How do you know when your brand has truly arrived? When your brand has completed its path of enlightenment and reached a state of “brand nirvana”? This is a question I put to some colleagues recently. One measurement that we all agreed to is when a brand becomes a form of currency, more appealing to your target audience than currency itself. Let me explain what I mean with some examples.
A couple of years ago my team was planning a campaign for our company (“epost.ca”:http://www.epost.ca/) and we wanted to include compelling prizing that would drive interest in signing up for our service. We wanted something more original than just giving away cash so we engaged our agency at the time and got back advice that we eventually used. No surprise to anyone, it was “iTunes”:http://www.itunes.com/ downloads, “iPod”:http://www.apple.com/ipod/ giveaways and for a grand prize, a “Mini Cooper”:http://www.mini.ca/.
Each of these product brands we felt had a value in the eyes of our target audiences which would exceed their cash value equivalent. This hunch seemed to be confirmed in our campaign results. After we ran that campaign I started to notice how many other organizations were using these exact same products as giveaways in their campaigns. That was almost two years ago.
Today, you can’t swing a cat without hitting someone giving away a free iPod or iTunes downloads or a chance to win a Mini Cooper for signing up for their service or buying their products. Haven’t noticed? Go to your favourite search engine and punch in “ipod giveaway” and watch what happens. I got “over 2.2 million results on Google”:http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=ipod+giveaway. As marketers, we copy this idea because *we want cash with better branding.* It’s kind of like hanging out with the cool kids in high school. We believe that our brands will increase in value by their association with what I’ll call “currency” brands.
This takes me back to my hypothesis. I hypothesize that you have truly reached brand nirvana when the value of your product is so well understood and generally desired that its market value exceeds its cash value in people’s minds. I ask you, what higher attainment could a brand achieve?
Month: June 2006
A couple of months ago, I was introduced to “LinkedIn”:http://www.linkedin.com and I must agree with “Mitch Joel”:http://www.twistimage.com/blog/archives/000547.html that this is a very useful online tool.
Just last night I had dinner with an “old university buddy”:http://ac.micro.org/wp I lost touch with 13 years ago. We reconnected courtesy of LinkedIn. (No, I am not on their payroll nor have I been offered any compensation from them.)
However, a colleague of mine had a complaint. She asked me not to include her name so let’s call her ‘Gertrude’. Gertrude recently connected with someone but while her new connection could see her contact list, she was blocked from seeing theirs. Gertrude thought this was rather selfish.
After being a co-host on Across The Sound – the new marketing podcast of Joseph Jaffe and then hearing a follow-up episode of ATS where CC Chapman co-hosted, I decided to throw my hat into the podcasting ring. With little more than college radio training and the occasional interview on talk radio, I created my own podcast, Six Pixels Of Separation.
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