Allen P. Adamson's Blog
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Mar.04.2009
We’ve yet to see any light at the end of our very dark economic tunnel. While professional economists keep us posted as to what may or may not be the answer to our recessionary travails, a number of branding professionals have made clear that the smart use of digital technology can help marketers...
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Feb.27.2009
What do women want? Forget Freud. According to a recent study undertaken by Frito-Lay, they don’t want to snack like their husbands or boyfriends or brothers or fathers or sons. In addition to not favoring salty foods, they don’t want to snack on foods that, according to a female colleague “you...
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Feb.19.2009
Is everything on sale or am I just imagining it? In this period of economic doom and gloom, I’ve yet to find a brand that isn’t promising downsized pricing to its down and out customer base. The two questions every brand manager should be asking during the price-value fisticuffs are first, what we...
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Feb.19.2009
Among the many questions being asked of brand professionals during this crisis of confidence and commerce is whether companies can afford to be good. That is, with all the cost-cutting and down-sizing, should companies shelve initiatives relating to social responsibility until better times return?...
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Feb.12.2009
The redesigned Tropicana packaging has raised questions by lots of people who think its clean, but generic new graphics don’t do a whole lot to distinguish the brand from its competition. In fact, by eliminating the simple, little straw-in-the-orange visual, which conveyed without words where we...
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Jan.27.2009
How is media buying evolving along with the evoloution of digital branding channels? Is “print dead,” as many in the marketing industry might have us believe? Vivek Shah, a digital expert at Time, Inc. answered these, and a number of other interesting questions, in our recent interview. Click here...
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Jan.22.2009
How much did social networking have to do with the fact that we watched Barack Obama sworn in as the 44th president of the United States? From this voter’s perspective, a lot. Yes, it helped that there was a former Facebook member on the Obama staff, but more than this are the millions of...
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Jan.09.2009
I’ve heard kids say all sorts of things about what they want to be when they grow up, a doctor, a fireman, a dog walker, even a judge on American Idol, but the owner of a Dairy Queen franchise? In its recent foray into digital marketing, the folks of DQ have launched an online video game, DQ Tycoon...
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Jan.07.2009
Call me old-fashioned, if you will, but I consider myself a traditionalist when it comes to knowing what keeps a strong brand strong. And my opinion is that the recent decision by The New York Times Company to sell display advertising on the front page of its esteemed newspaper will weaken its...
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Jan.05.2009
What makes digital content go viral? In a year during which both a truly awesome presidential election and truly awful financial crisis held sway, there was no dearth of online video, both reality and parody. Some of it people watched and passed along with abandon. Some they just watched and...
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Dec.18.2008
Audi is a great brand. Friends and colleagues who drive Audis love them for the entirety of the brand experience, from the way the car performs, to the way it looks, to what it says about them as auto aficionados. What friends and colleagues, along with thousands of people I don’t know, don’t love...
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Dec.16.2008
I want to thank my friends at The Brand Show for inviting me to join in their recent conversation on branding in a digital world. During this enjoyable and free-wheeling discussion we talked about why, in this transparent environment, it’s critical to deliver on your brand promise consistently and...
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Dec.15.2008
I love the way Don Draper and his band of merry Mad Men talk the talk. But, were they part of this current digital branding world, would their talk cut it? Probably not. One of the things I write about in BrandDigital is that talking the digital talk, being able to throw around digital terms with...
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Dec.11.2008
From the NBC network’s point of view, moving Jay Leno from his late night spot to a prime time spot is a stroke of financial brilliance. It’s going to save them the cost of producing high-budget cops, docs, and lawyer dramas (which people DVR and watch on-demand anyway). From my professional...
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Dec.09.2008
In this economic climate of shrinking budgets and diminished consumer attention, there are two valuable lessons marketers should take away from the brilliant campaign run by the Obama team. Lesson one: Stay focused on a simple, core idea for your brand which, in the President-elect’s case was “...
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About Allen
Allen Adamson is the Managing Director of the New York office of Landor Associates and author of BrandSimple: How the Best Brands Keep it Simple and Succeed and the forthcoming BrandDigital: Simple Ways Top Brands Succeed in the Digital World.
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