If you’re my brand: Never let me down. Keep on making me smile. Stay cool. Always surprise me. Change when you need to, but stay true to your heritage. Dress nice. Make sure I don’t have to hide our love. If you do something bad – stay honest and tell the truth cause I will forgive you. And finally! Never ever take me for granted.
Tokyo in sunrise – A Brand that didn’t let me down. Taken from my Instagram feed.
If you’ll stick to these simple guidelines – I’m prepared to spend the rest of my life with you and give you my all my love. If not – get lost!
psst. You haven't missed the new app for kids aged 1-9 years old? It's created by my other company JAJDO.
Check it out in the App store
February 16, 2011
in Advertising Awards,Art,branding,Cases,Entrepreneurship,Images,Innovate,My Books,People,Quote of the day,Research,SEO,Social communication,Software,Speaking,Svenska,The trend is my friend,Video
Some of you might have followed my blog since way back while others followed me only a couple of days. So I decided it was time to dig into Google Analytics and gather my top 100 blog posts, based on traffic, (I have written 596 to this date) between the years 2005 and 2011 for you to read.
I did actually start my first blog back in 2002 but quickly stopped blogging. It was more of an installation experiment. Then in 2005 I slowly started posting again. Up until now I’ve had over a half a million pageviews and 367374 unique visitors dropping in.
Oh, by the way. If there’s anything you like – please Tweet it or put it on your FB page. It would make me happy.
So here we [click to continue…]
The other day I wrote quite a long post on the future of integrated communication from a digital perspective. I stressed the fact that in order for your brand to create and maintain strongs brand in the future you’ve gotta provide people with true values not just fun stuff that entertains. On top of that I’ve also written a quite extensive post on how all your brands belong not to you, but to the consumer. You might wanna tap into that one too before reading this post. Here we go:
You’ve lost control of almost all of your sales process. Accept it and change or die. (Had to go punk style)
That actually happens to tactical communication as we know it when all rules are changed? What happens to ads, prints, point of sale, direct marketing etc?
Let’s me elaborate on that based on an old communication model called AIDA, Attention, Information, Desire and Acquire, first described in 1898 by E. St. Elmo Lewis. Some people say [click to continue…]
January 13, 2011
in branding,Images,Innovate,Just another day,Link of the day,Quote of the day,SEO,Simplicity,Social communication,The trend is my friend,Video
Leading a brand? Thinking about how to create a long term integrated communication platform? Think no more cause I’ll share the model I’ve been using for the last three years when leading brands into the future of advertising, communication and advertising.
Normally I’d work a company or brand through a series of workshops. We would then slowly start to follow this model over time. Changing how you, your brand and marketing organisation work with advertising and communication is not something you do over night. I would recommend brands to keep on doing what they do best – shoot fireworks -while slowly start to change their way of communicating their products and services from ground up.
Moving your communication into the future is also tough on your organisation as your moving from campaign based communication activities to instead building long term equity that will generate results over time. Send your entire marketing organization as well as your IT department and management team on several digital communication crash courses cause your CEO better understand what you talk about when you’re talking conversion, SEM, SEO, AdWords, H1, Keywords, Stats and shit.
Have a read. If you like what you read – get going. Change!
Here we go – The Key To Future Integrated Communication by Johan Ronnestam
The basis of your online communication platform
The first thing we’ve gotta agree upon before moving further into the model is the following: Your brand consist out of two things. The product/services you offer and [click to continue…]
About two years ago I frantically started writing on this blog post. Then the sheer length of it got the best of me and since then it’s been stuck in my unpublished library. Now I thought it’s time to give birth to this baby even though most of it was written about two years ago, before Facebook got big, the iPad and more.
When you read it – remember I pushed publish to share the love, not the excellent writing.
This post covers how you start and run a company practically for free.
The post will guide you all the way from day one until you’re up and running and need to consider things like sales, advertising, process support, crm, intranets, extranets etc etc.
I spend about 1-2 hours a day [click to continue…]
November 11, 2010
in branding,Cases,Entrepreneurship,Graphics,Images,Innovate,Just another day,Print,Simplicity,Svenska,The trend is my friend,Video
What do you do when someone asks you to sign a non disclosure agreement and then asks you to spend the coming year planning, creating, implementing and launching a new Swedish bank?
Say yes of course!
This is where the story of the freshly launched brand Marginalen Bank starts. Together with recidivist Caroline Karlström I found myself 50% giggling like a child about the fact that we had secured the coolest and most complex project I’ve ever worked with while feeling 50% scared to death about the fact that this was that big ass project where you either succeed or you end up in a grave. Well, we [click to continue…]
I am not applying for a new job as a CEO or Marketing Director, but if I did that would be my headline and I would run the brand I’d work for based on the insights that follow.
Steve! Bring it on!
Ok, so you’re s marketing director or even a CEO struggling to beat the he’ll out of your competition? Well, you are not alone. That’s more or less what all brands want, but why then are there so few that actually make a mark that can stand the tests of time?
Here are 14 pointers on how to get your brand charging into the future.
0.1. Before you read anything else. If your product or service doesn’t stand the competition. Get back to the drawing board and make sure it does. Then continue to Nr 1.
It’s really quite easy. Apple started their brand journey by making sure they had kick ass products.
1. Great branding is not about sticking to graphical guidelines, it’s about sticking to values and beliefs
I think I’ve written about it before. But years ago (1999) I found myself working with Nike after having called them to talk Framfab into a pitch. In one of the first meetings I attended I of course asked for Nike’s visual guidelines. One guy from Nike looked at me and said: “Just don’t touch the logo”. I repeated myself and clarified that I wondered about fonts and colorings. The guy again: “Don’t touch the logo, that’s all”.
How does Nike keep it together then? With great people of course. They act as gatekeepers of the brand. It’s in their spine like I’ve written about before.
2. Do things larger than life
Anish Kapoor knows how to make things larger than life!
Don’t be shy! Whatever you do, don’t expect that people wanna see everyday life things. We wanna get carried along and dream. The way you shape your products [click to continue…]
There are no secret formulas, no secret recipes or magic potions when it comes to social media marketing. All you’ve gotta do is take in one single fact: People have moved lots of their behaviors online and you’ve gotta follow.
To succeed in moving your business, communication and advertising into the digital world, ask yourselves the following questions:
- If people search for things related to my business via Google - how can I make sure they find me?
- We’ve used to organize events in the real world - where can we organize events in the digital world?
- When people started to use phones you gave your sales people phones - why are you not giving them Skype, MSN, Twitter, Facebook and live streaming accounts?
- You would never automate a personal relation that could lead to sales - why are you automatic every single sales process online?
- People don’t listen to brands, they listen to other people - how can we make sure other people say good things about us?
- Since people tend to spend their time alone behind the screen - how can we continue to build human digital relations using video, photos and copy?
- In the real world you do PR towards paid media – how can you shift your PR activities to be picked up by earned media online?
- Traditionally you’ve spent lots of money on media - how can you shift focus to spending lots of money on value that leads to eyeballs online?
- In the offline world you would value how people navigate in your store - how much do you value how people navigate in your online world?
- Building a great house requires an well paid architect – why then are you hiring the cheapest architect when building a great online presence?
- In the old world comparing products was hard - does your products stand the future transparency were everything can be compared?
- Back then you could create a 3 year marketing plan – what can you do to turn it into a 3 month marketing plan?
- Focus groups used to lead you right - is your organization prepared to listen to real time data instead?
- Building brands took years and years - how can you build your brand in months?
- Competitors introduced themselves at the next fair - are you prepared for the ones who wont introduce themselves at all and don’t care about the old way of doing business, only your old customers?
- You used to write business plans - how can you get moving and learn on the way.
If you’ve got 15 right answers then you’re fine. If not – start running!
