7 Stellar Examples of Branded Content from the Fashion Industry

This Mashable piece has some excellent examples of how fashion is leading the way with branded content. Great stuff!

7 Stellar Examples of Branded Content from the Fashion Industry

COD: Solve Media and the Captcha Ad Phenomenon

I've written about Solve Media before, but I thought I'd begin this new series of "company of the day" by starting with them. They offer a solution that replaces those unbloodybelievably annoying Captchas with ads that ask the consumer to type in a brand message where they used to have to type gibberish.

I thought of Solve as I watched my father one morning struggling to read the Captcha on Yahoo mail, then switching to the audio alternative, then switching back to the text, in order to create a new email account. He managed after about 40 seconds, but the opportunity of eliminating that wasted time and palpable aggravation is one of the reasons why this platform is doing so well.

Here's a vid that explains it all better than I can:



Since the last time I wrote, Solve has also launched a video version of their platform, enabling brands to create even richer and more memorable experiences in this low clutter ad vehicle.

Solve commissioned a third-party Wharton School of Business study that showed a 111 percent higher level of brand recall from Type-Ins Wharton School of Business study versus banners, and 12 times the level of message recall. Further, it appears that people are at least as likely to complete a Type-In versus a Captcha in order to get what they seek.

There are a few naysayers -- people who find this sort of advertising too intrusive. I get the concern but really disagree with them. Solves are fundamentally at least as secure as Captchas, and far easier on the compliance front. I'm sure my father would have much preferred typing "Refresh everything" to his Captcha experience. It also enables consumers to "pay attention" instead of "pay cash" for content that they want. Since something like 85% of consumers vow never to pay for online content, the opportunity to do a value exchange with something other than cash will surely be an appealing alternative for them.

Big brands are getting on board in big numbers. It's a great innovation that's worth genuine consideration.

Note: Solve Media is an occasional client of Catalyst S+F.

Company of the Day (COD) is Back

After an 18 month hiatus, I am going to try to return to the tradition of reviewing a company a day on this site. Hey, my traffic isn't like Yahoo's, but I figure every little helps when a small outfit is looking for publicity and trial. I want to help in my own small way. If you are looking for snark, look elsewhere. For me this is about focusing on offerings I like and adding a few more electrons to their quest for publicity and broad scale awareness. Each day I'll be posting one at around 9AM Pacific time. I hope you find them interesting. First one arrives in just one minute!

Boys Will Be Girls

Check Out This Important Announcement From Ryan Digicrest

Mr. Adam Bergman has made a delightful pledge on his blog. I love his "Rants of a Modern Day Elitist" and the things he has to say about everything.

Occasionally he also virtually invites me into Shoe Culture, though as a Boomer I use the word "Shoe" begrudgingly.

Because as anyone over the age of 45 knows, a shoe is leather, and comes in black, cordovan, or with a certain generosity of spirit, brown. What he writes about are those colorful abominations that pretend to be shoes but are actually souped up Keds. But I forgive him, because he's an amazing guy and an amazing thinker.

But just so we're clear:

This, my friends, is a hot shoe.



This, however, is an overpriced piece of plastic and polyester.



Write on, Mr. Bergman!

I Wuvs Ya T-Mobile

I just dumped the iPhone for a G2 from T-Mobile. I am so happy. It wasn’t a magical transition. T-Mobile transposed my home phone with my ATT celly number, so that took a day, and then there was a bit of a problem with what services I had ordered. That took another day. But through it all their customer service people were magical. They made it clear that they cared and wanted to put things right.

The G2 is very nice, but not as easy or intuitive as an iPhone. But then, much of the capability of an iPhone was theoretical given that I live in the Bay Area and mostly travel to NYC.

Their Australian partner managed to give me five bars most everywhere I traveled, but ATT itself couldn’t consistently connect me from my bedroom in Oakland.

Oh, I know, the iPhone users on ATT suck down a lot of bandwidth. More than anyone if I remember that market research correctly. But here's the deal, if your network can't handle more iPhones -- phones that cost a mint every month -- perhaps it's time to stop selling them until you throw a few more towers up in t
he SF financial district.

I had no complaints about ATT customer service. There people were lovely as well. Imagine what it is like to deal with jackass digital netizen webizens who are striken with the world’s most overtaxed network.

ATT had been my choice two years ago because of the mind bogglingly dreadful customer service from Sprint. And because they had iPhone. But mostly it was because being a valued Sprint customer, whose calls were very important to them, was equivalent to constant dry heaves.

I swear that their endless IVR reached through the phone and shoved needles in my corneas. Oh my god that company was the worst! I don’t blame the reps. After all, they didn’t create the system that made me wait hours only to tell me I had to call someone else. They weren’t the MFs that sent me four phones I didn’t order, charged me $2000, and then had the audacity to say it was my problem to ship them back. That EVO is darned cool, but nothing is worth the walking on hot coals required to be a Sprint custo—be a warm blooded serf that the Sprint leech drew hemoglobin from.

Off that soapbox. This is about lovely T-Mobile. Cheaper by far than ATT and Sprint were. And get this – I actually have a signal in my living room. Something ATT only managed on cloudless days, and Sprint only managed so they could deliver the cornea needles, or so I always imagined.

I wuvs you T Mobile. I wuvs my new phone. I wuvs actual mobile phone service. I wuvs the T Mobile people. If they got rid of their IVR at the beginning of a call, this would be what I imagine Heaven is like. Being with them hasn’t been perfect, but when they screw up, as everyone and everything does at times, they apologize. That’s all I ask. Well, that and not shoving needles into my eyeballs.

I'm a nice person -- ask anyone. So I suppose I should apologize for my Sprint bile above. But I've wanted to pee on Sprint for years ever since they treated me like so much gum on a shoe solle, and now that I have T-Mobile, I know that a mobile company can actually be pleasant to work with.

Three Exercises for Living a Commitment to Creativity

Each year, the organizers of the Sunday “Agency Only” program of the iMedia Agency Summit bring in an expert to focus on addressing on the most important challenges facing our industry. This year’s speaker was Tamara Birdsall, Chief Creative Officer of Real Girls Media and a veteran of both the buy and sells sides of the business.

For Tamara, the most important thing that we can do to create a more creative environment – whether we are in Creative or in another Agency discipline, is to make a commitment to walk the walk of making the time and practicing the art of creativity. And then actually walking that walk.

She demonstrated her long running belief that a series of exercises can help us:

• Break out of our linear “ruts”
• Improve our own individual creative thinking
• Drive richer and more valuable group creativity

To help attendees address these three challenges, Tamara engaged the group in three critical exercises.

1. Creative description. Tamara underscored the importance of switching gears – to break out of our day to day activities and busyness with a purely creative exercise. For the purpose of the session, she asked attendees to come up with innovative descriptions for a Granny Smith Apple. Now, obviously, this exercise was not directly applicable to a business challenge. But to Birdsall, that’s the point – that breaking free of our patterns of thought and behavior is a critical first step to being more creative more regularly. And it is the sort of exercise we should be making time for in our daily work life.

2. Mind Mapping: to help us unleash our own internal creative juices, Birdsall had each member of the Agency Day develop a Mind Map for a specific marketing challenge. The nonlinear nature of this exercise proved tremendously valuable to expanding our horizons. Birdsall asked the group to consider a fictitious financial institution considering opening a bank especially for women. By asking each of us to riff individually on the idea of “women and money,” we were each asked to create our own mind maps on the topic. When it came time to review peoples’ maps, it became clear that taking the time to stretch our own thinking can help create more truly innovative concepts.

3. Brain Writing: Her third exercise focused on the technique of brain writing, which asks people to do some initial ideation on paper, and then passing their ideas to the next person for them to build upon. For many people in the room, this written method of ideation was cathartic in that it offered so many advantages over the sort of freeform “brainstorms” that are core to the way most agencies operate, and yet don’t always yield great results.

Tamara was quick to point out that these exercises are only a starting point set of examples of things we can do – that we should explore online resources that further explain these and other tactics so we can find tools that work for us.

What made the session so powerful was the tremendous number of innovative ideas the group was able to generate in only a few moments using the exercises. For those of us who have sat in a tremendous numbers of ineffective freeform brainstorms, Tamara’s suggestions and her passion for trying to find new and more disciplined techniques were a refreshing call to rethink the tactics that aren’t unlocking our full potential.

I know I speak for dozens of attendees when I extend a personal thanks to Tamara for her passion, ideas, and participation.

Special thanks to iMediaConnection for running this first.

Brand Belief Starts with You

Do consumers believe in your brand? Do you?

I’ve talking to my Father a lot over the past few days, and one of his favorite topics is the Dodgers.

The Brooklyn Dodgers. He was a proud Brooklynite. And a major Dodgers fan. Until they moved. For him, the move was a betrayal. A realization that the team owners cared not one whit for Brooklyn or its people.

Which was, in his view, a violation of the brand though he wouldn’t use those words. But the nature of Brooklyn and its people was a big part of the Dodgers brand. They weren’t just a group of players brought together by paychecks – they were an embodiment of the spirit of the Borough – always in the shadow of Manhattan, and determined to scrap and scrape to be on top.

In my 25 or so years in marketing, I have been struck by the number of people I’ve met who were charged with building brands they disdained. People who had contempt for their targets if they were downscale or religious or extremely pedestrian in their aspirations and dreams.

Enter social media. The powerful thing about a TV ad you produce once a year or a print ad you spend thousands on is that it gives the savvy the opportunity to pretend – to pretend to share the values of the users that drive the brand. To pretend that a product is far better than it is. Car photographers and food stylists and supermodels can also be used to obfuscate product issues instead of focusing resources on fixing them.

What I love about social is that there’s no place to hide anymore. No way to paper over fundamental product issues or elitism. In this new environment, truth will out. If we don’t believe in what we are selling, we’ll surely be found out.

We have instincts about which brands care about their products – and us. Is there any doubt in your head that Steve Jobs is a believer? Jeff Bezos? Tony Hsieh?

Even when we don’t know who is behind brands, we love it when brands and the people behind them demonstrate genuine belief in their offerings. Take Cadillac. There are lots of reasons why Cadillac is back, but I think a big part of it is that Cadillac got its groove back – the brash, in your face, look at me sense of this aspirational brand returned as the design team started designing actual Cadillacs again, and everyone else – from the dealer to the men and women on the line – felt good about what they were making and doing. You could feel it. You can feel it.

What other brands feel like they believe in what they are doing?
• Tide
• Hyundai
• Contadina
• Ford
• Flip
• Tyler Perry Studios
• JC Penney
• Tourism Australia

Those are some on my list, anyway.

The popularity of cause related marketing is an interesting side to this belief thing. Many brands are using borrowed interest to give their brands a sense of purpose. I think that’s great – but it doesn’t replace the need for everyone involved in a brand to actually care about their product. Because cause related marketing makes me feel good about this purchase, whereas brand pride and brand belief make me feel good about being loyal to the brand. Now, causes can make me feel better about buying a brand, but they can only supplement – not replace – genuine belief in the things were are making and doing.

Let’s head back to Ebbets Field for the closer. There were a lot of reasons why the Dodgers moved, not least a big fight with the city over a new stadium. Sound familiar?

Anyway, whatever the reasons, there’s no doubt that most Brooklyners felt betrayed. For the Dodgers it didn’t matter much – after all, baseball was a local business and LA was a long ways away from Coney Island. But when we fail to believe in the people that buy our products -- and in those products themselves, the consumer can sense that betrayal.

Think about that the next time those consumers you disdain aren’t signing up in droves for your FaceBook page.

Thanks to iMedia Connection for publishing this first.

Ryan's First Post

Check out Ryan's first post as a Catalysta! So interesting to talk to him and see what people outside the adbiz think of our "danse brandabre."

http://www.mediabizbloggers.com/catalyst-s-f/111853999.html

So long to ya 2010