"Super Bowl ads are one of the purest forms of branded entertainment," says Larry Vincent, Group Director of Strategy in the Los Angeles office of premier brand strategy and design consultancy Siegel+Gale, and long-time entertainment marketing expert. "Superbowl ads have become theatre in their own right, but if you’re not tying the ad to a direct call to action, you have to ask: what is this huge investment really doing for my brand?"

The iconic Apple Macintosh introduction ad in 1984 worked as a brand-building tool because it addressed the promise of the brand and established the voice that the brand would employ for decades to come. But it was also a spectacular launch point for a much bigger campaign – the next day they launched the product. They used the media for its greatest strength: reach. Frequency was not a factor, since the ad ran once and only once.

Advertisements that are tied to a promotional campaign or short-term, national sales initiatives can work well on the broadcast. That’s why you see so many movie ads. The studio has to build a brand in six weeks or less. They need to go from 0 to 100%, and a Superbowl ad can put a film on the map.

But it gets tricky when you plan to use the media for pure brand-building purposes. Too many companies feel they must be represented at the Super Bowl – that they have to buy these spots. It’s the perceived membership dues for a major brand. They try too hard to find a way to use the media, defaulting to ‘brand.’ It’s not clear that a Super Bowl ad does much for most of these companies.

Here are three things to consider when using a Super Bowl ad as a brand-building initiative:

1. Make the ad a tangible touch point of your existing brand strategy; reinforce messages already in the marketplace about what your brand stands for. It must reflect your promise, your values, and your unique corporate voice.
2. Don’t try to load the ad with too many messages. You’re competing for consumer attention. Too many brands over-reach. Keep it simple.
3. Have celebrity endorsements and cutting-edge digital effects serve your brand – not vice versa. You’ve got 30 seconds to create effect for the brand. Think of your casting and special effects choices as tools to help re-convey your story.

To speak with Larry Vincent about branding strategies surrounding the Super Bowl, either before or after the game, please contact Davia Temin or Megan Creydt of Temin and Company at 212-588-8788 or news@teminandco.com.

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Siegel+Gale will launch its new EyeOpener research innovation at THE Conference on Marketing in Naples, Florida, on February 5th.

THE Conference is a place where the greatest marketers will gather to challenge conventionalism, defy boundaries, and celebrate the power of marketing. Your entire marketing team – brand managers, promotions departments, designers, strategists, analysts, researchers, and innovators will leave feeling revitalized and inspired.

Our very own Director of Brand Research, Dr. Rolf Wulfsburg, will present the power of EyeOpener in brand decision making on Tuesday, February 5th at 1:30pm in a keynote session in the Proof Track which will focus on predicting return on brand investment (ROBI) and how to do that effectively.

Learn more and/or register for the conference.

Clearly in today’s rough and tumble world of politics, candidates are packaged as brands, says Alan Siegel, Chairman and CEO of Siegel+Gale. Their handlers work hard to position them. They use research to determine how they are perceived and what messages they can use that are credible and resonate with voters, and they try to find a voice that defines their distinctive personae to differentiate them from the competition.

• Hillary Clinton has been seen as the leading Democratic brand — the experienced leader, an articulate policy wonk, and an insider who has seen it all as the candidate who spent eight years in the White House.
• John McCain is the straight-talking rebel.
• John Edwards is the empathetic populist who grew up in a modest house in North Carolina and champions the plight of middle class Americans.
• Barack Obama casts himself as the energetic change agent with the charisma necessary to inspire a new generation of leadership through the politics of inclusion.
• Mike Huckabee offers solace to Christian values voters who hunger for religious guidance in uncertain times.
• Mitt Romney demands to be seen as a socially conservative but entrepreneurial CEO who seeks market solutions to the nation’s challenges.

But to prevail, the candidates must stay true to their brand promises. Right now, as the Democratic nomination narrows to a fierce competition between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Mrs. Clinton is undermining her position as the “Leading Brand” among the Democratic candidates with attacks on Barack Obama, the “Challenger Brand.”

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Tru2way, the new cable industry brand announced earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show by Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, was created by global strategic branding firm, Siegel+Gale.

“Tru2way is the future of interactive television,” says Alan Siegel, Chairman and CEO of Siegel+Gale. This new, industry-standard technology will allow a whole new generation of interconnected media devices, including interactive televisions needing no cable box. Consumers will be able to vote; order pay-per-view; purchase products, services, and music; organize their content; and access a personalized TV guide; all with a click of their remote.

The brand, previously called OpenCable™ Platform, was brought to life by a multi-industry consortium that included cable operators: Comcast, Cox, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, and Bright House Networks; electronics manufacturers: Panasonic, Samsung, LG, and Microsoft; cable industry trade organizations: CTAM and NCTA; and CableLabs®, the cable industry’s research and development arm, which owns the tru2way trademark.

“Our technology initiatives often result in consumer-facing products, such as the cable modem and digital voice products. But tru2way is the first industry-wide brand, and I was greatly impressed by the excitement and reception it received during the electronics show. Tru2way appears to have really nailed it for cable’s interactive video future,” said CableLabs President and CEO, Dr. Richard R. Green.

Siegel+Gale’s cross-functional strategy and creative teams collaborated with the consortium’s partners to explore the technology’s potential. An accelerated research process to include client and customer interviews led to the development of the name, logo design, and brand positioning for this next-generation technology in five months.

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It is one of the most prevalent ideas in the brand world: Capture the brand loyalty of a person when they are young, and they will be yours forever. Companies pursue this idea with a vengeance, abandoning older audiences to win the hearts and minds of children, teens, and college students. And it is one of the biggest mistakes brand professionals can make.

A recent study showed that, in fact, consumers are likely to switch brands within a range of product categories regardless of age, indicating that brand loyalty is not captured at a young age and held for life. A different study, conducted for AARP, echoed this finding, demonstrating that in some categories, older consumers are less loyal and actually more likely to switch brands.

Think about your own life: You are probably not wearing the same clothing brands you did in your youth. Or driving the same car brand. Or even using the same kind of laundry detergent. Your tastes change. Your household income changes. You get married, have kids, get busy, retire. There are very few brands that can see a person through all those changes in life—and there are very few brands that should even try.

Taste, Experience, and Self-Expression
The “get ‘em while they’re young” theory works differently among three different types of brands:

• Taste Brands—food, beverage, or household brands that involve your sense of taste or smell
• Experience Brands—when the consumer experience can be the driving factor, such as financial services, retail, and online brands
• Self-Expression Brands—when the products you use say something about you, such as clothing, automotive, and some electronics

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Last year, a video created by Kodak for The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference made its way all over the Internet. A blue-suited investor-relations executive started giving a staid, predictable financial presentation exalting the Eastman Kodak company and its creation of Kodak Moments. Suddenly, the speaker launched into an energetic tongue-in-cheek exultation of the new Kodak digital technology, building to a frenzied cry:

“You were a Kodak moment once, and by God you’ll be one again. Only this time it’s digital!”

And not a moment too soon.

Kodak and many other former brand giants have struggled to keep up with the pace and complexity of this new digital age, and have been suffering for it. Kodak’s video publicly and wittily – and, most importantly, via new media – acknowledged its outdated image and old, passé voice, and signaled that the frumpy, unhip grandfather of the camera industry intends to blow up its old voice and change how they communicate.

FROM CORPORATE VOICE TO DIGITAL VOICE
I introduced the CORPORATE VOICE concept in the 1980s to create communications programs that unified a company’s diverse exposures and built a distinctive, focused, coherent identity that would rise above all the background noise. Back then, the CORPORATE VOICE was channeled into controlled one-way communications segmented into a limited number of traditional media.

Everything has changed since then. The ongoing digital revolution has raised the din of information exponentially. The messaging environment has changed radically. Speed, novelty, distraction, and noise rule. It is thus more imperative than ever for everyone, from the start-up to the not-for-profit to the Fortune 100 player, to recalibrate their CORPORATE VOICE to find the right pitch, the proper tone, the ideal volume, and perfect placement to ensure crystalline audibility.

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How can preteens and teens chat online with their friends in a completely safe environment? This is something that toy and media companies have been fumbling over for the past several years. Well, Mattel has a pretty smart solution—it’s called Barbie Girls, and it’s a copasetic convergence between consumer product and online brand experience. Truth be told, I’m not sure why other consumer product and media companies haven’t made this connection sooner.

The process is simple—you go to the store, buy a Mattel Barbie Girl, and connect it to your computer via a docking station. When your girlfriends catch on and get one, you can authenticate your doll on their computers and vice-versa. Your child is now ready to communicate online with her friends and only her friends.

The online play experience is very Sim-like, in terms of game play patterns. Girls can go online and design their own rooms, check out their friends’ rooms and their objects, chat, play with their virtual pets and, of course, no little-girl pretend-play online experience would be complete without the all-important trip to the mall (where kids learn about online transactions). I’m only half kidding—I wouldn’t be surprised to see new Mattel products contextually placed inside the Barbie world, in-game advertising, or online conditioning for tweens.

The offline experience is not as robust as the online play experience, but the doll itself is an actual MP3 player; a good place to store Barbie tunes you downloaded from the website (note to Mattel: That one’s a freebie).

The technology is simple, and my guess is that this product will go a long way. Parents will be buying these toys for their kids and as presents for all their friends.

“It’s a good way to make money, but it’s also a good way to destroy your brand,” said Alan Siegel, chief executive of the New York branding firm Siegel and Gale.

“It has to be done with great care and very intelligently and in harmony with what the brand stands for.”

Read the complete Associated Press article

“People are becoming very price-conscious,” said Alan Siegel, chairman and chief executive of branding strategy firm Siegel & Gale. “Without making any kind of an offer, I’m not sure Starbucks is addressing the problem.”

Read the complete Los Angeles Times article

NEW YORK, NY – November 14, 2007 – Siegel+Gale, one of the world’s premier strategic branding firms, has appointed Richard Pasqua as the Creative Director of its Interactive practice.

An award-winning designer and digital artist, Mr. Pasqua previously led design for Nickelodeon, RedSky Interactive, Xceed Interactive, and Doubleday Direct Interactive.

"Nothing is more important in today’s branding world than designing breakthrough, effective media that extends clients’ brands seamlessly into the interactive sphere," says Howard Belk, Co-President and CCO of Siegel+Gale. "Rich has the artistic eye to blend form and function into consistently superb interactive products. We look forward to utilizing his creative vision as we take interactive media to the next quantum level."

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Next Generation Global Brand Asset Management Tool
to be Unveiled at November 12th Conference

NEW YORK AND LOS ANGELES – NOVEMBER 12, 2007 – Siegel+Gale, the premier brand strategy and design consultancy, announced today the launch of BRAND AMPLIFIRE™, an intuitive, powerful digital brand asset management tool using Google Search® technology. Unveiled today at the Henry Stewart Digital Asset Management Conference in Los Angeles, BRAND AMPLIFIRE™ allows companies to achieve consistent corporate branding across all communications, both print and digital.

By combining Google Search® technology with Siegel+Gale’s renowned “Simple is Smart” philosophy, BRAND AMPLIFIRE™ will be the most advanced – and user- friendly – digital brand asset management tool on the market. BRAND AMPLIFIRE™ is a joint venture between Siegel+Gale and SmartDoc Technologies.

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Flock Inc. has just released a new “social browser” that lets users interact with their favorite or most popular social networks on the web. Based upon Firefox and other Mozilla technologies, it is available for both Mac and PC and supports Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Blogsome, Wordpress, del.icio.us, TypePad, Twitter, Photobucket, Blogger, Livejournal, Xanga.com, Magnolia, and Piczo.

Flock neatly packages all its social networking features for easy access and updating, but I’m wondering why they created an entire browser to do this. Maybe the company should have partnered with all popular browsers and offered one plug-in that aggregates all social network information, but most browsers already have plug-ins that do this. Whenever a new social network pops up you will need to install a new plug-in into your Flock browser, so the maintenance is similar to most browsers out there.

It seems as if Flock is more like a social network that lets you manage all your existing social networks. But I’m not sure I’m ready to invest in yet another network, especially when I can do all this and more from my Google home page. It will be interesting to see how Google integrates all its great social features and web applications into one mobile OS. Something tells me this generation will be updating their social sites from their wireless devices on the go and not so much on their desktops.

Ad Forum Worldwide Summit 2007: Co-Presidents Howard Belk and David Srere comment on the unique culture at Siegel+Gale and why simple brands work smarter to help clients excel.

Siegel+Gale, one of the world’s premier strategic branding firms, announced today the appointment of Laurence Vincent as Group Director, Strategy of Siegel+Gale’s Los Angeles office. A specialist in branded entertainment and integrated marketing, Mr. Vincent has developed innovative strategies for clients ranging from the National Football League and MasterCard International to The Walt Disney Company and Home Depot.

“Laurence is one of the stars in the field of branding and will be a major asset as we continue to build Siegel+Gale’s presence in the entertainment and technology space,” said Alan Siegel, Chairman and CEO.

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I have been getting emails from a reputable organization which are of no interest to me because they are statistics about money flows in mutual funds. I had erroneously subscribed when I thought it was a different type of data. So, today I tried to unsubscribe. And this is what I got as a confirmation email acknowledging my request (I’ve masked the name of the organization).

We have received a request for the removal of your email address, “ireneetz@siegelgale.com” from the www-update@lists.oho.org mailing list. To confirm that you want to be removed from this mailing list, simply reply to this message, keeping the Subject: header intact. Or visit this web page:

If you do not wish to be removed from this list, simply disregard this message. If you have any other questions, send them to www-update-owner@lists.oho.org.

Is this a joke? Instead of giving me four unintelligible options, how about one that is clear? Why must I jump through hoops to stop getting emails from them? Does anyone realize that this message is literally jibberish? Do I really need to be protected from “unsubscribe” pranksters–if such a class of criminal really exists?