Nicely played, BMW!
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Creative Excellence for Your Brand: Simply a Balancing Act
Here’s a simple formula to use when evaluating the creative communication used to express your brand.
The Creative Excellence Triangle has three corners. Without each of these, Excellence will collapse and cease to exist.
Too often we merely trace justification for a solution back to a written campaign or project brief. This allows us to verify only one corner of the Triangle, the Strategic. Although that is equally important to overall Excellence, without Emotional Power presented with Pristine Aesthetics, creative solutions will not work in the real world of the marketplace.
Emotional Power cannot be prescribed by even the most masterfully crafted strategic brief. Passionate creative direction must bring it to life. This is where marketing intentions become reality. Research, analytics, strategy and all the cold, hard facts must now connect to life’s real emotional needs and desires.
Pristine Aesthetics are the sirens of the marketing message. If the work is not beautiful, it will not be considered. Never standing a chance of being absorbed. Never making an impact.
Strategic Perfection will be given the opportunity to work – to build the brand and the business – only if it exists in a beautiful balance with Emotions and Aesthetics.
Coaching for Coaches
Cross Country Coach Jim O’Brien from Arcadia High School knows how to inspire and lead. Watch him make his athletes responsible for meeting his expectations.
Accountability. Communication. Understanding. Respect. Results.
Still the best marketing stunt of all time!
Defending Champion Joey Chestnut
Without question, the champion of all marketing stunts is The Nathan’s International Hot Dog Eating Contest.
While this competition stands in stark contrast to The National Spelling Bee, they both have ESPN in common.
ESPN knows that all they need is true competitive spirit on display and they have a hit. If you haven’t seen this marvelous modern marketing spectacle, you must tune in to ESPN tomorrow at Noon, Eastern U.S. Daylight Time.
Recent controversy regarding the contractual eligibility of six-time champion, Takeru Kobayashi, only helps fuel the publicity that this juggernaut generates every July 4th on Coney Island.
Nike Free 2.0s helped heal my foot, knee and hip while I ran 30 miles per week.
I am not a doctor. I’m just a runner. Right now I’m a very grateful runner. While one of my running friends walks around in a boot recovering from bunion surgery, I’m amazed at the healing effect Nike Free 2.0s have had on me.
Just 4 months ago, I was contemplating having a bunion removed from my left pinky toe knuckle. That same bunion was causing issues all the way up my left leg. Foot, knee and hip pain were just something I dealt with because I’m addicted to running.
I’m not even sure why – however, just when I was about to see the surgeons and begin the MRIs and who knows what else they’d prescribe – I made the switch to making all my training runs in my Nike Frees. I’d been rotating between the Frees, Vomeros and something else. I just felt more and more comfortable, doing every type of run in the Frees.
Now 4 months later, the bunion is gone along with all the knee and hip pain. Again, I am not a doctor. However, I doubt any podiatrist or orthopedist would have told me, “Get yourself a pair of Nike Frees and up your mileage to 30 plus a week.”
So, what does this have to do with branding? Everything. The best brands are those that practice true innovation. The development of Nike Free technology derives from a profound understanding of real running motion, impact and energy absorption.
Nike lives by true innovation and I’m grateful for the real results. As they say…
Just do it.
You can never pay too much attention to detail.
Pristine Aesthetics create unparalleled perfection in label design. That’s all!
Memorial Day is for Fallen Soldiers. Here’s why:
Memorial Day honors our fallen heroes. We often wonder why they serve and why they must fall. This is offered for your consideration:
This week’s news contained a story about the arrest of the man shown above, Ratko Mladic, a Serbian general, allegedly responsible for one of the worst genocidal crimes in recent history. He will stand trial for the murder of 8,000 Bosnian men and boys back in 1995.
I remember reading a shocking e-mail that disrupted my busy work day around the time. I was probably focused on helping Michelin sell more tires, sitting in a fancy office in Westport, Connecticut. The e-mail was from my older brother Michael, a US Army Special Forces Medic. He wrote of a woman who was working with him.
Mike was deployed in Bosnia shortly after Mladic’s reign of evil. This was now a peacetime mission and Mike was there as part of the infrastructure rebuilding. His skills as a nurse were being put to use in helping the Bosnians re-establish hospital care. He worked alongside a Bosnian woman whose will to work and function soundly – let alone live – was hard to fathom given what she had seen during the death march from Srebrenica to Tuzla.
Over the course of the march, she had witnessed every male member of her family being taken off to the side of the road and shot in the back of the head. Her husband. Her sons. Her father. Her brothers. Her uncles. Her nephews. And her cousins. Every male member of her family – slowly, deliberately, day-by-day for the shear terror of it – executed in front of her eyes.
Every day that she arrived to work at the hospital was miraculous in Mike’s eyes and made him deeply appreciate his place in life. Half a world away, my mission to market and sell more Michelin tires was certainly put in proper perspective.
Please have a wonderful Memorial Day everyone. Remember our fallen heroes and those that now serve as a relentless and unselfish deterrent to the atrocities that plague our world.
