MarketingPower.com the Web site of the American Marketing Association, featured this quote from Jeremy Bullmore yesterday
Who’s he? First read the quote:

“Consumers build an image [of a brand] as birds build nests. From the scraps and straws they chance upon.”
Jeremy Bullmore

Then, consider this from another heavyweight:

“Brands are out of juice.”
Kevin Roberts

Bullmore was the former chairman of J. Walter Thompson Co.
And Kevin Roberts? Chairman/CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi.

Parting quote:

For the poor ad agency clients, it’s like when you were a child and went to the doctor’s. There was the nasty doctor who just shoved foul-tasting medicine down your throat. Then there was the nice doctor who empathised with your anxiety regarding the foul taste and had a nice sugar cube handy for you. Either way, you still got the same old medicine.
Mark Wnek

Tomorrow, a quote from (Sir) Martin Sorrell.

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Interesting execution of this ‘sign’ hung by Ikea in Paris, at some major railway stations.

See the story here.

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If you haven’t heard of Kevin Roberts or that odd concept called Lovemarks, you’ve not been in advertising long enough!

Roberts, CEO of of Satchi & Saatchi, is a prolific ideas person, pushing the boundaries of advertising and creativity, and saying provocative –but true– things about branding. (Who’s to contest that “brands have run out of juice?”) His book, Lovemarks, is a very unusual book. Good-looking, terrific ideas, but awful in terms of layout. The Lovemarks site, however, is much more valuable. Plenty of community involvement, etc. To make things more interesting, the site awarded a Toyota Prius to the best Lovemark story, in August this year. (There’s another offer, for a KitchenAid mixer, going on.)

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Take a look at JotSpot, the company offering a free beta Wiki product. These features are remarkable. It appears that the Jotspot founders have thought through how to solve the techy issues that frustrate most communicators. For instance, they have this feature that allows you to send an email to every page of your Wiki. Imagine that! No manual ‘posting’ unless you really have to. Just “cc” an email you are sending your team/project mates, and it gets automatically posted.

If you want to try it out, go here, and fill out some basic info.
I should have mine up in a few days. I am already working on an article on Wikis, and by the time it is published, I should be up and running with a great collaboration tool.

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GE, the company that’s running an ‘imagination at work’ campaign has a terrific idea, online, to support the claim – a white board and a few thick markers. Clicking on the ad, opens a window, which then prompts you to ‘pick up’ a marker –by clicking and dragging your mouse.

It works just like the white board application in Windows, but is even more fanciful. It allows you to write or draw anything.

I checked out the GE site, by Googling ‘imagination at work’ and the page loaded with the same tool. What’s neat about this site is that it is free of text and hype you’d expect about the company’s ‘imagination’ claim. As any art director will tell you, white space is a beautiful thing!

A few simple clickable boxes allow you to change the color of the page, change the color of the ink in the marker, choose the thickness of the tip, or see a preview of your doodle/masterpiece –which redraws your creation. Messed up? Wipe the page and start again! When finished, you can send that page via email to a friend or yourself. I can see this developing into a tool for all kinds of educational ends.

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Excuse the overblown headline, but with the rush to integrate advertising and entertainment a la Madison and Vine, it had to go this way. Virgin Atlantic Airways, as noted by Stuart Elliott, the New York Times Media and Advertising columnist, has embarked on a risqué advertising gimmick using LodgeNet, the video-on-demand service in hotel chains.

The 10-minute porn look-alike flick is listed among the other adult titles, with no hint that it is a piece of adver-tainment. Of course, it is free. It was created by Miami hotshot ad agency Crispin, Porter & Bogusky.

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Several mobile phone companies are now selling Wireless Broadband packages for connecting to the Net, using a wireless card. With a card like this, practically the whole country is a hotspot.

I use Wi-Fi quite a lot, and find this irresistible. My typical work day includes logging in to my Web-based email from a variety or places –vendor’s desktops, Starbucks, Schlotzsky’s, Borders Books etc. Very useful when working with tight deadlines. But I still have to drive up to the nearest hotspot.

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