I am fascinated by the uproar about the transfer of the show Project Runway from the uber stylish Bravo to the more, um, subdued Lifetime (it premiered on the new channel last Thursday).  According to the blogs, viewers were sure that the show would not be nearly as good on Lifetime as it was on Bravo.  But while the channel has changed, the format, the hosts and the lingo will remain - so why was everyone so sure it would be bad?  Because the Bravo network has developed an incredible brand around “drama” TV that is so bad it’s great, for young-minded, style-oriented viewers – while Lifetime’s for…well, I don’t really know – women who stay home on Saturday nights?  (Even the name Lifetime sounds old!)  Fans trusted the show coming from Bravo as curator.  I’m inspired by Bravo’s ability to create this “in the know” persona for itself (even the logo suggests people are talking about it!). The most successful channels are brands – and while some are reaping the rewards of brilliantly managing this, those that don’t will be totally “out.”

Our Chicago office founder and MD recently turned 39 again, and in honor of his birthday, his loyal troops wanted to find a cool little t-shirt store and print up a customized tee (”39 4Eva”). It’s not too hard in Chicago (or any big city) to find these niche type boutiques, and none really seemed to stand out until they found the T-Shirt Deli.

One thing that inspires us at Egg is finding brands that really pay attention to their story. In order to be able to do that, they have to be obsessive about the details. The T-Shirt Deli’s story is about mimicking the best delis, offering t-shirt aficionados as many fonts as cheeses as well as the promise of something fresh and totally unique.

There are two elements of the story that they deliver so well.  One virtual, one real world.

First their T-Shirts are served up wrapped sugmarine/hoagie/hero style in butcher’s paper with the packaging held together with ironically contradictory stickers like “lean ham and kosher meat”. Great little details that show they care. Second, on their website the navigation looks like an old plastic deli board complete with miscolored letters and their mailing list invitation is a deli “take a ticket” stub. Nice little touches like this make a difference and suggest that if they care enough about these details, then their product will be similarly high quality.

A few weeks back, there I was waxing lyrical about getting a personal note from the pilot on a United flight which made me reconsider my lack of emotional connection with my airline of choice. Shortly after that post I also heard the first rumblings of a story that has gathered massive momentum online since. The popular “United Breaks Guitars” story has been everywhere with almost 4.5 million views on You Tube, coverage on the Today Show, Jimmy Kimmel etc. It certainly makes the United brand look shabby and tight-fisted. In a nutshell, musician Dave Carroll saw United baggage handlers tossing his checked bags around for fun, including his beloved Taylor guitar which was damaged to the tune of $1,200.  The song is about him trying to recoup that money from the airline.

Clearly in this case, the big loser is United - apparently when this story became so big, United’s share price dropped $180 million, a caustic reminder that brand reputation does have a dollar value. Most news coverage on this has focused on the humble Dave Carroll who has been a maestro at playing the social media game, so he’s the obvious winner.  However, in my view, the biggest under the radar winner here is Taylor Guitars - the small Caifornia-based manufacturer of the eponymous guitar. Here’s a brand used by some of the most renowned musicians worldwide (Neil Young, Dave Matthews) and Sting, suddenly sitting on a piece of PR gold. Based on this response, I’ve got to think they didn’t really make the most of the opportunity.

As for United, they’re getting even more stick from other country musicians singing about how awesome their competition is.  Brand damage by country music song is a pretty sorry stage of affairs.

Last week I was traveling back from a 2 day ideation session. The session had involved a lot of work and some particularly long days + nights, so I was delighted to see my request to use my upgrade certificates confirmed when I checked in at 4.30am in St. Louis for my return leg on United. I’m extremely loyal to United, which is about 95% due to the fact that I’ve been a member of their Mileage Plus program for the past 7 years and get preferential treatment as a result. I am, however, not committed to United.  If another carrier flying the routes I travel most often, offered me the same status to switch and matched my accumulated miles - I’d be there in a second (at least for a decent trial period).  Yep, that’s a pretty big ask, but I do spend a lot of money on flights.

However, this United flight was a bit different. The pilot made all his pre-flight announcements from the front of the plane rather than in the cockpit, so I immediately connected the brand with someone beyond the flight attendants - sort of like meeting the bank manager rather than a teller (sorry flight attendants). Then about an hour before landing, the flight attendant brought me a card that was a personal note from the pilot.  “Dear Mr. Band”, it said, “It’s my pleasure to fly you to Vancouver”.  OK, so not exactly going way above and beyond - but certainly a small unexpected touch that made me reconsider my relationship with United a little bit and perhaps put my brand promiscuity on the back burner. Reminded me it doesn’t take much to shape brand relationships, even ones that are years old.  When I told my wife about this, she asked me if the captain had added his hotel room number and a winking smiley.  Thankfully no.  Stretching the brand to the overly friendly skies would have been a bit much.

Back in the 70s BMW commissioned some of the hottest artists of the day (Warhol, Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg etc) to paint a range of their cars. Check them all out here. These cars are going on display again at Grand Central Station in New York, for a couple of weeks only (the installation closes on April 6th).  While Warhol may have elevated everyday brands with his work (Campbell’s Soup Can etc), it seems more appropriate that a brand like BMW is re-imaged in this way. Actually using the cars as part of the art rather than portraying them on canvas, makes a difference, but I think it’s the fact that BMW were collaborating with this creation that elevates their part in the show. Campbell’s Soup didn’t ask Warhol to paint their cans. I wonder what would be a decent equivalent today (apart from Apple).

We’re doing quite a bit of contemplation these days on brands that are poised for greater success in tougher economic times. The obvious categories with lower prices but high perceived value like confectionery or snack foods are already posting impressive and robust performance, like Cadbury in Europe.

There are a couple of other approaches that have grabbed our attention. The first is what we’re calling Renewable Brands, those that can be enjoyed time and again, in new ways, without having to spend (much) again to do so. The key part to this is being able to renew your engagement with that brand, so it feels fresh. The two that spring immediately to mind are the new Kindle from Amazon and the ubiquitous ipod - both very easy to refresh and renew at low cost. What other examples are out there of renewable brands?

The second is a very simple idea that seems almost revolutionary in its approach - products that are built to last and priced accordingly.  Howies, a UK based sports clothing line have come up with an idea called Hand Me Down. They have a jacket and 3 types of bag right now that are guaranteed for 10 years. The material is more robust, the stiching, zips etc are higher quality and perhaps the best bit…the label has space for the names of 3 owners - encouraging the passing on of the product. The prices are comparatively  high - the jacket is £400 and the bags range from £125-195, but that’s spread out over at least 10 years.

Both ideas are valid, but given the short-term nature of people’s thinking, I’m guessing the ability to refresh and renew is going to perform better than investing in a product that lasts. With the latter, we have to work harder to derive pleasure. What do you think?

Alisa Miller, head of Public Radio International spoke at last year’s TED Conference about how the mainstream media content we consume most frequently limits our appreciation of world events. While this might be completely obvious to anyone who watches network or cable news, she presents her case with incredibly effective visuals that are compelling if at little depressing. The counter-argument of course is that news follows the stories of the day that it’s viewers care about (hence celebrity obsession with Anna Nicole Smith inspires more column inches than what’s happening at a Climate Change Conference), but apparently, we actually have a greater hunger for world news that we did in the past, so that argument is less clear cut. I’m less interested in the pull/push theory of news…I believe we’re all spoon fed…. and more interested in this notion of news mapping and how it could apply to brand mapping.

We used this as inspiration for the branded life experiment, wondering if there are certain brands that dominate our day to day lives  in the same way that news about Paris Hilton dominates the world of media. We’ll get back to you when we’ve been running this a bit longer, but at the moment, Apple is the (perhaps unsurprising) dominant force.

We blogged about David Beckham’s arrival at the LA Galaxy a couple of years ago as an example of how the MLS brand  was really getting a huge boost.  I liken it now to a brand manager acquiring a great brand to add to his portfolio.

Since the end of the MLS season, Beckham has been playing his football in Italy for AC Milan.  As he’s under contract to the Galaxy, they have agreed a loan period with Milan, which is due to end next month when the MLS season re-starts.  Now, however, Beckham wants to stay in Italy.  He’s playing amazingly well, Milan are a huge team and he’s playing on a much bigger stage and at a higher standard.  Now his lawyers are trying to reach a deal with the LA Galaxy to sell him to Milan on a permanent basis.  If that happens, the MLS brand gets a double shot in the guts - first the league loses its prize brand asset and second the image of the league as  second (or third) tier standard gets reinforced.  Let’s return to that brand manager.  Suddenly the brand that’s been driving all the interest in your company and spurring a load of growth is about to be acquired by a rival.  If I was the LA Galaxy (and the MLS too) - I wouldn’t be letting him go under any circumstance.

Back in May last year there were two really cool ideas on brands that cropped up on blogs that I follow. BrandTags by Noah Brier became insanely popular and was a huge success and is still going - a lovely, simple way of capturing the essence of brands via a mass tag cloud. The second which was on the always excellent Dear Jane Sample,  was equally insightful. Understanding that our days are filled with brands, Jane created the Brand Timeline Portrait, showing brand usage at different times of day. Both got us thinking at Egg Strategy of how branded our lives are. If we really took the time to log all the different brands we used in a day, what would that look like, how many would there be, which ones would we use more, which ones would we love and want to use, or despise and have to use? I got together with my friends at Industrial Brand and they pushed the idea further and were able to bring it to life with a really easy to use engine and simple visualization designed by Ryan and Jer. We called it brandedlife.  Register, login, have a play and let us know what you think.  The tagcloud shows the most popular brands (ones that you want to use, vs. have to) closest to the center, the frequency of use through size and the likeability through color intensity (brighter = more likeable.).  We’re still testing it out, so feedback is most welcome.

In its latest installment of viral goodness, Burger King offers you ‘Flame’, the IT-fragrence of 2008 and perfect holiday gift for the spicy-hot-man-who-has-everything on your holiday list. Check it out at the brilliantly named website: firemeetsdesire.com.   

Reported to make your man smell like “the scent of seduction with a hint of flame-broiled meat.”…..mmmmmm, sexy.

It is a bargain at its $3.99 price point and available at Ricky NYC or online. 

Happy Holidays!

The idea of a mash up isn’t new in the music business.  I’m listening to Viva La Hova right now - a mash up of arguably the 2 biggest acts in the world today - Jay Z and Coldplay. As I listen to hip hop beats over Chris Martin’s piano, I wonder about the idea of brand mash ups.  The beauty of the musical mash up is that it takes two completely different sounds/genres and forces them together to create something more unexpected.  In marketing, cross promotions happen most with brands that share similar values (e.g. the Harley Davidson special edition F150 truck)- because marketers are thinking of synergy and obvious fit between brands, but isn’t that, well, a bit obvious.  Wouldn’t it be more interesting if brands chose to do “mash ups” instead of cross promotions with other brands that were completely out of left field?  Send your weirdest brand mash ups.

Last week we posted about the brands in the new Bond movie. Movies have long used product placement to help fund production, but do we know which films are most branded vs. others?  We might not be able to answer that question specifically, but you can certainly get an idea of which brands are involved in which films with these.  These alternative movie posters remove all visuals and credits and replace them with the names of the brands involved in the movie.  Very nice - thanks to Mark and Jason for the tips.