Friday, April 21, 2006

Battelle on Google, me on 'brand strategy'

Author, search expert, and all around smartypants (I mean that in a very nice, slightly awe-struck way) John Battelle writes of Google:

As I’ve written elsewhere, I believe the Google brand is in need of message clarification - most folks still see it as that “Aha!” service that changed how they search the Web, but increasingly, it’s also the brand that does deals with Sony Pictures to promote personalized homepages. Clearly, brand strategy is on [Google VP of Global Communications and Public Affairs Elliot] Schrage’s mind.

I replied in a comment to John:

Google doesn’t need a new ‘message’ or ‘brand strategy’. Brand is behaviour. Google needs to look long and hard at its behaviour and change it as needed. The nodes on the network (that is, people) will spread its own (their own) messages about that, as they are already doing. I’m talking individual customers/users as well as the agencies who bring them so much revenue, who are often treated as if they are lucky to have the privilege to work with Google - not as customers who spread the bread on Google’s butter.

(I obviously meant to write “customers who spread butter on Google’s bread,” but having messed up, I’m not so sure my error isn’t closer to the truth.)

This is, by the way, exactly what I was talking about when I wrote of Danny Sullivan’s valuable brand just yesterday. Battelle himself has the same sort of brand, as it happens.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Danny Sullivan's multi-million dollar brand

Search Engine Watch‘s Danny Sullivan has written a lengthy, very interesting piece about his decade of writing about search. In addition to the juicy goodness related to search in his piece, it’s fascinating to see how Danny Sullivan has become such a brand in his own right - and one that didn’t need focus groups, overpaid image consultants, or lots of smoke and mirrors about ‘branding’ from people who wouldn’t know the true meaning of the word if it hit them in the head.

Rather, Danny’s brand has emerged from his behaviour, which is precisely where every company’s true brand originates. All of the flashy logos in the world won’t matter if everyone thinks of you as unreliable or mediocre. By being both reliable and excellent, Danny Sullivan has an amount of trust and esteem from his constituents that most companies would pay millions to acquire. For trust and esteem are the true measures of a long-lasting, sterling brand. Something as seemingly ‘little’ as whether or not your landing pages are useful or frustrating and time wasting can have a huge effect on your branding. So how are you doing with branding - you know, the whole reliability and trust thing? 

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

And marketers wonder why people hate them...

Philips has patented a TV that bars viewers from changing channels during commercials, in addition to disabling the ability of DVR viewers to fast forward through adverts. Unless you feel like paying extra money to be able to do those things. As Mile from Techdirt says:

Yes, this is a “feature” that not a single person in this world would want—except perhaps folks like former TV exec Jamie Kellner, who once said that people who went to the bathroom during commercial breaks were “stealing” TV...What will they work on next? A couch that won’t let you stand up and walk away during commercial breaks? Or how about a toilet seat that won’t open during commercials?

It’s completely obvious, but I’m going to say it anyway: Imagine what good could come about if all of the time, energy, and money put into developing these ridiculous attempts at kidnapping people in increments of 30 seconds was actually put into providing something of real value. 

Monday, April 17, 2006

Exbrayat: An author's (posthumous) blog

The grandfather of my fiancé (and EA advisory board member), Antoine Clarke, was a famous French writer known simply as Exbrayat. He invented the genre of the humorous detective novel and wrote more than 100 books (plus several plays and films), on which his first name, Charles, never appeared. You can read more about him here, at the Exbrayat blog that Antoine and I set up yesterday.

We hope the blog will be something very special for Exbrayat’s fans. We will be adding more never before published family photographs, podcasts, and other goodies for fans as time permits. For Antoine’s mother, who has always been very publicity shy and has refused all interview requests, it’s a genuine case of blogging and social media as DIY PR - actually conversing with the public, bypassing the traditional media owned by others in order to speak directly with the people who really count, on a platform owned by the family. The network that nobody owns is a million times more valuable and useful to the family than any other.

May 5th would have been Exbrayat’s 100th birthday, and we’ll all be heading to France soon for the various Exbrayat centenary celebrations in that country. Antoine and I will be taking photos there for the blog, as well as noting the family’s observations on the events in France. And yes, we’ll be doing it in English. 

Blog advice for marketers

David Weinberger writes for AdAge:

The opportunity is not for marketers to pick off the chickens one by one but for marketers to unlearn what they have spent so long teaching themselves. The blogosphere is a vibrant human conversation. If marketers can learn to enter that conversation as humans first, talking honestly about what they care about, identifying themselves and exposing themselves, then they will be welcome in the blogosphere. But, of course, that means they cannot enter it as marketers.