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Is 2010 the Year of Branding Mistakes?

Mark Casey — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:52:59 +0000

2010 has already seen such remarkable stumbles in brand management, it’s hard to imagine what’s to come. From NBC dragging The Tonight Show through the mud to even worse decisions by their now-parent Comcast, we’re one month in and it has already been a bad year for marketing executives in America.

The first and most well known folly came with Apple’s iPad, which was met immediately with worldwide groans at the feminine-hygiene implications of it’s already underwhelming name, which prompted one commenter to muse, “I guess there aren’t many female higher-ups in the Apple organization…”

And while there are plenty of obvious better options, including iTablet, iSlate, or giving up on the now-cliche “i” branding altogether, at least the name made sense and wasn’t totally absurd. “iPad” conjures up the power of the iPod, and it is, in fact, a notepad-like computer. So it’s not all bad.

No, all bad would have to go to Comcast, who recently announced that they are re-branding their core services of cable, internet, and phone access by naming them XFinity. The name has been rightly met with scoffs in the blogosphere — scoffs so loud that now Time Magazine has picked up on the act. It’s bland, it’s dense and indecipherable, and it is clearly from “the future,” circa 1989.

Remember Dunder Mifflin Infinity? Yeah, that was a joke about bad corporate marketing decisions. And now “Corporate” from The Office is paralleled by Comcast’s ownership of NBC — this is life-imitating-art genius that would never sell as a movie because it’s just too absurd.

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Will Avatar Spell Oscar’s Doom?

Mark Casey — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:04:05 +0000

I had my reservations about the Academy Awards’ “Best Picture” category being expanded into 10 nominations when they announced it last year, and now that the nominees are out, some of my concerns have been confirmed — but there’s hope for absolution.

First, the obvious concern was that the category would become over saturated, with too many slots to fill and not enough quality films. Happily, I wouldn’t say that happened this year. The only real lenience the abundance of spots brought was allowing titles like “Up,” which was a very good movie but not a great one, to receive some recognition for its achievement. Up isn’t really in danger of winning the award, but a nomination is a fine accolade that it wouldn’t have gotten in a 5 nominee set.

But the real concern here is that the expanded category would be the beginning of the end for The Oscars as the last true semi-artistic award show. One would hate to see yet another show like the popularity-driven Grammys or the marketing-soaked Golden Globes (where lifetime achievement awards magically transform themselves into ads for upcoming features). And now, with the addition of the PR machine that is Avatar and the saccharine The Blind Side being added when they may not have been otherwise, some are suggesting that a win for either could spell disaster for the Oscar’s prestige.

Avatar was a fine film, and its normalization 3D gimmickery is something many a producer is cheering about. But if it were to somehow win best picture on the merits of being either paradigm-shifting or hugely popular (because if it wins, it probably won’t be on its merits as a film alone), then how long will it take for the diluted nominee field to include popular titles with even less artistic value? If there were ten nominees in the past, would Jurassic Park have snuck a best picture crown? Would Cameron have also won for Terminator 2?

I hope this is just nonsense and my such concerns are proven entirely ridiculous. And heaping this much pretense and gravitas onto an award show which is already considered meaningless by some is probably not healthy. But I do know one thing: If Avatar wins, it probably won’t be because it was the best film out this year, and that’s not a good thing.

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From Humble Beginnings…

Mark Casey — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 19:38:31 +0000

The Clinton Global Initiative does great things for impoverished nations the world over, none more important right now than Haiti. But where did this illustrious group start? An article about Doug Band from the Sarasota H-T sheds some light.

To donate to the Haiti relief efforts, please visit the Red Cross website or text “Haiti” to 909999 to instantly donate $10. I haven’t passed that message along since the quake, so it’s better late than never.

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Today’s Big Picture

Mark Casey — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:36:00 +0000

I just rooted up (get it?) an impressive series of photographs by Myoung Ho Lee — call them portraits — of trees, with an artificial “canvas” behind them, to turn them into natural, artificially displayed, organic art:

A real tree in front of a backlit canvas

Here’s a quote from the article:

Trees are attractive objects in that they enable people to think philosophically and appreciate aesthetically. But too often, we don’t recognize the value of ordinary mundane objects around us. Seeing trees in a refreshing way or restoring the value of trees is to awaken all beings on earth in my work.

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CBS Rejects Gay Super Bowl Ad: Double Standard or Good Taste?

Mark Casey — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 23:55:16 +0000

CBS has made plenty of controversy for itself the past week or so by agreeing to run an anti-abortion ad during the Super Bowl starring college football star Tim Tebow. But now it seems that wasn’t quite enough for them, because they’re also making a point to reject a commercial for a gay dating website called Mancrunch.com (what?).

On the one hand, this is a clear double standard, and they are making it clear just who they are most afraid of offending. But on the other, the ad is pretty terrible, and is probably offensive to most gay people:

As Gabe at Videogum eagerly points out:

This ad’s catchprhase is “It is hilarious and gross when guys kiss each other and it makes your friends deeply uncomfortable. Mancrunch.”

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The iPad Arrives

Mark Casey — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:05:18 +0000

There’s not a lot to say about the iPad — all the jokes about its name have already been made, and other than that it’s basically a simplistic tablet computer, and that’s a good thing. I’ve always loved tablet notebooks anyway, so hopefully not only the iPad catches on, but the market becomess flooded with slate-inspired laptops (I’m looking at you, HP).

But I couldn’t let the day pass without posting this hilarious picture, because say what you will about the iPad, the interface really is kind of awkward looking — they clearly tried too hard to model it after the iPhone:

Steve Jobs Reveals his Inspiration for the iPad

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TheAtlantic.com Pulls Further Ahead in Web-success

Mark Casey — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:36:41 +0000

Not much can be said for The Atlantic’s ever-blossoming website, except for that it is doing exactly what it needs to do in order to cement its status as king of the online highbrow monthlies. And it’s not just Andrew Sullivan.

It has everything I love in a website — short, conversational pieces; debate-themed features; a “forum” with tons of disparate sources giving their unique opinions. It’s a crafty blend of Politico and the now defunct 23/6.

I applaud it. One wonders when other sites will implement more of these excellent features.

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Blogback: Tucker Carlson Praises the Anti-Sex Demographic for Inventing Sex

Mark Casey — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:51:53 +0000

[First published on 10.12.08]

Last week, a pastor in Texas became a pop phenomenon when he suggested to his followers that they have more sex. It was a funny, quirky, cute story.

And it took nearly a week for the likes of Tucker Carlson to politicize it:

Overall, according to a 1997 study in the British Medical Journal, men with the most active sex lives have a death rate half that of those with the least active. Sex prolongs life.

You’d think that someone other than Ed Young would have noticed this. Maybe one of the tens of thousands of federal bureaucrats paid to worry about America’s health might have caught on and launched an ad campaign on billboards and city buses. (“Sex: It’s the Right Thing to Do,” or “Take a Minute for Couchball.”) But no. It took an evangelical.

Yes, it “took an evangelical.” Just like it took a million evangelicals to convince Bush and his subordinates that “abstinance only” could somehow be related to the idea of “education.”

Carlson has never backed down from a challenge, but he should probably quit while he’s ahead when it comes to dressing up the most anti-sex demographic on the face of the Earth as the kingpins of the activity. You can’t slap a bowtie on a pig and call it a genius.

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Top 10 Crazy Political Commentators

Mark Casey — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 14:17:45 +0000

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Hulu is Gaining on YouTube

Mark Casey — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:49:47 +0000

Hulu.com is an amazing website.

An ironic partnership between Fox and NBC, Hulu is a video sharing site featuring high-quality, professional videos from each network’s primetime shows and webisodes — including the popular Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons, and Family Guy. Since it’s inception just over a year ago, Hulu has also added plenty of extra content to its ranks, including viral video machines The Daily Show and The Colbert Report — and unlike YouTube, Hulu shows many of those programs in the form of full episodes, and even quite a few in HD.

And of course, the fix for YouTube was in as soon as Hulu launched. Unlike other online content ventures from major media outlets, Hulu allows their videos to be imbedded in one’s blog or website — even full episodes. Now, it appears as though Hulu will very quickly surpass YouTube in terms of advertising revenue:

The feat suggests traditional media companies can make money online without having to cede control to Google, as the music industry did to Apple, whose iTunes music store dominates the digital music market.

It also shows the difficulties other social networks might have in generating revenues from their amateur content.

Obviously, the ability to become associated with professional, monitored content is more appealing — for now — to advertisers than appearing on random YouTube viral videos is. That easily explains why Hulu’s 6 million visitors is currently pulling in nearly as much as YouTube’s 80 million. But I still believe that advertisers skittishness toward online advertising is on its way out, however slowly.

Why Coke or Pepsi or Budweiser thinks that flashing their logo on TV and in magazines is more valuable than flashing it on a website is beyond me. Branding is branding, and they can reach just as many people on Facebook as they can in Maxim Magazine — only in Maxim, readers cannot click on their logo and be taken directly to the product’s website. Yet advertisers still complain about “low click-through rates” — a marvelous concept that doesn’t even exist in other advertising mediums, but still manages to disappoint CEOs.

Once the internet becomes as integrated in our society as television, Hulu will have to have an audience, not just a product, to rival YouTube’s. Until then, congratulations to them. They’ve succeeded where other media companies have failed miserably for a decade.

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