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Archives for 2010

Advertising Standards Authority Expand Authority to Online Space

asaThe Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is the U.K.’s independent regulator of advertising across all media, including TV, internet, sales promotions and direct marketing. The ASA’s mission is to ensure ads are legal, decent, honest and truthful by applying the Advertising Codes.

According to an article from the BBC today, the ASA will expand its power to apply its Advertising Codes to online ads beginning March 1, 2011.  Additionally, the ASA will have the power to ban marketing messages from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

The ASA’s power will only apply to websites, online ads and online messages that are intended to sell products and services, so online publishers and journalists will not be subject to the ASA’s oversight.  The BBC article noted that 75% of complaints to the ASA are related to misleading messages in ads, and beginning in March 2011, not only will the ASA have to power to restrict and ban online ads that are found to be misleading, but they’ll also have the right to purchase ad space themselves advertising other companies’ non-compliance with ASA standards.

For brands that are used to practicing truth-in-advertising and don’t mislead consumers, the new ASA reach to the online advertising space should be welcome.  Now, advertisers will be placed on a level playing field in terms of assertions and claims.  However, the online space is very, very big, and the ASA won’t be able to catch all advertisers who disregard the standards.  This is a step in the right direction though, and consumers should benefit from it.

You can follow the link to read more about the ASA’s newly extended authority in the digital space.  While most consumers are likely to be happy about the ASA’s announcement, there will undoubtedly be some people who believe this kind of regulation and oversight in the online space is unwelcome and excessive.  What do you think?  Leave a comment and share your thoughts as a consumer and as a business person.

What Makes for Effective Investor Relations Sites? Part 25: Let Investors See What You’ve Been Writing About

In my last installment of this series, I wrote about how posting slides of your investor presentations was helpful to investors. This week, I’m addressing a corollary concern: the need for investors to be able to access a history of a company’s financial press releases. Almost every investor relations web site will include a section on press releases. Unfortunately, where the section is and how much history it contains can vary considerably.

Ideally, a link to news releases should show up clearly on the main investor relations page. This should then lead to a page dedicated to the press releases. Some companies choose to have a separate page for the media that contains all press releases, but in my opinion, investors are better served to have at least a link on the main investor relations page. A better approach is to have financial press releases dealing with earnings, dividends and related financial news in a separate area so that investors can find what they need without hunting through new product introduction announcements or the latest news on charity events sponsored by the company.

Next, companies should give thought to how long the press releases should be up on the site. I have seen companies that arbitrarily cut off the press release history after two years, but this is probably too short a time frame. At the very least, companies should keep financial press releases up for five years or the same period of time for which they are also archiving financial information, whichever is longer. Press releases can be very helpful in understanding management’s thinking at the time of the event, and with electronic storage being as cheap as it is these days, there is no good reason not to have a complete history.

Unilever

A good example of how to do all of this is on the Unilever site. When you navigate to Unilever’s main investor relations page, one section of the page gives you a link to Press Releases, which is shown right.

Clicking on the link takes you to the Press Release page shown below, which contains a full ten years of releases, enough to satisfy even the most data hungry analyst.

Unilever

In the end, web sites, if designed well, can make life much easier for investors, and just a little bit of forethought will accomplish that objective when it comes to press releases.

In this series:
Previous post: Presentations
Next post: Additional Information

Mac vs PC Guy Commercials May Not Be Over Yet

A bit of a buzz has been going on related to the famous Mac vs. PC Guy commercials that have become a highly recognizable and popular advertising campaign which successfully repositioned Apple’s brand against the personal computer category leader, Microsoft.

I wrote about the Apple brand and Mac vs. PC Guy commercials on the Corporate Eye blog in May 2008 and again in October 2008, and now, over two years later, the ads are still popular.  There aren’t a lot of companies or brands that can boast that kind of successful ad campaign longevity.

A new interview with Justin Long, who plays Mac in the Mac vs. PC Guy commercials, sheds new light on the ad campaign.  While only 66 Mac vs. PC Guy commercials have actually aired on television (you can watch all 66 ads on the Adweek website), Long explains in an interview published on Time magazine’s Techland blog, that at least 100 commercials were actually filmed.  However, he doesn’t know if those ads will ever see the light of day.

Similarly, Long didn’t know if the Mac vs. PC Guy campaign had met its demise yet or not.  When asked ‘the’ question about whether the campaign had ended or not, Long responded, “I don’t know, they don’t really tell me much. I personally haven’t heard anything. I could get a call next week.”

As the Apple brand struggles to overcome some bumps in its otherwise easy path of growth that the company has enjoyed over the past several years thanks to innovative products supported by creative advertising, it’s interesting to debate whether the time has come to charge forward with completely new advertising or if sticking with continuity is the better approach.  Only Apple’s marketing and executive teams can make that decision, but it will be interesting to see what comes next for Apple advertising.

What do you think?  Is it time to retire Mac vs. PC Guy or is there still some life left in the characters Justin Long and John Hodgman play?  Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Necessity is the Mother of Reinvention

corporate rebrand = metamorphosis

There are lots of reasons why a company might choose to rebrand:

  • increasing globalisation leading to confusion in the minds of customers
  • acquisition or merger of two companies – or a spinoff – necessitating a change
  • significant change to the business – products, services, direction, scale…
  • the need to differentiate from competitors
  • occasionally as a result of a crisis
  • and no doubt there are more…

Such a big change isn’t usually decided on a whim, but is driven by necessity. And corporate brand metamorphosis certainly isn’t easy. It would definitely be worth getting some expert advice!

As always with the Communicate Magazine conferences, the upcoming Transform Conference is intended to help people facing the implementation of such a major project, providing practical ideas and case studies based on the experiences of the line-up of speakers.

For this conference, the speakers are drawn from corporates, governments, charities and corporate advisors, and include: Unilever, Hays, Dave, AkzoNobel, The Co-Op, Aviva, Santander, Holcim and many more.

There will be discussions on communicating the changes internally, on protecting intellectual property, dealing with cultural issues, reputation management, visual identity and fonts, brand architecture and reinvention without damaging brand heritage. It sounds fascinating – the only issue, as always, is choosing between the different streams of discussion.

I’m particularly intrigued by the idea of a history of the world in 1000 fonts, which is the topic to be covered by Bruno Maag of Dalton Maag – brand values and visual identities from the Romans onwards! On the other hand, guidance on how to execute a new visual identity across multiple brand touchpoints in multiple departments across multiple regions sounds essential, and as a former project manager I can imagine just how complex such a programme could be. (This session will be led by Gideon Wilkinson from Endpoint).

I’ll just have to hope that Communicate have decided to video each session. Or that I can find a time-turner before October.

The early bird period for this conference is nearly over, so you’ll have to act fast (before the end of August) if you want to make a saving on the conference fee. It’s going to be at the Hotel Russell, in London, on October 21 – and it’s an all day thing (not surprising, given what they plan to cover). More details here. Looking good!

Brands Turn Heads and Build Business in New York’s Times Square

Earlier this week, I wrote a post about brand museums and factories that have become popular tourist destinations.  Had I written that post a few years ago, Kellogg’s may have been on it, but the company’s Cereal City USA in Battle Creek, Michigan never drew the attendance levels it needed to survive (it closed in 2007).  However, just because Cereal City USA wasn’t a huge hit doesn’t mean that Kellogg’s was ready to give up on creating branded experiences for consumers.

Enter New York City’s Times Square, which has become a brand hot spot over the past decade with more companies investing in unique retail locations there after seeing brands like FAO Schwartz and M&M’s succeed in drawing large crowds.  This month, Kellogg’s jumped on the bandwagon by opening a store and cafe dedicated to a brand that has held a place in American pop culture for decades.

Welcome to Pop Tarts World.


pop-tarts-world


Pop Tarts World started off with a bang.  Already, 1,500-2,000 consumers visit Pop Tarts World per day where they can buy branded merchandise and taste unique Pop Tarts-inspired menu items.  According to BrandWeek, Zeta Interactive has been tracking the performance on Pop Tarts World online, and already positive Pop Tarts brand buzz online has grown from 74% to 88% less than two weeks since the store opened.  Furthermore, the Kellogg’s brand has also seen a boost in the positive online buzz of 6%.

And that’s not all.  The Pop Tarts Facebook page grew from 1.8 million to 2 million people within two weeks with people not just visiting but also actively joining the conversation, uploading pictures of themselves at Pop Tarts World, and more.  The online popularity of Pop Tarts has even surpassed brands like Wheaties, Cheerios, Frosted Flakes, and Quaker Oats — some of the dominant players in the breakfast foods segment in the United States.

Consumers love branded experiences that are either useful or entertaining (or both).  Pop Tarts World is a perfect example of an entertaining branded experience.  Not only that, but it’s also an example of a branded experience that people can share.  Pop Tarts, entertainment, shared experiences that can be shared further through branded social web destinations — it’s a recipe for success.

What do you think?  Will you stop into Pop Tarts World next time you’re in midtown Manhattan?

Image: Flickr

Social Media Happens Up North Too

northI’m allowed to say that, because I’m from Teesside.

I know there are points north of there (I’ve even visited a few) but for many living in the south, anywhere above the Hull/Bristol line is the Frozen North – and there may even be dragons.

So I’m delighted that Communicate Magazine are bringing their very successful Social Media in a Corporate Context to Manchester.

OK, Manchester isn’t very far north, and is less than 2 hours by train from London these days, but it’s a start, right? Next stop Newcastle – or Edinburgh, perhaps.

I’ve been to both SMCC conferences so far, and have thoroughly enjoyed them, so I can wholeheartedly recommend this one.

Iit looks as though there’ll be a return of the excellent Social Media Newsroom X-Factor session, a session on social media reputation management and a debate about crowd-sourcing, as well as a couple of sessions on community development (internal and external), one on engaging Gen-Y, one on crisis comms, and more… Speakers will be from many organisations, including First Direct, Manchester Airport, Boots, VisitBritain, Lloyds TSB, Scania, DHL and the NHS.

Communicate Magazine have also invited Molly Flatt from 1000Heads to talk about word of mouth; as someone who’s been on the receiving end of ‘a hug from a corporate’ via the work of 1000Heads (in another role), I’ll be particularly interested to hear her speak.

For those of you who get a lot out of these conferences (all of you, surely?) there’s a chance to shape next year’s programme to suit your needs, by becoming a Pacesetter now – and you get a second conference seat for free, as well as a year’s subscription to Communicate magazine.

This autumn’s conference is going to be on the 19th October, at the Palace Hotel in central Manchester. More details available on the Communicate Magazine events pages, but if you’re quick, there’s a discount of £50 if you book before 31 August.

So come and visit Manchester! These days Manchester is my closest city (yes, I too have moved south); perhaps see you there?