Timezoneone Blog

These ads often manage to pull a tear of two.

 Andy

Last week Tim, Murray and myself, had a rapid fire visit to Boulder, Colorado. The home of Crocs , the Dushanbe Teahouse and the characters’ house from the “Mork & Mindy ” television show. This was my first visit inside the US of A and it blew all my misconceptions of the place away.

I spent a good amount of the time suffering from insomnia and lack of appetite, but my personal highlights from the Crocs bootcamp were:

“Its Toasted” - Tim “happy chappy” Chapman coined the phrase as part of the new TZ1 language for decision making.

Being The First “Adman” through US customs.

Rick Rolling (gangster style) through Boulder in the “Loredo” listening to the non stop 80’s channel.

Adventures to the Firewood Lot with the “trusty” navigator Navman.

Sharing a room with messy Murray in the semi-murderous underground bunker.

Embracing the most organic city in North America by eating goats cheese and the huge variety of mushrooms , at least once a day to smell my best.

Being interviewed by Barns and noble about our knowledge of books, and Tim stealing the show.

Celebrating my 26th birthday with the Crocs brithday bear.

Seeing the US B-team and meeting the friendly felluhs at Crocs.

-King cobra snaking off.

In keeping with my sporting theme week I would like to remind everyone of this fanatstic TVC.  Oh wouldn’t we love for this to be reality….

Folksey

My current favorite TVC at the moment is Pink Batts here in New Zealand. For those of you who don’t know, Pink Batts are thermal insulation for keeping your home warm. Really quite a boring and unattractive product, a pink fluffy square. A problem a lot of good TVC’s face is you watch the ad, think it’s great but can’t recall the company or product. Somehow Pink Batts have made a heart-warming, emotive commercial that leaves you with warm fuzzies and clearly remembering the product being advertised. A TV commercial success. They have been nominated for many upcoming awards and I for one will have my fingers crossed for them. 

The day seems to have flown by, so here is a link to keep you entertained until tomorrow. It showcases talents in graphic design, web, illustration and packaging.
http://www.graphic-exchange.com/

I’m one for a bit of history, so here goes some entercation on the origins of branding. 6000BC to be exact.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/04/23/scibrand123.xml

… and for something a little different, this image made me smile.

Alaina

The excellent book Value Creation: The Power of Brand Equity by William Neal and Ron Strauss dives deep in to the importance of a brand and makes some very valuable points, especially in the current economic climate – with revenues under pressure a powerful brand offers you additional levels of protection. The book discusses how a brand is a defensible long-term asset a company owns. Competitors can quickly replicate product or service performance; they can meet or beat prices; they can enter channels and markets freely. But your competitors cannot quickly build the confidence of your consumers and clients. And therein lies the value of a brand.

A successful brand reduces uncertainty among buyers, employees, suppliers, investors and other stakeholders. It offers trust and confidence – just what is needed in the current market. So with the economy wobbling a strong brand is a very good asset to have on your side. Speaking of strong brands, we are just updating a beautiful communication piece for The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). The ‘Roadshow’ brochure (see visual) which was developed last year helps communicate to perspective students the creativity and ethos of the School. It is excellent brand building work like this that has played a big part in growing the enrollment numbers. Congratulations to Maryann and Jonathan at the SAIC for having a strong vision for the SAIC brand and message.

Written by Richard Tattershaw

“The 22 immutable laws of marketing” is a great read for all marketers. Written by Al Ries and Jack Trout, I recommend you put it on your must read list. It is hard to pick a favorite law but if I was pressed, I would go with law #3: “It’s better to be first in the mind than to be first in the marketplace.” You see this time and time again in consumer and business to business marketing. Be first in the consumer’s mind and sales will follow. For example, the ipod was not the first mp3 player, but it is the first in peoples minds… Nigel Foley, TimeZoneOne