Archive for Advertising

The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding

// May 7th, 2009 // 14,306 Comments » // Advertising, Design

Came across this while I was doing a project:

The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding

by Al Reis

1. Expansion

The power of a brand is inversely proportional to its scope

2. Contraction

A brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus

3. Publicity

The birth of a brand is achieved with publicity, not advertising

4. Advertising

Once born, a brand needs advertising to stay healthy

5.The Word

A brand should strive to own a word in the mind of the consumer

6.Credentials

The crucial ingredient in the success of any brand is its claim to authenticity

7. Quality

Quality is important, but brands are not built on quality alone

8. The Category

A leading brand should promote the category, not the brand

9. The Name

In the long run a brand is nothing more than a name.

10. Extensions

The easiest way to destroy a brand is to put its name on everything

11. Fellowship

In order to build the category, a brand should welcome other brands

12. The Generic

One of the fastest routes to failure is giving a brand a generic name

13. The Company

Brands are brands. Companies are companies. There is a difference

14. Subbrands

What branding builds, subbranding can destroy

15. Siblings

There is a time and a place to launch a second brand

16. Shape

A brand’s logotype should be designed to fit the eyes. Both eyes.

17. Color

A brand should use a color that is the opposite of its major competitor’s

18. Borders

There are no barriers to global branding. A brand should know no borders.

19. Consistency

A brand is not built overnight. Success is measured in decades, not years.

20. Change

Brands can be changed, but only infrequently and only very carefully

21. Mortality

No brand will live forever. Euthanasia is often the best solution

22. Singularity

The most important aspect of a brand is its single-mindedness

Progress is Beautiful

// March 26th, 2009 // 23,404 Comments » // Advertising

audi_logoOver the past few years Audi has made great strides in their branding efforts by using smart, beautify designed advertising campaigns. The VW subsidiary has continued to grow market share, and perhaps more impressively sales over the last year despite the fiscal crisis and the collapse of the automotive industry. This article will examine the techniques employed by Audi in its quest for market domination. As well as the aesthetic simplicity, and beauty found in the Audi ads themselves.

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Auditory Branding

Perhaps the most unique aspect of Audi’s advertising campaign is it’s commitment to Auditory Branding. In many ways this is a throw back to the company jingles of the 50’s and 60’s, but the challenge for Audi has been how to bring the idea of the company jingle to a luxury market. Your typical jingle might tell you everything you need to know about a product, but it surely doesn’t exude the elegance, style, or grace that one expects to find in a luxury product. Audi’s director of marketing Stephen Berkov said the goal is to find out “What is the sound of an Audi”, by tying the company to a sound, or a general style of sound, it offers unique branding capabilities, and allows the brand image to be perpetuated in new, and exciting ways. Audi’s solution has been to use original scores in all of their advertising.

Here are two examples from their 2009 A4 campaign:

Progress is Beautiful

Truth in Progress

Digital Advertising

The biggest opportunity and one of the biggest challenges in marketing over the last half decade has been how to effectively break into the digital medium. It goes beyond simply making a website and trying to drive traffic to it. The challenge is to permeate this new Web 2.0 culture. Audi has used a variety of tactics including viral marketing, and interactive marketing as it’s answer to this paradigm shift.

Art of the Heist

This 2005 viral marketing campaign for the Audi A3 has too be one of the a3heist2most innovative on record. It started with the staged theft of the new A3 model (which at this point had yet to be released), complete with broken glass and police tape. New York City was promptly canvased with flyers seeking information on the theft, and the story was picked up by local and national news outlets. Audi then went into full swing by creating a storyline behind the heist and viewers were able to follow the story on StolenA3.com, Lastresortretrieval.com, and Virgilkingofcode.com, all created by Audi. The story turned into a full blown web mini series that attracted over 500,000 participants, most of which fit right into the A3’s target market, Males, 25-34, making 150,000+. Audi execs liked to call this new approach “alternate reality branding” and it is easy to see why. In the end, the sprawling campaign included traditional print and broadcast ads, live events, online puzzles, films and gorilla tactics that spanned over 4 months, and increased the interest of the new A3 by 79% (according to the agency anyway).

A Rhythm of Lines

This 2007 interactive marketing campaign for the Audi A5 is not about the car. Its all about the driver – style conscious, creatively minded and beyond the

reaches of traditional advertising. Audi’s answer was to appeal to their creative side by letting them create their own advertisement. They developed an interactive flash website that allowed users to create their own “Rhythm of Lines” and enter them in a contest where they would be reproduced as limited prints. The creations could also be saved as desktop back grounds, or sent to friends. Visit microsite here

Mobile Marketing

The latest innovation from Audi has come with its 2009 A4 campaign in which they take advantage of the new smart phone crazy by introducing a free Iphone app. The application is available for free from itunes.audi-a4-driving-challenge

For years advertisers have explored different methods of pushing advertising into the mobile space, and various attempts to have ad sponsored phone service, ads before calls, ad-funded dialup services and even location aware ads pop up as SMS messages as you travel around have all basically fallen flat… Audi shows us how it’ll be done in the future with Audi A4 Driving Challenge. Dave Taylor

Simplicity of Design

I have always been attracted to Audi’s ad campaigns for two reasons, great music, and simple, elegant design. To finish up I wanted to include some examples of how simply and directly Audi conveys theirs messages. Not commentary here, the ads speak for themselves.

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