NY Times has a fantastic article today about how big brands are sidestepping the traditional media channels and connecting directly with consumers:
“We want to find a way to enhance the experience and services, rather than looking for a way to interrupt people from getting to where they want to go,” said Stefan Olander, global director for brand connections at Nike. “How can we provide a service that the consumer goes, ‘Wow, you really made this easier for me’?”
“We don’t automatically think about television anymore,” said Joaquin Hidalgo, vice president for global brand marketing at Nike. “There was a time when brands like Nike could tell kids through the medium of television what was cool, what was in, what was not in, because that was the only window they had into the world. That has completely changed now.”
The article is totally in line with what our clients are telling us and well worth a read
I will be speaking at the
Sales and Marketing in Travel Europe 2007 in Berlin on the 23rd of October.
I am looking forward to presenting some new interesting findings there and also announce a new partnership.
If you’re attending or in town then send me a mail and we can meet up.
I was looking at the debate on the problems surrounding the subprime lending crisis in our InfluenceMonitor service today.
The figure below shows the share-of-influence(1) of a number of well known investment banking brands has in the online “subprime”-debate.
Notice how the share-of-influence of Bear Stearns and UBS seems to be correlated: Initially UBS was the brand in focus. In June however, Bear Sterns announced problems with some of their hedge funds. For a while it took the heat of UBS.
However from July and onwards the focus on UBS has been steadily growing while the interest in Bear Stearns has dropped almost correspondingly.
Interestingly Citygroup, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, ABN AMRO, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank mostly escape attention.
The focus on Goldman Sachs however seems to be growing.
(1)
Share-of-influence is calculated by measuring the share of earned coverage a brand gets in a particular context and then factoring in the measured, topical influence of each voice that discusses the brand. So, when the topic is "subprime" a mention in NY Times will count for roughly 50% more than a mention in CNN.com’s money section.