Brand Fatale

The tests showed that brands outperformed people where a person’s relationship to a product was tied to a story--such as the subject who loved his watch, which was handed down from his father, more than his girlfriend, or the man whose life-long love of the Seattle Seahawks measured as stronger than his love for his toddler. In all, three of the eight test subjects showed more love for brands than people. “The product they loved more, they loved for a reason,”

it was telling that when the product beat the person there was always a sense of connection that was driven by story.

It was a year for thinking big, and spreading the wealth. Advertisers continued to move well beyond the 30-, 60- and even 90-second spot in 2013, as two of our top 10 ads this year, including No. 1, stretch beyond three minutes. That's an eternity in Internet time, yet they were watched, loved and shared worldwide.

Six other ads are at least a minute long, leaving just two lonely spots—both of them comedies—holding down the fort for the traditional :30.

Entre as 20 maiores companhias do mundo a Samsung é uma das que mais gasta em publicidade. De acordo com a Thomson Reuters, o investimento em publicidade equivale a 5,4% das suas vendas. A Apple gasta 0,6%

For a logo to hijack our brains and hearts through pre-attentive processing (those things we see in the corner of our eye), we require multiple exposures to the stimulus. Chatterjee has found this unconscious, positive association to occur within 23 exposures, but she believes it could probably happen in even fewer. “When consumers process any stimulus--a logo is a brand stimulus--implicitly it only creates a weak memory trace. The weak memory trace by itself can’t really change behavior, Chatterjee explains. “But over multiple exposures, those weak memory traces start to become stronger.” “The consumer is unaware that those memory traces exist. Let’s take John and Jane Doe looking at an ultrasound. They’re looking at a picture, they’re oohing and ahhing, showing it to their friends, talking about it, putting it in a scrapbook. They’re focusing on the baby. They may not even know it’s an ultrasound made by a GE machine, but they see it multiple times.” “Then, maybe they’re buying a new house, and so they’re buying appliances, they go to a big-box store, they’re looking at multiple brands. It is quite conceivable they will be more attracted to the GE brands."

for this long con to work, the logo has to be identical everywhere I see it.

The other catch, maybe the most important catch of all when working in unconscious branding, is that the consumer can’t recognize they’re being manipulated, or very bad things happen.

a 365 idea--one that can create 365 days of connection between a brand and people

Creativity and innovation are about finding unexpected solutions to obvious problems or finding obvious solutions to unexpected problems

We should use our creativity to provide better businesses and solutions rather than constantly trying to disrupt what people are doing.

"People want lives that count, resonate, and matter in human terms--and it’s the failure to live that way that leads them to mistrust institutions, instead of respect, adore, and maybe even love them."

an increasing group of companies is striving--intentionally or not--to focus on improving lives.

The fact is that most people don’t care about brands. People surveyed wouldn’t care if 73% brands they used disappeared from their life, a number that remains nearly the same as in last year’s findings.

making a consumer fall in love with a brand depends on "narrowing the psychological distance" between the buyer and the product.

A marca Portugal perdeu cerca de 30% de valor no TOP 100 do estudo Nation Brands, da Brand Finance, em apenas 1 ano. Avaliada em 94 mil milhões de euros, em 2011, viu a sua posição descer da 39ª posição para a 53ª. Em 2012, a marca Portugal foi avaliada em 60 mil milhões de euros.

Content and brand stories should not be conceived of in a sequential manner but rather as an ecosystem and constant narrative.

There has never been a greater need for brands to craft little jewels of content that can sparkle and seduce the most discerning of consumers. Brands that learn to tell their brand story in bite-sized, mobile friendly chunks in the fragmented world of social media will engage consumers.

Pick one person from each of your target audiences (e.g., working parents, college students or urban hipsters) and answer the following questions: What does he or she look like? What does he or she care about? Where does he or she work? What does he or she do for fun?