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Susan Gunelius

Susan Gunelius

Rebranding HSN as the Brand Hero

credit card shoppingHSN has come a long way since the early days of home shopping and HSN.com, and the HSN marketing team wants to make sure women know it. With a complete rebranding, HSN will be positioned as the hero to women who think the brand is outdated. The HSN rebranding makes a specific effort to attract younger women through the use of updated packaging, taglines, fonts, television scripts, and more.

The new tagline simply states, “It’s fun here.” The marketing push focuses on building customer trust in the brand through mobile and digital where nearly half of HSN’s sales and new customers come from.

Rebranding HSN is a good move (albeit a bit late), and should help to position the brand for the evolving television commerce industry. With the growth in multiple display use and original programming online, the convergence of television, mobile, and commerce is poised to catalyze this type of shopping in new ways. Gone are the days of the HSN and television commerce of ten or twenty years ago. This type of shopping will look very different in just a few years.

Natalie Zmuda of Ad Age reports that HSN hopes to remove its reliance on celebrities selling their products to define its own brand. Instead, the rebranding will allow HSN to stand on its own as a relevant brand. Already, HSN is leveraging social media to support its rebranding strategy with Google+ Hangouts that don’t necessarily rely on celebrities.

Anytime a brand controls its own success rather than relying on third parties (including celebrities) is a smart move. If HSN continues to move in the right direction, it might start to carve out a larger market share against its top competitor, QVC, and it might be able to lead the next phase of the television commerce industry as online and what we’ve known as traditional television become more and more integrated in the coming years.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts on the HSN rebranding as well as the future of television commerce overall.

Image: Philippe Ramakers

The Evolution of Single Fathers and What Brand Marketers Need to Know

father_and_daughterA recent study from Pew Research found that the number of single fathers in the United States has risen by nine times since 1960. The evolution of the single father consumer demographic has significant effects for brand marketers.

It has long been known through numerous research results that women make or influence the vast majority of purchase decisions, and brands have changed their marketing strategies and tactics to better appeal to the influential mother demographic over the years. However, the growing number of single fathers and stay-at-home fathers is getting bigger every day. This is a market segment that brand marketers need to target with unique messages and campaigns.

According to the Pew Research study, in 1960, just 1% of households (300,000) with minor children in the United States were headed by a single father. In 2011, that number had grown to 8% to 2.6 million. Looking at the data from a different angle, just 14% of single parent households in the United States were headed by men. In 2011, that percentage was up to 24%.

In other words, nearly one in four single parent households in the United States are led by men. Clearly, this is a target audience that cannot be ignored. Ads, promotions, and messaging that cater to antiquated stereotypes of “traditional” families are not just missing an important audience but they’re also losing favor with two-parent households.

Pew Research also found that the role of fathers overall has changed. Today, Americans believe that fathers aren’t necessarily the family breadwinners alone. Gretchen Livingston of Pew Research writes, “Fathers are narrowing the still sizable gap with mothers in the amount of time they spend with their children. The public believes that a father’s greatest role is to provide values to his children, followed by emotional support, discipline, and income support. Public opinion ascribes roughly the same hierarchy of roles to mothers.”

Brands that market directly to the growing niche audience of single father heads of household and fathers who are primary caregivers are in a unique position to seize opportunities to build critical relationships with an audience that shows no signs of slowing down.

How is your brand connecting with this target market? Leave a comment and share your insights below.

Image: Glenda Otero

New Digital Ad Best Practices Will Benefit Brands

gavelEight of the biggest digital ad networks in the United States are voluntarily implementing a set of best practices that should reduce online copyright infringements, piracy, and counterfeiting. AdWeek reports that Google, Yahoo!, 24/7 Media, AOL, Microsoft, Conde Nast, Adtegrity, and SpotXchange will all implement new guidelines that support the White House’s efforts to better protect intellectual property.

This is great news for online publishers, including brands, brand journalists and sites that publish branded content because it is a key step in ensuring content owners’ copyrights and brand’s trademarks aren’t violated. The best practices will enable ad networks to stop paying sites that publish content which violates intellectual property protection laws. By cutting off an important revenue stream to these nefarious site owners, advertisers, high quality online publishers, and consumers win.

The new Best Practices Guidelines for Ad Networks to Address Piracy and Counterfeiting includes three primary sections:

1. General Commitment

Ad networks will maintain policies that prohibit websites from earning revenue through the network, which are found to be primarily dedicated to selling counterfeit goods or infringe copyrights by publishing content owned by another individual or entity. These policies will be published on each ad network’s website.

2. Identification and Verification Process

Ad networks must be certified against the Interactive Advertising Bureau Networks and Exchanges Quality Assurance Guidelines or maintain an independent quality assurance process.

3. Complain Process

Ad networks sill accept and address notices from rights holders related to content published on sites in the ad network, and contact information for the person or entity responsible for receiving complaints must be clearly published on the ad network’s website. Ad networks must conduct appropriate investigations for all valid complaints received.

You can follow the link above to read the complete best practices document.

Not only will the new ad networks best practices cut the revenue stream of sites that are clearly breaking copyright laws, but it will also hurt sites that are selling counterfeit branded merchandise. Of course, these best practices won’t completely stop these types of sites. They’re likely to be replaced faster than consumers can complain about them and ad networks can remove them from their networks. However, it’s a step in the right direction.

At the very least, this is a topic that brand marketers need to be aware of and follow, because the outcome will help them protect their copyrights and trademarks as well as reduce ad spending on these sites. It’s an all-around win for brands.

What do you think? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Jason Morrison

8 Proven Tricks to Create Perfect Pinterest Pins

pins pinterestWhat makes the perfect Pinterest post? That’s the question Curalate wanted to answer, so they researched 500,000 images in a recent study and identified eight specific factors that affect how many views and re-pins your Pinterest pins get. This is important information for brands that want to more effectively leverage the visual marketing opportunities that Pinterest offers.

The infographic below shows all of the details from the study. The highlights include:

Faces or No Faces?

Images that show a person’s face are repinned less frequently than images that don’t include a face. The study reveals that images without faces in them receive 23% more repins than images that include faces.

How Many Colors?

As you might expect, images with multiple colors that are dominant in the image receive 3.25 times more repins than black and white images or images with any single color.

What Color is Best?

Just as colors like yellow and red catch people’s attention offline and on web pages, images that are reddish-orange get approximately twice as many repins as images that are blueish.

Does Lightness Matter?

The answer to this question is a resounding, “Yes.” Curalate found that images with medium lightness received 20 times more repins than images that are very dark.

Is a Specific Saturation Level Important?

The sweet spot appears to be 50% saturation. The study found that images that are 50% saturated get 10 times more repins than desaturated images.

What Should the Background Look Like?

You might think that a single product image with a blank background will get more repins than images with cluttered backgrounds, but the opposite is true based on the data from Curalate. Images with less than 10% background are repinned 2-4 times more than images with more than 40% background (meaning more than 40% of the image is empty background).

How Does Aspect Ratio Affect Repins?

Vertical images should have a 2.3 aspect ratio. Curalate found that vertical images with an aspect ratio between 2.3 and 4.5 get 60% more repins than images that are very tall and skinny.

What Texture Is Best?

Images with a smooth texture are repinned 17 times more than images with a rough texture.

8 Tricks for Repinnapble Pins

Here are the 8 tricks brand marketers can leverage from the study data:

  1. Avoid images with people’s faces in them.
  2. Use images with multiple colors.
  3. Pin more images that are reddish-orange than blue.
  4. Adjust your images to medium lightness.
  5. Use images with 50% saturation.
  6. Avoid blank backgrounds. Instead, keep the background of your images to less than 10%.
  7. Pin images with visual interest that are high-texture.
  8. Avoid vertical images that are very skinny.

You can see the complete infographic below and visit the Curalate website using the link above for all of the details.

The-Eyes-Have-It-Curalate-Infographic-copy

Images: Talk2Frank, Curalate

 

Brands Absent in Most Tweeted Events List

twitter-bird-white-on-blueWhat are the most tweeted events in the history of Twitter UK? Lauren Hockenson compiled a list of the top five most-tweeted events on record for Gigaom, and brands are noticeably absent from the list. Instead, sporting events, musical events, and political and papal announcements top the list on Twitter UK.

Lauren gathered information from Twitter and news reports to identify the top five most tweeted events on record as follows:

1. Barack Obama’s re-election
2. Spain’s Euro 2012 win
3. Introduction of Pope Francis
4. Andy Murray’s Wimbledon win
5. Spice Girls reunion performance during the 2012 London Olympics

You can follow the link above to read Lauren’s full article which includes all of the tweet-per-minute statistics and details about each of the five events.

The lesson for brands to learn from the most tweeted events on record is this—events that have consumer emotional involvement and a relationship element, wherein consumers experience the event together and want to share their thoughts and feelings about those events, get tweeted.

Brands need to consider how they can more closely align themselves with these types of events. Traditional sporting events sponsorship doesn’t drive tweets. Andy Murray’s win drove tweets. Imagine a brand like Red Bull (a brand that is very good at aligning itself with high-profile, high-emotion events) had developed a campaign tightly aligned with Andy Murray prior to his Wimbledon win. There would be organic brand exposure after his win drove 120,000 tweets per minute.

I’m not suggesting that an event that is solely a branded event could get to the top of the most tweeted events list. Trying to chase one of those top spots would be a losing battle. However, tying brands to events that match the highly tweeted events in this list should drive indirect marketing organically.

How can your brand ride the event tweeting wave? Think strategically, do your event research, identify what makes a tweetworthy event, and find opportunities to integrate your brand into those events in new and creative ways. The old event sponsorship models aren’t enough anymore.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts about event marketing for brands in 2013 and beyond.

Image: Twitter

Ernst & Young Rebrands as EY

EY logo old and newJuly 1, 2013 saw the demise of another of the “Big Four” global audit and advisory brands when Ernst & Young rebranded as EY. The new EY brand includes not just a new name but also a new logo and tagline, “Building a better working world.”

According to the EY press release announcing the rebranding (and the appointment of a new CEO, Mark Weinberger), the shift to EY will bring consistency to the company brand in the 140 countries it operates in around the world. The rebranding will also, “demonstrate clearly and boldly who we are and reflect the goal we have recently set ourselves to be the number one brand in our profession.”

The rebranding is also intended to reflect the EY corporate values. As Weinberger explains, “our values are the fundamental beliefs of our organization and remain the bedrock of our culture. They are one of the most important sources of our organizational strength. We encourage and expect our people to demonstrate integrity, respect and teaming, have the energy, enthusiasm and courage to lead and build relationships based on doing the right thing.”

Can EY live up to those bold statements? Only time will tell. There is no better time for a company like EY to seize the opportunity to prove it can act honestly and responsibly. The video below provides more information about the rebranding effort.


The new logo includes a beam icon that has already appeared in EY marketing materials but now is clearly the core of the entire rebranding effort. The beam certainly adds a sense of looking toward the future to the brand. When combined with the tagline, I’m reminded of Stephen Colbert’s Super PAC slogan, “Making a better tomorrow, tomorrow,” but I digress.

While the application of the beam works well in graphics, designers in the Brand New community believe it seems like a lost opportunity in the logo. I do have to agree that the beam seems like an odd afterthought tagged onto the EY. However, the logo design does follow the trend in creating simple logos rather than the highly stylized Web 2.0 logo design trend that dominated the early 2000s. That is a good thing.

To clarify, EY will be used to refer to any and all companies within Ernst & Young Global Limited. Each of those companies is its own, separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited does not provide any products or services directly to consumers in any way.