I have a friend, we’ll call him Bob, and Bob’s worn a red hat everyday that I can remember. It’s kind of his ‘thing’. Doesn’t matter what he’s wearing or where he’s going, he always wears a red chapeau.  So we’ve all come to expect him to wear the hat. It fits him, he’s kinda like the hat – vibrant, fun, colorful and a little spicy. Without the hat, Bob just wouldn’t be Bob.

Then one day, Bob changed, and came in wearing a godforsaken black hat. We asked him what was wrong. We thought the worst! Had someone passed away? Was he leaving the country? What?!  He assured us that all was fine, he just needed a change; same Bob, different hat. We didn’t believe him. We knew something had to be wrong…Bob wouldn’t just not wear a red hat. His red hat was a part of him, a symbol of who he was. But there he was, in that black hat, trying to make us believe all was well.  We didn’t know what to do, our faith in Bob and that red hat was waining. He just wasn’t the same person. The black hat wasn’t Bob. I was confused.

Of course this is a very simple analogy to “brand”.  Bob’s brand became his red hat.  Imagine that your company, product or service has a red hat.  It’s the behavior you’ve exhibited while you’ve created your brand.  Your company has worn that hat every day. It stands for your brand, it envelops you, your employees, your offices and storefronts, your advertising and marketing efforts, everything. Your customers trust this hat, they love this hat, they know this hat.  Then you bring in a new marketing team their first impulse is to change it all, because after all, change is good  right?  They change how you are seen by your customers. They give you a black hat and what happens? Customers, partners and employees get concerned. They’re not familiar with this hat. They want to know what happened and why you changed. They’re concerned. But you tell them nothing is wrong and continue on in the black hat. Fear, uncertainty and doubt amounts to brand abandonment and with that comes mass exodus of sales.

Are you wearing a hat?  What color is it or haven’t you looked lately?  Don’t be a Bob.

What color hat are you? What color hat do your customers think you are? Do they match?

Is that a blow-up doll?

Yep, it’ll blow alright – your ad, your brand and hopefully your job.  And not in a good way!  Let’s see, if we have  a really disgusting looking sandwich, how can we make it more appealing to men in the 18-35 demo? Oh, I know, let’s bring sex in!  Sex always sells right?  Yes it usually does do the trick but not when you’re selling cheap, greasy food and comparing it to a blow job.  7-inches of hot meat?  Let’s see, what does that remind us of?  Oh, I know…giggle…giggle.  I can just see the little goatee sporting, skinny jeans-wearing creative toads at the agency (reportedly NOT CP&B, but an agency servicing Singapore for BK) sitting around giggling about hot meat and blow jobs when some one finally said “That’s it!”  We can degrade women, insinuate about the sex we’re not having and win a ComArts award! Let’s do it.

The brand?  Aww, the brand sucks anyway – get it? Sucks? Blow? Meat?  Fire them and fire them now.

I know all the other blogs have done what I’ve done too and made sure that CP&B wasn’t given credit for this piece of trash.  But aren’t they BK’s global agency of record?  Shouldn’t they have had creative say-so in this? I’m sure Bogusky ranted to his crew about how this is the kind of work he expects from them here.  Nice work. Frankly it blows and you blow.  Time’s up CP&B.

Facebook is just a site for reconnecting with old friends and definitely not for business, right?

Wrong.

Facebook can be used for personal reasons, and it is a great tool for connecting with friends and family, but used properly, it can also be a great business tool. Facebook has a section on their site for “pages”. These pages are for businesses to use to promote what they do, gather fans, and create a network of their consumers and potential consumers. The business can share news, blog updates, videos and answer questions. But the first question that needs to be answered is: Does your business need a Facebook page?

The following 10 questions should help you to determine the answer:

1. Do you have a personal Facebook page where you are connected with friends and talk about your normal life?
2. Do you want to keep your personal life separate from your business?
3. Does your business have a blog or website?
4. Would you like to bring more traffic to your blog or website?
5. Are higher rankings in the search engines important to your business?
6. Do you sell a product or a service that people buy?
7. Are you on any other social networks? (Twitter, Youtube, Flickr,Yelp, etc)
8. Are your buyers on any social networks? (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, Yelp, etc)
9. Do you want to be connected to your buyers?
10. Could your buyers benefit from a community where they can share stories and connect?

If you answered YES to 8 or more of the questions above, you need a Facebook page for your business.

If you answered NO to two or more, let us know which one and why in the comments and lets discuss.

Still confused? Send us an email to biz@motorcreative.com.

“We’ve got to show the product!  Don’t use humor, these are doctor’s for Pete’s sake!  Let’s tell them all the hard work and clinical trials that went into making this doo-hicky.”  Puh-lease, gimme a break.

Most device manufacturers have completely lost touch, or really have never developed touch, with their market. Rarely does anyone in marketing ever go out into the field to speak with their docs.  The sales reps have a great rapport with their customers but as usual any information they gather never makes it very far back into the organization and certainly not into marketing.  So what they end up with is this image of a highly paid, highly educated, stern figure who doesn’t have time to be marketed to.  I wonder if the good people at Mercedes, Tommy Bahama and Morton’s feel the same way.  Hmmm, something tells me they don’t and this market is heavily marketed to because they have a propensity to be marketed to and react to it in the form of sales.  Wow. Novel idea.

Some our most successful campaigns, ones that are still running in the likes of riveting pubs like The Journal of Neurosurgery, Diagnostic Imaging and Modern Healthcare, have been ones where we’ve been able to convince the client that a smart, creative approach to this audience will be well received and received in the form of device sales.  A cruise control button on a guy’s head, a tightrope walking surgeon, a leopard and Lance Armstrong. All eye-grabbers, engaging and influential.

Don’t treat the medical device market as a sterile, scrubs wearing group of nerds.  Get out into the field, engage with your audience, learn that a neurosurgeon, a cardiologist and an orthopedic surgeon are three entirely different breeds of physicians – and personalities! – but learn that they can be marketed to and in fact welcome it.

Paging Dr. Fein.  Dr. Fein.  Paging Dr. Fein. Dr. Fein?

Ever woken up and decided “Hey, who cares about what our brand attributes are, let’s invent something new that’s totally out of our reach just to see if we can generate more sales on a whim.”

No? Well then you’re one step ahead Coke and now good ‘ol KFC.

Many times, companies feel like business is slowing and that they need to re-invent themselves in order to change things up. The problem? They forget what the brand is actually about. Remember New Coke? Or now KFC: The “Kentucky [Grilled] Catastrophe”? For Coke, all it took was a small group of influential marketing execs to suggest a change – albeit massive – for the company to damage the brand it worked so hard to create. With KFC, pressure from health fanatics and perceived market needs persuaded KFC marketing nuts to cave in and change their secret recipe for success (what happened after that is now no secret).

Neither of these brands were failing. Neither needed re-inventing. Both companies were in the black and people were buying their products – as advertised I might add.

So what happened?

They stopped listening to their brand and their customers and started listening to influencers who didn’t have the brand’s best interests at stake.

Remember when you were young and you wanted to do what everyone else was doing? What did your mom always ask you? “If everyone else jumped of a bridge, would you”? We all sighed and reluctantly said “Noooo”.

Coke and KFC nodded and said “Great idea Johnson; I think you’ve really got something there!”. And they jumped, without their brand behind them as a parachute.

Before you jump off your own bridge and especially in tough economic times like these, think first about about your brand, your market and how extensible a new offering could be within this framework. If your QSR is known for fast, fried and greasy, don’t think that adding salad to the board is a good idea.  Stick to your core competencies and grow your sales organically. Don’t panic.

Now, I’ll have a 2 piece, extra crispy, all-white with mash and slaw please. Don’t tell my cardiologist.

Can you guess which of the GM stable of brands appears on the Business Week list of top 100 global brands?

Give up?

Cadillac? Nope. Chevy then? Uh-uh. Buick? Gimme a break.

The answer, and hopefully it’s obvious by now, is none. A big fat zero. Which is just where they are right now – zero, back to square one. Even GM’s supposed “power brand”, Chevrolet, and the re-introduction of the Camaro, hasn’t helped. As a typical old-school, product driven organization, GM was more concerned with developing new product lines but never put the effort into developing the brands under which those product lines would fall.

As a result, no one knows what they’re buying into when they buy a GM product. Is it performance? Is is service? Is it reliability? Is it affordable design? No one knows. Well, maybe President Obama knows something we don’t know. He just bought the company.

Maybe he’s just hoping to snag a Camaro without the outrageous price tag…

Oh, and just to be fair, can you guess which of GM’s competitors appear on the list? All of them. The usual suspects: Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche and Ferrari – the brands you’d expect because, well, they’re actually brands and you know what each of them stands for and the type of products, quality and service you’d expect from each. But also on the list are: Ford (just barely, but it’s there thanks to trucks), Toyota, Lexus, Honda, Hyundai and Volkswagen.

So where are you? Are you building a brand or are you building products?

Will Obama come to your rescue when your fate has been aligned with GMs? Doubtful.