The First World war didn’t end on the 11th November 1918. This was merely an armistice. The war ended a year later with the Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles that followed.
I think that it is high time that the armistice maintained between creative and media agencies since our historic schism in the mid 90s be concluded with a peace conference and final treaty.
David Lloyd George, architect of the Welfare State and the greatest radical in British politics.
I hold something to be true. That radical thinking, particularly radical strategic thinking works.
This blog – unlike many ad blogs that talk about the future – has always set itself against both the Ostriches and the Lemmings. Of course we all loathe the Ostriches, those who continue to find succour beneath the sands of the status quo. But I have an equal amount of contempt for the Lemmings.
I’ve been thinking a bit about a concept that I introduced in the ‘meme doctors’ article. That of vaccinating your brand against competitive memes.
Brand vaccination might be a smart new way to think about your brand’s competition and what you can do about it.
Rather than thinking exclusively about aggressive strategies to attack and counter attack the competition, maybe thinking about how to vaccinate your brand against competitive memes makes for a much more interesting start point.
For instance one could argue that what Sky needs to do in the UK is not only to propagate its brand meme so that it is attractive to consumers but also vaccinate itself against the Freeview meme which is attacking it, that of BBC endorseed multichannel TV with no ongoing subscription.
I guess its a kind of defensive approach to life but how many times has a brand’s competitiveness in the market been undermined ‘at home’ while it was playing away aggressively trying to attract new customers?
Associated involvement is the term I give the collection of advertising techniques that includes sponsorship, product placement and advertising-funded programming. While they are clearly enjoying…