Is “Milton” more likely to get beat up on the playground than “Jake”? (Absolutely.) Should we spell “sneakers” with a “z” at the end? (Absolutely not.) Is it trademark infringement if there’s a company with the same name, but they’re on the other side of the country? (You’d better check.) Whether we’re talking about a […]
If you’ve ever done any online dating, you’ve probably been asked to think about “your personal brand.” This is really just a clever way of asking, “What makes you ‘you’ and different from your competition?” As in dating, the best brands in business are distinct, consistent and memorable. Because let’s face it, there are a […]
There’s a rising trend these days in viral location-based marketing. A lot of people have been talking about this clever campaign for TNT, these secret-agent Coke machines branded toward the latest Bond flick and this hilarious bus stop campaign from the folks at Qualcomm. What are the agencies behind these campaigns doing right? In a […]
Another new product name has cracked us up this week: The Hot Mess, brought to you by everybody’s favorite Halloweentown nightmare, Jack in the Box. If you are unfamiliar with the Mess, here’s all you need to know: Gooey jack cheese, onion rings, jalapenos, beef. Not necessarily in that order. Okay, so it’s messy. But […]
Sometimes a great idea gets all the attention it deserves. Case in point: This incredibly clever résumé by a man in Paris who found a new way to break through the cluttered mess that is the modern job search. His answer: a familiar Web product page, repurposed in every conceivable detail into a viral sales tool: […]
Further dispatches from the world of smart branding: On my way home from dropping my son off at school, I was flipping around the radio and stopped on an interview on NPR Business News with Jake Fisher, director of auto testing at Consumer Reports. They were talking about how Subaru had been able to increase sales […]
Flipping though a recent New York Times Magazine, I saw this ad. It called to mind the long-form copy of David Ogilvy (“the father of advertising”) that left an indelible mark on the advertising world. Ogilvy believed — and there’s now plenty of research to back up his hunch — that although most people won’t […]
My 12-year-old neighbor, Phoebe, returned from a trip to Houston and couldn’t wait to tell me about the ice cream she’d discovered, Blue Bell, and the company’s super fun slogan, “We eat all we can, and sell the rest.” (Phoebe’s not aware that I write copy for a living, but she knows how I feel […]
Nine-year-old Martha Payne started a blog last month analyzing her school lunches. Boring, right? But, with over a million visitors in just six weeks, she has something to teach the likes of Michelle Obama and Jamie Oliver. Why is her blog so successful? She pretty much sums it up in her profile: “My dad says […]
The other day I bought a new toothbrush because it had “DualAction cleaning power.” “This must be way better than my current toothbrush,” I remember thinking. It wasn’t. In fact, it wasn’t really much different except the bristles had a vague hourglass shape instead of the standard pill shape of most toothbrushes (with UniAction cleaning […]
