Marketing goods or services under two or more trademarks of different companies is a popular way to broaden an existing or new brand’s exposure in the marketplace and can be used in many ways.
Although co-branding is not a new concept, it remains crucial to consider the strategic objectives of the project and to address all the possible risks before it is launched.
When the New Yorker reporter Jeffrey Goldberg asked Sen. John Kerry whether the Democrats had a credibility problem on defense controversies, the party’s titular leader replied without equivocation, “Look, the answer is, we have to do an unbranding.” As Kerry saw it, the political problem had to do with salesmanship: “We have to brand more effectively. It’s marketing.” An editor on the linguistic qui vive titled Goldberg’s article about the Democrats’ need to shuck off the appearance of weakness “The Unbranding.”
The hot word in the field of sales — indeed, pervading the world of perfect pitching — is brand.
In a world where the words new and fresh are relentlessly repeated on every product label, the name of the sales technique is getting old and stale. Where is the ad-Ubermensch, the creative Ogilvy, who will put forward a new moniker for the name of the atmospheric marketing game? The time has come, as John Kerry puts it, to unbrand the word brand.
Via Houston Cronicle
MediaPost and Deutsche Bank surveyed advertising executives regarding their online budgets. The results of the survey are published on MediaPost Web site. 35% of budgets dedicated to online branding went to niche sites such as iVillage and Marketwatch. 21% went to the three largest portals, with [tag]Yahoo![/tag] capturing 11%, as much as MSN and America Online combined (MSN had 6% and America Online had 5%). 13% went to Web sites of local media, while 11% went to ad networks. The remaining 20% went to various other sites, including Web sites of local media.
69% of respondents also reported spending more to buy sponsored listings on search engines. 35% of executives said cost-per-click had increased between 1 and 10%, while 25% reported a price increase of 11 to 20%; 9% of respondents said paid search was now at least 21% more expensive than in Q4 2004. Google accounting for 53% of search budgets and Overture accounting for 28%. 4% of search dollars went to Findwhat and 4% went to MSN.
Companies spend billions searching for memorable slogans, but the payoff is elusive and other key aspects of business may be neglected. Today, however, memorable slogans are the exception, not the rule. Slogans aren’t magic, and in most cases consumers don’t pay that much attention to them anyway. Companies that focus too much on slogans end up neglecting the truly important aspects of their businesses.