Issue: Creative spam headlines start to look like good copywriting
Commentary by: David Vinjamuri

A few weeks ago, I began to notice spam.  Not that I hadn’t noticed it before; the way a horse notices swarming flies.   But this was different.  An e-mail with the subject “Obama Shot in Colorado” set my hairs on end.  I almost clicked before I noted the sender and realized it was spam.  On the same day, I received a valid e-mail from a newsletter that I’d signed up to with the title “Get Ready to Shop” - and almost marked it as spam.

Which raises the question - are spammers working harder for our attention than real marketers?  Have we surrendered creativity to the grinding data-consciousness of direct marketers (no offense)?   Have the spammers followed the adult entertainment marketers as the next generation of marketing innovators we will refuse to learn from?

Issue: Wal-Mart adopts a new logo
Commentary by: David Vinjamuri (additional commentary on Fox Business News)

It must be a slow week when a corporate logo change makes news, but that’s where we find ourselves with Walmart as it changes its logo for the first time in sixteen years.

The new logo has three distinguishing points from the old: first it removes the star that separated the ‘Wal’ from ‘Mart’ (a hyphen predated the star). Secondly, the new logo uses upper and lower case where all previous logos were all-caps. Finally, the new logo ads a starburst (or a six-pointed asterisk as we see it) at the end of the logo.

Wal-Mart’s press release sounds almost defensive on the logo update:

This update to the logo is simply a reflection of the refresh taking place inside our stores and our renewed sense of purpose to help people save money so they can live better.

This begs the question of the underlying brand strategy - what is Walmart hoping to accomplish? The answer seems regrettably clear. Walmart is in a strong competitive position given the downturn of the economy. They are using the opportunity to try to take market share from their competitors. Walmart believes that it “owns” working class families - they are value shoppers who are very loyal to Walmart. So the new logo, new tagline, new outfits for employees and freshened store layouts reflect Walmart’s desire to lure upscale customers from Target.

This is a reasonable goal but Walmart is pursuing it in the wrong way. The new logo with a six pointed star at the end (which bears an unfortunate resemblance to an asterisk) reminds us of nothing as much as Target’s logo with the bullseye. The new slogan: “Save Money. Live Better” does have the advantage of reaching an end benefit. But compare it to “Always Low Prices” and you’ll see that it again positions Walmart against Target’s lifestyle marketing.

To be successful, Walmart must stand for working families and focus on offering good products at the lowest everyday prices. When Walmart walks away from this mission it does so at its peril.

Walmart may replace logos and slogans but it should not replace the important mission it created - one which lifted the standard of living for millions of middle class families around the U.S.

Branding Bottom Line: Walmart gets a nice new logo *
* (but it reminds us a lot of Target)

Brand:  Paul Coelho (latest novel: “The Witch of Portobello“)
Execution: MySpace
Target: Passionate fans
Rating: *****
Reviewer: David Vinjamuri

Description:
Think of consumer generated advertising and you might think Doritos,  the NFL or Heinz.  But Brazilian author Paul Coelho has jumped headfirst into this space with a MySpace competition to make a collaborative movie of the book for film festival submission.  The rules are straightforward: pick a character and film the segment of the book in which that character is the narrator (there are fifteen).  The best segments get stiched together with a movie that, like the book, is told from multiple perspectives.  The entire movie will be submitted to film festivals.

What Works:
Paul Coelho has involved his most passionate fans with his brand in a way that few professional marketers manage.  While the standard user-generated advertising campaign is well understood - shoot a commercial for my brand and I’ll stick it on network television - Coelho has reimagined the boundaries of this very limited medium.

The framework for this project is what makes it so effective.  Rather than an open assignment, Paul Coelho gives his readers a specific challenge: film a portion of the book from the point of view of one of the narrators.  Narrowing the scope of creativity can significantly enhance both the results and the creative quality - if it’s narrowed intelligently.  And this is brilliant narrowing.

The second success factor for the Witch of Portobello contest is the attraction of the final project.  Instead of having one winner, Coelho will recognize fifteen, and their work will be stiched together in a way that will add unexpected elements to the final product.  This creates a good platform for extending the life of the contest and of the book.

Finally, Coelho hosts this contest through a social network (albeit MySpace) and will naturally attract the kind of talent he is looking for.  In fact, the contest has been so successful that he has shut down submissions for all but a handful of the narrative chapters.

What Doesn’t:
There actually is some corporate involvement here - from Hewlett Packard.  It’s not clear how broad their role is (or if they had any part in creating this competition), but the merest whiff of corporate marketing in this competition could hurt the authenticity of the final product.  This competition will pay back in user interest and loyalty - corporate money might do more damage than it is worth.

Branding Bottom Line:
A novelist takes the serious marketers to school.

Brand: Baby Einstein (Disney)
Execution: TV
Target: First time Moms
Rating: **
Reviewer: David Vinjamuri

Description:
A testimonial-style commercial for Baby Einstein. The spot starts off showing the green door to a suburban house and superimposes “A Real Mom Talks About Baby Einstein DVDs” over the door. Then we meet Antonia and her son Hudson. Antonia talks about how much she likes Baby Einstein DVDs. As she speaks we see images from the DVDs as well as scenes of her playing with her sons both in an out-of-doors. The spot ends with a voiceover “Make new discoveries with Baby Einstein DVDs” and a product shot of the DVD lineup.

What Works:
If you buy the premise that you must advertise mass-distributed brands on mass media (and we do not), then this spot does the job as well as it can be done. It is not overly slick and would look equally comfortable if shown on a cable access channel. It speaks directly from one mom to others, just as the Baby Einstein videos do. It is fairly single-minded about the brand positioning “by a mom, for moms” which is the strongest positioning for the Baby Einstein product. It doesn’t splash the Disney name - a temptation that lesser marketers in large corporations might have succumbed to. It also is simple, uses strong images and has a good product shot and good branding.

What Doesn’t
I was particularly interested in reviewing this ad because I wrote a chapter of Accidental Branding about the Baby Einstein founder, Julie Clark. When Disney bought out Clark and took over the Baby Einstein brand, they did a good job of keeping the Disney name away from the product. But to make their return, they moved Baby Einstein into broader mainstream distribution and created spinoff products - everything from toys to sippy cups. This expanded the sales of the brand tremendously, but it also began to erode the expertise of Baby Einstein which had been narrowly focused on producing videos for babies.

Disney also started advertising the Baby Einstein brand. It was an unsurprising move, as Disney clearly wanted to bring mass marketing to Baby Einstein. I was very curious to see if they could pull this off, because the brand always struck me as a consummate ‘insider’ brand that thrives on personal recommendation. It is impossible to know if any mass media campaign might be clever enough to sell Baby Einstein without ruining the “it’s my secret” appeal of Baby Einstein, but this spot does not work. The ad straddles the unhappy line between diet supplement testimonial and infomercial. The production values are not bad but it still feels far less well crafted than the Baby Einstein videos themselves and clearly a corporate product.

Branding Bottom Line:
Baby Einstein reminds us we still want a set of Ginsu Knives.

Issue: Marketing silos can hurt the brand
Commentary by: David Vinjamuri

Last week, Disney closed the door on one of the most successful promotions in its history. Virtual Magic Kingdom was opened in 2005 as an online role-playing game set in a virtual version of the Anaheim Disney theme park. The game allowed players to create characters (commonly called ‘avatars’) who would roam the park, interacting with other players, participating in promotions and playing games in the virtual world. Some of these yielded virtual prizes like hats, pins or furniture for the game. Others could be used to get real world prizes or promotions in the (real) theme park.

Virtual Magic Kingdom was intended to last only for the duration of the 2005 celebration of DisneyLand’s 50th anniversary. Because of the tremendous popularity of the promotion, however, it was kept running and only in April of 2008 did Disney announce that it would close forever on May 21st.
Which raises the question: why? Disney’s stated reasons sound like political talking points:

As many of you know, Virtual Magic Kingdom was created and launched back in 2005 as part of the Disneyland 50th Anniversary Celebration. VMK exceeded expectations in terms of performance, and as a result we extended the promotion (that is, VMK, the game) well beyond the 50th Celebration.

Eventually though, all promotions must come to an end, so I’m announcing today that on May 21, 2008, VMK will open our virtual gates for the last time. You read that right: VMK was never intended to last forever - we’ll close the game for good at the end of day on May 21st, 2008.

On its face, this would be a terrible reason to close a world which has drawn such a dedicated user community. The cost of maintaining this virtual world is minimal compared to attracting the same users with new promotions. Simple ROI analysis on the existing users of this type of virtual community would almost certainly show that their increased interaction with the (real world) Disneyland more than paid for the cost of maintaining the promotion.

The real answer is disarmingly simple:

Disney says it never intended the 50th-anniversary promotion to run this long, but money is also a factor: Virtual Magic Kingdom is free, and full access to Disney’s other online game sites — like Club Penguin and Toontown — costs as much as $9.95 a month in the case of Toontown. - Peter Sanders, The Wall Street Journal

Viewed from the narrow lens of a Disney division responsible solely for online promotions, Virtual Magic Kingdom is a loser. Even if most of the users never return, and think horrible thoughts about the Disney brand, the small percentage who will migrate to paid content make this look like a sensible economic decision.

And this is where typical corporate organization fails the brand. In fact, closing Virtual Magic Kingdom is a mistake for the Disney brand and certainly a dis-economic decision for the franchise overall. Disney like most consumer marketers spends millions of dollars in advertising hoping to engage consumers for a minute or less and get them to think about the Disney theme parks. Virtual Magic Kingdom got consumers to engage with a faithful representation of Disneyland for hundreds of hours, even tying in actual on-park activities, for a fraction of the cost. These consumers became brand evangelists - the type who get others to engage with the brand.

Disney should not fool itself that its paid games are a substitute. Those are pure branded entertainment, and will be judged by a different yardstick. Many consumers who interacted with the free promotion will never pay $120 a year to play the online game.

When I was researching Accidental Branding, I discovered that successful entrepreneurs understand that everything affects the brand. They are loathe to turn every corner of their business into a profit center, understanding that generosity often builds brand equity. Disney’s move to shutter Virtual Magic Kingdom will certainly spruce up the balance sheet this year. But it’s a bad brand move and one that could have been avoided by tearing down marketing silos.

Issue: Dove Accused of Retouching ‘Real Beauty’ Ads
Commentary by: David Vinjamuri

In Accidental Branding I write that brands need to ’sweat the details’ - meaning that paying attention to even small, innocuous details of the business that might not obviously affect the brand pays important dividends. A brewing scandal this week at Unilever with the Dove brand illustrates this. Dove has gotten into a mess because a profile of a professional photo retoucher in The New Yorker mentioned that he had worked on the ‘Real Beauty’ campaign - in which Dove explicitly argues against retouching reality. The details are complex, but Dove appears to have neglected to instruct a freelance photographer on the second iteration of the campaign in 2007 - the revered Annie Liebovitz - to avoid making any digital corrections to her photos.

The Dove Campaign for real beauty includes the following:

Original Print Campaign

Dove Pro-Age Print Campaign

Dove Evolution Video

Dove Onslaught Video

The campaign has been acclaimed for bringing body image issues to the fore. It has been criticized because Dove still sells products intended to beautify and because Unilever sells products like Axe that use the exact techniques that the Dove campaign criticizes.

Here are the facts in the unwinding mess:

Writing for the May 12th issue of The New Yorker, Lauren Collins profiled digital photo retouch artist Pascal Dangin. In her profile, Lauren writes:

To avoid such complaints, retouchers tend to practice semi-clandestinely. “It is known that everybody does it, but they protest,” Dangin said recently. “The people who complain about retouching are the first to say, ‘Get this thing off my arm.’ ” I mentioned the Dove ad campaign that proudly featured lumpier-than-usual “real women” in their undergarments. It turned out that it was a Dangin job. “Do you know how much retouching was on that?” he asked. “But it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone’s skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.”

This paragraph was noted last week by BusinessWeek blogger Burt Helm on May 7th in his Brand New Day blog. Then Jack Neff from AdAge picked up the BusinessWeek story.

Unilever responded quickly, denying the accusations. Unilever’s PR department issued the following statement from the photo retoucher Pascal Dangin who was profiled in the article:

The recent article published by The New Yorker incorrectly implies that I retouched the images in connection with the [2005] Dove ‘real women’ ad. I only worked on the [2007 Dove Pro-Age] campaign taken by Annie Leibovitz and was directed only to remove dust and do color correction — both the integrity of the photographs and the women’s natural beauty were maintained.

Unilever also released the following statement from Annie Liebovitz:

Let’s be perfectly clear — Pascal does all kinds of work — but he is primarily a printer — and only does retouching when asked to. The idea for Dove was very clear at the beginning. There was to be NO retouching, and there was not.

The New Yorker responded by standing by its story - only noting that the word “undergarments” was misplaced - meaning that they agreed Dangin might not have worked on the first campaign.

From this muddle, it is not clear whether Dangin made substantial alterations to the Liebowitz photographs. What is clear however, is that he did touch them and at a minimum made the “color corrections” that he claims in the statement delivered through Unilever. So it seems clear that Unilever and the Dove brand did not explicitly ensure that the Liebovitz photos were completely unaltered. It seems possible that the photos met the standard set for the brand - not altering the appearance of the women - but any retouching of the photos leaves the whiff of impropriety. For the brand, this is a disaster which could have been avoided with more attention to detail.

Branding Bottom Line:
Dove gets mascara all over the brand

Brand: Personality Not Included
Execution: Viral, Social Networking
Target: Business book readers
Rating: *****
Reviewer: David Vinjamuri

Description:
Personality Not Included: Why Companies Lose their Authenticity and How Great Brands Get it Back is a new business book published last month by Rohit Bhargava, Senior VP of Digital Strategy and Marketing at Ogilvy PR. Bhargava is a first-time author, but confronts the publishing world with the experience of a new media expert. His Influential Marketing Blog is listed in the AdAge Power 150.

To market Personality Not Included, Bhargava drew from his blogging and new media PR experience to create a variety of attention-getting stunts, the largest of which was a simultaneous interview with 50 bloggers for the launch of the book (here’s one) which amplified the viral nature of his book launch. He also created a facebook add-on to a book signing event to increase turnout and a group blog called The Personality Project to complement the book’s website. Bhargava has a twelve month plan of activities to launch the site. Rohit is speaking in New York on Wednesday, May 14th.

What Works:
Marketing a business book can be a daunting task for a first-time author who is not a celebrity. Most publishers view new authors the same way that venture capitalists view start-up companies. They make a good number of small bets and then see which author manages to make their own work successful. So authors are left to their own devices to market their ideas.

Bhargava has done an excellent job of mining his expertise in new media, particularly social networking, to build a base for his book. He recognizes that a campaign of this nature is by definition a slow build, and that his chances of hitting a bestseller list are most likely a year or more down the road. He has cleverly co-opted the interest of bloggers and colleagues by creating event-driven online properties. The 50-blog simultaneous interview which he used to launch his book was particularly inventive, as it provided real sales momentum but a better artifact (in the form of a variety of interesting author interviews permanently archived by Google and a competition among bloggers to see who came up with the best questions) than the “social media bum rush” done for The Age of Conversation.

Bhargava has also strategically done a good job of positioning Personality Not Included against the anticipated book “Groundswell” by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff from Forrester. While that book handily outsells his at the moment, by positioning Personality Not Included as a new-media-aware branding book rather than the chronicle of a fundamental change in consumer behavior he has given his work a longer shelf life.

What Doesn’t:
This is a significant book and Bhargava may have lost an opportunity by not engaging professionals to help him get mainstream media reviews. This would have been tricky however, as he is a senior executive in a PR firm himself. However his expertise is in digital media and he does not have the same relationships with traditional print media as he does in the digital sphere. While there have been some very good examples of books launched entirely in the blogsphere, notably The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott, a gentle push from BusinessWeek or The New York Times can be invaluable for a new business book.

Branding Bottom Line:
Bhargava finds new ways to turn the web on its head. We would hire him.

BONUS: Interview with Rohit Bhargava

How did you come up with the idea for your 50-blog interview?
The nice thing about having your own book is that if you have an idea that you think works, you can do it. The idea for the blog interviews came out of my desire to do a promotion that bloggers would be interested in because they get something in return. For me, I wanted them to write about the concept of a book that they hadn’t read. For all the 55 bloggers that decided to ask me 5 questions about the book, they were getting good customized content for their blogs and the chance to win a prize (and fame) for having the best interview. I had the idea on a Sunday and launched it on a Tuesday, so sometimes when the right idea comes along, it just works.

What are the biggest challenges for a first time author marketing his own book?
The biggest challenge is to realize that all the marketing and publicity will fall on your own shoulders. I knew this going in because I had some great advice from other authors that I talked to, but you’re never quite ready for how much you actually have to do yourself. The other challenge for someone like me is that I still have my full time day job, which means much of my book efforts are in the after hours or not full time.

You talk about a slow build and a 12-month calendar. What are some of the things you have planned for the rest of the year?
Well, I have an overall strategy that I’m working towards which has lots of different elements but I can’t really say what is exactly going to happen over the next 12 months because some of the efforts I have not come up with yet. Right now I’m spending a lot of time talking about a new site I launched for the book that I am really excited about called The Personality Project (www.thepersonalityproject.com). I can tell you there are quite a few more activities that I have planned over the next few months that will likely duplicate the amount of buzz of the launch and hopefully eclipse it!

With thousands of business books published each year, what do you think the key to differentiation is?
I spent a lot of time on this - researching other books that could be considered “competitive” to my book. I think the answer is twofold. Part of the theory of the book is that personality sets companies apart, and to a degree the personality of my book sets it apart from others in the same space. In addition, I focused very much on writing a book that was fun and engaging to read, and ultimately useful. It was this focus on being actually useful that sets PNI apart as well, because so many books are written in a theoretical way instead of a practical way.

In your first few weeks what have the biggest surprises of new authorship been for you?
The single biggest surprise has got to be just how much weight people who organize events and conferences put on authorship. I always suspected that if the book became successful, I would start to get better speaking invitations for more prominent slots or keynotes instead of panels. I expected this would take some time, but it was almost overnight that this started to happen. That was surprising, as I don’t quite feel that the book has earned that for me yet … but I plan to try and make the most of the chances I’m given!

What has been your best use of social networking to promote your book?
So far, I’d have to say the launch interview idea was the biggest success because of the buzz it generated. There are a few other ideas that I will be launching (which I mentioned above) that should equal or better that buzz as I roll them out.

You launched at nearly the same time as an anticipated book in a similar area: GroundSwell. How do you compete with that marketing machine?
I am actually a great admirer of both Charlene and Josh, so when I made it to their launch party for the book a few weeks ago, we talked about this. I actually think it’s a great thing because our books are very complimentary. PNI is not a book about social media, but it does incorporate social media into it - so I could see many people getting very different things from both. What I realized after launching my book is that the real competition is other books that my publisher (McGraw-Hill) launched in the same timeframe because I am competing with marketing resources with those books. If I have competition to fight against, that’s where it really comes from.

Which did you enjoy more ˆ researching, writing or publicizing your book?
I love marketing and am really passionate about actually putting theory into ACTION, so I’d have to say the best time I’m having is right now with all the promotion for the book. The writing and researching, for me, is the hard work that got me to this point. When you’re actually marketing, that’s the fun part!

You have focused your launch efforts in San Francisco although you live in D.C. Why?
Focusing on SF was a deliberate choice because I have a lot of contacts through the Web2.0 crowd on the west coast and wanted to make the most of this community. In addition, during the weeks of the launch of the book, most of my speaking engagements were on the west coast, so it made logical sense to do the launch party there. I have lots planned for DC too, though, and will be in several other markets over the next few months before I start heading international as well.

What one piece of advice would you give to a first-time branding book author?
I would say, take an honest look at what your goals are and publish your book with that goal in mind. For me, PNI is a chance for me to make my reputation and share something useful with people who need to market something. The international component of the book and distribution was most important to me, so I went with the publisher that I did because they have a really strong distribution arm. That has turned out to be a great decision so far.

Brand: Heinz Ketchup
Execution: Consumer Generated Advertising Contest
Target: Burger Eaters
Rating: ****
Reviewer: David Vinjamuri

Description:
Heinz launched a promotional blitz in December of 2007 for a consumer-generated advertising contest called “Top This.” The challenge was to create a new television spot for Heinz. The winner would get $57,000 (the number taken from the ‘Heinz 57′ days) and would be aired on television. Runner ups would receive $5,700. Heinz promoted the contest on-pack with mentions on 57 million customized bottles and 200 million tailored packets with catchy taglines such as “Hungry for Fame?” and “Starving for the Spotlight?” Heinz also ran full-page ads in the New York Times and USA Today to promote the contest.

The winning ad was created by Chicagoland resident Matt Cozza, a Northwestern graduate, freelance cameraman and award-winning documentary filmmaker. The ad takes off from a personal experience of Cozza’s, where he sat down at a restaurant and found that Heinz ketchup was missing from his table, proceeded to swipe a bottle from another table and set off a chain reaction.  The ad will air on the Food Network.

What Works:
A win-win campaign for both Heinz and its consumers.  The 130-year-old brand pours some vitality into its creative efforts from outside the walls of agency-of-record Cramer-Krasselt.  Heinz consumers get to dream about creating a spot to air on national television and of winning a substantial prize.  Heinz builds momentum for the contest by picking the finalist videos from the thousands of entries itself, but allowing consumers to choose the winner.

This is all, of course, textbook script for a consumer-generated marketing campaign, but Heinz has been exceptionally savvy in the way it has managed the process.  The promotional efforts sound impressive and reach a huge number of consumers, but they’re also exceptionally thrifty.  On-pack advertising has virtually no incremental cost for Heinz and one-time insertions in two newspapers are small cost items done more for publicity than actual consumer awareness.  Heinz also creates a customized, low-cost forum to air these spots before a friendly audience (on the Food Network) and consider them for further exposure.

The announcement of the winner creates a big PR opportunity for Heinz and results in some national news media coverage including a Fox Business News segment.

The final benefit may be as important as the rest.  Without abandoning its agency of record, Heinz essentially gets thousands of fully produced concept ads for free.   And many of these are not handicam efforts.  The myth behind consumer-generated marketing  campaigns is that every Dick and Jane can win.  The reality is somewhat different.  These campaigns have become a resume-builder for talented film school grads and independent producers.  Just the sort of folks that brands have difficulty accessing directly.

What Doesn’t:
Brands rarely consider that a consumer-generated advertising contest will wind up putting a new tagline - and possibly a new brand positioning - on air nationally.  While it seems inevitable that consumers play an increasingly large role in positioning and marketing brands, this is something different.  The contest format is artificial and can result in a tug on the brand in a particular direction that is larger and less gradual than consumer co-creation would normally produce.

While the campaign winner was a very solid ad, it does not break new ground for Heinz, which as not yet found as compelling a positioning as it achieved with the iconic spot “Anticipation” of the late 70’s - fueled by the Carly Simon hit of the same name. “Now We Can Eat,” positions Heinz as “what goes with food” but the product-as-hero format features the bottle more than the Ketchup.  Heinz already owns the category - it needs to create more hungry people to expand the category.

Branding Bottom Line:
A better spot than 80% of what’s on television.  For $57,000.  Top that.

Brand: Brooklyn Museum
Execution: Online Viral
Target: New York Museum Goers
Rating: *****
Reviewer: David Vinjamuri

Description:
The newest in a series of intriguing online marketing initiatives for the Brooklyn Museum, Click! is an exhibition taking place from June 27 - August 10, 2008 which will be crowd-curated until May 23rd, 2008. A full description from the Brooklyn Museum Website:

Click! is a photography exhibition that invites Brooklyn Museum’s visitors, the online community, and the general public to participate in the exhibition process. Taking its inspiration from the critically acclaimed book The Wisdom of Crowds, in which New Yorker business and financial columnist James Surowiecki asserts that a diverse crowd is often wiser at making decisions than expert individuals, Click!  explores whether Surowiecki’s premise can be applied to the visual arts—is a diverse crowd just as “wise” at evaluating art as the trained experts? Click! is an exhibition in three consecutive parts. It begins with an open call—artists are asked to electronically submit a work of photography that responds to the exhibition’s theme, “Changing Faces of Brooklyn,” along with an artist statement.

After the conclusion of the open call, an online forum opens for audience evaluation of all submissions; as in other juried exhibitions, all works will be anonymous. As part of the evaluation, each visitor answers a series of questions about his/her knowledge of art and perceived expertise.

Click! culminates in an exhibition at the Museum, where the artworks are installed according to their relative ranking from the juried process. Visitors will also be able to see how different groups within the crowd evaluated the same works of art. The results will be analyzed and discussed by experts in the fields of art, online communities, and crowd theory.

Click! follows a series of other new media initiatives at the Brooklyn Museum, including the online exhibit Hiroshige’s One Hundred Views of Edo and the Graffiti Exhibit from 2006.

What Works:
Necessity begets creativity and so it is perhaps not surprising that one of the most creative series of new media marketing initiatives in recent memory comes from a budgetary-constrained arts institution, the venerable Brooklyn Museum. The Click! exhibit shows that meaningful online interactivity can be as simple as asking the public to choose the works for an upcoming exhibit, thus giving them a stake in the outcome and a good reason to visit.

This advertising blog does not give many five-star ratings, and this one is earned not just for the clever use of the online medium, timely jump onto a popular bandwagon (crowdsourcing) and strategic pandering to a popular author (James Surowiecki) but for the continuation of a two year series of clever, low-budget new media initiatives which have effectively served to position the Brooklyn Museum as a daring innovator among its peers.

Even better for students of new media, the museum has documented the journey along with its results in an excellent white paper. This type of sharing is rare in the private sector and much needed in an industry where most of the big advertisers are struggling to understand the online medium.

The best parts of the Brooklyn Museum’s approach to using new and emerging media is its focus on simplicity - from the cellphone tour to the crowd-curated exhibit. It is a refreshing change from some of the lavish but unnecessary innovations foisted on us by the Fortune 100.

What Doesn’t:
Although straightforward, the website for the Brooklyn Museum is not nearly as innovative and user friendly as the online exhibits.

Branding Bottom Line:
The Brooklyn Museum makes us wonder what we got for the last million we spent with our online agency.

Issue: A small supplier decision comes back to bite Wal-Mart
Commentary by: David Vinjamuri

[Image from NALIP.org]

In Accidental Branding, I write “Do Sweat the Details”. By this I mean that very small actions that do not at first seem to be related to our brands often have very big consequences for the brand. What I meant when I wrote this is that consumers often cue off of small details that are of no interest to brand marketers, like how the package opens, how customer service handles complaints or how business partners speak about our business.

This week, Wal-Mart has provided an excellent example of how decisions seemingly unrelated to marketing can affect our brands. It’s a big enough deal that I would call this Wal-Mart crisis a textbook example of “Brand Karma” - meaning that what you put out into the world eventually comes back to you. Wal-Mart has never had a great reputation among its suppliers. For years it has been accused of sourcing goods locally in new markets only as a competitive tactic to drive out other retail customers and then ending the relationship in order to bankrupt the local supplier.

This general attitude towards suppliers bit back recently as The Wall Street Journal reports. The company which Wal-Mart used to capture video of sales conferences and other internal meetings for thirty years, Flagler Productions Inc. was dismissed two years ago. It does not take much reading between the lines to suspect that this termination of a longtime relationship was not handled well. INstead of maintaining a fondness for Wal-Mart and seeking to regain the Wal-Mart business, Flagler has gone into the business of selling these candid and embarrassing videos of Wal-Mart events to the general public. It appears that in spite of Wal-Marts general legal rectitude, they never secured exclusive rights to this video.

It’s a brand disaster. The videos, as Gary McWilliams reports, contain:

A former executive vice president and board member challenges store managers in 2004 to continue his work opposing unionization. Male managers in drag lead thousands of co-workers in the company’s corporate cheer. In another meeting, managers mock foolish or dangerous use of a product sold in its stores.

I have written a lot about Wal-Mart in the past several years, and I don’t think it’s an evil company. Their basic goal of trying to reduce prices for average working families is a good one. They have made some good steps forward (along with Target) on trying to bring prescription drug prices down. They’ve also tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to bring down the horrible, predatory purveyors of pay-day loans with fair competition.

Where Wal-Mart seems to falter is that they have no corporate instinct for the integrity of their brand. A corporate obsessed with costs is bound to bruise a lot of “little guys” in the process. (See Wendy Bounds nice blog post for more on this.) And not shockingly, one with the ability to really hurt Wal-Mart has finally bitten back.

The lesson? Everything affects your brand. If the way you treat your employees, suppliers or customers is not consistent with your brand, they will become a cancer in your system. Brands may not practice Buddhism, but they should believe in Karma. It all does eventually catch up with you.

If anyone has links to the Wal-Mart videos, please feel free to post them in comments.