Super Bowl Gamble
The Super Bowl is one TV event where the commercials are not zapped away. These iconic ads not only generate buzz pre-event but after the game as well. The audience is huge; 111 million fans strong, but it’s also an advertiser’s biggest gamble at $3.5 million for a 30-second spot (that’s $116,667 per second). How would you advise your client though, if you were a marketer willing to take that risk? A Fast Company blogger writes, “The quality of Super Bowl ads often rivals the game itself, and yet every year brands will make missteps. Viewers will cringe, be bored, stop...
Read MoreGolden Globes Aftermath and The Help
I was at The Beverly Hilton cafeteria when ‘The Help’s’ Octavia Spencer won the Golden Globe and everyone cheered. More so than earlier when the New York Giants scored a TD on that Hail Mary pass as the first half was coming to its end. It was the loudest cheer I heard considering ‘the help’ made up most of the audience, but I know they cheered mostly because she was one of their own. And I cheered too! Because I was there to ‘help’ as well. Later on, when I ran into her at the ‘One On One’ Press/Media Room when she was doing her rounds...
Read MoreSponsorship Investment or Donation
You have an upcoming event, and you realize you need sponsors to make it a success. When seeking sponsors, do you ask them to ‘spend’ their money? Do you try to impress them of the value of linking their website (with much larger number of unique visitors than yours) to yours? Do you still ‘sell’ Gold, Silver, Bronze levels of sponsorship differentiated mostly by the amount of money the sponsors should award you with? If the answer is ‘Yes’ to any or all of the questions above, then you are still missing out on the opportunity for a long-term relationship with your potential...
Read MoreForget Me Not Brand Names
As the new TV series Pan Am (centered around Pan American Airways) made its premiere last night on ABC, I couldn’t help but go down memory lane feeling a little bit nostalgic, seeing the iconic Pan Am sign on top of the current MetLife building at Grand Central Station and Park Avenue in Manhattan and all, as well as thinking of the other gone but not forgotten brand names of yesterday. In the retail world, there was Gimbels (of “Miracle on 34th Street” fame), and Alexander’s, as well as Korvette’s, but none of them compare to the brand power of...
Read MoreCo-Branding Gone Wild or Wrong
Just as soon as I included Missoni and Target co-branding effort as ‘an example’ of a co-branding campaign, I came across a disturbing update today; the gist of which is, although the idea was brilliant, and marketed brilliantly, the amount of hype and anticipation by fans crashed the store’s website when the line launched online. And things haven’t gotten better since. Needless to point out that this development does not undermine the effectiveness of a co-branding strategy in general, but surely points out the timing and preparation, as well as the proactivity, of the...
Read MoreInteractive Fashion Industry
The fashion industry not only has joined the 21st Century, it has wholeheartedly embraced digital technology and social media advancements and interactivity. Take Burberry for example. They partnered with Twitter to create the first ever live ‘Tweetwalk’ show, premiering the Spring Summer 2012 collection with instant backstage twit pics of every look live from London’s Hyde Park show space. Every look was shared before the models hit the runway, allowing followers to view the collection moments before anyone else. They didn’t ignore the Chinese social media either. They...
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