Today, Calvin Klein announced actress Eva Mendes will be comes the spokesperson for Calvin Klein Fragrances and will make her debut in the company’s 2008 Fall campaign. We like.
Get ready for an explosion of cute. Yes, GAP has announced the winners of its casting call contest which selected four kids from a pool of 20 finalists which were selected from a pool of 800,000.
If there’s two things I love, it’s sweet n’ salty kettle corn and challenger upstart brands with great stories. Combine those and you get LesserEvil Snacks.
The packaging caught my eye at Fresh Market so I picked it up, and the writing on the box was great. As is the fun brand story on their website:
Here at LesserEvil, we are all about the snacks. We love to eat them. Love to share them. Love to think up wild new snacks. Simply put, we just love snacks.
When we started this company three years ago, we were all about the snacks then too. Unfortunately, we’d head to the store to pick up some snacks and have a huge predicament: pick up some healthy, yet bland snacks – or – delicious, mouth-watering but REALLY unhealthy snacks. Where was the great taste and better nutritionals? Where was the “LesserEvil?â€
And the FAQs page is great.
So I wrote to them and got a response from Kyser Thompson, their “Chief StoryTeller.”
LesserEvil is the kind of brand I root for. They have all sorts of popcorn and potato snacks, without trans-fat and corn syrup. You can find it at places like Whole Foods, Fresh Market, and on their website. It’s great stuff, and I’m happy to spread the word. There are a lot brands that could learn from these guys.
According to The New York Times, Subway is inexplicably (as in pending lawsuit) pissed at Quizno’s because of some “derogatory” user-generated videos that depict Subway unfavorably. Must see to believe (scroll down to view the big offender).
Ad Age looks at an age old truth about mature brands. They need to get new customers in the franchise in order to survive.
Talk about a marketing conundrum: Revive Colt 45 malt liquor — once seen as an exploitative product that preyed on the urban poor — as an edgy choice for young hipsters.
But Pabst Brewing Co. is trying to do just that, with a campaign from Seattle boutique Cole & Weber. To appeal to younger drinkers, Cole & Weber tapped graphic novelist Jim Mahfood (author of the volume “Classic 40 Ounce: Tales From the Brown Bag” and a regular contributor to alternative newsweeklies) to create a series of scenes and stories of young adults enjoying themselves with Colt 45. Most of the creative shows 20-somethings flaunting their oversize cans in social settings such as rooftop parties and dance clubs.
Tyson Foods, Inc. has been touting its line of antibiotic-free chicken as part of a $70 million advertising campaign. But, competitive poultry producers are upset that the Arkansas-based company has been making false claims about its product.
Calling themselves the Truthful Labeling Coalition, Perdue Farms, Sanderson Farms Inc., Gold’n Plump Poultry Inc. and Foster Poultry Farms accused Tyson of displaying misleading advertising claims in violation of federal and state law and sent a letter to Tyson asking the company to pull its ads.
At issue is Tyson’s use of an animal medication called ionophores, commonly added to poultry feed to help prevent an intestinal parasite that can lead to lower body weight or death in poultry, causing economic loss to producers.
Last month, Tyson agreed to stop using a version of its antibiotic-free labels on its chicken products after the U.S. Department of Agriculture concluded it had awarded the label mistakenly, because the company was still using medication that it characterized as antibiotics. Tyson has also agreed to amend its advertising.
[via The Wall Street Journal]
We were casually perusing the FAO Schwarz website when we came across the Barbie section. This should be fun, we thought.
Kansas City Star takes a look at Lee Jeans, a firm that ended its 18-year relationship with Minneapolis-based Fallon. The account is now at Arnold in Boston.
Lee is centered on a pull, not a push, strategy. In other words, the consumer dictates needs and Lee fulfills them.
Lee president Joe Dzialo said the company has undertaken extensive research to understand its customer, research that includes large-scale quantitative analysis and one-on-one interaction, including asking consumers about purchasing intents before and after trying on its jeans.
What Lee came away with is that its customer demands mostly middle-of-the road clothes with a bit of style that are reliable but that most importantly resolve a litany of fit issues confronting its customers’ ever-changing — and often challenging — body shapes.
For instance, many women the company queried complained of jeans “gapping†at the back. So Lee now has a line of jeans that have a wide yet discreet elasticized band in the back. There’s also a line that includes a panel in front that provides a slight pull-in effect.
For both men and women, Lee and other brands have added a “stretch†element to their jeans that “give†at key points, although Lee marketing vice president Liz Cahill said men’s products are positioned as being “flexible.â€
“You can’t say ‘stretch’ to men,†Cahill said.
I’m taking note of this story, primarily because we often read about and talk about how companies need to improve their product and that better marketing flows from there. Lee could be a case study for this idea.
Microsoft’s $240 million investment in Facebook, which bought them a paltry 1.6% of the company, might now be a model for other social media investments.
According to The New York Times, Slide, the maker of applications for social networks, has raised another round of funding – $50 million from the private equity funds at Fidelity and T-Rowe Price, two major Wall Street investment houses. The firms have taken a nine percent stake in the three-year-old, 64-employee Slide, valuing it at $550 million.
Max Levchin, Slide’s chief executive, explained the valuation, “It’s impossible for social networks focused on scaling the network itself to build all the niche applications that bring people and keep people on these sites.†Just as consumers bought Windows to play games, organize their taxes or create documents, application makers like Slide “add the bulk of perceived value to the consumers of these Web platforms,†he said.
In other words, if Facebook is worth $15 billion then Slide is worth 1/30th of that.
All of which leads me to speculate on how much of the value in Slide, or another company like it, is found in the technology versus is in the brand. I understand the technology comes first in a company like this, but from there it’s about building the brand. Yet, is there a brand team at Slide? Do they work with consultants or an agency? Or does the Slide brand build itself?
You gotta love a CEO that falls in love with his own product to the exclusion of all else. In a NYT interview Steve Jobs calls the Macbook Air the most elegant of Apple’s computer designs, lavishing affection even…
On New Years Day, Euro RSCG, NY launched the Open for Fun campaign on behalf of Ritz. They told us it was “multifaceted” and “integrated,” two slabs of PR bait that grip our attention like the iron hand of…
According to The New York Times, Zagat Survey is for sale and may fetch as much as $200 million.
The Zagats, who met at Yale Law School, could not find a publisher for their annual Manhattan restaurant rankings guide in the early 1980s, so they began publishing it themselves and delivering copies to any bookstore that would stock them. They set up a publishing company in part to get tax deductions for meals.
The business has since expanded wildly with international guides in multiple languages and into new categories. The company also began making custom guides for corporations. For example, Walt Disney commissioned a guide for attractions at its theme parks and WellPoint, the health insurer, commissioned a guide on doctors in its network. In both cases, the rankings and reviews were completed independently of the companies that paid for them.
The article suggests that the media company would make a great acquisition for a carrier looking for a mobile content play. I can also see a credit card company wanting to buy this firm. Am Ex is already deep into custom publishing with titles like Travel & Leisure and Food & Wine.
Today in Sunday Styles, readers encounter one Charlotte Voisey, a “brand ambassador†at William Grant & Sons, Glenfiddich’s parent company. Turns out, she is responsible for creating a Scotch-laden libation known as “Sweet Solera.”
A mixture of Glenfiddich 15-Year-Old Solera Reserve, Lillet Rouge, and a winsome dash of caramel syrup, and bespangled with a maraschino cherry, the Sweet Solera is a cousin to a Rob Roy, meaning it’s kin to a Manhattan. That is to say, it comes from a good family.
This new cocktail, born from whims of a creative mixologist, is also pure marketing strategy. It’s about cracking the perception that single-malt Scotches are designed for rich old men to sip, neat or on the rocks, after a round of golf or a corporate merger or both, a stereotype Ms. Voisey is eager to dispel. “Cocktails are supposed to be fun,†she said.
Wendy’s, apparently not pleased with its red wig campaign, may be leaving Saatchi & Saatchi, AdScam’s George Parker reports. A Saatchi source tells Parker production has ceased on all work. George didn’t like the red wig campaign citing its…
With help from Stink and TBWA\China, Psyop put together “Together” for Adidas and the ’08 Olympics. Tagline: “Impossible is nothing.” It’s very Nike, with a little power-to-the-people in concentrate. Victory, meet China….
Brandkeys publishes this thing called the Customer Loyalty Engagement Index. According to this year’s index, Starbucks lost serious ground in ’07 for forgetting what made it a big name in the first place: the coffee experience. Who’s winning the…
Perhaps they haven’t seen ATT’s logo. Perhaps they don’t care their new logo conjures a lazy Saturday afternoon at the beach. No, Xerox and Omnicom’ Interbrand, which just unveiled its new logo today, thinks a red beach ball will…
Gotta love a logo battle. French firm Lacoste just lost one against a dental practice in UK-based Gloucestershire, which uses the image of a crocodile to promote its service. The battle raged for four years between the goliathan clothing…
Sorry for all the bad puns, but hey, a bad brand deserves bad puns. I wrote back in March about Circuit City’s decision to fire 3000 employees, the ones who were the most knowledgeable on the sales floor. Of course, at the time, it was a way to make Wall Street happy by lowering costs and boosting profits.
Well, Wall Street is not happy. From the Chicago Tribune:
Shares of Circuit City Stores Inc. lost more than a quarter of their value Friday after the firm posted a wider-than-expected third-quarter loss and said it wouldn’t make money this quarter either, prompting analysts to question whether it should hang out a “for sale” sign.
The stock fell $1.91, or 28.7 percent, to $4.75, on the New York Stock Exchange. It was the biggest drop since February 2002.
“Clearly, we are very disappointed,” Chief Executive Philip Schoonover told analysts during a conference call. He said the company underestimated the financial impact of cost-saving initiatives on sales.
Analysts were clearly disappointed. The results were “absolutely astonishing to us,” said Christopher Horvers, an analyst at Bear Stearns & Co. “If they don’t turn around in the fourth quarter, it will raise the likelihood that this company goes down a dark path.”
Well, it’s not astonishing to me. The in-store experience is one of the most important things they have. Getting rid of 3000 smart workers wasn’t the answer. They’ve killed their brand.
When will corporations and marketers realize that cutting costs isn’t always the answer to their problems?
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
