virginia.miracle | Virginia Miracle

Tattooing Your Brand Love

By virginia.miracle | January 22, 2008

Last night, whilst watching something shameful off my DVR (ah, strike TV), I saw a self-described redneck get a tattoo of a Wrangler jeans label on the part of his body over which that label would normally sit.

So that started me thinking, why do people make their brand love permanent with tattoos? I understand the desire to closely associate with a brand whose philosophy you share, but brands are run by people and change over time. It takes extreme faith in a company’s desire to stay true to the brand’s meaning to break out needles.

Nike is so enamored of the idea of their employees making a permanent commitment, that in Fall 2000, they brought tattoo artists to campus “just in case there was interest” and about 30 “Ekins” (Nike spelled backwards) took the plunge. The phenomenon of the swoosh tattoo rippled out from there. Another extreme example of brand tattooing is Disney Tattoo Guy, who sports Disney icons on 90% of his body. Permanent promotion! Maybe tattoo artists should be brought to more gatherings of brand fans “just in case” someone decides to join the tribe.

Below, I am sharing a smattering of brand tattoos that I found particularly entertaining – the final being a potentially cautionary tale about how tattoo meanings can change as brands do.

Consumer Tats:

Geek Tats:

And, oh, how things change…

Are there any brands for which you feel such a passion that you’d make it permanent? And I thought a weekend was a commitment!

Lead, Don’t Pander

By virginia.miracle | January 21, 2008

We now interrupt the corporate brand discussion to cover a more appropriate MLK day topic, leadership.

I currently live in South Carolina, which means that for the past 2 weeks, I have had the strange experience of being bombarded by presidential ads that are NOT meant for me. When I lived in Austin, I could count on one hand the number of people I knew who were natives – almost everyone had relocated from another part of the state, country or world because of the remarkable lifestyle and employment opportunities there. On the flip side, I know very few people who are transplants to South Carolina and the candidates tailored messages accordingly.

As far as I can tell, all of the candidates made South Carolina-specific broadcast pieces and ran them until I curled up in a ball and cried uncle (1 week to go for the Dems). Republican ads hit the following messages in a big, repetitive way – I’m a Christian, I’m pro-life, I will protect the country. The manner in which they covered those points seemed almost condescending to me but I shrugged it off as “I’m not the target, they’re probably good ads”. In thinking that, I am as guilty as the candidates for underestimating my neighbors. NBC filmed a great interview Saturday night with a Christian study group in Columbia, South Carolina whose members said they were offended by the way the candidates were trying to use religion to gloss over their plans to deal with the very real & complex issues facing the nation. They didn’t understand how being photographed with a big cross in the background should supersede the need for them to understand candidate positions on long term plans for Iraq, the economy and illegal immigration. Sharing a common gender, race, college, sports team, or even religion is no guarantee that common values about the future of the country are shared.

I am no political pundit, but I think there is an opportunity for the candidate who wants to put a little faith in the intelligence of the American voter – even those in the “backward” southern states. Great leaders don’t rise to positions of power by insinuating that their followers are of lesser intellect.

Hydrox’s Fans Won’t Forget

By virginia.miracle | January 19, 2008

There is a fun story in today’s WSJ about brand fans of the Oreo also-ran, Hydrox. Kellogg killed off the cookie brand, which would have celebrated its 100th anniversary this year, in 2003 after failing to gain any ground against the Oreo even after reformulating and renaming the product “Droxie” to try to appeal to children. While I personally can not remember ever tasting one of these cookies, this brand had real fans and they are organizing to try to get Kellogg to reconsider.

There is a history of fans using the internet to rally for discontinued “brands” – but with limited success. Jericho fans bombarding the network with nuts to get a few more episodes. Similarly, Save Our Bluths sent banana baskets to Fox which may have contributed to the brilliant/low-rated Arrested Development getting another season, but at a reduced episode order and it was promptly canceled. Hopefully a similar fate is not in store for 30 Rock.
On the beverage front, Save Surge has been around for more than 5 years, but with no real response from Coca Cola, beyond the company trying to enlist these fans to support the launch of their very similar formulation, Vault.

So what holds these brand movements together? I think the Hydrox fans sum it up with their call to arms “Non-conformists don’t eat Oreos“. These challenger brands have an element of delicious discovery and make the users feel independent and in-the-know for supporting them and spreading the word. If the brands had mass popularity, they wouldn’t need movements in the first place! The challenge to marketers is to help all brands – not just those headed toward the dustbin – to instill customers with those same feelings of smart individuality or discovered knowledge that they will be inspired to pass along.

Sunsetting a Web Project

By virginia.miracle | January 16, 2008

No one ever wants to think about the end of a project before it begins, but many web projects do and should end. It is a good practice to put some thought into how that will be handled before you launch, but little consensus on what the best practice for are for “the end”. Take a gander at the following treatments and let me know which you think is best in class:

Option 1: Time warp – Subservient Chicken – This Burger King’s site originally launched as a way to promote their new chicken sandwich. It has not changed noticeably since the day it launched (copyright 2004). There is no dated material, just a quick, fun customer experience that could be considered “evergreen”. This is the Helen of Troy of viral marketing – the project that caused 1000 others to get greenlighted. Because of it’s significance, it is nice to be able to refer newcomers to online WOM to this site.

Option 2: Keep it live, but let it age – Clark and michael – This 10 episode series featuring man of the moment Michael Cera and friend Clark Duke ran from spring into summer of ’07, but received a surge of viewership months later when it made Time’s list of Top 10 Best Web Videos in December. While the episodes can still be viewed, Clark and Michael’s personal diary ended in July. For folks like me who only discovered the site in the last month, it feels like a broken window. (hat tip: Catchup Blog)

Option 3: Let the audience hijack your site – In the Motherhood – ITM was a Suave and Sprint “co-conception” that I discussed here was done around Mother’s Day 2007. While it doesn’t look like the brands involved have not done much updating since the end of the script contest, the users have hijacked that community and kept the forums alive. Option 4: Leave no footprints – Too many promotions to mention – Another option is to simply take your site down after its useful period is over. The downside is that you may break a lot of links to your brand all over the web.

Option 5: Set boundaries, honor what you accomplished – The Show with Ze Frank – ZeFrank grew a huge following of “Sportsracers” with his lightning-fast daily video podcast “show”. From the beginning, Ze set expectations that it was a 1 year gig and would end 1 year from its start date and so it did. Now, Ze has pulled together highlights of the show for those discovering it late, but refers to it in the appropriate (past) tense.

The one thing that I think can be taken away from these treatments is that how you sunset a web project makes a big difference in your future digital footprint. You can always change plans based on audience reaction, but it is important to plan not just for the next 6 months, but the artifacts that will exist in 18 or 24 months as well.

WGA Strike Ripples Extend

By virginia.miracle | January 14, 2008

The WGA strike has had an impact that goes beyond late night hosts growing beards and folks like me considering spending their hard earned free time watching American Gladiators. While it may be a mild annoyance for me, the WGA/AMPTP standoff is starting to have ripple effects on a number of other online and offline endeavors.

For example, the lack of the Golden Globes ceremony last night eliminated the platform for fashion designers to break into the public psyche. More importantly, what will the fashion pundits have to talk about? This dooms us to another week of Spears sisters news coverage instead of Best & Worst red carpet wrap-ups we so rightly deserve. Social media queens/fashion snarks “The Fug Girls” did a great job capturing this over in their NYMagazine column.

Once I started thinking about the strike, I began to wonder how Hey!Nielsen, a social networking site where users share opinions about TV shows with the company who provides feedback to the networks, would deal with the lack of new content. Steve Ciabatonni at the Hey!Nielsen blog shared some of their plans with me:

We are working on a few ideas to keep the interest high and we are hoping to spark more conversations around Video Games (our newest category which is drawing some activity), movies, and bands.

Leading up to the Super Bowl (the most watched show on the planet traditionally), we’re enlisting some key Hey! Nielsen members to rate the ads live on super sunday — I think we’ll have a lot of fun with that. Most people like the ads more than they like the game, so… I’m eager to chat with those folks during the game.

How true it is. While original content will start drying up, ad copywriters are most definitely not on strike and will keep the fodder for armchair critics coming. If nothing else, this is a creative distraction from the strike. Like so many of you out there, I am crossing my fingers and toes for a speedy resolution.