John Winsor

Marketing Speak

Johnnie Moore has a nice post about the power of language and context on Brandshift. Thanks for sharing, Johnnie!

Brand Perception

Henrik Fisker, the Dutch designer of Fisker Coachbuild talked about what he learned before launching his own company to design and sell $200,000 - $300,000 cars built on Mercedes and BMW chassis with the New York Times:

"We learned about quality from BMW, how to do great things with very few people whilst at Aston Martin, and from Ford how not to do things."

A couple of years ago, Ford was all the rage in the design world with the hiring of designer Jay Mays. It's hard to teach old brands new tricks.

Katrina

Like many others, I have been watching in horror the tragedy on the gulf coast. The hurricane has exposed not only the corrupt neglect of the federal government under George W. Bush but also the humanity of the average citizens of this wonderful nation.

The long-term issue is not the clean-up but our tendancy, as a nation, to get distracted six months or a year from now. With that in mind, I've decided to support Habitat for Humanity's Operation Home Delivery.

One of the things that intrigues me most about Habitat's initiative is the "Home in a Box" program.

Habitat’s plan is to assemble the materials needed to build a house – either purchased or donated – and then, working with affiliates, churches, corporations and others in communities all over the country, volunteers, working with building specialists, will “pre-build” the frame of a home over a few days. The house will be tacked together to ensure a rock-solid fit, then the frame will be taken apart and the components placed, along with other necessary construction materials, in a container and shipped to an area along the Gulf Coast or New Orleans where families, volunteers and builders will rebuild the home.

I hope you find your own way to support an effort to help the victims of this tragedy.

Connecting People with People

A friend just sent me the link to MaintainYourIdentity.net. Great job, Saab!

Anti-Brands

Popular brands can sometimes create such gravitational pull in a culture that they can spawn a whole collection of anti-brands.

One good example is the yellow LiveStrong wrist band that the Lance Armstrong Foundation has used so successfully to raise money and awareness for cancer victims.

While there have been a flood of "me to" gel bracelets out in the market, the folks from AZbikes.com have pushed the envelope and are selling LiveWrong bracelet. They are even giving money away to Flagstaffbiking.org as a way to raise money for trail access.

Brand...Anti-Brand.

Brands I Love #4

There is something very special about my Moleskine notebook. I'm not sure if it's the history, the design or the fact that it is a facilitator of creativity. One of the things I love about Moleskine is the story of the history that comes as a pamphlet in every notebook. Storytelling is such a powerful tool in building a brand.

Culture Turmps Vision

I can easily trick myself into thinking that everyone sees the world the same way I do. In Asia, The Eyes Have It, was a good reminder to consider other points of view.

In the latest test, the researchers tracked the eye movement of the Chinese and Americans as they looked at pictures.

The Americans looked at the object in the foreground sooner -- a leopard in the jungle for example -- and they looked at it longer. The Chinese had more eye movement, especially on the background and back and forth between the main object and the background, he said.

Reinforcing the belief that the differences are cultural, he said, when Asians raised in North America were studied, they were intermediate between native Asians and European-Americans, and sometimes closer to Americans in the way they viewed scenes.

Focus on the Demand Chain

I had a nice chat today with Joe Campisi this morning. Joe is a brillant strategist that always something interesting to say. His ideas about Demand Chain Management are fresh. Here's what he had to say:

"The demand chain is the opposite side of the supply chain from the consumer.

The supply side concentrates on getting the product to the consumer while the demand chain concentrates on the experience of the consumer and the interaction with a brand on all levels.

Very few businesspeople are seeing things from the Demand Side. And, very few have the vision to follow the rules of Demand Side engagement.

It’s important to develop a "Demand side" approach to gaining insights and consequent actions for building an environment that learns daily and creates a living demand side environment for the consumer."