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Archives for December 2010

Brands Adopt the Pantone Color of the Year for 2011

pantone-2011-color-of-the-yearEach year, Pantone names a new color of the year.  In 2010, turquoise won the honor.  The 2011 Pantone color of the year has been announced and it’s honeysuckle.  It’s a reddish-pink color designated as PMS 18-2120.

The Pantone color of the year is typically associated with the fashion and home categories, but it’s not unusual to see it spread to brand and products from a variety of lines of business.

Brands that have already adopted the Pantone Honeysuckle color include:

Some products using the Honeysuckle color are shown in the image below:

pantone-honeysuckle

There is even a Pantone Paint line with a new Honeysuckle shade and a Pantone Hotel, complete with a Pantone Bar, in Brussels, which promises an experience that allows you to “travel to a colorific world.”

The reddish-pink Honeysuckle color is intended to evoke an uplifting feeling and deliver a boost of confidence in navigating life’s challenges.  The bright color is intended to be alluring, eye-catching, and attract people to it as a hummingbird is attracted to the reddish-pink flowers of a real honeysuckle.  As the Pantone website explains, Honeysuckle could be very effective in package design, “for products that speak to something active or festive, or are suggestive of sweet tastes and scents. It’s an especially good shade for delicious food or drink packaging.”

Color trends are something that brand managers need to be aware of, and the Pantone trend reports for the fashion and home industries are something to keep an eye on as the trends in clothing often spread to other categories as well.  Color trends can provide broad insight into the emotions that are expected to affect consumers in the short term.  The psychology of color marketing and color branding exist for a reason.  Listen to the trends and predictions and look for creative ways to integrate them effectively into your own branding initiatives.

Honda’s Naughty or Nice Facebook App Tracks Behavior with a Fun Hook

I have to hand it to Honda for coming up with a Facebook app that can be perceived by consumers as fun, entertaining, and humorous, but could be working hard behind the scenes to tell Honda’s marketing team so much more than whether a user has been naughty or nice this year.

To use the Honday Naughty or Nice Facebook app shown below, you have to “like” the Honda page on Facebook.  Then you can click the start button on the app, which will scan your Facebook updates for naughty or nice keyword flags, how often you “like” things, and how many Facebook invitations you accepted throughout 2010.  The result tells you whether you’ve been naughty or nice this year.


Honda-Naughty-or-Nice_facebook-app


For users, the app could be humorous and could have a viral effect if groups of people start comparing results.  However, Honda benefits in multiple ways.  First, if the app is popular, Honda benefits from positive word-of-mouth marketing and brand buzz.  More importantly, Honda get access to a year’s worth of Facebook updates as well as “like” and invitation acceptance behavior history.

The app tab on Honda’s Facebook page doesn’t disclose upfront how much (if any) information Honda will collect, store, and/or use as it crawls through user’s Facebook histories, but if the company is going through the trouble to search for naughty and nice flags, then it would make sense to look for additional keywords or behaviors that can help the company develop future targeted marketing campaigns.

What do you think of this type of Facebook app?  Too invasive?  Very clever?  Leave a comment and share your opinion.  One thing is for certain, this type of app is likely to get more popular and marketers will probably have to get even more clever to motivate people to allow access to their social media profile histories.  In other words, will a promise of being labeled naughty or nice be enough to move people to action and open the doors to their social media profiles a year from now?  What do you think?

Green Advertising : Top Five Traps To Avoid 2/2

no evilThis is Part 2 of the Green Advertising : Feeling The Pressure post a few weeks ago.  Apologies if you’ve been on tenterhooks waiting for it!

The concept of Greenwashing has been around, it seems, for ages.  The trouble is, with the public, NGOs and various other bodies keeping a sharp look out, a company can easily fall into the greenwash trap without meaning to.

This is especially true on websites where content tends to be scrutinised much less before publication than, say, broadcast advertisements or print op-ed pieces.

Here then are top five traps to avoid on your websites and in all advertising in general. [Read more…] about Green Advertising : Top Five Traps To Avoid 2/2

Ad Spending Forecasts Highlight China and the Internet

This week, ZenithOptimedia released its “Adspend Forecast Update” for December 2010 and one type of advertising and one region of the world drew attention as the focus of opportunity for the future.  In other words, companies are shifting budgets and investing more money into the large-scale opportunity of China and the lost-cost and wide-reach of the Internet.

According to the report summary, the key findings are:

  • After the surprisingly strong 4.9% recovery this year, we predict annual growth of between 4.6% and 5.2% for the next three years.
  • Global ad expenditure to exceed the 2008 peak in 2012.
  • Developing markets to continue to grow much faster than developed markets: developing markets will account for 35.9% of ad expenditure in 2013, up from 31.5% in 2010
  • Ad expenditure in newspapers and magazines to fall by 2% between 2010 and 2013. Technology to help television, cinema and outdoor grow ahead of the market, while internet advertising grows three times faster than the market as a whole.
  • Display advertising now the fastest-growing internet category, driven by online video and social media.

You can get a clear picture of how the shift in media investments are expected to go in the chart below:

ZenithOptimedia_adspending-forecasts

Most media investments are expected to decrease or stay fairly even through 2013 with one exception — Internet which is expected to experience a 39.8% increase in adspend between 2009 and 2010.  The next closest medium with a predicted increase is television with a 6.9% change.  Clearly, we’re going to experience several years of companies and brands vying for attention and trying to learn how to best leverage the Internet to build brands and make sales.

When it comes to regional investments, the Asia Pacific region is forecasted to see major media advertising expenditures increase by 31.0% between 2009 and 2013.  That’s not as high as the increases expected in Latin America (43.3%), Central Europe (39.8%) or Africa and the Middle East (32.2%), but considering that China accounts for 20% of the world’s population, the return on those advertising investments in the Asia Pacific region could be exponentially better than in any other area of the world.

Given the economic downturn that spread across much of the world in recent years, emerging markets have gained traction in terms of prioritization for advertising investments.  The ZenithOptimedia forecast certainly supports the assumption that the trend will continue well into the future.

Where are you investing your advertising budget in terms of media and geographical region over the next several years?  Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

A Rabbit Warren of Brazilian Banking CSR

Come Into The Rabbits Hole trimManagement & Excellence is what I can only describe as an intriguing and unique company.  Their website describes them as:

a research and rating company in the areas of ethics, sustainability, corporate governance, transparency and corporate social responsibility (CSR) specialized in Latin America, Spain and the oil industry worldwide

The company recently released the results of their 2010 “Most Sustainable Latin Bank” survey (PDF).   And the winner is (for the SIXTH year running!) Itaú-Unibanco.

This is no surprise.  Itaú-Unibanco is the largest Brazilian bank and one of the top 500 companies in the world, maintaining a presence not just in Latin American but also the US, Japan, Hong Kong, the UK and the UAE.  It’s no Merrill Lynch, but neither is it a small town squib.

But how can you examine its exceptional sustainability record online?  Only through digging, it would appear. [Read more…] about A Rabbit Warren of Brazilian Banking CSR

Corporate Eye Summary December 4, 2010

  • What Makes for Effective Investor Relations Sites? Part 31: Annual General Meetings
    Companies are of two minds about Annual General Meetings of Shareholders; some view them as a necessary evil to be dispensed with as quickly and with as little fanfare as possible; others see it as an opportunity to reach out to their owners and present the Board and management in the best possible light while […]


  • Fresh Ideas for Your Corporate Blog
    A guest post from Barbara Jolie on keeping your corporate blog fresh and interesting.
    Corporate blogs can get a little stagnant, but not if you approach them from a fresh angle from time to time. In writing this, I realize that corporate communications professionals are often given a very limited scope from which to write. Some […]


  • FTC’s Wants ‘Do Not Track’ List for Online Advertising
    Online behavioral targeting might be in danger for marketers if a new U.S. Federal Trade Commission proposal comes to fruition.  As Internet users lose more of their privacy every day with every click being tracked for behavioral marketing purposes, the FTC is considering implementing a Do Not Track list similar to the immensely popular Do […]


  • Whoever Gets Their Positioning Right Wins a Prize: Survival (And Even Profit)
    I recently invited Karen Jones from BioEngagement to write a guest post for us about how best to position new technologies. Over to you, Karen!
    Let’s say you have a new technology platform to sell. Should you describe it as “new and never been done before”, or “just like those other guys, but better”?
    Positioning: Create […]


  • Big Shift in Holiday Brand Advertising Spending
    Holiday marketing and advertising budgets for retailers are staying relatively flat this year, but that money won’t be spent the same way it has been in prior years.  2010 holiday advertising budgets will be spread in new ways to match the changing behaviors of consumers.
    According to the BDO Retail Compass Survey, fewer companies are cutting […]