Brand Book

Open publication - Free publishing - More meagan sackett

My creative brief

Click to enlarge

This advertising agency is disguised as brands.

Advertising Age Chia Pet Article

Grand brands are not deceptive

I went to target the other day and was craving something sweet. I came across little debbie 100 calorie triple fudge brownies. This is what the packaging looked like:


I opened the box in the car and I laughed uncontrollably outloud. The product was so small and deceptive it was laughable. In fact, the product shot on the box was bigger than the actual product. The box also shows three brownies. They failed to mention 100 calories was only for one brownie the size of my thumb.

I looked up consumer reviews on this product and this is what the people had to say:

Hungry Girl blog: " The world's smallest fudge brownie. With tiny stripes. In an itty bitty plastic bag. It is laughably tiny. Really, REALLY tiny. Almost a joke. And it's fiber-free. Bummer. Even though this brownie tastes pretty good, it's hard to justify spending 100 calories and 4g fat on something so depressingly small."


Associated Content: "Not only are these brownies small, they are very flat and really, there is not much to this snack. These brownies were a disappointment to me. These brownies are too small. Period. Don't let the name fool you."

And those above reviews were just a few of the many angry consumer reviews I found.

Brands should use impulse buys to jump over one of the major hurdles of brands: getting the consumer to try your product. It is not effective for brands to get consumers at an impulse buy and then disregard them. This is detrimental for revenue because it eliminates repeat customers.


Brands more and more these days are trying to adapt to consumer trends instead of being true to what their brand stands for. If a brand does extremely well at making fattening brownies, then that is where they should put most of their efforts.

Little Debbie's brand promise is unwrap a smile. Unfortunately I unwrapped a hatered for the brand.

Great Brands have their own video game.

The Obama video game:


http://superobamaworld.com/

When is it okay to change your logo?

When your brand has such a negative stigma, it can't hurt to change the logo.

If a company is truly trying to change their image, they should take some risks. It would be risky to not change every aspect of their new branding effort. If the brand loyal consumers are truly loyal, they will stick to the brand no matter what font type they use.

Walmart recently just changed their logo from a boxy font to a more feminine looking one. They are also changing the color of the font from a harsh blue to a soft blue. When The Martin Agency gained the Walmart account, they added an emotional aspect to the brand over a purely economical approach. They also did away with the dark blue spiky star in the logo. They replaced this with a soft yellow cheerful sun. Does this now mean that Walmart will make your day more cheerful because you saved a few bucks on your family?

If you could actually feel and touch the new logos, would you rather touch the spiky dark blue star or the soft yellow cheerful sun? Maybe this will pull in some new customers to the store after all. After a few months of this logo transformation it will be interesting to see if their sales and perception increase. The next step is for Microsoft Word to update their spell check option from Wal-Mart to Walmart.

A twist on insights

I believe that the role of a strategic planner is to make the ordinary into extraordinary. Really good insights do just that.

Here are some insights:




***Non-branded art: Filmmaker Jeff Chiba Stearns



***Non- branded art: Cappuccino Art

***Duck Tape: Stuck at prom - Duct brand duct tape scholarship contest

***Toyota: Banana leaf print advertisement

***Honda: Plant this letter direct mail piece

The next generation of art directors

Elephant painting an elephant