Shirley Slesinger Lasswell, the visionary who with her first husband extended the Winnie The Pooh characters and brand into a merchandising machine, passed away yesterday.
After licensing the merchandise rights to The Walt Disney Company in 1961 in exchange for royalties, Pooh products grew to generate over $1 billion in annual sales.
An interesting life, as captured in this remembrance from the Los Angeles Times:
Her first husband, Stephen Slesinger, was among the first to see Pooh’s financial potential. A literary agent, Slesinger in 1930 secured the rights to sell Pooh merchandise in the United States and Canada from A.A. Milne, author of the Pooh books.
When Slesinger died in 1953, Lasswell was left with the rights and a 1-year-old daughter to support.
“I thought, ‘Now what do I do?’ But it was right there for me,” Lasswell told The Times in 2002. “I decided to promote Pooh.”
…[She] paid homage to the character that’s “really been my whole life,” Lasswell told Fortune magazine in 2003, by driving a Cadillac with a license plate that said “POOH 1.”
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…Says the headline in this celebration of the 10th birthday of the blogosphere, from The Wall Street Journal, confirming what many recognize: Blogs have quickly evolved as a communications channel, of importance to most any organization brand. Whether companies fully grasp this culture shift is a topic for another column, or share your comment below.
From the Journal:
The consumption of blogs is often avid and occasionally obsessive. But more commonly, it is utterly natural, as if turning to them were no stranger than (dare one say this here?) picking one’s way through the morning’s newspapers. The daily reading of virtually everyone under 40 — and a fair few folk over that age — now includes a blog or two, and this reflects as much the quality of today’s bloggers as it does a techno-psychological revolution among readers of news and opinion.
We are approaching a decade since the first blogger — regarded by many to be Jorn Barger — began his business of hunting and gathering links to items that tickled his fancy, to which he appended some of his own commentary. On Dec. 23, 1997, on his site, Robot Wisdom, Mr. Barger wrote: “I decided to start my own webpage logging the best stuff I find as I surf, on a daily basis,” and the Oxford English Dictionary regards this as the primordial root of the word “weblog.”
The dating of the 10th anniversary of blogs, and the ascription of primacy to the first blogger, are imperfect exercises. Others, such as David Winer, who blogged with Scripting News, and Cameron Barrett, who started CamWorld, were alongside the polemical Mr. Barger in the advance guard. And before them there were “proto-blogs,” embryonic indications of the online profusion that was to follow. But by widespread consensus, 1997 is a reasonable point at which to mark the emergence of the blog as a distinct life-form.
As part of The Journal’s coverage, this slideshow of blog design.
And this advice for what makes an effective blog, from Elizabeth Spiers, founding editor of Gawker, as quoted in the Journal:
They were topically focused, often in niche areas. They published regularly and frequently, typically during office hours and several times a day. They published content that was original or difficult to find, from breaking news to proprietary photographs to obscure links that readers are unlikely to find on their own. They were usually well-written, which has its own intrinsic appeal for anyone who prefers to enjoy what they’re reading. And lastly, they engaged their readership by soliciting feedback and responding to it, in the form of asking for tips, allowing comments or otherwise demonstrating some level of interest in their audience’s preferences.
Good advice.
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The title of “best burger” is personal to most. Everyone has their favorite, and awarding the title is like finding good art for many who know it when they see it or, in this example, taste it. For example, in Southern California In-N-Out Burger owns a cult following.
Our staff discovered a formidable burger contender last week in Santa Barbara. Well, really our burger experience took place in Goleta, just down the road and next door to the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The Habit, as it is called, is a 20 restaurant operation in Southern California. Never having heard of The Habit previously, we were first struck by the brand name [we are in the branding business after all], which drew us to the closest location we could find, where we noticed a standing-into-the-street queueing line, prompting us to stop and embrace temptation.
The Habit relies upon little advertising in building their brand [when a company speaks of advertising expense in basis points instead of a whole number percentage, that is no advertising]. Instead The Habit focuses upon the product, the employee and the customer experience through an own the conversation strategy, building the brand organically through endorsement and WOM. Sounds familiar.
We like the brand name, the brand strategy, and the burger. Thought you should know.
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The Birla Institute of Technology & Science, otherwise known as BITS Pilani, is among the most highly respected engineering schools in Asia. A recent article in the university alumni magazine, at page 71, identifies this website as among three for recommended brand reading, alongside other authors and sources such as Harvard Business Review and McKinsey Quarterly.
As a demonstration of good brand naming, a big thumbs up to the name of the magazine. What better name for a publication associated with an institute of technology and science than that of the BITS Pilani alumni magazine, Sandpaper.
[More posts about BIPS Pilani | More posts about Pilani, India | More posts about Brand Naming | More posts about University Branding | More posts about Magazine Branding | More blogs about University Branding]
A public service campaign in Australia flips the reckless driving conversation on its head to emotionally hit young men where it hurts most. The campaign demonstrates the effectiveness of engaging an audience emotionally, whether advocating a purchase or a change in behavior. From Newsweek:
When you first read the slogan, SPEEDING: NO ONE THINKS BIG OF YOU, you might think it was a reminder that people think poorly of those who break the law. Think again. This new road-safety campaign…is aimed a bit more below the belt—by suggesting those men who speed have small penises. In…advertisements, young “hoons”—Aussie-speak for speeding or reckless drivers—are mocked by unimpressed women who wave their little fingers at the drivers in a parody of their manhood.
The wagging finger is a commonly used insult in Australia, often leveled at drivers of monster SUVs or expensive sports cars to suggest their vehicles are compensating for a deficiency elsewhere…
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It has been nearly a month since the London 2012 Olympic Games Organizing Committee was hit with an avalanche of negative public opinion. On June 4 the Committee announced the new London 2012 logo, a new visual identity seemingly no one liked except the “branding” firm responsible for creating it.
Reaction to the new logo was swift, such as this BBC News report:
BBC blog posters saw the 2012 logo as an attempt to connect with young people in a “dad at the disco” kind of way:
“It’s boring and looks like it took a second for a 3 year old to do,” one wrote. “It certainly doesn’t appeal to children, I mean I’m 16 and dislike it, my brother is 10 and thinks it’s plain.”
[Another offered] “…It looks like a logo designed for young people by old people who don’t understand young people.”
One respected strategist compared the new logo to “ugly shards.”
Curiously, the firm behind the logo went into hiding. Emerging later from nearly two weeks of silence, the firm’s stance was reported in the Sunday Telegraph:
Brian Boylan, 61, the chairman of Wolff Olins, the…consultancy responsible for the £400,000 logo, insisted: “Let’s be clear: we won’t change the design at all. We are proud of it. It will go down in history. We have created something original in a world where it is increasingly difficult to make something different.”
[Patrick] Cox, 41, who led the design team that created the logo, said: “It wasn’t created to be warm and fuzzy.
“Its design is intentionally raw, which means it doesn’t immediately sit there and ask to be liked very much. It was meant to be something that did provoke a response, like the little thorn in the chair that gets you to breathe in, sit up and take notice.”
Thorny indeed.
How did the process of creating this logo lead to an overwhelmingly negative public firestorm? We begin by looking at the firm itself. As the logo creators describe themselves:
Wolff Olins started in the mid 60s as a design company. We focused on looks. But looks that worked, because they were always founded on an idea… By the mid 90s…[t]he brand idea became central to our philosophy. The brand idea is the core purpose which drives an organisation. It involves both the value of its position and the way it’s expressed – what it looks like and how it communicates itself.
Fine and good, but the Wolff Olins philosophy prompts this question: What is the brand idea the 2012 logo is founded upon? As any good brand consultancy knows, a great identity should grow out of a brand promise pointing to a unique competitive difference, one creating a “must have” response. This unique difference should work to shift the market conversation to the advantage of the brand.
We looked for the answer. One capable of understanding within seconds.
The Organizing Committee offers an eyes glazed over 454 word explanation here. No help.
A variety of press reports offered this explanation:
The design brief was for an emblem that represented the four key ‘brand pillars’ of access, participation, stimulation and inspiration, culminating in the brand vision of ‘Everyone’s Games’.
“London 2012 will be Everyone’s Games, everyone’s 2012. This is the vision at the very heart of our brand…”
And this from the press release:
London 2012 will be a Games for a connected world making the most of exciting new technology to get people closer to the action they want to see, when, where and how they want to experience it.
The new emblem is dynamic, modern and flexible reflecting a brand savvy world where people, especially young people, no longer relate to static logos but respond to a dynamic brand that works with new technology and across traditional and new media networks.
Nowhere do these explanations point to a demonstration of the one unique difference separating London 2012 from any other Olympics host city, or any other major sports event. Change out the name and the “brand idea” offered up by London 2012 could as easily apply to Beijing as to London, or the World Cup as to the Olympic Games.
Or, the London 2012 brand idea could just as easily support a youth oriented mobile service. And, as we found, it does.
The Wolff Olins claim to “have created something original in a world where it is increasingly difficult to make something different” rings hollow when their work is viewed within the context of other designs developed/directed by the firm. We located this press release describing another Wolff Olins design attempt to reach out to the youth market, describing a “brand idea” eerily similar to that of London 2012, and a likewise similar logo:
“djuice is now the world’s second largest mobile offering for young people…
At the same time, djuice has…introduc[ed]…a new logo. The design profile has been developed in cooperation with Wolff Olins…
“Our new image is playful, colourful and flexible, and the diversity reflects the many different aspects of djuice and the diversity of our customers’ interests…This is how we envisage djuice, as the centre, from where good things emerge, the only place young people need to visit to get the latest and best…experience.”
The reality is precious few location brands create human engagement by effectively tapping into their brand context with a compelling promise. Often such brands tend to veer off track and “settle” for brand stories and messages that are acceptable to those on the inside making decisions, but are wholly inadequate to engage those the brand seeks to reach and convert. These often self-congratulatory messages become irrelevant as soon as they are uttered. Perhaps part of the reason for this is the nature of governmental and quasi-governmental units involved in a branding project to want to seek a near unanimity among various stakeholders as decisions are made. However, this form of consensus if not worked through properly is the enemy of the breakthrough and can result in the banal. It puts a premium on the decision of whom is trusted with the process of uncovering the engaging and unforgettable story of your place and, in this case, your sports event.
Wolff Olins did not create a banal 2012 logo, nor did they create a breakthrough. Rather they created a logo begging for an explanation, and not a brand.
What London 2012 needs instead is a visual demonstration supporting the unique promise of these Olympic Games, one creating excitement rather than acting as a barrier to public enthusiasm. How do they get there?
To create a breakthrough brand, to offer a compelling story engaging the audiences London 2012 seeks, the brand must offer a difference, a unique “something unheard of elsewhere.” True, there is far more to the story of London 2012 than one unique difference. However, to create the opportunity to tell the broader story of the Games, to own the conversation, London 2012 must first stand for a single uniqueness, a door opener, prompting an audience to care long enough to stop, and to stop long enough to be influenced.
What is it about London 2012 that separates the experience from all other alternatives?
How will this experience fulfill a passion not satisfied elsewhere?
Why should anyone care?
If an audience can answer these questions for themselves within seconds, then we see a brand that matters. One that appreciates in value and creates economic opportunity. One capable of being remembered above all others.
For the decision-makers responsible for creating such a brand that’s when the fun begins; when they receive credit for being oh-so-smart.
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As a brand consultancy we are in the word business. To create human engagement we seek out words and imagery to effectively demonstrate the story of our client brands, to attract an audience through market conversation.
To further understand how language and conversation work, reach for How Language Works by David Crystal. Described as “the perfect one-volume introduction to the study of language” in the Guardian Unlimited, there is more in this review from the New York Times:
When I first began reading David Crystal’s “How Language Works,” I was a bit perplexed. It seemed to be moving too fast and too abruptly through topics and sub-topics. There were no transitions and no chatty digressions. It was like being in the back seat of a taxi whose driver had his foot to the floor.
Then I got it. What Mr. Crystal, widely regarded as a leading authority on linguistics, has done is to assume the role of a master distiller of knowledge who takes the whole subject of language and pours it into 73 clearly labeled bottles all beginning with the word “How” — as in, “How we use tone of voice,” “How children learn to mean,” “How conversation works.”
For those interested in the power of language and conversation in brand strategy, add this book to your reading list.
Or listen to us demonstrate Own The Conversation® Strategy within a matter of seconds.
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The Republic of Malta is an island nation strategically located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. Malta is a member state of the European Union; the smallest EU country in both population and area.
With few indigenous raw materials and a small domestic market, Malta’s economy is based on tourism and value-added manufacturing exports such as electronics.
As important as is tourism to Malta’s economic fortunes, during 2006 the nation focused on developing a brand strategy to grow the nation’s tourism industry. While the decision to develop their brand was a good one, the Brand Malta exercise became an admitted failure, according to this from the Malta Star:
The internal branding campaign has become the laughing stock of the country and has sustained a constant attack in the media by opinion writers.
[The tourism authority’s…brand consultant] went on record admitting that the campaign failed. “We might have used language that is not accessible to everybody,” said the branding expert.
The Malta Tourism Authority is angry. Their consultant admits failure. Now, some months later, what should this beautiful island nation do next?
Perhaps in the future Malta will seek advice in how to size up any firm who say they offer branding services, and how to choose a good one.
We previously commented on the Malta effort, as quoted in this link to Wired Temples, the Malta Media weblog.
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Friday, July 20th, 2007 - 11:46am |
Ahead of Their Time + Apparel & Retail + Brand Extension + Packaged Goods + Pop Culture + Success Stories |
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