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February 14, 2009 at 11:17 pm | consumer marketing | No Comments
Two beers from two countries, and two different ways to deal with customer expectations.
Kingfish from India with two paper labels, smaller one at the neck -like in bottles from many other brands and countries.
Corona from Mexico with a single embedded label, making it perhaps easier to re-use, but also letting the customers see that different bottles have slightly different amounts of beer…
The neck label has a raison d’etre beyond extra promotion: keeping too much information away from the market.
Salud!
February 12, 2009 at 10:54 pm | general | No Comments
It has been a while since the last blog entry, reaffirming the tendency of many blogs to take a rest too long.
It is not easy to fight gravity.
What makes a blog successful? frequent, interesting updates. Other stuff is optional.
How to get frequent, interesting updates? competition: have several contributors to the blog.
Yes, that is why I check the likes of …. engadget (sample of blog visited daily) . Even if a specific entry or a writer is not particularly good I know that another post will be up soon.
Q. Where am I getting to?
A. This should be(come) the standard of marketing/public diplomacy blogs.
December 20, 2007 at 2:19 am | general | No Comments
Things are busy here, and just did a lecture on branding at Tohoku University.
The task being to make clear the connection between branding and communication.
November 3, 2007 at 12:48 am | branding | No Comments
Yesterday the second formal review of the Brand+ project took place.
I provided the latest estimate of partner companies and other details, among them were some of the materials that have develop to efectively communicate our point when negotiating with companies.
This is one of them:
It surprises companies (and specially company presidents) that somebody asks them where are they from. The reality is that Japanese consumers do it all the time, consciously and unconsciously.
The same way that people want to know where I am from, their customers desire similar information.
The typical company answer? Sendai
After that it should be obvious that they use the Sendai brand, isn’t it?
(The actual slide is in Japanese, but based on this concept)
October 31, 2007 at 12:17 pm | general | No Comments
Besides busy finalizing the partner portfolio for the December launch of the brand, I am preparing for a professional seminar in Tokyo next January.
Looking for interesting examples of location branding I came across this slogan for the Baden-Wurttemberg region of Southern Germany -excellent use of humor in official promotion:
Translation: We Can (Do) Everything. Except (Speak) Standard German.
Targeted to other Germans -familiar with the reputation of locals speaking their own Swabian dialect- the ad plays with the reality of B-W as the headquarters of Mercedes Benz, Porsche, Boss and others.
http://www.wir-koennen-alles.de/
(Select English and the humor stops, the slogan becoming “The state portal”)
Disclaimer: In High School days I spent two summers in the Black Forests of B-W, and the German language lessons included a healthy dose of Swabian.
October 25, 2007 at 1:30 am | general | No Comments
Seems that info embargoes do not work too well and I have appeared in the Asahi Newspaper, Tohoku edition.
Details to follow
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Here it is, in small size to protect the guilty
I could have done it without the emphasis on the logo, but the comments from the Chamber of Commerce and Fujisaki Dept. Store added the right ammount of reality.
October 24, 2007 at 12:39 am | general | No Comments
Toyota has “decided to build a new car plant in Sendai Prefecture in northern Japan”.
Thanks Toyota, thanks AP and thanks IHT.
In fact, the name of the prefecture (province/state) is Miyagi, and the plant is in Ohiramura/Daiwa towns -20 km. or so from the Sendai City limits.
Proving that branding is important, and since Sendai has better image than the above names, by the vote of the AP and others we are on the way to have a Toyota Sendai Plant.
Thanks again
October 14, 2007 at 5:26 am | general | No Comments
Tomorrow is Blog Action Day [1] and I would like to bring up the concept of sustainability in branding.
Typically, large advertising agencies make the real money not on strategy, tactics or creative services for the client, but on the direct and indirect commissions that they get from the media they run the ads on. Thus on one hand we get all those extra pages on printed media and the commercials on TV, and on the other when the money runs out promotional activities disappear the way of the dinosaurs.
I am sure that advertising pays for the existence of media but that is besides the point for my client. What they really want is permanent, sustainable branding at an affordable cost. So I made a decision that will not be copied by Dentsu or Hakuhodo: No advertising. We run on, we become visible on the channels of our partners -on their permanent channels such as packaging and web. Even if advertising ceases -or there is none to begin with like in the case of my client- the brand is positioned for growth.
This is sustainability. Think about it when signing contracts with the big agencies.
Here is big, ready to be introduced on Blog Action Day, Enviroment Topic:
Mori No Miyako Sendai: Sendai, the city of forests.
The logo signifies the city (those 3 buildings) among the green trees that surround it.
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Congrats to Al Gore for his much deserved Nobel Peace Prize.
An inconvenient Truth [2]
[1] http://blogactionday.org/
[2] http://www.climatecrisis.net/
October 10, 2007 at 2:19 am | general | No Comments
All? of the companies that I am targeting are consumer-focused. This translates -with one exception- into familiarity with advertising, and thus I decided to give them a choice when presenting the project to them.
Will they prefer a traditional, serious but boring layout or the avant-garde puzzle? Which one company executives take in their hands first?
Why the puzzle design? It is thanks to the partner companies that the Sendai Brand maze is resolved. 
Seriously, they provide the marketing channels, a must for success.
