Rewind 12 months and picture a beautiful sunny day at Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon...  I'll bet the conference was reserved with something like "Strategically Capitalize on the 2010 World Cup."  If indeed that meeting took place, you could look back today and say, "mission accomplished."  

Not only have they successfully associated the Nike brand with this international event, they have done it WITHOUT being an "official" sponsor.  A fact which I'm sure has the execs at Adidas singing a different tune about their similarly-titled planning meeting.  Sure, Adidas is able to say, "Adidas is the official match ball of the 2010 World Cup," but does it really matter if your audience associates a competitor with the event itself?  (note: No research exists yet to confirm that Nike's recall is higher than Adidas' recall.)...read the rest of this post»

If the 2010 World Cup marketing can't elevate the sport of soccer, it's not for a lack of effort. The 2010 World Cup is here and if you didn't know, you probably haven't turned on your TV lately.

As a fellow marketer, I am humbled by the amount of great messaging that is buzzing around this exciting time. Take the official World Cup 2010 commercials that have been airing on various networks.

In my opinion, the creative agency successfully positioned the World Cup to the WORLD as THE event to watch. I'm not even a soccer fan, but the combining of U2's music with emotional, international images of competition is almost foolproof when it comes to getting the hair on the back of my neck to start singing.
And that's the powerful thing - it's now so much more than soccer. The chord these spots struck in me is bigger than a game, bigger than a tournament, even bigger than a sport. It's about global competition.
What emotions did the commercial evoke in you?...read the rest of this post»

Wouldn't our job be easy if that was all it took?  Don't know what I'm referring to?  Technology news has been rife with this "cloak and dagger" story that reads more like a Tom Clancy chapter than a real life birthday boy water cooler story.  The New York Times take on the chain of events can be found here, but here's the one sentence summary: Apple employee carrying a prototype of the new iPhone leaves the device at a bar and Gizmodo (tech news outfit) buys it from the lucky finder and shows the world.  ...read the rest of this post»

It seems that there are so many terms we as agencies use to describe our relationship with clients.  Are we a client’s partner?  A vendor?  Those have been the front runners for years.

However, since my early days at Thompson & Company, we used another term to describe the relationship we have with clients.  Marketing and communications firms are more like an "extension" of a company’s marketing team.  The key word is extension.  To explain why this term is most accurate, it's easier to look at the other two terms.  ...read the rest of this post»

The buzz about the iPad is ebbing, but the conversations are still heated.  Like a lot of categories that are highly competitive, you'll find loyalists that will fall on the sword for "their" brand.  Apple and Microsoft have battled for eons, but if you watched TV within the last few years, you know Apple's advertising has been aggressively comparative, to put it lightly.  ...read the rest of this post»

Hello, I'm an iPad.  You might have heard of me... I'm kind of a big deal (to quote the famous Ron Burgundy).  

"Kind of a big deal" is an understatement. If you could put a value on hype (actually you can), iPad would be the front runner for 2010 and would probably never be caught.  In the days and weeks leading up to the release of this product, rumors, rogue photographs and unofficial screen shots were flying.  Except for the name, iPad, had not been announced.  Some people rumored this new hybrid tablet-netbook-iPod Touch would be called iTablet, but if you look at Twitter trends from last Wednesday, January 27, you could figure out what the official product name is without ever reading a single news clip, article, etc. ...read the rest of this post»

If you've followed the brainwoo.com blog, you might have seen two previous posts about Dr. John Medina's book, Brain Rules.  In those posts, I reviewed rules 1-8.  For Rules 9 and 10, a video review seemed appropriate since those two rules are about Sensory Integration and Vision.  Hope you enjoy the change of pace and medium!