Category — Branding

Yes yes, the chill is in the air now, fall is here and retailers are humming holiday tunes and setting up lights, reminding us all exactly how many days we have left until the ultimate deadline. They need to put on the pressure to make it feel like an obligation and not just an optional gift-giving occasion. And I don’t feel the pressue until I see Nieman Marcus peddling overpriced fantasy gifts via catalog.

And look at that, Nieman Marcus put out their annual holiday gift guide, called the Christmas Book, just the other day. It’s jam packed with things even the top 1% of the American financial elite would think twice about buying. These are difficult days economically, not the best time to be putting out catalogs filled with $110k dollar motorbikes and $45k dollar gold rings owed by 12th century Vikings. Some people may take offense. Not me, I think it’s fine reading and enjoy it thoroughly. Some people, though.

Here’s a sampling of some of the contents:
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Harley-Davidson has a pretty hardcore fanbase of older American motorcyclists, but the way things are going, that’s not going to last. Harley realizes there’s a whole generation of younger riders embracing foreign brands; Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, Aprilia, and Ducati all make high performance, high quality bikes that generally cost less than a Harley. So they need to make a bike that appeals to that crowd, and find a way to make them take notice of it.

That’s why they paired up the V-Rod Muscle and Marisa Miller. I’ll admit, I’m one of those young upstarts who trash talks the last great American icon, Harley-Davidson. I like Ducatis and cafe racers and European names on my bikes. I like to go fast in a straight line, but also be able to go through corners. Call me a snob, what can I say? Still, the V-Rod Muscle, even though I hate the name, is a Harley I might consider riding. And the fact that Marisa Miller is bent over athletically on one got me to take notice too. So the ad worked on me.
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Obama’s new political ad, “The American Promise” is the single most frightening political advertisement I have ever seen in my life. It’s absolutely chilling. The rabid cultist gleam in the eyes of the supporters nearly weeping as Obama repeats his meaningless rhetoric. Can this be real?

I’ve never had much faith in the political understanding of my fellow man. Admittedly, I’m a horrible misanthrope, of the opinion that the masses are irrational chumps, with about as much understanding of basic economics as I have about the inner workings of the Large Hadron Collider.

Maybe I’m out of touch, but I imagine the average person setting out nachos every Sunday to root for Red or Blue like a political football game; shouting out buzzwords like “More Regulations!” and “Al Qaeda Hates Freedom!”, then talking about it the next day at the water cooler. Why else follow politics if not as conversation fodder, right?

I figured I’d just watch the madness from the sidelines for a while and move to Costa Rica when the shit really starts to hit the fan and the freaks inevitably vote themselves into slavery. I didn’t think it’d happen so quickly though.
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Remember this?

I had no words for these commercials. I hesitated to even write about them since I thought there would eventually be some sort of punchline commercial to cap them off. But no, they were just odd for the sake of oddity, and now they’re canceled. The internet spoke unanimously and Microsoft listened. It might just have been the worst way to spend $300 million dollars in the history of the modern era.

Maybe that’s what Microsoft was getting at: “We’re so successful, we can spend $300 million dollars on a meaningless ad campaign, suck it Apple”. If that were the tag line, I’d at least respect their testicular fortitude.

But it’s over and done with, a thing of the past. What we’re interested in now is the future. Thankfully for Microsoft they have a new series of commercials that are actually good. Check out the video after the jump I’m A PC
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For years, heroin dealers have used “brand stamps” as a way to inform customers of their quality. Even before Frank Lucas’s “Blue Magic” in the 1960s, “good” dealers have found ways to make their product stand out among the poorer quality majority. Once the high quality dealers started doing this, everyone else started as well since it was a low cost way of increasing the apparent quality of the bags. For only the cost of a stamp and ink, a dealer could copy the stamp from the highest quality heroin on the street.

This lack of copyright laws made the high quality dealers constantly have to shift their brand names and stay topical, since the best brands were copied within days. Illustrating this: just recently, 52 glassine bags of heroin stamped both with “OBAMA” and an image of Sen. Barack Obama were confiscated following a routine car stop on Interstate 95 in Upper Chichester, according to Pennsylvania State Police. That’s an interesting way to support your candidate.

Examples of heroin brand stamps:
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This is a Hai Karate commercial from the late 1960s. The idea of the ad is that Hai Karate is such a great smell, women will force themselves on you, and you’ll have to protect yourself. The box even came with an actual karate instruction booklet to help you defend yourself against rogue attacking women.

This idea is common in the fragrance market for young men. It’s funny, grabs your attention and appeals to the desire that young men have: to be jumped by women.

Check out the similarities in the Tag body spray commercial:
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ClustaRack sells these paper roll holders for $200-$300 dollars each. It’s a pretty specific niche market they’re selling to: print shops and…well, I don’t really know who else besides print shops would need these. The point is, they have a great, really visible advertising hook for a simple little product.
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The free market is a beautiful thing, everyone benefits and everyone gets what they want. Just put all the needs and desires of mankind in a pot and sprinkle in some human ingenuity, and out comes all sorts of innovative ways to get things done.
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Everyone knows that KFC uses a super secret blend of eleven herbs and spices to make its fried chicken ultra-delicious. KFC goes to great lengths to keep that formula secret. In fact, one company blends a formulation that represents part of the recipe while another spice company blends the remainder. And a final computer processing system is used to standardize the blending of the products to ensure neither company has the complete recipe.
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Twenty years ago, if you told any ad exec that there would be nationally televised advertisements selling pills that enlarge your penis, during prime time TV no less, they would have guffawed their Cuban cigars right into your coffee cup. And yet, here we are. What happened?

The success of Enzyte is due entirely to marketing. It doesn’t matter if the pills do nothing, it doesn’t matter if the founder gets serious jail time. All that matters is public perception, and that’s what marketing is all about. A catchy jingle and the go-with-it attitude wins every time. So despite all the negatives, we have to tip our hats to Smiling Bob for taking advantage of the insecurities of a entire nation’s male population.

Well done, Bob. You win the Best Marketing of a Shit Product Award.