Alberta Business Marketing

Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) was recently in the news because they had offered to pay celebrity Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino from the MTV reality television show Jersey Shore to not wear their products.

You read correctly. A&F offered to pay Mr. Sorrentino to not wear their product. It was their view that he portrayed a negative impact on their brand based on his demeanour and behaviour on the show. A spokesperson for A&F said "Mr. Sorrentino's association with our brand could cause significant damage to our image."

It's interesting to see how A&F doesn't want a reality-television celebrity to wear their clothes or promote their brand. There is no doubt this was a deliberate marketing publicity stunt by A&F and I'm obviously not the only one to make this observation as one friend aptly noted. Needless to say many people have been discussing this news be it via own social networks and in the news.

The last time that A&F got this kind of publicity it was for another reason. And not a good one.

A&F is definitely going against the norm by asking a celebrity not to use their products. In most cases, companies would be desperate to get that kind of free publicity. It's no secret many companies pay millions of dollars for product placement in television shows and movies. Regardless of your opinion of "The Situation", there is no denying that A&F gets an incredible amount of free exposure from him that would otherwise cost a ton of ad dollars if A&F tried to run an equivalent ad campaign.

All of this is tongue in cheek of course because if A&F's request was serious about protecting their brand, their legal department would simply have to contact MTV (the producer of Jersey Shore) and told them to cease and desist. Subsequently their logos and brand would then have to be 'blurred' out in future episodes.

MTV of course wisely played along with the whole thing and didn't get their nose out of joint. So both A&F and Jersey Shore got a lot of free publicity from this move especially during the critical 'Back-to-School' phase of the calendar. Although it must be said the financial markets didn't quite respond positively to the recent fiscal results of A&F.

So perhaps we shouldn't quite yet conclude that paying celebrities to not promote a product is the new black.

Sulemaan Ahmed
Twitter @sulemaan

Tags: Branding, PR, This and That
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Justin Bieber had his hair cut. Not earth shattering news, not even news (he did this about a month ago). But interesting, nevertheless because it raises some serious questions about brand versus product. Yes, it really does!

Bieber is a brand. He is a slickly created, well oiled and operated, brand that achieved enormous success globally within a very short time. What made this happen. What is it about Justin (the Beeb, to his friends) that made him the one-man money machine he has become.

As brand people, we necessarily have to deconstruct him into his features, attributes and benefits (higher order benefits, too):

The Bieber brand is built on a very fragile frame (literally and figuratively).

So who says, then, that it's okay for the brand to jettison one of the most universally known and loved attributes -- the hair. It would be like Nike scrapping the swoosh (or is that swoosh™?), or General Motors ditching Pontiac (just kidding). Seriously, though, the Bieb's hair was at the root of the other features that made him wholesome: it made him look young and vulnerable; it fit the wholesome, blond boyish persona; it was uniquely his (and the seductively quirky little shake that blew the blob out of his eyes). All these attributes are swept away by the barber's apprentice, together with the rejected locks and dust-bunnies.

I would like to meet the image consultant who thought it would be a good idea to be a Delilah to Bieber's Sampson?* Even though, from a brand management point of view it was handled brilliantly (he never actually "changed his look," but rather he did something wonderful for those less fortunate (had his hair cut in aid of a charity), allowing him (them) to test the waters before making it a true-blue repositioning (Coke could have used a trick like this around the time they came up with New Coke). But it is strategically akin to jumping off the top of the Empire State Building hoping to land on the awning.

So, what do we have now? A "new improved" Justin Bieber (if the hair was an ingredient), a rebranded Justin (if the flop of blond hair was a brand attribute), a de-featured Boy Band or nothing more than Justin Bieber with short hair?

It will be interesting to watch his fortune rise or fall. Miley Cyrus, another teenage pop idol, decided at the ripe old age of 15 that her sweet, clean and virginal image was not for her, and rebranded as a much more worldly femme fatal (this is the nice way of saying sexy-beast -- see picture below. Even Billie Ray cringes at the sight). It seems her popularity decreased (but this could have been because the tween market is huge and the market for post tween-pre-adult adulteresses is smaller); but sales of her non-musical line extensions (such as the quasi-legal drug salvia) skyrocketed.

Can we expect the same from Justin? Would you buy shares in Bieber Brand Inc.?

Laurence Bernstein

* Not so subtle reference to the biblical Samson and his paramour, the lovely Delilah who, in return for (as best as this blogger recalls) financial favours, cuts Samson's hair. This is important not from a sartorial point of view, but because Samson's hair was the source of his immense strength (strength-providing-hair=feature, strength=attribute, able-to-destroy-temples=benefit, save-the-world=higher order benefit, eternal-redemption=relevant-differentiated-experience). Readers are encouraged to click here for further elucidation of the Samson story.

Extra Credit:
Those with even more time on their hands might want to contemplate whether or not Daniel Radcliffe severely impacted his (or the Harry Potter) brand by baring all in a London play (click here)

Tags: bernstein, Bieber, brand pyramid, Branding, Justin, Miley, PR, protean research, Strategy
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In my third of four posts about which channels work best to reach and engage influencers, I take a look at the new kid on the block: social media.

Marketers are sometimes torn between doing what has worked most effectively in the past and testing out new technologies and channels that have the potential to be real game-changers in the future.

The bright shiny object of the last few years is, of course, social media, a channel that’s still not completely understood but that has, in theory, the potential to radically change the way we market.

Why? Well, to start with, based on our research, influencers are spending 7 hours per week in the US and 9 in Canada on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and blogs. That’s already impressive but when you add to that the finding that influencers are connected, on average, to 108 (US) and 137 (Canada) people in their own social media network, that’s something that gets the attention of marketers – as it should.

While social media shares ease of use with the email channel, it’s this community or network that may hold the key to the channel’s true potential. These individuals have chosen to be connected based on an affinity for a particular community, and are actively engaged with others in it and outside that community too.

Bill McCloskey at ClickZ offers some fascinating examples about the potential power of social media, including this one:

“…look at Marvel Comics, which is one of the top performing ‘advertisers’ in the Twitter space. As of right now, Marvel has around 44,000 followers [63,000+ as I write this post]. But over the last few weeks, it sent out 151 Twitter offers. But more than that: 246 ‘influencers’ have directly rebroadcast that message to their followers. Add it all up and Marvel has exposed its offer to over 66 million eyeballs over the past few weeks!”

Those are some impressive numbers and just a hint of the potential opportunities social media offers marketers. However we do need to distinguish the difference between influencers: some will talk; others will pass along information (as per above) and of utmost value are those that truly influence others – by eliciting action. So whether on social media sites or via email or on the phone, you must understand what you are trying to achieve and ensure that you have designed appropriately.

One more thing bares repeating from my last two posts: even if some channels are better than others to reach particular consumers in particular ways, the fact is these channels work best for marketers when they work together.

For instance, email messages that offer a social-sharing option (like Twitter and Facebook) generate a 30% higher click-through rate than emails without it, according to a new study by email marketing company Get Response. And if the email includes three or more social-sharing options, that click-through rate jumps to 55%.

The bottom line? Social media offers a unique and advantageous opportunity to find, reach, engage and have a continuous dialogue with individuals – both within their social media communities and in their network at large. Just needs to be done right!

In the fourth and final part of this series, I’ll blog about the true answer to the question – which channel is most effective at finding, reaching, engaging and motivating influencers?

Gillian MacPherson

Tags: Branding, Customer Experience, Direct Marketing, Integration, PR, Research, social media, Strategy
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There are times when there is no possibility of being constructive when writing about the absurdities inflicted on an innocent world by others in our field. There are even times when, as honest proponents of our business, we have no choice but to call it like it is. And this, Ladies and Gentlemen, is one of those times. (By the way, stop me if you’ve heard this one!)

I am referring to the Province of Alberta rebranding project — the one (I am not sure whether it is for tourism or just for the sake of doing it) which has as its tag line: “Alberta. Freedom to Create. Spirit to Achieve”. Normally, as those who know me would expect, I would let a slogan as completely mysterious and meaningless and nonsensical as this pass with barely a snide comment. But this isn’t normally.

Seems the marketers in Alberta (or whoever is responsible for this) took the “Freedom to Create” part literally, and “created” a beach and coastline for the province in order to make a point in an ad. Yes, I kid you not. They used a scene from a beach in Northumberland as the image in an advertisement. More than just the beach, they also used the image of two English girls romping on the beach.

Not surprisingly, they were caught out in the blogosphere, and this is where the fun really starts. It turns out that the image, over which the Alberta logo and the tag line appear written large, is not meant to depict Alberta — it is meant to be a visual depiction of Albertans’ concern for the future of the world (this according to Olga Guthrie of Alberta’s public affairs bureau). It is likely that the intent of the campaign may be to counter the idea that Alberta’s oil sands extraction process is an economic depiction of Albertans’ lack of concern for the future of the world. If that is the case, then wouldn’t the fact that they could not find a pristine example of concern-for-the-world in their own backyard, rather prove the critics right?

Apparently not. The Prime Minister’s head of media relations (sorry, but what the hell is the Prime Minister involved in this for?), helpfully points out that, “There’s no attempt to mislead here. The picture used just fitted the mood and tone of what we (we? we?) were trying to do.” Obviously, whatever Alberta is trying to do, is something they can’t do, if they can’t find a picture to fit the mood and tone of whatever it is, in Alberta. Whatever happened to authenticity?

The little English girls, too, were not meant to deceive — they are meant to be British girls because (implicitly) only English girls are suitable “symbols of the future.” (Olga again).

If you don’t believe me, here is a link to a PDF of the article in The Guardian Weekly.

Need I say more? Have we achieved absolutely nothing in the marketing world? Has everything we’ve been trying to do and say really been so tediously boring that it is totally ignored? I am desolate, disappointed and going to Mexico!

Tags: Around the World, Branding, Customer Experience, Get it off your chest, PR, This and That
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