A few weeks ago, we published the first in a series of papers looking at some of the meaty issues facing marketers today.   Each paper was first presented at our 25th Anniversary conference in London in June 2011:  ‘Back to the future of branding - A look at what the past 25 years of brand marketing tell us about what the next 25 may have in store’. 

Our aim was to encourage new thinking, make a few predictions and perhaps even challenge some of today’s orthodoxies.  We wanted to show that we remain as committed as ever to helping our clients out-think, out-compete and out-perform their competition.

For those of you who weren’t able to attend the conference, I’m delighted to present the second
of our anniversary papers, entitled ‘Variations On The Role & Measurement of Brand’.

Co-authored by Sony Ericsson’s Nigel Turner and The Value Engineers’ Paul Durrant, the paper examines how marketers can provide consistent brand cues to help people navigate the exploding universe of mobile technology, while measuring the effect of their activities with discrete, purpose-built tools.

We hope you enjoy it.  If you’d like to discuss any of the issues raised in the paper, why not submit a comment below, or get in touch with us directly?

China: now the world’s second largest economy; 3 corporations in the Fortune Global 500; growing influence in every sphere of our lives from geo-political to the clothes we wear.  Yet how many Chinese brands can you name outside your own category today? Tsingtao maybe? Lenovo? Haier? MG?

In the most recently published Interbrand ‘Best Global Brands’ Survey there is not a single Chinese brand in the top 100. However check out the Top 100 brands in China (courtesy of Brand Finance) and think forward ten years. How many will be as familiar to us then as Samsung, Hyundai, Sony, Canon, Acer, Toyota, Honda are now? And perhaps more pertinently, how many of them will be more familiar to consumers in today’s emerging and about to emerge markets than the so called ‘Global’ brands are now?

In the 4th quarter of 2010 the top 4 mobile phone vendors (in shipments, not profit) were Nokia, Samsung, LG and ZTE. Apple were 5th (note I said shipments, not profit) ZTE?

To quote from the IDC press release:

‘ZTE finished the quarter in the number 4 position with shipments steadily spreading from its home country of China to developing regions such as Africa and Latin America. ZTE has also recently made inroads in developed markets such as Western Europe and the U.S. as well as Japan. While most of its shipments have historically concentrated on entry-level and mid-range devices, some of its recent success is directly attributable to its rapidly expanding smartphone line, such as the Android-based Blade and Racer devices. Meanwhile, its S- and C-series entry-level feature phones provided additional competition within emerging markets.’

By following a strategy of building up volume in partnership with known brands and at the same time building their operational expertise they are creating a strong,  well-resourced foundation for an eventual move to selling products under their own brand. An approach already followed by HTC.

Will they invest some of the cash they are now earning as an OEM player on brand-building? I wouldn’t be at all surprised.

But in the end, a brand’s strength is based on how much it is trusted by its customers to deliver on the promises it makes.

The tone of the coverage of Chinese Telecommunications Company Huawei’s offer to set up infrastructure to let us use our mobiles on the tube during the Olympics suggests that there is some way to go to build up trust in China plc.

However, it seems inevitable that we will soon – as consumers – have much greater familiarity with goods and services from Chinese brands.

The Chinese are coming. As a brand marketer, how do you propose to respond?

My team and I were recently travelling to mainland Europe on a business trip, as you do. Shortly after crossing the Channel an operator message started to pop up on my (personal) mobile phone:

“Don’t forget, using data on your iPhone while abroad for things like web browsing, Google maps, and Apps can use 1MB/min. To monitor how much you use, go to Settings/General/Usage. It’s £3/MB in the EU and £6/MB outside the EU.”

Not only was the message persistent, it was also missing a trick. What a wasted opportunity to make me happy and get some money off me at the same time – I thought. European Commission regulation states that customers travelling to another Member State must receive an automated message of the charges that apply for data roaming services.

All fine, except, in their eagerness to satisfy the authorities, the operators, in this case O2, forgot that their primary objective should be to satisfy their customers and please their shareholders. Is it really that difficult to dream up a bolt-on data plan for a one day trip and put a ‘YES PLEASE’ link / button at the end of this horrible and mildly threatening message? I think not.

Customers demand nothing less than seamless experiences these days, particularly if they are prepared to shell out on their all-singing, all-dancing smartphones. One would think this should particularly be the case if those same customers are travelling within the integrated market of the European Union. This looks to me like a big wasted opportunity not only to create positive outcome for the customer but also to make the operators some money. The irony is that we were travelling on a project that addresses customer experiences and ways of making them more joined-up, more satisfying and more profitable.

Following its pogo-powered wellies, Orange has concluded its sponsorship of Glastonbury with an attempt to create the most tagged photograph ever taken.

The photo of the crowd at the Pyramid Stage was taken at half-time during the England/Slovenia World Cup match, and is a massive 1.3 gigapixels in size. Created by Poke London, GlastoTag is made up of 36 separate snaps stitched together to create a panorama.

So far, Orange has amassed almost 8,000 tags – but with almost 70,000 faces in the picture, there’s still a lot of scope to play. With the ability to link tags to Facebook, the network provider has shown once again that it understands the power of social media.

It’s a lovely example of a brand tapping into the lasting goodwill generated by an event – and if you were there for the game, why not drop by the site and tag yourself? We will be…

The Orange Power Wellies, which were developed by renewable energy experts Got Wind, convert heat from the feet into an electrical current.

Twelve hours of fancy footwork can generate enough energy to power a mobile phone for one hour.

Great for all festival goers this year.