was unmistakable.

While the difference in the rate of growth of ATL vs BTL is a known and understood fact, I think the next two charts which indicate that the ATL growth is way below the average A&P growth rate while BTL growth rates are higher is a new and an interesting finding.

While the trend looks at spends in the US, it highlights the direction in which the marcom managers in Asia will tend to move / or are moving.