HOW TO MAKE BRAND STRATEGY USEFUL -- Beliefs in Action
Mullen Marketing Search is a brand consultancy and executive recruitment firm based in New York City working with Fortune 500 companies. We help clients build beliefs-in-action brand strategies by putting engagement at the heart of brand ideas, help clients with organizational strategy, conduct agency searches or executive recruitment for in-house talent needed in a changing communications landscape. We focus on finding the most innovative marketing minds out there.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Does the brand you work for need to be a publisher/TV production house? Does it need to make content?
Does your brand lack engagement? and does engagement mean the brand has to give you entertainment, information, or otherwise publish information and insights for you to consumer (aka CONTENT)?
PR agencies are getting into the media business turning brands not into the underwriters of articles and video but as publishers (Content Marketing Craze with PR agencies). What is old is new again. Sponsoring scripts and building shows to embed ads into is how the whole TV ad business got going.
There was a time in the late 1990's every brand felt it needed it's own free-standing website. There were a lot of people ready to capitalize on this need. I remember well when saying the following back then: "Does this cracker/laundry soap/toothbrush have something to say on this site that will make people come and what will keep them coming back?" -- well this sounded a lot like "not getting it" to the people with a passion for their own brand site.
Context is everything is an adage we should pay a lot of attention to in these "comms planning/channel planning, path-to- purchase, mobile-marketing, GPS timed offer" days.
Can't a brand find a world to be a part of and to underwrite? Does it need to create a world to be in and underwrite?
Maybe a cracker wants to raise it's importance and engagement. That's understandable. But can't a low interest thing like a cracker brand engage and really shine in the right context? I think so. A cracker or any brand can be engaging if it finds actions to be of use. A cracker is not unimportant, but it may not need to be a publisher -- it can be embedded in a world of parties, food programming through product placement, recipes, and in a context where a cracker can shine an be useful.
Does it need to write and produce this content to have a context?
Instead of asking this question, what I really want to ask is where is the filter? I need a filter. I'm drowning in content. Aren't you?
PR agencies are getting into the media business turning brands not into the underwriters of articles and video but as publishers (Content Marketing Craze with PR agencies). What is old is new again. Sponsoring scripts and building shows to embed ads into is how the whole TV ad business got going.
There was a time in the late 1990's every brand felt it needed it's own free-standing website. There were a lot of people ready to capitalize on this need. I remember well when saying the following back then: "Does this cracker/laundry soap/toothbrush have something to say on this site that will make people come and what will keep them coming back?" -- well this sounded a lot like "not getting it" to the people with a passion for their own brand site.
Context is everything is an adage we should pay a lot of attention to in these "comms planning/channel planning, path-to- purchase, mobile-marketing, GPS timed offer" days.
Can't a brand find a world to be a part of and to underwrite? Does it need to create a world to be in and underwrite?
Maybe a cracker wants to raise it's importance and engagement. That's understandable. But can't a low interest thing like a cracker brand engage and really shine in the right context? I think so. A cracker or any brand can be engaging if it finds actions to be of use. A cracker is not unimportant, but it may not need to be a publisher -- it can be embedded in a world of parties, food programming through product placement, recipes, and in a context where a cracker can shine an be useful.
Does it need to write and produce this content to have a context?
Instead of asking this question, what I really want to ask is where is the filter? I need a filter. I'm drowning in content. Aren't you?
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Express Your Ideas Clearly At Work More Visually
Story-telling in new ways demands new tools. To express your ideas and yourself, wouldn't it be great to get past the clunky powerpoints we so often generate at work to a whole new format? Maybe with tools like Mural.ly people who aren't designers (like me) can do more with our stories visually. Will Wright the author of SimCity, launched Spore at PopTech in 2006 saying we all have design aspirations and that most people want to express themselves, but what they make isn't too attractive. He said what people need is the tools and computers are great tools to amplify our abilities and to help us tell stories. How true. So true I never forgot it and have looked for tools to help me and everyone I know to tell their stories better ever since.
Will said back in 2006, "The tools we surround ourselves with are an expression of our identity." It's almost non-news that we are getting those tools faster and free now-- from Pinterest to Instagram to Facebook Timelines -- we have more and more tools to express ourselves beautifully (hurrah!). Mural.ly might be something to help us tell our stories better at work. It's in beta so we'll see. If you check it out (and I think you should), take my advice and watch the videos. Sign up for the free account and watch first and then click about. I thought I could just click around and get going and I accidentally clicked on something that took me to a full screen photo of a guy staring at a wall of inter-related stuff-- straight out of the TV show Scandal or the Unibomber's shack. Clearly this tool could help detectives or conspiracy theorists, but I think the makers intend it for storytellers like you and me.I will continue to look for more tools like it and pass them on. Work presentations should all be more like Will Wright at PopTech and less like 18 pt typeface crammed into 5 bullet points a page. We'll get there.
Will said back in 2006, "The tools we surround ourselves with are an expression of our identity." It's almost non-news that we are getting those tools faster and free now-- from Pinterest to Instagram to Facebook Timelines -- we have more and more tools to express ourselves beautifully (hurrah!). Mural.ly might be something to help us tell our stories better at work. It's in beta so we'll see. If you check it out (and I think you should), take my advice and watch the videos. Sign up for the free account and watch first and then click about. I thought I could just click around and get going and I accidentally clicked on something that took me to a full screen photo of a guy staring at a wall of inter-related stuff-- straight out of the TV show Scandal or the Unibomber's shack. Clearly this tool could help detectives or conspiracy theorists, but I think the makers intend it for storytellers like you and me.I will continue to look for more tools like it and pass them on. Work presentations should all be more like Will Wright at PopTech and less like 18 pt typeface crammed into 5 bullet points a page. We'll get there.
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