Wide Angle

We all know the recession has drastically impacted consumer behaviors, but we may often overlook its direct impact on brands themselves.   The recession has changed the way marketers manage their brand portfolios as they try to do more with less.  As such, marketers are taking a closer look at how then can stretch existing brand equity across a greater number of products, often taking a parent brand/sub-brand approach.   

We generally see four different sub-brand approaches, each with their own benefits and risks:  Read More »

Following up on my last post, I wanted to share my key takeaways from the last two days of ANA’s Masters of Marketing conference:

• The importance of authenticity remained a key theme throughout the rest of the presentations.  David Jones of Havas Worldwide talked quite a bit about making sure your brand genuinely connects to real issues consumers care about.  According to Havas research, 86% of consumers expect companies to stand for something other than profits.  (MLC members who are interested in creating these types of connections with consumers should click here to see the Council’s approach.) Read More »

I had the opportunity to attend the ANA’s Masters of Marketing Conference this weekend.  The topic of this year’s conference was “Growth: Defying the Recession.”  I wanted to pass along a few of the great insights from the first day of the conference.

My biggest takeaway was the focus on authenticity I heard from all of the presenters.  “Your brand has to be who it is” was the common refrain. Read More »

I don’t know how many of you follow box office results, but I’d like to point your attention to Paranormal Activity, a horror movie getting a slow rollout from Paramount that just this past weekend grossed $19.6 million from just 760 screens.  That’s a per screen average of $25,813—a number more common for a summer blockbuster than a small, independent, genre film with a budget of $11,000.   So how did this small movie get so big?  Marketing, and more specifically a very smart use of social media. Read More »