Advertising Age
Corporate Branding Goes Rogue: Why Social Media Is Radically Changing The Game
ADVERTISING AGE — I remember as the brand management director for Lucent Technologies we worked hard to maintain a flexible yet consistent brand identity. The work from Landor won just about every creative branding award there was and the brand management team won the APQC Best-in-Class award. In those days, if a group misused the brand we said they "went rogue." We meant they deviated from the standard. I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that corporate branding has gone rogue and the cause is social media. Here's why...
Five Reasons Companies Should Not Block Access To Social Networks
ADVERTISING AGE — Last week, a client told me that they don't allow employees to access YouTube at work. "Do your employees carry cellphones?" I asked. The answer was "yes," of course. Well then, most of them already have access to YouTube - right in their pockets. The fact is, resistance to social network access at work is futile. The Economist, in a special report on social networking, notes that a survey of 1,400 chief information officers conducted last year by the recruitment firm, Robert Half Technology, found that only one-tenth of them gave employees full access to such networks during the day, and that many were blocking Facebook and Twitter altogether. Here are five reasons companies should allow social networking...
Do People Tweet About Brands More Out Of Hate Than Love? Most-Tweeted Brands Of The Week Chart
ADVERTISING AGE — The presence of two media brands -- the BBC and BET -- on this week's Top 10 Most Tweeted Brands chart (a collaboration between Advertising Age and What The Trend, the social-media trend-analytics service), raises some interesting questions about why people tend to tweet about brands. Both broadcasters dominated Twitter's "trending topics" list throughout the week because of consumer displeasure...
How Lionsgate Plans To Take On 'Twitter Effect' For 'Kick-Ass'
ADVERTISING AGE — While the so-called "Twitter effect" and its impact on a movie's box office remains enigmatic at best for most studios, Lionsgate is hoping its latest social-media marketing milestone will put them one step closer to a solution. Lionsgate will become the first advertiser to sync up its sponsored brand pages on YouTube, Facebook and MySpace under one platform to promote its upcoming comic-book movie "Kick-Ass," out April 16. The "Kick-Ass" promotion, courtesy of Silicon Valley startup ThisMoment, lets Lionsgate integrate user comments, video streams and Twitter conversations (via a branded hashtag) under one platform...
The Cult Of Toyota: Even After Recalls And Hearings, The Brand Has Die-Hard Loyalists
ADVERTISING AGE — Toyota might be telling Capitol Hill it wants to regain the public trust, but judging from Facebook, it may not have lost it. According to Doug Frisbie, Toyota Motor Sales USA's national social media and marketing integration manager, the automaker has actually grown its Facebook fan base more than 10% since late January, around the time of the marketer's Jan. 21 recall announcement and its Jan. 26 stop-sale date...
